Final Blog Post

I think the most useful technology I have learned is making a class website.  I know that I will use this technology year after year and it will be extremely helpful to run my classes smoothly. I had no idea how easy it was to make a website, and now I am aware of how to effectively make a website, calendar, etc. I plan on using this and other technologies to enhance my classroom activities and communication with my students. With these technologies I will be able to have my students participate in talking with one another and helping one another with communication online. This technology class has helped me realize how useful technology can be in the classroom and how I need to keep on top of new technology to enhance my classroom and teaching.

Internet Safety Assignment

The sources that I read/watched and used were:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTj3WBmY1k&feature=related

http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.netfamilynews.org%2F%3Fp%3D29924?gname=teaching-with-technology

http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538-1-4830-1,00.html

http://www.providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,5302-1-2769-1,00.html

1. The most important things I learned from the readings is that we need to remember the difference between real life and cyber life. Another thing is that we need to be involved in our children's lives, because many parents had no idea what their children were doing online. Most importantly though is we need to watch ourselves and make sure we don't fall into a virtual life.

2. What I have read will help me understand that I must be involved in my children's life and that I need to make sure I monitor what they use the internet and their cell phones for.  As far as my future students I now know that I need to help them be aware of the dangers of technology and how fast things can travel online or via text.  Once something gets in another person's hands, it is free game to be spread to everyone and everyone.

3. With this information I have learned I am going to try and strengthen my relationships with my friends and families by texting people less and trying to have more personal and face to face conversations. I am also going to try and warn my family about the dangers of technology and remind them about what really matters.

4. I am fully aware of the dangers that children face with cyber bullying and sexual predators. To prevent these things from happening I need to warn children of the dangers and even give examples of what has happened to people because of cyber bullying.  Also, I will address the root of it all and encourage kindness and respect. But most importantly I will tell them how to protect themselves and avoid cyber bullying and sexual predators.

5. (see the links at the top of the post)

6. I think as a teacher in this day and age I need to be most careful about my facebook and keeping it private especially from my students.  Many things can get out of hand and misconstrued on facebook.  Also, I need to be careful not to hand out a personal phone number to my students. As a teacher if I do run into any trouble it is best to not keep the issue secret but to address it and clear the air as soon as possible.

7. I think the most important thing I can do to help my students use the internet but in a safe way to teach and prepare them how to protect themselves. I also think that they need to hear stories and hear the scary effects that can happen from using the internet in a dangerous way. I need to always be reminding my students of internet safety and how to appropriately use technology.

For the sharing part I talked with a teacher that I job shadowed earlier this semester (who has teenage/ pre-teen children and of course teaches teenagers).  I mostly shared with him the video that I watched about a girl who committed suicide after a nude picture of her was sent around the school and she was constantly harassed because of it. We had a great conversation about how to keep students safe, and how building a trusting relationship with them can allow them to come to you for problems, but also it allows you to have more of a positive influence on them. It was easy to talk to him about the relationships he has with his students and how he tries to truly get to know each of them individually.  When he knows them on a personal level then they trust him and he is able to give them advice about life that they will listen to.  With these strong relationships, it can be more effective to try and teach students how to be safe with sharing things through technology.

More Comments

Here is my comment on Katy's page!

http://katystechnologyblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-is-video-that-i-would-assign-my.html?showComment=1323757445585#c9038875105653245333

Group Commenting

Here is a link to Brett's comments.

http://brett-smith.blogspot.com/2011/12/instructional-videos.html?showComment=1323736552725#c9186541937174220206

I'm still waiting to see Katelyn's but I just wanted to show that I've commented on Brett's at least!

My Instructional Video!!!

Reflection:
            For my future teaching, instructional videos can be helpful in many ways. For instance, if I know that I will be out of town for one or more days, and I wish to have students continue to learn or work on a project with the substitute teacher there, I can make a quick instructional video to be played for the class telling them what it is I would like them to do.  It would be like having a mini lesson to get them started on a project I would like for them to work on.  Also, in my possible future of coaching, instructional videos can be very helpful in teaching my athletes a certain concept, plays (in basketball), or drills that they can do on their own at home.  If they have an instructional video they can reference to, it can help them better understand, remember, and study what it is that I would like for them to work on.  I will most likely use instructional videos more for at home drills with my athletes than I will in my Health classroom.
             Making an instructional video proved to be a fairly easy and useful tool for helping students (or in my case, athletes) learn to do something properly.  Many visual learners can especially benefit from these videos because they can see what it is that they need to do, and in addition to that they have the freedom to pause and re-wind if they did not understand something the first time.  These videos can be put to great use in my future career.

Storyboard

Here is my story board for my Instructional Video!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FZaztI6a3rrXnLLAf6q9WX1QhWNFcVeryEMxh_aoydU/edit

Personal Technology Project Part I

I'm sorry this post is late, I indeed had my project done on Monday, but had confusions that left me posting my project tonight.  For my project I used Prezi to learn how to make presentations that could help my future lesson plans.

My Prezi can be found at: http://prezi.com/ok984gvlsdxz/health-education-in-third-world-countries/

1. From this project I learned that Prezi is a great way to be able to make a presentation outside of PowerPoint or Google, and it has great functions and tools for presenting multiple ideas that may not be linear.  Prezi allows for people to use a map layout, with zoom in and zoom out qualities that make it fun and different from other presentations.  It can be a great tool for introducing difficult concepts.

2. I could use this technology for instruction on concepts that may be more difficult and require more time to dive in and consider details.  I could also simply use this technology to spice up a lesson plan and make things fun and interesting for my students.  The different effects of Prezi makes it fun and enjoyable to use and learn from.

3. In my own teaching I could use this technology to:

• Have students work in a group to present a specific topic and add their own one or two parts into a Prezi presentation. Then I can have them come together and collaborate their ideas onto this fun presentation map.
• Present ideas or concepts to my colleagues in a meeting pertaining to information I think we should all be covering in our curriculum, or new health information that we should all be aware of when teaching about health education.
• Make a lesson plan on a heavy topic such as mental health or suicide more accessible for important details and create a holistic approach.

Overall I learned to love Prezi and enjoyed creating this project!

Copyright Assignment

For this first video I chose one of my YouTube favorites.  It is a mash up of 8 different popular songs put together.  At the beginning of the mash-up, and on the YouTube site the artist makes note of the 8 songs that he samples and who the original artists are.  I also noticed that he never uses more than 30 seconds of one song just by itself, however one or two songs continually play in the background for quite some time, but the song itself sounds different due to other music and words being played over top.  He does use more than 30 seconds total of some of the music videos, however again it is never all at one time.

This song has been on YouTube for many years now, so Norwegian Recycling must  have done things correctly, however I still wondered and worried about the copyright issues.  On the YouTube page there was a link to the Norwegian Recycling website where they have made many mash ups! Again, I can't find a page that shows full copyright explanations for all of the works they have made, but they always give credit to the original songs and artists that they used, and they never use more than 30 seconds of a song and video alone without something being altered by another song.  Everything seems to be high quality which leads me to believe that they legitimately acquired the video and music with the purposes to make their own creative mash ups.  They have been doing this for years and have not been in trouble yet, so they must be doing something right!

For my second YouTube video I chose part 1 of a 6 part YouTube showing of the full movie of The Lion King.  I thought that this was not a legitimate use of the movie, due to the fact that it showed the first 15 minutes of the movie, and each part helped complete the whole movie.  In caption that tell about the movie it gives all of the background information to the movie.  It tells when, how, and who created it, and the success story about how The Lion King has become a musical and earned many awards for it's music.  They claim at the bottom that "all rights go to Disney" however I'm not sure that simply saying this is good enough.  On the side however there is an icon that says that is contains content from Tseries music, which I found out is an Indian music company.  I am almost positive that this is not allowed, and that whoever put up this video did not acquire it legitimately. I am also not aware of how they received all of the movie, and therefore I am not convinced it is being properly used.

Want to Check out my Class Website?!

Well you should! Check out:

Health and Anatomy with Ms. Wilson

I am pleased with my accomplishments (and I hope my professor and t.a. are as well!)  I am quite possibly one of the least tech savvy people to walk this Earth, so the thought of me creating a whole website with links, embedded gadgets, and calendars involved? Forget about it.  But I did it!  Let's hope I can keep improving!

How will this affect my teaching?

“How do you think you will use your website in your own teaching? What aspects of the website will be most useful for you, your students, and their parents?”

    For my future classroom I think that I will indeed use my website as a place where my students and their parents can find assignments, know of up coming projects and tests, read what I expect from the students, and have other modes of learning outside of my classroom.  Now that I have learned more about technology and how easy it is to use I will be less afraid to implement it into my own teaching methods.  I think for many students a class website will be extremely useful for when they are at home and need to remember what is due, or what they need to be studying.  My only fear is that some of my students may not have access to my website from home, or out of neglect may forget to use it.  Hopefully I can remind them of the importance and helpfulness of the class website.

    The aspect of the website that will be most useful for me would either be the class blog, to get a feel for how the students are doing, and helping them answer questions that they may need help with, or all of the documents that students have access to so that I can simply direct them to the class website instead of printing our more copies of the syllabus (for example).  I think these same aspects will be helpful for the students.  I think the blog can help them start a network of help for homework and upcoming tests.  I think the helpful links to practice quizzes and tutorials under Anatomy will be extremely helpful to those students as well.  For the parents I feel as if the calendar and copies of the syllabus will be most helpful for them so they can see what is expected of their student and when.  It can help them keep their child on task.