Final Evaluation Blog

The most useful technology I think that I will use in the future from this course was learning Mindmiester. I think that will be a great tool for me in my future classrooms because even since I was in high school, education has become a lot more high tech and this would be a great tool for sharing ideas with other students in the classroom and doing group work to develop analysis. I think a skill that can be difficult to teach and that is often overlooked is that of analyzing works of literature. It is easy to see connections when the teacher presents them, but it is much harder to find them on your own. I have trained my mind to do that but I am still working on it and I'm getting ready to finish the English program here at BYU. I think that Mindmiester is a great tool for that because it will allow students to get into groups and share ideas and analysis with very little directing from me so that students will be able to develop that skill, which I feel is so vital in learning to appreciate literature and the value that it has.

I think I will also use the video creating technology that we used to create the instructional videos. That's a great way to help students learn to create tutorials and videos and it's a great way for me as a teacher to create tutorials or instructional videos for the students so that they can learn at home and in the classroom by instruction. I had no idea that those tools were available and beyond using them in the classroom, which I think will be very useful, I will also use them in my personal life as I need to create videos for any other reason.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, I will learn to use new technologies as they become available by going online and watching as many tutorials as I can find so that I will be able to better understand features that aren't extremely self explanatory. I am lucky in that my job exposes me to a lot of new technologies and I have had a lot of experience in learning on my own how to use different programs. So, it is not very hard for me to figure out how to use new technologies on my own, but when I need help, I have discovered that there are plenty of resources out there. I will be able to look up the tutorials online, but I will also be able to go to my blog or others' blogs and discussion boards and all kinds of things in my networks to better use the new technology. Networks where ideas and new knowledge can be shared will be increasing valuable to me, I'm sure.

Before implementing new technologies, I will first learn how to use them to the best of my ability as discussed above, and then I will determine whether or not using this technology will be useful in furthering the educational goals that I have already set for the class and the students. If the technology is something that is interesting and cool but that doesn't help the class reach the educational goals that are set for it, then the technology is not of enough worth to be used in the classroom. It may be very useful in other contexts, but it will be important for me to evaluate how a technology can aid in learning and not how it can be the main event in an assignment. I will also probably focus on using simple technologies that are easy to learn because I will be teaching English and will want to focus mainly on the curriculum, not on learning new programs. One other thing that will help me determine the usefulness of future technologies is actually applying and using them in the classroom and seeing whether or not they are effective in doing what I hoped they would.

Google Reader Tutorial

Ever since I started looking up tutorials for Mindmeister and my final project, I have found a few others for things that we learned earlier and that I may have been struggling with. Searching for tutorials on Google is a great way to learn how to do things, but more importantly, learn new things that you might not have realized were there before in the program. This particular tutorial that I found is really useful in explaining how to use Google Reader. I was interested in this because when I got a Google reader account or whatever early in the semester, I thought it seemed really useful but wasn't really sure how to best use it. It was easy enough to figure out but there are so many other features that I didn't know about the first time I went through. So, that is where the tutorials come in handy. For instance, this tutorial teaches you how to subscribe to newspapers, which I didn't know you could do, but that I would be interested in. I think looking up tutorials for new programs will be something I do in the future when I have classes of my own so that I can master them to the best of my ability and be able to teach my students how to use as many features as possible so that they will understand the usefullness of certain programs.

Using Wikis in the Classroom

For the final project, as you know, we used wikis to post our Lesson Activity Plans. If you click on that, it will take you to mine. I have used wikis before in a class at BYU for posting information of periodicals from the Victorian period. They called it the Viki Wiki and they actually created it at the Center for Teaching and Learning, where I work. I really like wikis because they are easy to use and they allow students to sort of publish their work, especially if you are collaborating with other schools or classes. I think that using wikis in my future classroom would be a great idea when we have assignments on short stories or things that are new and exciting that the students would want to share. I think that not only does it make it easy to share, but it also forces the student to take a certain level of pride in their work, as it is going to be posted online for their classmates as well as others to read and learn from.

Mindmeister Tutorial

I went online to look for tutorials for the program that I'm learning for my project and this was the most useful one I was able to find. It very simply goes through how to create maps and is a great way to get started. I think it would be a great recommendation for anyone starting to use the program or perhaps to show students in a classroom who will begin using this program for something.

Mindmeister Blog

I discovered while I was browsing through the Mindmeister website and trying to familiarize myself with its content, that there is a Mindmeister blog where they share new information about Mindmeister as it comes up. While I only have the free version and so not a lot of the upgrades and promotional things matter to me, unless I become attached and in the future decide to sign up for an account, there are still a lot of useful things on there. They put updates on when the program will be going through changes and so will be down, there is one blog about someone that works with Mindmeister and his experiences with the program. There are also other posts that are more helpful to me, such as the blog entitled, "Online guide to mind map drawing services." This is a great resource and I've added it to my blog list so that I can get updates when they come and will know of any new features or things like that as I learn about his new technology.

Personal Techonology Project: Mindmeister

In deciding what I thought would be the most important and useful technology to learn about for use in my future classroom, I was torn between Accelerated Reader and Mindmeister, but I settled on Mindmeister because I felt that it would be useful for students to use in their learning and I also felt that I would probably end up actually using it more than I would Accelerated Reader. I signed up for an account with Mindmeister and I'm excited to learn more about it. The reason I chose this technology is that I feel that one of the most important things I can teach my students that will help them in their learning is to not be afraid to share ideas and to talk about the texts that we read. Discussion is the best way to discover things about a text. I know that for myself, when other people's perspectives and ideas are brought into a text I am reading, it adds a whole new dimension to my understanding. And so I feel that discussion is absolutely essential to learning about literature. However, I understand that not all students are comfortable participating in class discussions and they might be afraid that their ideas are stupid or invalid. I have traditionally been one of the shyer students in my classes as well so I understand where they're coming from. This would be a great way for students to share ideas about a text without forcing them to do something that they may be very uncomfortable with. I want the sharing of ideas to be a positive experience and so I think that this technology might be incredibly useful in allowing students to share ideas in a less scary setting.

Photo Story 3

Maybe it's cheating a little bit to do my weekly participation blog on the tool I used for my instructional video, but I really liked this tool and I'm excited to use it in the future. My video is a little bit unexciting but that's because this was my first time using Photo Story for Windows. I really love this tool! What a great way to make videos of any kind using pictures. It is incredibly fast and easy and I think in the future in my classrooms, I will record something similar to a power point lecture using this tool so that students that miss class can view what we learned at home. I may also use this simply to create supplementary matieral for students to learn and study on their own and then come to class to dicuss what was discussed on the video. Having this information saved can also be helpful for students when reviewing for tests. Also, I think this is a great tool to teach students to use because it is so easy. And this way, they can create instructional videos for the class for say a book report or something like that so that the students can have a little bit of fun and use creativity as well as technology to do a report instead of just turning in written summaries or something like that.

Instructional Video

I did my video on commonly confused words. It's a little bit long. I probably could have cut out a couple words to make it fit better.

English Teaching Blog

I was emailed, like many others I'm sure, the link to the BYU English Teaching blog. I went to the site and read several of the blog posts. It was really interesting and I think it's a great idea. There were opportunities for the sharing of ideas and there were questions posed that everyone could participate in and answer so that we as teachers can get ideas from each other and help each other to get the best materials and utilize them in the best way possible.

Jing

Something I discovered at work this week is a program called Jing. Somebody may have already found it, but for me it was a great discovery. This program is free and it makes taking screen shots fast and easy and you can edit and save them just as easily. I have used it a lot already in my work and for my assignments just this week in this class and I'm sure I will use it plenty in the future. In the classroom it would be a great tool because you can use it to take screen shots to show students how to do things online without having to explain it in writing, but you can do it so quickly that it's great. Also, you can teach students how to do it so that they can do instructional projects or other things where they can take screen shots and edit them with arrows and other things. This is really a great resource. In fact, I'm so excited about it, I'm going to take a screen shot of this blog post and post it right... here.Pretty sweet, huh?

Storyboard

Here is my storyboard for the instructional video project. I am doing a video about commonly confused words.

Internet Safety

Reading

I read the Ensign article entitled "Just A Game?" by Charles D. Knutson and Kyle K. Oswald. It was a great article I thought. Some of the most important things I learned from the article were the signs of addictive internet gaming behavior. The questions that it presents to ask yourself to figure out if you have an addiction or not I thought were great and were a very straightforward way for people to see that they have a problem when they otherwise might not have. I also learned a lot about the games themselves. I've never been involved with one or been really close to someone that is. I have had people close to me get involved in interactive games with other people online but never something quite as intense as this and I wasn't aware of how much of a commitment these games can become. So it was really educational in that way.

What I read in this article will effect my actions in the future as a parent and teacher in that I will further encourage the youth around me, as well as my husband, to stay away from these kinds of games in general. And if they still become involved in them, to try and limit their usage early on and teach them the dangers of them before they become too involved to see what is happening. I already felt that gaming was something I didn't want too much of in my family, but this has only reaffirmed my beliefs about that. There is so much to do in this life that is productive and good that it would break my heart to see someone close to me become addicted to something like this.

I think I can use what I have learned here to look out for addictive behavior in those I love and to possibly help them see that what they are doing is harmful in a loving way. It has also helped me understand the appeal of these games in some way and so hopefully in the future I can be a little bit more understanding if I encounter people with these problems so that they will be able to listen to me instead of just reject me saying that I don't understand.

I also have read Elder Bednar's talk, "Things As They Really Are" and felt that it was a great article and something that everyone in this day and age should read because it is so pertinent and important. These are real problems facing thousands and thousands of people and they are effecting even me in some ways and so it is good to notice them so that we can keep these harmful habits in check.

Watching

I actually listened to a podcast called "Internet Safety Podcast". I got the link off of the Internet Safety Videos link. It was really interesting. I learned about a lot of malicious software and a little bit about the motivation behind the people that create them. It's not always malicious, but sometimes is just a matter of someone seeing whether or not they can do it, but there is a lot of malicious software created with malicious motivation and some of them can be very damaging. This podcast examined different kinds and I found it very interesting and educational.

Doing

I talked to my cousin who is a sophomore in high school about internet safety. In asking her what she knows about internet safety, she said that she's not supposed to go to chat rooms or give out her information without talking to her parents first. She also said that she's not supposed to download anything without asking her parents first. I said that those were great guidelines and I explained to her what can happen if she does those things without their permission and that they really can happen to her. I also showed her a little bit from the talks I read by Elder Bednar and the one I read online and she thought they were interesting and informative as well, even though she's not involved in online gaming. She said it was good to learn more about it and be aware so she can help her friends that might have the same problems. I also explained breifly some of the terrible things that viruses and malicious software cna do and helped her further understand the importance of checking with her parents before doing anything that she doesn't usually do or downloading anything at all. I feel that it was productive because we both learned some things, and I hope that she shares her knowledge with her friends and family as well.

Video Communication Project

Here is my screen shot of me using a synchronous video tool. I used Google Video Chat and I talked to my parents and my dog because I didn't know of any other classmates doing this project. It was fun to talk to them and learn how to use this new tool.


This is my screen shot of me using an asynchronous video tool: posting a video on facebook for a friend. This is a lot of fun. After doing this one, I did about eight more. :)


Here is my video on viddler. I uploaded a video I took on vacation this summer and left comments as if I were a teacher critiquing it. This is a fun tool.

My weekly participation idea which was my previous blog kind of talks about this because I did it before I decided I wanted to do the video communication project, and that post has some great ideas about using these tools. However, to expand, after I actually experimented with them, I found that they are easier to use than I thought. I feel that using the synchronous video programs can be very useful for communicating with say a pen pal across the world, or relatives that you don't see often and I would be interested in exploring these possibilities in the classroom. I would perhaps want to set students up with pen pals that live in our sister city or something like that so that they can get to know about different cultures and I think this would be a great way to do that. Also, it would be good for discussion groups and things of that nature. On a more personal level, it would be a good way for me to communicate with teachers throughout the teaching community who might be able to share with me some new insights on teaching and they would be able to demonstrate things to me instead of simply trying to explain them and because it is live, I would be able to ask questions of them as well.

The asynchronous video programs are great because they allow you to post a video for someone to view later and comment on or reply to you via video. They were a lot of fun for me just in sending my friends videos, but they would also be useful in the classroom for students wanting to communicate with each other as well as me as a teacher being able to record a short video and share it with students outside the classroom.

Video commenting is one of the most innovative things that I discovered while doing this project, and as I mentioned in my previous blog, it's a great way to comment on films or clips that need to be analyzed for class and it would be a great way, as I did for this project, to comment on student work. Say students created a video project and submitted it (something that has been done for years and years and were some of my favorite projects in high school) and I wanted to be able to tell them the things that I liked about it and the things that didn't meet requirements while watching the film so that they knew exactly what I was talking about. This is a great tool for something like that. And, as I also mentioned in the last post, I think this would be a great way for students to teach students when there isn't enough time for a lot of presentations in class.

Videos to Assist in Instruction

Watching the tutorial on Viddler got me thinking about different ways in which webcams can be used in the classroom. Also, I just started using my own webcam and in realizing how easy it is to use, I've come to the conclusion that it can and should be used in a lot of different ways, especially with teaching in the future.

One idea I had was that I could use Viddler to help students analyse videos or compare and contrast them with the written word, since I am going into English teaching. This way, students can have assignments to watch videos and they will have the opportunity to make comments and annotate as was mentioned in the tutorial. This will make it easier to communicate what point in the film the student is referring to instead of simply trying to describe it and getting confused. It also will cut down on time spent describing and taking notes on where something occurs in a film, which can be time consuming and really annoying.

I also was thinking about using Voicethreads in a similar way to the way that we receive instruction for this class, but in reverse. This was inspired by the devotionals that we give. I have always been a firm believer that when we have to teach something, we learn it better, but there is not always enough time in class for students to teach the class certain ideas or theories and so it would be a great way to help students learn to have then prepare a lesson plan and record it on voicethreads and then let the rest of the students learn from it and comment on it for homework. This way, the students learn and teach eachother and they have more opportunities to become experts on subjects because they are responsible for teaching them.

Also, sometimes it is difficult to describe how to do something in written word and so for some assignments, while I plan to explain them in class, I can also post the assignment along with a video of myself demonstrating how to do the assignment correctly so that students can refer back to it as they go about doing the assignment on their own.

There are many ways in which webcams and various video programs can be useful. I feel as though a whole new world has been opened up to me. :)

The Center for Teaching and Learning Website

I have worked for the Center for Teaching and Learning for two and a half years and have only really seen what we can do from the inside. I've never read any of the tips for using technology and teaching on the website but because Prof. West posted that link on his blog, I decided to explore it because I should probably know what's on there anyway. Adding videos to PowerPoint is something I didn't even know you could do, but it will be very useful in the future when I teach I'm sure. I looked further and discovered the teaching tip that talks about YouTube videos without the clutter and I really liked that too. Not only does it look unprofessional when you show videos with clutter like that, but it also can show inappropriate material by accident that you don't want your students to see. I also really liked the one about concept mapping because I have wondered what the best way to do that on a computer is in the past so that information is really helpful.

Teacher Tube Video Critiques

50 States and Capitals (cartoon song)

This is a good example of something that did not follow copyright laws properly. They use the Animaniacs cartoon of the states and capitals, which is a great resource for learning and so it's clear that they were using it for educational purposes. However, they made several mistakes as far as copyright goes. They used the cartoon without citing it, which should always happen no matter how much of the material you use or if you got permission for it. Also, they show the entire song, which is probably the only part of that episode people will really want anyway, so they are using more than they should have and not even citing the source. What they could do differently is either show just a little clip and then write down all the rest of the states and capitals and cite the cartoon, or they could obtain permission for using this clip and still cite it because that should always happen.

Kids and Kubs Softball

This video uses lots of images from the war and just general pictures of Florida and people playing softball and other things like that. Most of the pictures I think were the man in the video's own pictures and so they don't need to be cited, but there were a few that I don't think were his. They seemed to come from other sources and other photographers and so they were not his to display without permission. Now, because this video is education, I think it was ok to use them. Also, there was not more than five from one photographer or anything like that. So, the amount used was ok under Fair Use, but they still were not cited. So, in order to make this comply with copyright laws, I would suggest that they have a credit at the end with the sources of the photographs that were not directly from the subject of the video or the person who made the video themself. Other than that, it looks pretty kosher.

Google Reader

Here is my screen shot. I hope it's big enough. If not, I can email you one.

The social networks I chose to join were Facebook and Twitter. I chose Facebook because I already know how to use it and I like it and I chose Twitter because it's probably the most widely used besides Facebook. I'm still trying to get the hang of it though.

For my resources that I subscribed to, I chose The Edublogger because I read some of posts and found them very interesting. I also added a blog that I searched for and found about Secondary Education that I thought would be interesting and useful. I added the blog for this class so that I could easily access it in yet another way. I added two of the best English blogs that I could find because I found some of the posts to be interesting and useful as well.

Blogging as an Educational Tool

Using the blog for this class with all of the assignments and information on it has been a really easy way for me to understand what I need to do for this class. Learning how to tag posts opened my eyes as well. I think that this is a great resource for teaching and I'm excited to use it in the future in my own classrooms. Blogs are great because they leave room for comments and open communication between the teacher and student as well as the rest of the class that is quick and reliable.

Tagging is effective because it allows some easy navigation of the site that students can understand and that allows the person creating the blog to post as often as they want because it won't become too crowded if you always have the option of narrowing down what you are looking at.

Some ideas I have about using blogs in the future include posting assignments on them so that students can always go online and ask questions via blog comments that I can answer and then have available for all of the students to see so that it is like asking a question in class except that students will remember it better because it is in writing on my blog right next to the assignment. This will help clarify assignments and make it so that students don't flounder at home so much while they are trying to do new assignments, especially ones that are more difficult or detailed.

Another idea I have is that I can use blogs for announcements in class and tag them as "announcements" so that students can always see what is new in class in case they missed class that day or just need a reference to look at. It is always hard for students who are sick and miss a day or two when new announcements have been made or assignments have been explained and so this would provide a place where students can go and see what happened in class and see if any due dates have been moved or assignments have been changed.

I think a blog would be great place to post course policies as well so that students and parents a like can go online and see what the policies are at any time in case they lose a syllabus or something that was on paper.

I think involving parents in class blogs is a great idea as well. Allowing them access to see what their children are studying and what the assignments they are doing entail would help parents with children that struggle to know what needs to be done and help them more effectively.

I think blogging is a great resource and I think I will use if extensively in my future classrooms.

This Semester

My technological background is probably about the same as the average student. I have used Blackboard and have experimented with Moodle for a study at the Center for Teaching and Learning where I work. I work with Qualtrics there and can give anyone that needs one an account so that you can create your own surveys and distribute them. I have learned a lot through my job at the CTL, including better skills with Microsoft Office programs. I have used other programs such as Morae, JIRA, Scope, and a few programs that allow me to create tutorials for the programs we create and CTL.

My goals for the semester include becoming more proficient at some new programs such as Voicethread and Moodle (even though I understand we won't be using it much) and to learn new methods for using technology to become an effective teacher in the future. I don't know much about teaching yet and I am anxious to learn because I feel that it is very important and I want to be able to reach my students in the future. I'm excited to become a teacher and so I'm excited for this class and all that I hope it will teach me.

Welcome to My Blog :)

I added some gadgets on the side:
1) one of my favorite scriptures because good scriptures always put me in a good mood, so hopefully they will do the same for you :)
2) a picture I took while I was running Stewart Falls one night. I love this picture because it reminds me of the great run I had but also because I think Stewart Falls is beautiful and the mountains here in Utah have a way of making me extremely happy so why not put a little bit of that happiness on my blog?
3) a box for links that I like and want to share with others. I will add links to useful educational websites etc. as the semester continues hopefully but for right now, I just added one of my favorite SNL skits called "Immigrant Tale." Something else you might like to know about me, I love to laugh and SNL is great at making me. :)
4) My Blog List where I will eventually put all my group members blogs
5) a link to my profile so you can learn even MORE about me. Woohoo!