January 31, 2010

A baby using technology?! If this is what our world has come to then I say maybe we're doing something right.


Podcasts

Listening to these podcasts was painful. They were utterly boring and I felt exhausted after enduring only ten minutes of them. I think that maybe if the people who were talking in them weren't so dull and made their voices more animated and lively to make up for the lack of a visual accomplice would help dramatically. Overall these podcasts gave me an idea on how podcasts are done and how not to sound in one.

The SmartBoard Lessons Podcast I felt was the most poorly done. It was fuzzy and hard to hear and follow what he was talking about. I think he was in a drive-thru or a restaurant ordering soup and coffee and he kept talking about it and to the people he was ordering from. It was very distracting and took away from the message he was trying to portray. What I think he was trying to talk about is using dimdim.com as a teaching tool. Its an online meeting site you can use with SmartBoard. You can also use it to do call in conferences with other classrooms and record meetings. Again, it was hard to understand him and what he was trying to say between the poor audio and all the background noise.

I think the KidCast podcast was much better done. His voice was clearer to understand and there wasn't any intrusive background noise. He was discussing video podcasting or "vodcasting" a term he did not like to use; which I agree it sounds too much like podcast and can become confusing if your discussing podcasting and vodcasting in the same conversation. I'm already confused writing about it. It's not needed, just go the extra mile and say video podcasting, it can't hurt. He seemed to be more pro podcasting because it is less time consuming and the editing isn't as difficult. But, he gave useful circumstances when video podcasing is the better way to go such as, when you need to capture a nonverbal message or you need to use a visual model to demonstrate or animate something. It can also save time with the way you explain something, it makes someone have to think more on how their audience will perceive them because they're not just hearing their voice, and in doing so it also builds confidence. He said the best way to decide whether to use a podcast or a video podcast is to find the medium that best fits your message the best and ask yourself what do you have the time and resources to do.

ConnectLearning Episode 92 was also hard to understand due to the poor audio quality and had distracting background noises that took away from the message, and made it difficult to understand just WHAT they were discussing. What I got from this podcast was that David Warlick is having a conversation with another educator about how to make conferences better and to discuss how to find better ways for classrooms to work together. He wants to use technology as a teacher and for teachers to be a teacher 2.0; someone who blogs and uses twitter. The EdTech Talk podcast was more conversational, choppy, and also hard to hear and make out, but it got better as the podcast progressed. The woman who is talking in this podcast is a college undergraduate social work professor. She teaches and designs online courses. She talks about using Wiki as an email source and uses a blackboard for discussion posts. She finds the blackboard useful because her students can find assignments 24/7. She also uses Wiki for collaborative group work she assigns to her students and finds this the most effective way to use Wiki. She also states that online learning expands the learning community and I agree with her point, that for an online course the learning does not end when class time is up, it is ongoing. She also talked about how she made a question box where her students could ask for help if they needed it but instead students were answering each other's questions and figuring out that they could rely on each other for answers instead of always relying on the teacher. Which I feel is a very positive thing.

The MacBreak Weekly 177: ipad podcast was much easier to understand and follow. It was almost like listening to radio vj's. They said the iPad was going to be big, bigger than the iPod touch which was strange to me because normally technology gets smaller not regressively bigger. It's a tablet with a bright screen and you can get it in a WiFi version between the prices of $499-$599 depending on how many gigabytes you want. I think it was just a joke how they were saying the iPad was inexpensive because it was less than $1000, that doesn't make it cheap when you can get a netbook for half the price. They did though however, admit that it was probably not a mainstream product for your average income family and the originality and creativity about the name, iPad, seemed to be a debate amongst the speakers in the podcast. The This Week in Photography 126 podcast was also very conversational, but it was conversational without being confusing on who is talking and when. This podcast discussed certain cameras in which they considered racist. Some digital cameras with new technology have difficulty functioning properly when an Asian or African-American is the subject of the picture. I definitely do not think that the cameras or racist, that's just silly, moreover that they were not fully tested properly and that the makers of these cameras need to use a larger more wide range of people for there sample group to test the cameras functioning on.

Media Literacy in the First Grade
Click here to see what I'm talking about.

This film was inspirational to me to be a more technology literate person, so I can be a more effective and technology literate teacher. I think that my future students deserve that from me. It was great how the kids new and could EXPLAIN how to do all of these technological things, maybe they could find a way to make money and teach it to older less media educated people. One boy even explained very effectively the rules on commenting on someone else's blog, his main point being in so many words don't say something cruel, it's unnecessary. Agreed. According to the film media literacy was evaluating, navigating, creating, and responding, which I feel is an easy way to put the scary concept of being media proficient, an idea that sounds difficult to do but if you follow the guidelines above it seems less demanding.

As to answering the question, Am I ready? I'm going to do my best to teach students who will definitely know more than me about the technological advances of this world, but again I'm going to do my best to keep up and just keep learning it along the way. So to answer that question, yes, yes I am ready.

Little Kids...Big Potential
Go Here to watch these amazing kids do amazing things

I think the title speaks for itself on what exactly this film was about. The kids were blogging and commenting and explaining how to comment and use technology. They discussed how blogging helps their writing improve. Webpages helped them find and search for things they wanted to learn about. They also helped them learn how to use the Internet. I feel the use of technology has encouraged independent learning among these students.They even used their Nintendo DS' in the classroom.

They also used Wiki a popular classroom tool. It teaches them about collaborative learning and an easy way to get help from other people. Using Wiki, they learned about all kinds of traditions and rituals, and even different ways on how to make the Alphabet, from people all over the world. Using these tools are extremely beneficial to today's students and in a way they're getting to see and experience the world. I also liked their use of Skype in the classroom, to talk to experts and interact with other classrooms. They're doing so much with technology at such a young age and they are definitely little kids with big potential. The world needs more teachers and students like this.

Iphone used by 1 year old baby Part 2
Click Here to see a BABY use an iPhone

This kid was AMAZING! Absolutely brilliant. He could turn the phone on, find pictures, zoom in the pictures, and then even return to the home page on the iPhone, very impressive. He knew exactly what his parents were asking him to do with the phone at the age of 1, I am almost speechless by this. Between the first graders and the one year old using this technology at an expert level, I think children are born knowing how to use technology. Needless to say, if a one year old can do it anyone can. An iPhone just cannot be that hard to use. I don't have one so I don't really know, but after seeing this video I'm convinced it can not be that difficult. By the time this baby reaches grade level schooling his knowledge of technology will be expansive, but I feel keeping up with the growing technology is the key to teaching this new age generation in the most effective way possible.