Internet for Educators coming to an end..........

This week my group presented in the class. We talked about some good and bad aspects of the Internet in education. Some of the more important things we talked about were teacher resources, teacher networking, and the overwhelming amounts of information. The Internet is overflowing with information. We have to be careful when we give students a topic and tell them to go research it because often students will take the first site that is listed in google. We must inform students to be critical of the information online and that often they are ranked based on money or advertising.
Teacher resources and networking go hand in hand with student learning. I believe you want to be a successful teacher you must be a networked teacher. Teachers who get and share good learning activities with other teachers only increase their students success. The Internet allows for many networking and resource sharing opportunities. The one place I liked the most was the teacher resource section on facebook. Other teachers can share resources here, but even more importantly you can have conversations with many other teachers.

On Wednesday we had a very interesting presentation on technology, education, and the future. This presentation was crazy good. We seen where some of the technology is going and how we have to keep up with it. The part on 6th sense was intense, but I am not sure how I would use that in the classroom. So if you have any ideas please let me know.......
There were 2 parts that still stick out in my mind, the first thing is wolfram alpha, I think this will be something I use as a teacher and "forget" to tell my students about. This site could really change people teach. You can go onto that site and it solves equations for you, yikes good luck math teachers. The other thing I really liked was when we used our cellphones as a recorder. I liked it because it translates it into text. I think this could be valuable when students get to university lectures. It could also be used when a guest speaker or elder comes into the class, so the students can just listen and not have to take down the notes because they can get them off of the 'site' later. The interesting question Ryan brought up was can this text be translated into a different language? If it can I think this may be one of the more important tools when you have a class of EAL students.

That's all for this week.......

Cyberbullying

We had a presentation on cyberbullying this week. I feel that cyberbullying is a very important issue in schools today. A lot of people do cyberbullying without knowing it. I was surprised how high I scored on the "are you a cyberbully". This kinda test would be something I would do with my class so they become aware that they may or may not be cyberbullying. Students need to educated in this area because of the effects cyberbullying has on people and their health.

We also had a presentation on filtering in school. I agree that students should have their searches filtered. I believe that teachers should have the freedom to use all sites, such as YouTube as teaching resources. Obviously teachers could be monitored and not allowed to go on inappropriate sites.

Thats all for this week.........

Interesting Technology In Physical Education

I was trying to think of ways to incorporate more technology into my physical education classes. I came across this videohttp://www.wwaytv3.com/node/7289. I really believe that this "be active Hops Sports" program would really work well with students. It shows professional athletes (role models) performing different activities that students try in the gym. It gets students up and active, and working on different skill sets such as reaction time. There are a variety of programs such as plates and yoga. I am interested in other ways that technology can be used in the gym. I know we have talked about heart rate monitors and pedometers.

What else is there?

Howard Griffith & Donald Girouard MB Education, Web Based Learning

Another day, another presentation. This time we were lucky to have two of the leaders in Manitoba Web Based Education, Howard Griffith and Donald Girouard. First off I really think the idea of the Manitoba Education web based courses are really beneficial for students and teachers. It allows students to participate in classes that are not offered in their school. I like that an expert teacher will be delivering the course so that students will get the most out of the experience. On the flip side I think that delivering this course would be really time consuming for the teacher.

The most important aspect for myself was that you could use the web based courses as a guide in the classroom. Since the web courses follow the curriculum, these course would be great resources for teachers. They may be limited in the differentiated instruction, but as an educator I think it would be beneficial to use some of the material for these courses (developed by experts) in the classroom. Teaching a subject for the first time, these courses could save you alot of preperation.

Talk to you next week....

Dr. Glen Gatin is in the house

This weeks lecture was presented by Dr. Gatin. The topic I found most interesting was the part on the educational value of using Second Life in the class room. I think i would try to use this program in my Health Education classes. In the grade 11 and 12 health curriculum their are many topics that Second life could demonstrate. For example, we talk about nutrition and mental health. Each student could create a character. Each student could pick out of a hat a topic, such as being a binge eater. Their second life character could then fulfill the topic and the students could see the effects on their second life character (physically, mentally, and socially). Doing this through second life could help students visualize the effects that some events (poor nutrition) have on the body.

I think students would be more willing to learn through this interesting virtual world.

Till next time, these are the Gaudry files.....

Presentation by Dr. Alec Couros

This weeks presentation was conducted by Dr. Alec Couros via Elluminate Live. First of all the Elluminate live program was pretty cool. It allowed us to connect with Alec in a different province. He was able to talk to us, while giving a presentation on open education. Elluminate live would be a good way to have people present to my classes. (some doodling functions would have to be turned off)

Alec had a lot of interesting and useful ideas. I really liked the photo sharing idea. I could see my classes doing this. Everyday we could take a picture of the class doing an activity, assignment, presentation or whatever we are up to that day. We would photo share those class pictures so other teachers can get ideas on activities (resource sharing), or they could be viewed by parents so they can get a better understanding of what their children are doing at school. I think it could be a good way to have accountability in the class, as well as introducing technology into the class. In Phys Ed. this would be a great way to share games with other educators.

Great Presentation!!

till next time the Gaudry Files are closed!

John Evans

John Evans visited our Internet for Educators class on Wednesday Jan. 13, 2010. John talked about Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). He talked about many sources of technology that can be used daily such as twitter, but my favorite was the the Google Reader.

I think it is awesome how you can add subscriptions to almost any site by just copying the email address and pasting the address into your reader (under add a subscription). Why is this awesome??? Well you can add sports sites, news sites, educational sites etc. to one page for easy reference. The Google reader then allows you to view the top stories under each page that you have subscribed to. Each story has a short description to help you choose if its worth your time to read the whole article. As John said you can have the stories updated daily, so this would be a great way to start the day. You can delete the articles that are irrelevant or boring. The reader would be a good way to keep up with classmates blogs in school and for resource materials for class projects.

Google reader is a pretty sweet tool for educators. I look forward to learning about other tools in the coming weeks.