Reflection - EIT Class

If I could put the week in one word it would be WOW!! I learned so many things that I will be able to integrate into my curriculm that my students will enjoy but most importantly will learn.

The activity that I think will benefit my curriculum the most will be NING. I think there is so much that I can do for faculty, students & parents on this. Being able to invite parents to the NING so that they can be caught up on what we are doing, assignments, and when tests are will be a great advantage! Students will thoroughly enjoy the social networking and like I have said before I think that more student involvement will happen. Some students feel "Safe" when communicating online and I think it will allow them to have a voice in class discussions. Hopefully as I integrate this other teachers will take the "plunge" and do the same thing. Clipart courtsey of schools.clipart.com

I have one Mac computer in my room that is used once a year. But as I went through this class I was opened up to so many things that kids can do with iMovie & GarageBand. I am going to try to incorporate more projects and involve this computer in the process. I believe that I can check out Mac laptops also to help me out with availability.

Many of the things that we learned this week I will be able to incorporate into my classroom. Right now, the only one that I do not see helping my curriculum is Second Life. But I think in time as SL develops we will be able to integrate it into our curriculum.

Day 2 - EIT Class

Today was Day 2 of my Emerging Instructional Strategies class. We spent most of the day playing with Second Life. Dan Power from UNI Business Department, came in & talked to us about Second Life. I still am not sold on Second Life mainly because you have to be 18 to use and I won't be able to incorporate into my classroom. Although there are good informational tools out there for us to use. It was fun to learn & see some of the different things you can do in Second Life. It just astonishes me on what it can do.

Steve Hargadon talked to us this morning about Nings via Skype. The graphic to the left is the Skype logo, click on it to go to the website. Skype is really cool. I am going to try to incorporate this into my Marketing class and hopefully some others along the way. Marketing is a class that I teach that is hard for me to teach because all we have ever done is out of the book and I hate it. I want to change how I do things and I think using a Ning, Wiki, Blogs, and hopefully bringing in a guest speaker via Skype would be great and I think that I would enjoy teaching the class more. I like the subject but just don't like how I or the others before me have taught it. BORING. Nings are cool and I think they could be very valuable for our classrooms. Nings can be set up to be private and I like that idea.

We also worked on our final project for the class. My group is focusing on authentic writing digital tools. Very cool and useful for when I return to my school. I created the survey for the students (who are actually teachers in this case). Tommorrow we are learning podcasting. I already subscribe to a few different podcasts but after Wednesday I will know how to make one. Becky & I are in charge of doing a podcast for Voice Thread. Voice Thread will be introduced in class on Wednesday but some of my group members had already used it. Very cool. You can post a question and have people respond by voice. They can actually call from their cell phones to post comments. Our group also talked about Jing. Very useful tool also. I will be able to use Jing to show students various steps on how to perform tasks.

Another great day & I look forward to tommorrow.

Second Life Experience.....again!

WOW! I am just amazed how SL works. Again on Thursday night we met in 3 venues for my EIT class. We were in the chat room, MeBeam, & SL. As we met in SL we went to virtual Iowa. This was so weird to me. The guy who acutally made the world was there and he talked to us. We sat in chairs and listened to him. I am still confused on how this all works. Mr. Powers (I believe was his name) talked about the cost and hoping to increase tourism, etc. Is this real? I keep wondering if this is actually is his job? What a job! We also went to the Wild Rose dance club. Again mind blowing to me. They actually have streaming audio and live (so to say) bands playing!

After visiting Iowa, we went to a place to get free clothes. I got totally lost and then exited off the program. I am still amazed how this works.

I did learn that you have to be 18 to use SL. I am sure there are some freaks out there. So as I posted earlier, I wouldn't be able to use this at the high school level because seniors turn 18 at different times throughout the year.

A little off topic but INTERESTING

Thursday night's chat was out of this world!!! It all started in the chat room where my classmates, instructor, Dr. Z & I were talking about our Emerging Technologies class. I also signed on to MeBeam. I just love MeBeam, it is so nice to see the people I am talking to. Lastly, some of us went into Second Life. All I can say about Second Life is WOW!!! Amazing to me how that all works. For those of you who don't know, Second Life is a virtual world where I can meet & chat with my classmates or pretty much anyone.

I was definitely an immigrant on Thursday night. It was hard to multitask and carry on 2-3 conversations at a time. I found myself sticking with the chat room at the beginning because that was "safe" for me. At times I can feel somewhat of a native but many times I find myself an immigrant. I love to learn new technologies though. I did venture out into Second Life. I did find it somewhat difficult to move around in Second Life but I learned. I think it will just take practice. I don't play any video games, but I think students would love this and would move around just fine!

I love the chat room. I wish (and maybe I will figure it out) I could incorporate this into my classroom. I beileve that more students would type what they are thinking because they do not have to speak out loud. You could certainly get more people involved in class discussions this way.

MeBeam is wonderful too. Not sure yet how I would incorporate this into the high school setting. Something would have to be done at night to get this to work but could be really neat once you would get it going.

Second Life I am not so sure about. I think students would enjoy it because it is similar to video games. Again something that could be beneficial but not sure how to incorporate it yet.