Distance Education

5 Pros:

1. You get to work from your own home. -This makes it easier for parents that are not comfortable with having their children in the public school system and gives them a chance to teach their child.
2. You get the advantage of collaborating with others from all over the country (or state). -This can help with subjects of diversity and learning about other places based on who your "classmates" are.
3. There are deadlines. -So it isn't like a correspondence course where you have to pace your own self. You can still have the structure of doing work but without being in a classroom.
4. Sometimes there are more choices. -Some rural schools may not be able to offer some of the classes that an online one could. This could help with those that are looking for more challenging classes.
5. You can set your own pace. -While there are deadlines to help you, you still have the freedom of working at night, in the morning, after work, etc. The day is more flexible.

5 Con's

1. Little to none face-to-face interaction. -While some online schools offer meeting times or other get-togethers, for the most part you will be interacting with students over the computer and don't get the personal communication you would in a traditional school setting.
2. It may be more difficult to get help when you need it. -If you are struggling with an assignment or any other part of the curriculum you may not have the direct and immediate help that you would from a teacher in a traditional classroom.
3. You have to rely on your equipment and Internet services. -If you have technical difficulties you may have trouble using your computer or the Internet, which means if an assignment or any other work is due and you are unable to get online to post it then you may be penalized.
4. The freedom. -While this is also a pro, it can be a con as well. Sometimes students need the structure of an everyday school setting. If a student does not have this then they may be more apt to "blow off" assignments since they have their own time to do and there is not a teacher there to penalize them.
5. May not be the "best" education possible. -Without a teacher right there instructing you, you may not be getting the best education there is. An example is science. If a classroom is doing a science experiment in a lab in a traditional classroom, will the video or instructions of the experiment be as beneficial as the hands on experiment? Probably not.

Emerging Technologies

The emerging technologies in the world are almost endless. There are things that we have now that 10 years ago many would have thought impossible. When choosing 3 items for this assignment I chose 3 that I understood and have seen used before instead of finding something that I was unfamiliar with. They are blogging, online/networked classrooms, and wiki’s.

The first one, blogging, has been around for a few years now but is becoming ever more popular. A blog is a “web-log” or journal type style. It is online and under a username that that person can post whatever type of information they want to in their blog and it is available for everyone to see. This could be used in the classroom in a variety of ways. A teacher can create an assignment that they post in their blogs and that way classmates can see everyone’s responses and comment on them. This creates a sense of community between the classroom because everyone has the opportunity to share their ideas.

The second one is online classrooms. This is becoming very popular in college and even in high school. It is a way for students to be taught by a teacher that is not at their school, or to teach students that aren’t at your school. It is a virtual classroom. Students will be able to watch, listen, and interact with their teacher, even if the teacher isn’t there. I think that this technology offers a lot of advantages because it makes it possible to get the best educators because you are now able to have them even if they are at different schools. Of course there are many downfalls to this, but I think that it is going to become even more popular very soon.

The third and final emerging technology is wiki’s. They are websites that anybody can add to. It would work great in a classroom because a teacher could create a site and the students could add questions, comments, insights, or whatever, to the site as needed. It creates a very interactive environment for students and can continue their education at home. The internet makes it great for students to check into the wiki while they are at home and then parents can see what is going on in their child’s classroom as well.

All of these technologies will soon have a greater impact in classrooms and as a future teacher, I as well as all the other future teachers, should prepare for a classroom that includes all of these and many more. Not to embrace these emerging technologies will most likely hurt us in the long run because they aren’t going to go away, and if we have the chance now to learn about them then we will be able to understand them better in our own classroom.

Engaging Students with Concept Mapping Activities

I think that concept mapping is a tool that should be used in all classrooms at one point or another. As a teacher it can be a great program to get students used to writing in an organized manner and help them see their ideas more clearly. It is also a good way to help students understand the ideas of similarities and differences. Students are able to see their ideas in an organized and visual way that is easier to understand than just jotting down some ideas. Especially for students learning how to outline subjects or study for tests even, this program can give those students a good starting point in doing so. Some of my ideas for the use of concept mapping include, an outline for a paper, such as writing a fairy tale. They can use the map to organize the title, main characters, themes, beginning and endings, and so on. Another idea could be when writing a report on a famous person. The person would be the main topic and all the important information can branch off of it. You could also use it when teaching math and the "fact families" of numbers.
Concept mapping can really help students by showing them a visual step by step process. Each student is capable of creating their own concept map and in that way can show a teacher that they understand the process of what is being taught.

Teacher Web Grading

I really liked looking at other students TeacherWebs. It gave me some great ideas for my page and I got some insight into how the other students use the sites. Grading it was pretty easy, especially since it was enjoyable to look at the websites. There were sometimes a few small mistakes that I felt bad about, but they happen. I found some really cool websites from the other students that I would use as a teacher too. I also saw some really in-depth class schedules that I thought were very well done and could even be used in a real classroom.
There isn't a whole lot that I would do differently, but it was very helpful to see other students sites and give me some new ideas for next time. As for what I would like to see TeacherWeb have that they do not is not very much. There was still a lot more that I could do with TeacherWeb and even a lot that I have not even checked out. I think it is a great site for teachers, students, and parents, and if allowed I will definitely use it in my classroom one day.

Blogs in Education Project

1. I used the search engines Google, Ask Jeeves, and Dogpile to do my searches. I found that Dogpile seemed to have the best information and that Google and Ask Jeeves were about the same. I would use Google more though because it's paid sponsors are listed on the right hand side of the window, with an exception to a few results, and on Jeeves the paid sponsor results are listed at the very first and it is a little difficult at first to determine where the actual results start. Dogpile combines 4 different search engines, Google, Jeeves, MSN, and Yahoo, so it's results are going to be the best because it has 4 different search engines to get results from. It also has paid sponsor results but it says "Sponsored by:" before the sites that it sponsers so it is easy to tell the difference. All three of the sites listed educational.blogs.com as the first one, after the paid sponsers.



2. The first thing I noticed was a teacher using a blog called "Classroom Daily Blog" and in it the teacher would post a short blog each day talking about what they did in class that day. This could be a helpful tool for students, teachers, and parents to all interact together. The second thing I noticed that I thought was a good idea was in an 8th grade classroom. The teacher used blogs to have students post book reports and reviews to each other on the blogs. I thought this was a cool idea because then the students could get their peers perspective on what they thought of the book and the reviews of other books. The third thing I noticed was from a kindergarten classroom, which from the very start intrigued me because I was unsure of how a kindergarten class could use blogs. It turned out to be a cool idea, the teacher each day, or every few days would post things they did in class recently. There would be some art work from the students, or a book they read, or upcoming events to prepare for. It shows that blogs can be used in any grade level.



3. RSS readers and aggregators allow you to receive notices when a news story, headline, blog, etc. gets updated. This could be a useful tool in a classroom when an entire class has to post blogs. This would allow the teacher to be able to get notices when a student updates his or her blog page. It would be hard to keep track of which students are doing their blogs or when they get done, but if you could receive notice of them then it would be much eaiser.

4. I think that blogging and RSS readers could be a very useful tool in the classroom. Not only does it get students to understand the internet in a more professional classroom appropriate way but it helps students learn to type at an earlier age. With computers and technology updating constantly students are required to use them at earlier ages then ever before. Most students my age didn't use computers to do any writing when we were in elementary school so learning to type came a little bit later. These days a child can learn to type a lot earlier and help them later on. Blogs are a great way for students to see what their peers think about a certain topic, and it also gives them the proud moments of seeing their work "published" online. I think that if used properly this could be a great tool to start using more in classrooms.

5. The first pro I have for blogs is that it makes sharing your ideas so much eaiser for the entire classroom to see, especially if there are 25 or more kids that want to share their ideas. The second pro is that it promotes keyboard knowledge and computer knowledge, these are both things that they will use their entire lives so it is important to start early. The first con that I have is that it takes away from the actual writing process on paper and for some students the practice of physically writing is something that is needed to create better fine motor skills. If everything moves to computers then you lose a lot of that needed skill. The second con is that some students feel very private about their writing or are shy and don't want anybody but the teacher to be reading their work. If a child is embarrassed about his or her writing it can be very hard for them to write something that they know everybody is going to see.

WebQuest and Wikis

As I talked with Whitney about our thoughts and opinions about the WebQuests, we found out that we each had very different thoughts about what a WebQuest was. Whitney brought up a good point that she thought of the site as more of a resource for lesson plans and teaching tools. I had never thought of it that way and I think it's a great idea. Something that I did differently was that I thought of the page more as an interactive lesson. This is a great tool that can be used in the classroom on many different levels. Any subject can be turned into a WebQuest assignment and become a good hands-on activity for the students.
Wiki's also seem to be a useful tool for classrooms as well. It is a very interactive way for students and teachers to post and edit information in the same spot. This probably wouldn't be a good idea for the primary grades because the students won't understand the internet as well as older students, but this could even be something for parents to interact with as well. Overall I think that both of these are great tools to be used in the classroom for a more interactive and hands on approach to learning.

Learning Styles in a Tech Classroom

I think that researching and knowing about different learning styles is an important thing to know when you are teaching. Each student learns in their own way and it is important to try and accommodate to those needs whenever possible. When it comes to technology in the classroom applying different learning styles can be difficult. It is hard to get a kinesthetic or active learning style to fit in with a computer lesson, but you could fit it in with some sort of video recording lesson or something like that. Not every lesson will be able to accommodate every type of learner, but a good teacher will try and find ways to reach most types. Because technology is such a wide range of things (tv, computer, radio, electronics, etc.) it is possible to reach every learning style in one way or another depending on the topic. I think that with any classroom, not just a technology one, it is important to understand your students and how they learn best.