Technology Jedi

Last spring I attended an brilliant technology conference at Region 4. I was introduced to several different tools that could be used in my classroom. One of those such tools was symbaloo. I've created a brief tutorial to get you started with symbaloo...enjoy! Brief tutorial on Symbaloo

Constructivism  I've spoken about the Behavioral Theory, so now I'd like to look at the Constructivist point of view.  " As far as instruction is concerned, the instructor should try and encourage students to discover principles by themselves. The instructor and student should engage in an active dialog (i.e., Socratic learning). The task of the instructor is to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner's current state of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned." (Jerome Bruner) This is how we are encouraged to teach and its the way I think students learn best. The educator is to facilitate learning, while letting students explore and build onto what they already know. Memory: When one is learning something new, that information should be tied to already existing knowledge. In class the educator tries to connect informati...

This week my studies continue with the reading from William Kist's book 'The Socially Networked Classroom'. Chapter 3 has many points I found interesting.  "Some districts end up becoming locked down with unsupervised surfing strickly prohibited."(pg 47) Though this is one way to make sure students don't find themselves in areas they shouldn't be, it also creates difficulties for the educator in using technology in the classroom. Years ago my campus had us so locked down, we couldn't even get onto Youtube. Now, I'm not saying Youtube is pristine with information, but it has some really good videos and songs to engage students. How, for example, am I supposed to convey the power of lightning without showing the raw power via video? My campus finally cleared youtube for teachers computers and I was able to show instructional videos, snippets of videos to support the lesson, or music videos to engage students in the lesson, such as the Lab Safety Ra...

This week I read the first two chapters from "The Socially Networked Classroom" by William Kist. The book is an easy read and is quite enjoyable, I found that Kist explains everything as related to the classroom and has several activities set up that he used in his classroom.  Education is finding itself in a new environment with technology in the classrooms. Technology is changing the way we teach, communicate, and evaluate in education. Kist says, "One could make the argument that never before have we been more connected." He defines social networking as, "communication that takes place online using some kind of platform." As educators, we are always trying to prepare students for the future. It's difficult to keep up with the newest technologies and that's when we turn to our IT specialists to help keep us in the loop. Kist states, "In some cases, a disinclination to use new media in the classroom may simply stem from uncertainty and li...

Last year I was trying to break away from Powerpoint and try something different. I came across a few interesting sites. One was Quizlets, which I blogged before this one.  Powtoons has an option of being free or pay. It creates some pretty cool slideshows, which I used to review or introduce information to students.  Here are some of my Powtoons. Powtoon: Energy Types Racecar Project in Powtoons Metamorphic Rock Presentation in Powtoons

There are a great variety of social media tools. I’ve use Edmodo, ClassDojo, Quizlet, and Powtoons just recently. Before an exam I would create a quizlet to review vocabulary. Here is one of the quizlets I created https://quizlet.com/_32q9nx . You’ll see a menu of options when you pull up the link. Learn is a new option - this option is like a multiple-choice quiz Flashcards- is like a slideshow that goes through the terms and vocabulary Write - lets you take a quiz where one writes-in the answers. There is no word bank Spell - this has me type the question with correct spelling. Spelling is my Nemesis, I hated this option. 😜 Test - Goes over information. It’s interesting as it created questions from my vocabulary words and should have had some clarification for some of the questions. Match - this is my favorite option and we used this in class a number of times. Gravity - this is fun, but it would be wise to test your input into the game to make sure it’s not too ...

A recent assignment had me looking into an article on technology and the behaviorist theory by Pavlov. I found that since Pavlov first coined the behavior theory, several others have built upon that with relation to technology including Herbert Simon (1983) and James Gibson.  One part of the article discusses security in data gathering systems. As a child is working through a program to help them practice and learn, at that same time the system is collecting data on the child. How long did it take for the child to answer, where are they having problems or excelling. Where this data comes in handy for teachers trying to meet the students needs, that data is part of a huge database. Can we define a child only by tests or progress in programs...no. A program or test can't see a child's creativity at solving problems. In addition, who has the right to have the information on that child?  The New York Times had an article on this security. It states that we need perhaps a group...

For our discussion 6 in class we are talking about Backchannels. I had no idea what this was. Our professor shared several great links and I feel they are important enough to share them with you here, in addition my own personal experience with backchannel. Seven Things You Should Know about Backchannel Communication Teaching like it's 2999 Here is my personal experience: A few years ago when our district hired a new super, he brought a passion for technology with him. Our very first convocation we used backchannel communication. We were given a URL to sign in and were able to comment as the day progressed, it was fantastic!!!! Many of the administrators were wearing jersey type shirts with their name and Stafford on it. I asked if we could get one…I saw my message flash across the screen and soon many other employees joined in saying they were interested as well. Before the end of the week, knowing our interest in the jerseys, admin setup an account to get all of us one. A...

B.F. Skinner developed this as a theory of how we learn. The overall belief is that learning is through the "acquisition of new behavior." The classic example I remember from my education studies was of dogs salivating to a particular stimuli, such as a sound, or sight of the food bowl.  The article, referenced below, says, "learning comes from the observation of cultures". This is interesting because here we are at a crossroads in education. No longer is it student, teacher, textbook. Instead we are in a transition into the unknown as technology plays a major role in learning. An example of this occurred last year in my sixth grade GT(Gifted and Talented) science classes. I covered the objective and a few of my GT students went home and googled more information on the subject. The next day I gave them the floor to share with their classmates the extra information they had learned on the subject. Technology has made learning richer in my mind. However, based on th...

An ongoing concern of mine is online security, especially since we are moving towards Web 3.0. I found there is a company, Trust in Ads.org, who is trying to watch out for this.  They have an article 'Fighting Bot Fraud and other online related schemes' that is quite interesting. It states, " major platforms have long devoted significant resources to fighting sophisticated bad actors and fraudulent schemes – bot fraud being one of many issues we deal with every single day. While it is estimated by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) that bot fraud totaled $7 billion last year, in the context of a global online advertising marketplace that surpassed $170 billion in 2015, it's about 4 percent." https://trustinads.org/fighting-bot-fraud-and-other-online-ad-related-schemes/

In looking online for some information about cultural change because of technology, I found an article, by Dr. Inuk Chung, that lists four aspects to consider.   [Application and combination of IT to human] Firstly, application and combination of IT to human may lead to major cultural impacts. Simply put, we may experience unprecedented human-cyberspace interactions: e.g., the substitution of mental and physical functions of humans by IT, such as robotics; emergence of "neo-nomadism" by ubiquitous mobile devices; digitalization of human body with the wearable computers;   [Collectivism and individualism] Secondly, the development of IT may lead to weakening collectivism and feeding individualism, which in turn, increases the benefits of individuals, customized tastes and preferences and the role of pro-sumers;  [Focus on individual creativity] Thirdly, the development of IT may encourage creative thinking in education, rather than current system of simple ...

Google Groups Today's post is about a few virtual communities that I found that would be useful in watching and contributing to. I've copied any description from their group so that you can see their purpose and see any websites that they have.  1. Cyber Salon here is the description they provide.  Cyber Salon is modeled after the various (infamous) intellectual salons throughout history. Basically we are a bunch of educators, dedicated to teaching with technology, who like to hang out every so often to share ideas about what we are currently working on. We try to meet once a month somewhere that serves food, drinks, and wi-fi. If you are interested in receiving emails about what we are doing, when, and where...join this Google Group! Visit the CyberSalonAZ Blog: http://cybersalonaz.com 2. Educoder here is the description they provide: Educoder is an information hub for developers of educational technology, with an eye to research.  3. Apps User Groups here i...