Final Blog

FINAL blog—please post a final blog about...blogging...and what you have learned about it, how it could be used by you in the future in your chosen field, what you have learned by other bloggers you have read (or are reading), and whether you will continue to keep your blog going or let it drop. Finally, what is your advice to new bloggers?

I'd like to start this blog by saying that I have learned a lot about blogging since I started this semester. I've seen it used in many different ways. (as a teaching tool, to talk to other teachers, or even to have young children use in a classroom.) I've learned that these blogs can be professional or personal. I've learned that some are useful and some are not. Some are funny and some are serious. There is no right or wrong way to make a blog and the possibilities of it are endless. As much as I like blogs I'm not sure that I will continue blogging. I may stop for a while and come back to it when I start teaching in a classroom of my own. My advise to someone who is just starting a blog is to keep your mind open. You can't say or do anything wrong on blogger. Like I said before there is no right or wrong so feel free to be as creative/expressive as you want.

Did You Know?

Hey everyone!

   One of my teammates showed me this video and I thought it was awesome! Some of this stuff was insane but totally true! Hope you all enjoy :)

Did You Know?

Children & Technology

Hey everyone!

  So I know someone already talked about it in one of their blogs last week but I'm going to bring up the topic again. I was in my CHF 203 class where you get to play with pre-school children and observe them and I was talking to one of the little girls. We were talking about pets and she told me she had a hedge hog so we talked about what they eat and where they live and things like that. When we were talking about how the hedge hog doesn't shed but does something similar called quilling the little girl mentioned to me that she saw a video of it on YouTube. This got me thinking... Did this girls mother or father look up on YouTube quilling? Did the little girl go on YouTube and type in hedge hog or quilling? What else would she find if she typed in one of those words?  So i did some investigating on YouTube and typed in both of the words "quilling" and "hedge hog"...

   When I typed in "hedge hog" I found many useless videos about random things like sonic the hedge hog and peoples hedge hogs doing random things. When I typed in quilling I found only things about quilling which happens to be a craft that people do. None of these videos seemed educational. It's interesting to see what things will come up when you type in words like that. I had no idea that quilling was a craft I just thought it had to do with hedge hogs shedding. 

   Anyways this is just something for people to think about when they get on YouTube next time. 

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

Hey everyone, 

  I found this video youtube and thought it was hilarious! Some of the things that this guy comes up with are so true! Julian Smith talks at the end about relationship gossip ad if it's not on facebook it's not official and I thought that was great! Anyways I thought some other people might want to check it out and get a little laugh out of it. It's interesting how much everyone loves facebook but when you listen to this guy talk about it you sit there ant think "That's sooooo true!"

25 Things I Hate About Facebook

Oprah, Jon & Kate Plus 8, and Technology

Hello again!

Today I was watching Oprah and she had Jon & Kate Plus 8 on her show. They were talking to them through the camera because Jon & Kate and their children were at home doing the show. Near the end of the show they used Skype to talk to a couple who was expecting quadruplets. I found this very interesting! I'd never seen anyone on a large television show use Skype. It was soooo cool! How awesome is it that because of Skype the couple could share their story with Oprah and talk to Jon & Kate about their experience. The woman was so far along in her pregnancy that it would be hard for her to travel across the country to be on the show. Instead she can stay in the comfort of her home and talk to America. Anyways I thought this was pretty neat because before this class I'd only seen one person use Skype and it was my roommate last year because boyfriend was in Iraq, so to see something like that used on television was a big deal. 

Again hope everyone is having a good break! See you all soon!

Billboards

Hey everyone!

I'm not really sure how much this has to do with technology but I'm going to talk about it anyways. Some of you already know this but our softball team is in Florida right now for spring break. When we travel to the field I always notice all the billboards on the side of the road. I remember asking my dad one time why Maine doesn't have billboards. It seems like every other state we travel to does but we don't. So I did a little research and found out that in Maine it is illegal to have billboards. They were banned in 1965 as part of the Federal Highway Beautification Act. According to the Portland Press Herald Maine, Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska are the only four states that ban billboards. Anyways I thought this was a fun little fact. I guess it relates to technology because some billboards are now just like TV screens and they flash peoples signs instead of being pasted on, or they rotate panels to display 3 or 4 different signs. 

Hope everyones break is going well! :)

Technology on TV

Hello!

    Yesterday our softball team was traveling back from South Carolina. We got stuck in the airport over night and ended up having to take a bus back from Albany, NY. The point of this was that we were watching the show House on the bus yesterday. They were testing out these blood samples of this woman and couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with her. Near the end of the show they finally had someone test the blood by hand and they figured out she had a parasite which can easily be seen when you are looking at it under a microscope. One of the people made  a comment that "If we had just looked at the blood with our own hands then we would have noticed this right away" the response to hat was "That's what happens in our technology based world." I thought that was very interesting. Although we have all of this technology we sometimes over look that doing things by hand can be a better choice. It's the same way with spell check on computers. You can't tell me that people who type something up go through and spell check their papers after they have already spell checked it on the computer. Anyways I thought it was a good point to bring up. We rely on technology all the time but perhaps we should try things without technology once and a while and remember what it's like. 

K-3 Classroom

Hey Everyone!

  I was doing some research about lesson plans for K-3 that included technology. Since we were talking about it in class I figured I'd see what kind of other ideas I could find besides just our groups. I stumbled upon this website that teaches children the basics about computers. I played with the typing with Katie part at the bottom of the page. It told children how to properly place their hands on the key board and gave you games to play that made you type words and letters. I also looked at the time machine. It showed you a picture of a computer and talked about it, then when you put it in the time machine it gave you a picture of the same computer years ago and talked about how it has changed. I found that pretty interesting. There were plenty of other cool ideas on this website that I messed around with that seemed like young children would like to play with also. Hope you guys check out the site! 

http://www.growing.course.com/level_K/index.html

Technology In The Classroom

This week while I was reading articles for another class I'm taking I stumbled over one that caught my eye. I know many people in this class were interested in how to use technology in a classroom full of 4 or 5 year old children. This article talked about one class in South Carolina who used lots of technology in their classroom of 4 and 5 year olds. I thought I'd post it so anyone who was interested could read it. It seemed like there were several good ideas for projects you could do with them that included using video cameras, digital cameras, e-mail, and the internet. http.//journal.naeyc.org/btj/200809/pdf/OnOurMinds.pdf

Technology & Travel

Hey all! This weekend our softball team went to Tennessee for a tournament. I realized while we were there just how much we depend on technology. Many of our team members have a blackberry or some other type of phone that has the internet so we can check our e-mail while we are in an airport or look up our next flight and see if we are going to make it. Not only that but just about everyone has an Ipod or Zune and a computer. It's much harder than you think to do homework while you are traveling. Although it's nice to have your computer with you on a trip so you can do homework on the plane or in your hotel room it's a hassel to get through security with a computer. You have to take out all of your electronics when you go through security and then when you are done you have to put it all back in your backpack/carry-on. Then when you are on the plane you have to shove it in an over head compartment or under your seat. I guess it just didn't really occur to me until this weekend how dependant we are on these things. It's nice when you are traveling with a big team because someone always has something that you need if you happen to forget, like a charger for your computer or Ipod or cellphone. 

Ipods In The Classroom

Something that came up during our classroom discussion was the use of Ipods in the classroom. Are they good or bad? Should you be allowed to have your Ipod in for classes? Is it easier to cheat in class with an Ipod?

I personally believe that Ipods could be a good addition to a classroom. For most people it seems like they worked better with some sort of music or noise in the background. In a class I took last semester we talked about how different people learn differently. With Ipods people who like having music in the background could have their Ipod on and it wouldn't distract others who might not like having music in the background. Also children would be able to listen to what ever music helps them focus. 

On the other hand some children will find a way to use Ipods as a way to cheat. I know a person I knew in high school used his Ipod to cheat on a test. Our spanish teacher used to let us listen to music on our Ipods and this particular person decided to make a song that had all the answers in it so when he would get stuck on a question he would start the song over and listen to it. In a way I thought it was very creative that he could make up this song to remember the answers, but I also hated the fact that he cheated on the test while everyone else had studied.

 I guess there is good and bad to everything and we need to decided if the good out weights the bad or not. What does everyone else think? Should we be allowed to use Ipods in school?

My First Post!

Hey everyone! 

This is the first time I've ever used a blog before so I'm curious to see where this will take me and what I'll end up doing with it. I know yesterday in class my group talked a lot about MLTI. We had a bunch of questions about it. For instance, why 7th graders? Why start using them in the middle of middle school? Why not give them to the 8th graders or freshman in high school? We also talked about how maybe the schools jumped into this idea too quickly and didn't give it enough thought. My sister is two years younger than I am and she was the second year of the MLTI program, they had no rules or restrictions really except for they laptops were not allowed to be taken home. My brother is four years younger than I am and when he first started the MLTI program they had an assembly about the laptops, parents had to come in and sign wavers saying it was okay for their child to take the computers home, and they also had to pay an insurance fee on the computer in case anything happened to it. These rules came after my sisters class because so many people had problems with the computers, they broke things, they got viruses, etc. The school even hired a second computer teacher just to fix computers. As a group we felt like the schools probably should have thought about some of these things before they jumped into buying all of these computers. We are not saying this was a bad idea it just needed some more thought before being thrown into schools and classrooms. 

I hope this sparks some ones interest! :)