The results are in! Here are the best edublogs of 2004! Go check them out!
http://incsub.org/awards/index.php
Monday, December 13, 2004
You heard it first at T2E
More confirmation that Internet Explorer is bad news. This article reports that Penn State has discouraged everyone on campus from using IE. They suggest using ... Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, or something else to protect against viruses and poor internet security.
What should we learn from this as teachers? Using what everyone else uses is not always smart. Just because IE is popular doesn't mean we should be using it. I know teachers have a lot they need to be concerned with, but staying up to date on the technology and what works best should be one of these.
What should we learn from this as teachers? Using what everyone else uses is not always smart. Just because IE is popular doesn't mean we should be using it. I know teachers have a lot they need to be concerned with, but staying up to date on the technology and what works best should be one of these.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Final takeaways from the class
Shauna, in another section, left her final "rules of thumb" for using technology effectively.
1) Technology should enhance the lesson plan.
2) There will be a learning curve when you first teach a technology. Don't be bothered by that if you feel that in the long run that technology will be beneficial.
3) Technology will fail sometimes. Keep backups of files and have backup ideas on what your students can do if the technology is rendered useless at any given time.
4) It's important to keep up to date on technology. Don't be afraid to try new technologies, but make sure you try them out on your own before you bring them into the classroom.
If any of you would like to leave your final "rules of thumb" or main suggestions for good technology integration, please leave them as a comment here! I'd love to hear these and what else you learned this semester that was most useful.
1) Technology should enhance the lesson plan.
2) There will be a learning curve when you first teach a technology. Don't be bothered by that if you feel that in the long run that technology will be beneficial.
3) Technology will fail sometimes. Keep backups of files and have backup ideas on what your students can do if the technology is rendered useless at any given time.
4) It's important to keep up to date on technology. Don't be afraid to try new technologies, but make sure you try them out on your own before you bring them into the classroom.
If any of you would like to leave your final "rules of thumb" or main suggestions for good technology integration, please leave them as a comment here! I'd love to hear these and what else you learned this semester that was most useful.
Home Ec idea
Jessica had this idea for using PowerPoint in Home Ec that she wanted to share. Since she's not a Home Ec major, none of the home ec girls would see her idea, so I'm posting it here. It's a good one, and actually we've had a couple of Home Ec teachers do similar ideas for their lesson plans -- so here's a confirmation that your idea was a good one!
Now I know that I'm not a home economics teacher but I do teach a cooking class at BYU in the Home and Family Living department. Lately I have been playing around with powerpoint and I came up with this wonderful idea for a class project using powerpoint. It's a technology cookbook. You could separate the class into groups and have them choose a particular category to come up with recipes to contribute to a class cookbook. An example could be: a poultry section, casseroles, family meals, kids recipes, etc. They can be totally creative. Then each person in the group needs to come up with a recipe that they have made or that is a family recipe and the group can create their own powerpoint slides for that category. Then at the end of the semester the students could choose one recipe from their category and make it for the class. When each group does this they could present their section of the cookbook with their recipe and the class can have a huge potluck dinner. The teacher could take all of the slides and create cookbooks for each person in the class with every groups categories in it. It would be fun and educational for the students while implementing technology into their presentation and learning
Upcoming final: This is fun!
All right, I know "fun" and "final" aren't allowed in the same subject line, but we did the final for Dr. Allen's IPT 286 students yesterday, and it went really well (at least I thought so, and so did many of the students). Some students from our class also presented that day, and Roxana blogged about it:
So, don't let it stress you out, and I look forward to seeing all of your projects! Here are some lessons learned and suggestions from the groups that went Friday:
- Even if you're scheduled for 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m., come at 5:30 if you can. Many of the groups went faster than we expected, and it was disappointing to have them come late and only get to see a couple of people present. So if you can, ignore the schedule and everyone come at 5:30. If your group doesn't get done in two hours, you're free to go if you wish after two hours anyway.
- Follow the schedule posted on the door of each classroom. Just go in the order that everyone is listed there.
- If you're in the microteaching rooms, we'll be recording you, but not to evaluate you (that wouldn't be fair anyway because we're not recording those downstairs). It's more to evaluate US and how well this type of a final went so we can improve it for next year.
- When it's your turn to teach/present, please write your name on the whiteboard. I know ya (even though I still get some names wrong, I do know most of you), but Dr. Allen doesn't. Having your name on the whiteboard helps her know who you are so we can tell if we're getting behind the schedule (which shouldn't be a problem anyway)
- Ab0ut 15-20 minutes per person
See you all there!
"I liked the way that we did the final. I was a little nervous before I went in, but then it turned out not to be so bad. I liked telling about what I had learned about technology even if it was just power point. Plus I really liked seeing what the other students did. When they showed it as their presentation it didn't seem so impossible to do. It gave me a little bet of comfort that I might be able to do some of the things that they did as well. It was a good way to do a final, especially since that is what we'd been learning about."
So, don't let it stress you out, and I look forward to seeing all of your projects! Here are some lessons learned and suggestions from the groups that went Friday:
- Even if you're scheduled for 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m., come at 5:30 if you can. Many of the groups went faster than we expected, and it was disappointing to have them come late and only get to see a couple of people present. So if you can, ignore the schedule and everyone come at 5:30. If your group doesn't get done in two hours, you're free to go if you wish after two hours anyway.
- Follow the schedule posted on the door of each classroom. Just go in the order that everyone is listed there.
- If you're in the microteaching rooms, we'll be recording you, but not to evaluate you (that wouldn't be fair anyway because we're not recording those downstairs). It's more to evaluate US and how well this type of a final went so we can improve it for next year.
- When it's your turn to teach/present, please write your name on the whiteboard. I know ya (even though I still get some names wrong, I do know most of you), but Dr. Allen doesn't. Having your name on the whiteboard helps her know who you are so we can tell if we're getting behind the schedule (which shouldn't be a problem anyway)
- Ab0ut 15-20 minutes per person
See you all there!
Thursday, December 09, 2004
A SAD delivery
Molly expresses well some of the consternation we all feel at times with teachers who use PowerPoint ineffectively,
"I don't understand why teachers always make the classic black-and-white PowerPoints with a dash of a picture here and there. Everytime a teacher pulls up one of these presentations, it is my key signal to zone out."
Don't be this kind of teacher! I totally agree with Molly--don't give signals to your students to "zone out." A SAD (Stand And Deliver) style of teaching will often do that.
"I don't understand why teachers always make the classic black-and-white PowerPoints with a dash of a picture here and there. Everytime a teacher pulls up one of these presentations, it is my key signal to zone out."
Don't be this kind of teacher! I totally agree with Molly--don't give signals to your students to "zone out." A SAD (Stand And Deliver) style of teaching will often do that.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Ha! Ha! The difference between generations
Funny comic over at Will's blog about the difference between how our parents get news, and how many students get their news (i.e. through blogs, the internet). Go check it out!
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2004/12/01#a2919
BTW- BYU often blocks Will's blog and I don't know why! It's safe, and I've sent a request to BYU to unblock it.
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2004/12/01#a2919
BTW- BYU often blocks Will's blog and I don't know why! It's safe, and I've sent a request to BYU to unblock it.
More examples of educational uses of blogs
In case you like blogging and think it has potential in YOUR classroom but don't know how to do it, here are some examples of good educational weblogs, compiled by Will Richardson:
Galileo Web--The starting point for exporation of Pat's school site. I've highlighted a couple below, but spend some time clicking through the "Tech Integration Links" in the left column. Really well done stuff.
Developing Writers--This is a great example at Pat's school of how to use a Weblog to provide articulation materials for teachers. I wish my school would jump on this idea more, have Expository Composition teachers, for example, create a site that provides instructional materials, rubrics and models for the different essay genres they teach.
Ms. Chiang--Teaching Chinese with a blog. Nice example of class portal and materials/homework archive. More examples here.
The National Writing Project Blog Project also lists some educational uses of Weblogs on various levels. (See the "Tour of WP Blogs" in the left column.) Some highlights:
The Sequoia Sentinel--The homepage for the Sequoia School site.
IHMS 103--A beautiful middle school site with lots of student writing and feedback. We use this model at our school as well.
Hidden Histories-- A collaborative blog between two sixth grade classrooms 300 miles apart.
East Side Bloggers--High school bloggers in every grade. Try the "sort by students" drop down to get the scope of what they're doing.
Galileo Web--The starting point for exporation of Pat's school site. I've highlighted a couple below, but spend some time clicking through the "Tech Integration Links" in the left column. Really well done stuff.
Developing Writers--This is a great example at Pat's school of how to use a Weblog to provide articulation materials for teachers. I wish my school would jump on this idea more, have Expository Composition teachers, for example, create a site that provides instructional materials, rubrics and models for the different essay genres they teach.
Ms. Chiang--Teaching Chinese with a blog. Nice example of class portal and materials/homework archive. More examples here.
The National Writing Project Blog Project also lists some educational uses of Weblogs on various levels. (See the "Tour of WP Blogs" in the left column.) Some highlights:
The Sequoia Sentinel--The homepage for the Sequoia School site.
IHMS 103--A beautiful middle school site with lots of student writing and feedback. We use this model at our school as well.
Hidden Histories-- A collaborative blog between two sixth grade classrooms 300 miles apart.
East Side Bloggers--High school bloggers in every grade. Try the "sort by students" drop down to get the scope of what they're doing.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Eating the elephant (and other thoughts)
There have been a few interesting posts the last couple of days that I'd like to highlight. The first is from the "overwhelmed" category, I think. Hayley mentions that
Roxana has a thoughtful post about our discussion of Christ as the perfect teacher. She says that
Lindsay said
I know a lot of you are worried about accessibility and wonder, "Yes, this is all good, but will I really have technology in my school?" Maybe, maybe not. I just interviewed a first-year student who graduated from BYU and is in Kansas. His first school had nothing, absolutely nothing. He is now transfering to a school that has lots of technology opportunities and is even issuing him a laptop. I think most of your schools will be in-between these extremes, but technology will be much more prevalent in the coming years so even if you don't have many computers and such yet, you may soon.
Great posts all!
"I have been wondering about what I am going to do as a teacher. Though I do know a lot about technology, there is a lot that I am unsure about. I am worried about using technology only for the sake of using it. I am not necessarily a technology minded person, but I do know that technology is a very important teaching tool for my students. I am just trying to think about more that I can do in my English Classes"To Hayley and others feeling this way -- don't worry and don't be overwhelmed! Rome wasn't conquered in a day! Elephants aren't eaten in one bite! (and on, and on, insert your favorite cliche here). Seriously, you don't need to become a master at every technology to be successful. Rather, first recognize that technology IS valuable, and then make a decision each summer as you look ahead to your school year to ponder what educational technologies might help your new students. The technologies you use may change from year to year, and maybe you'll only learn one or two new technologies each year -- but if they are good ones, those tools will still be valuable.
Roxana has a thoughtful post about our discussion of Christ as the perfect teacher. She says that
"I thought that it was interesting that in class today we talked about Christ as the perfect example of a perfect teacher and why. He was the teacher that I would like to be. He taught the people simply and built upon their previous knowledge so that they could follow along. He taught line upon line, precept upon precept. I will not be able to expect that all my students will be able to understand everything at the same time. I will need to take my teaching at a pace that they can follow and build on their past knowledge.Jill continues with her thoughts on this discussion:
He was also a very patient teacher. This is also something that I will need to do in order to become a good teacher. A lot of times the people that he taught didn't understand what he said, but he didn't yell at them or tell them they should've been paying attention. He just loved them and tried to teach them again. I need to be patient with the students that don't understand what I teach right away. I need to have patience and continue to try and teach them.
It is also important for me to love all my students. Christ loved everyone, even those who messed up and he didn't hold it against them. I need to do the same thing. Even if a student drives me crazy I can't hold it against them for the rest of the semester or always think of that student as the difficult one. I need to love that student anyways.
These are just different thoughts that I had about the discussion that we had in class today."
"I really enjoyed our discussion in class yesterday. I researched it a little more deeply and here are some of my thoughts:
"What manner of teachers ought we to be?" If we are to become like Christ and to be successful teachers, we must emulate him as a teacher and as our savior. Some qualities of a Master Teacher are:
Faith- We must have faith in ourselves, that we can accomplish our ideals with a lot of work and some divine assistance. We also must have faith in our students. All too often, students and people in general rise (or fall) to the level of expectation placed on them. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we show our students that we expect great things of them, they will be more willing to do so, and develop faith in themselves.
Virtue - It can become a teacher's greatest ally and source of strength. Christ was virtuous in every sense of the word. A virtuous teacher is kind, true to their purpose, loyal to themself and their students, will not permit wrong, seeks after the "virtuous, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy", is respectful (and respected). Though we cannot teach the gospel in our classrooms, we can be an example of what we believe and thus create a spirit of learning and unity that will bless.
Knowledge - The Savior has a perfect knowledge of everything he teaches. We should also "seek learning even by study and also by faith". Teachers must be ever learning in both spiritual and secular matters in order to be effective. It is always comforting to me to remember, "blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness . . ."
Temperance and Patience - I'm sure there will be days when we feel like our classes are in utter chaos and the walls are falling down around us. Temperance and patience lend the composure and calm that we will need to know that things will work out. If we keep working at it and plead for the Lord's help, things will be ok. Temperance and patience also help us to remain focused on our goals and what is most important. Perhaps the most important help that these virtues confer is to be patient and understanding of others and their faults.
Kindness and Charity - Christ taught that we should love all men - even the annoying, the difficult, and the contentuous ones. "Charity seeketh not her own", but rather the greater good and edification of others. This is at the very heart of the work and calling of a teacher.
Teaching is difficult, and even painful at times, but I think, that if we seek to be a Master Teacher, even as the Master is, it will be the most joyous work of all. "
Lindsay said
"I have learned a lot in all my classes but I feel like I have learned a lot in my technology class. I was thinking what I had learned after class today and I realized that I really have learned a lot about technology and how to intergrate it into my classroom. ... I hope that I have the accessibility to technology when I am a teacher."
I know a lot of you are worried about accessibility and wonder, "Yes, this is all good, but will I really have technology in my school?" Maybe, maybe not. I just interviewed a first-year student who graduated from BYU and is in Kansas. His first school had nothing, absolutely nothing. He is now transfering to a school that has lots of technology opportunities and is even issuing him a laptop. I think most of your schools will be in-between these extremes, but technology will be much more prevalent in the coming years so even if you don't have many computers and such yet, you may soon.
Great posts all!
Monday, December 06, 2004
Tying up some loose ends
Well class, I told you I would post some things for you so here they are!
Here's the Final Presentation Schedule
Here's the Final Presentation Rubric that you'll be evaluated on
Based on some conflicts with some students' schedules, I made a few changes to the presentation schedule. It might have affected when you present. For example, if someone ahead of you was moved to a different day, you might be presenting earlier than you thought.
Here's the changes:
Languages
Alise Paterno will now present second after Elaine Doty presents at 5:30. Mary Miller is after Alise. They are in the computer lab, which has Photoshop for Elaine's presentation
Science
Benjamin Sheldon will be presenting on Friday, December 10th, at about 3:20 p.m. in room 274. He will need to be there from 3-5 p.m. Matt Zmolek is presenting Monday, the 13th, at about 6:10 p.m. in room 274 and will need to be there from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Rachel Fugal will be presenting on Friday, December 10th at about 5:40 p.m. in room 275 and will need to be there from 4-6 p.m.
Resources shown in class
Here are the links that we showed and talked about in class today:
Homemade PowerPoint Games
Skype (Internet telephone)
Google Scholar
Live Journal
WikiNews
Also, I apologize for the mess that was trying to figure out how to upload things to my server at the end of class. That was more hassle than I anticipated and I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was ("Bad Llama!" :-). Just to reassure you, I did get the files from Lindsay Baccus, Caroline Lund, Carla Goodman, and Elise Freeman, Memorie Durfee, as well as those of you who were on Macs and posted on my server directly. I expect the rest will be on Blackboard, on the discussion board, right?
Important note about grades
I spent some time today going back and making sure everything is graded. The gradebook is updated! Please everyone check your grades and if something is missing, and if you did the work, send it to me by email so I can grade it. If not, I assume that what the gradebook says is correct. I will also try to hurry and grade the examples in the next few days so you can check your grade on that as well.
Be sure to send me your blogging posts to grade ASAP so I can grade those as well. Thanks!
Here's the Final Presentation Schedule
Here's the Final Presentation Rubric that you'll be evaluated on
Based on some conflicts with some students' schedules, I made a few changes to the presentation schedule. It might have affected when you present. For example, if someone ahead of you was moved to a different day, you might be presenting earlier than you thought.
Here's the changes:
Languages
Alise Paterno will now present second after Elaine Doty presents at 5:30. Mary Miller is after Alise. They are in the computer lab, which has Photoshop for Elaine's presentation
Science
Benjamin Sheldon will be presenting on Friday, December 10th, at about 3:20 p.m. in room 274. He will need to be there from 3-5 p.m. Matt Zmolek is presenting Monday, the 13th, at about 6:10 p.m. in room 274 and will need to be there from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Rachel Fugal will be presenting on Friday, December 10th at about 5:40 p.m. in room 275 and will need to be there from 4-6 p.m.
Resources shown in class
Here are the links that we showed and talked about in class today:
Homemade PowerPoint Games
Skype (Internet telephone)
Google Scholar
Live Journal
WikiNews
Also, I apologize for the mess that was trying to figure out how to upload things to my server at the end of class. That was more hassle than I anticipated and I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was ("Bad Llama!" :-). Just to reassure you, I did get the files from Lindsay Baccus, Caroline Lund, Carla Goodman, and Elise Freeman, Memorie Durfee, as well as those of you who were on Macs and posted on my server directly. I expect the rest will be on Blackboard, on the discussion board, right?
Important note about grades
I spent some time today going back and making sure everything is graded. The gradebook is updated! Please everyone check your grades and if something is missing, and if you did the work, send it to me by email so I can grade it. If not, I assume that what the gradebook says is correct. I will also try to hurry and grade the examples in the next few days so you can check your grade on that as well.
Be sure to send me your blogging posts to grade ASAP so I can grade those as well. Thanks!
Friday, December 03, 2004
Evaluating blogs vs. discussion boards
There is a big trend in education towards "blended" learning or "hybrid" learning where some of the learning happens in class and some of it happens online. Our class this semester has been one example. My personal belief as a teacher is that students learn by reflecting, participating, and talking about what they are thinking. I knew not everyone would get a chance to talk in class, so I encouraged us all to blog our thoughts instead to each other.
But there are other ways of promoting online learning, of course, with wikis, discussion boards, virtual classrooms, chatting, etc. One big debate I've heard a lot is why all the fuss about blogs? Many feel blogs are just like discussion boards. In fact, someone in our class made the same comment at the beginning of the year. I promised we'd talk more about it someday.
Today's that day! Now that you've had the time to get used to blogging, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this: How are blogs different than discussion boards?
Lee LeFever has continued the discussion on his blog about the differences between weblogs and discussion boards. He has some really good ideas about why these may, in fact, be different ways of collaborating online.
As a class, let's consider this. Check out his table:
But there are other ways of promoting online learning, of course, with wikis, discussion boards, virtual classrooms, chatting, etc. One big debate I've heard a lot is why all the fuss about blogs? Many feel blogs are just like discussion boards. In fact, someone in our class made the same comment at the beginning of the year. I promised we'd talk more about it someday.
Today's that day! Now that you've had the time to get used to blogging, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this: How are blogs different than discussion boards?
Lee LeFever has continued the discussion on his blog about the differences between weblogs and discussion boards. He has some really good ideas about why these may, in fact, be different ways of collaborating online.
As a class, let's consider this. Check out his table:
Do you agree or disagree with his ideas?
Don't worry about saying what you think I want to hear, because what I want to hear are your real thoughts! Let's talk about this as teachers -- What are the strengths/weaknesses of each? When would you use either in your classroom? When would you want to use either as a student?
Vote for the best Edublogs!
This is kind of fun! Go to http://incsub.org/awards/index.php and you can nominate an educational weblog that you like for this year's edublog awards. Then you can vote, and, what I'm most excited for, see who the best ones are and add them to your aggregators. The deadline for nominations is today, and there were several nominated that I've read before and think are useful.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Finding educational blogs
Anne Davis has a couple of articles you might find interesting. In one, she quotes reports that Blog is the "Word of the Year" according to Merriam-Webster.
And you heard it first in IPT 286 :-)
She also posts a list of educational weblog search engines to help edubloggers like yourselves find useful blogs. check them out! Here they are:
And you heard it first in IPT 286 :-)
She also posts a list of educational weblog search engines to help edubloggers like yourselves find useful blogs. check them out! Here they are:
Manila Education Weblog Portal
Movable Type Education Weblog Portal
TypePad Education Weblog Portal
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Introducing ... Google Scholar!
Roxana said on her blog,
"Maybe (I don't know if they already do) but they should have a way to go and search and only get information that is acredited. Instead of getting a huge long list and half the stuff is junk"
I responded that just last week a new search engine was released that may do just what Roxana wants it to do -- or at least somewhat. It's called Google Scholar, and it allows students for free to search for research articles and scholarly publications available on the internet. I love it, but my only concern is that there are a lot of good, reliable sources of information on the internet that are not research journal-based. So those probably won't show up in Google Scholar. But it's at least another useful resource.
Check it out at scholar.google.com
"Maybe (I don't know if they already do) but they should have a way to go and search and only get information that is acredited. Instead of getting a huge long list and half the stuff is junk"
I responded that just last week a new search engine was released that may do just what Roxana wants it to do -- or at least somewhat. It's called Google Scholar, and it allows students for free to search for research articles and scholarly publications available on the internet. I love it, but my only concern is that there are a lot of good, reliable sources of information on the internet that are not research journal-based. So those probably won't show up in Google Scholar. But it's at least another useful resource.
Check it out at scholar.google.com
Post your lesson plans on Blackboard!
Hello all! A couple of students have posted their lesson plans on their blogs, which was fine for giving me the idea of your lesson, but could you please post it under the appropriate forum in Blackboard? It just helps us to not let some students fall through the cracks if all of the lesson plans are in the same place and we can grade them all at the same time.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Friday, November 26, 2004
Grading your class participation
Well, it's nearing the end of the semester (don't get teary-eyed, now :-) and it's time to grade the student participation part of your grades. Remember, if you read the assignment at http://msed.byu.edu/ipt/west/a_participation.html you are being given 50 points for participating in the online, out-of-class part of this course. That means your blogging and comments on other people's blogs. To quote from the assignment page:
- something you wrote on your blog
- a comment you wrote on somebody else's blog
- a comment you wrote responding to somebody's comment on your blog.
A reminder about what does NOT count as a post:
- Turning in homework (i.e., your blog post about your lesson idea does not count as a reflective post, it was a required way of submitting your homework -- it was not reflective.)
- However, a couple of times this year I specifically required you to reflect about a class topic. For example, I asked you to reflect about our ethics activities. That counts as one of your reflective posts because you were reflecting on what we learned about class. The required posts that will count towards your seven are: 1) Intro to Technology integration assignment (when you reflected about how your teachers used technology; 2) Best use of technology in your major assignment (when you reflected on the best technologies used in your discipline); and 3) Ethics reflection
- Posts about non-class topics. Some of the best writing this semester was about politics, love lives, etc. While highly entertaining, these had nothing to do with class and so they don't count as reflective posts!
Do you see the criteria? A post counts towards your seven if it was reflecting on class topics or topics connected with the use of technology in education.
If you're wondering, "How in the world do I remember where I posted stuff?" remember that it probably won't be too hard to find your posts. Look on your blog first. Then think if you posted something on my blog and use the search engine at the top of my blog to find the post that you commented on (although the search engine part doesn't work as well as I would like). Finally, look at your blogging buddies' blogs if you remember posting something there.
Here's how you send me the URLs: Once you find one of your good posts, click on the "comments" button underneath it. This will take you to a page that has only that post and it's comments, and nothing else. Look at the URL bar in the browser (where you type in web addresses). This is the "direct link" to this specific post. Copy and paste this URL into your email to me. This way I get an email with direct links to your five best posts and I will be able to read them and evaluate how reflective you've been this semester!
Good luck tracking down your posts and please email them to me before Finals Week. And thanks for all your wonderful thoughts!
"To get all 50 points, you must be actively participating in the discussions by posting your own thoughts on your blog and be commenting on the blogs of other students. There is no firm number of posts that you need to do, but you should plan on contributing at least around 7-10 thoughtful posts and/or comments this semester. By thoughtful, we mean critical, thorough, reflective, and instructive."Here's how we're going to do this. Please email me an email titled "My best reflective posts" or something like that, and in the body of the email give me the URLs to the SEVEN best posts that you have written this semester that showed you reflecting on class topics.. I'm only requiring you to send me seven posts instead of 10 because I know it might be a pain to have to track down all of the posts that you have written this semester. Send me your seven best ones, and I'll assume you did some other posts as well. A post can be:
- something you wrote on your blog
- a comment you wrote on somebody else's blog
- a comment you wrote responding to somebody's comment on your blog.
A reminder about what does NOT count as a post:
- Turning in homework (i.e., your blog post about your lesson idea does not count as a reflective post, it was a required way of submitting your homework -- it was not reflective.)
- However, a couple of times this year I specifically required you to reflect about a class topic. For example, I asked you to reflect about our ethics activities. That counts as one of your reflective posts because you were reflecting on what we learned about class. The required posts that will count towards your seven are: 1) Intro to Technology integration assignment (when you reflected about how your teachers used technology; 2) Best use of technology in your major assignment (when you reflected on the best technologies used in your discipline); and 3) Ethics reflection
- Posts about non-class topics. Some of the best writing this semester was about politics, love lives, etc. While highly entertaining, these had nothing to do with class and so they don't count as reflective posts!
Do you see the criteria? A post counts towards your seven if it was reflecting on class topics or topics connected with the use of technology in education.
If you're wondering, "How in the world do I remember where I posted stuff?" remember that it probably won't be too hard to find your posts. Look on your blog first. Then think if you posted something on my blog and use the search engine at the top of my blog to find the post that you commented on (although the search engine part doesn't work as well as I would like). Finally, look at your blogging buddies' blogs if you remember posting something there.
Here's how you send me the URLs: Once you find one of your good posts, click on the "comments" button underneath it. This will take you to a page that has only that post and it's comments, and nothing else. Look at the URL bar in the browser (where you type in web addresses). This is the "direct link" to this specific post. Copy and paste this URL into your email to me. This way I get an email with direct links to your five best posts and I will be able to read them and evaluate how reflective you've been this semester!
Good luck tracking down your posts and please email them to me before Finals Week. And thanks for all your wonderful thoughts!
Other great ideas!
I wasn't sure if I wanted to start linking to some of the great lesson ideas because you will get to share many of your ideas as part of the final presentation. But oh well, I couldn't resist!
Amy decided to let her students choose between two technologies for presenting what they learned, but she has thought through each project and given guidelines so it will be a good learning experience either way.
Joe decided to use iMovie for a persuasive writing assignment. Why is that significant? Most people think of persuasive writing as an essay, speech, or something like that. But aren't you often more persuaded by a good movie where you can SEE evidence, rather than just hear talk about it? This is a good example of picking the right technology for the project. Doing a persuasive piece with ppt just wouldn't have the same emotional punch as a movie. And writing a good script for a movie can still incorporate literary elements, as Joe shows.
Jill's going to use the Internet, digital cameras, Photoshop and either iMovie or ppt to have students make virtual museums of ecosystems near where they live.
By the way, Jill has a really cool idea for a post called "Take a penny, leave a penny" where she left some random ideas for using technologies in different lesson plans. She's left them there for anyone stuck needing a good idea. Hopefully you'll go to her blog and also "leave a penny" or leave a good idea for her as well!
Carla has a good idea for biology
The ELISA test is some kind of laboratory equipment that helps test fluids. What I like about this lesson idea is that it is up-to-date and applicable to our world and what's happening NOW. So students learn biology doing something that applies to their lives -- cool! This would also be a good idea for a Health lesson -- in fact when Carla gets out in the schools she should collaborate with a Health teacher on this one.
Amy decided to let her students choose between two technologies for presenting what they learned, but she has thought through each project and given guidelines so it will be a good learning experience either way.
Joe decided to use iMovie for a persuasive writing assignment. Why is that significant? Most people think of persuasive writing as an essay, speech, or something like that. But aren't you often more persuaded by a good movie where you can SEE evidence, rather than just hear talk about it? This is a good example of picking the right technology for the project. Doing a persuasive piece with ppt just wouldn't have the same emotional punch as a movie. And writing a good script for a movie can still incorporate literary elements, as Joe shows.
Jill's going to use the Internet, digital cameras, Photoshop and either iMovie or ppt to have students make virtual museums of ecosystems near where they live.
By the way, Jill has a really cool idea for a post called "Take a penny, leave a penny" where she left some random ideas for using technologies in different lesson plans. She's left them there for anyone stuck needing a good idea. Hopefully you'll go to her blog and also "leave a penny" or leave a good idea for her as well!
Carla has a good idea for biology
"Students will each be given a small tube containing “body fluid” which has previously been prepared—most will contain nothing, but one or two will contain an antibody that represents SARS. The students will “sneeze” on each other (mix and share fluid) three different times to simulate day-to-day interactions, keeping record of who they exchange with. A short lesson on how ELISA works will follow. Students will then perform an ELISA test to see if they have “SARS.” Finally, students will use deduction to determine who started the epidemic."
The ELISA test is some kind of laboratory equipment that helps test fluids. What I like about this lesson idea is that it is up-to-date and applicable to our world and what's happening NOW. So students learn biology doing something that applies to their lives -- cool! This would also be a good idea for a Health lesson -- in fact when Carla gets out in the schools she should collaborate with a Health teacher on this one.
Check out what your classmates are doing!
Well, I'm grading your final project lesson ideas right now, still not able to move very quickly after yesterday's feast ... and there are many good ideas again. One idea, in particular, really stands out, and I thought I'd share! Hayley and Savanna (an English teacher and a History teacher) are collaborating on a project where students learn about the Civil Rights movement, read a Civil Rights novel, and create an iMovie documentary that will be fun and that will satisfy standards in BOTH subjects. How cool is this? The students will learn more by doing it more effectively, the project will be cross-disciplinary, they'll have fun doing their homework for a change, and making the iMovie project will be less work because it will count as homework for two classes.
How cool is that? Way to go!
Here's their blogs about their idea:
http://earthchild.blogspot.com/2004/11/lesson-plan-overview.html
http://www.savannasue.blogspot.com/
How cool is that? Way to go!
Here's their blogs about their idea:
http://earthchild.blogspot.com/2004/11/lesson-plan-overview.html
http://www.savannasue.blogspot.com/
Thursday, November 18, 2004
If you wanted to learn desktop publishing ...
One cool technology with lots of educational possibilities is Adobe InDesign. This program allows you to make sweet posters, pamphlets, books, cards, ANYTHING! It's very powerful. I'd consider teaching it to you but I think we have only one copy in the McKay lab :-(.
So instead, if you want to learn it, you'll have to teach yourself. Here's a great way to do this! Go to this link:
http://weblog.edupodder.com/2004/11/i-podcast-class.html
And download the powerpoint and the audiofile. You can listen to the audio while you flip through the powerpoint (another cool way to use podcasting technology, by the way).
Wait! I can hear the pessimism already! "But Rick, InDesign is expensive and we won't have it in our school." Well, you're right, you probably won't have it in your school, except maybe just one or two copies. But you will probably have similar programs, like Microsoft Publisher, which does pretty much the same thing but not as well as InDesign. That's the trick with technologies, they really make up a bunch of "classes." You have the "desktop publishing class" and the "photo manipulation class" (like Photoshop), the "drawing tool" class (like Illustrator), the "spreadsheet class" (like Excel) and the "presentation class" like PowerPoint, and lots of others. Once you learn one tool, you can pretty much use any of the tools in its class because they work the same way. So, no, you might not have InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator at your school, but learning these tools will definitely help you take advantage of the programs that you WILL have.
So instead, if you want to learn it, you'll have to teach yourself. Here's a great way to do this! Go to this link:
http://weblog.edupodder.com/2004/11/i-podcast-class.html
And download the powerpoint and the audiofile. You can listen to the audio while you flip through the powerpoint (another cool way to use podcasting technology, by the way).
Wait! I can hear the pessimism already! "But Rick, InDesign is expensive and we won't have it in our school." Well, you're right, you probably won't have it in your school, except maybe just one or two copies. But you will probably have similar programs, like Microsoft Publisher, which does pretty much the same thing but not as well as InDesign. That's the trick with technologies, they really make up a bunch of "classes." You have the "desktop publishing class" and the "photo manipulation class" (like Photoshop), the "drawing tool" class (like Illustrator), the "spreadsheet class" (like Excel) and the "presentation class" like PowerPoint, and lots of others. Once you learn one tool, you can pretty much use any of the tools in its class because they work the same way. So, no, you might not have InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator at your school, but learning these tools will definitely help you take advantage of the programs that you WILL have.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Great ethics posts
Here are some great thoughts from your classmates on our ethics mini lessons:
J'Nette
Bonnie
Matt talks about a way to prevent cheating -- use creative and nontraditional forms of assessment!
Interesting post from Jonathan about how much we should be involved in protecting students. There's a real ethical dilemma for you! How do we balance professionalism with our moral responsibility to help students become decent people? A quote from Jonathan:
Here's a great question from Jared - I encourage you to go to his blog and discuss it!
J'Nette
"There are alot of programs available for teachers to help detect students that find these easy ways to cheat hardwork.
I liked the idea of having broader questioned assignments. Rather than marking a bubble sheet they could explain the knowledge they have learned. They have a chance to defend their reasoning and it gives the teacher a better perspective of where they could improve on their teaching."
Bonnie
"It really hit me after the various lessons on ethics how important information is in our society today. there are so many devices and technologies made specifically to find, transmit and store information. It is the whole basis of our society. So it makes sense that there are so many different laws protecting information. I'm sure none of us ever consider going into a store and taking something without buying it, but many of us don't even bat an eye at stealing information, ideas, music, software, etc. It is so easy to get sometimes that it doesn't seem like stealing at all. Many of these types of things are a lot more valuable than things one might steal from a store."I agree! Ideas may be the most valuable thing someone owns! We shouldn't break copyright just because we're worried about getting sued (who cares about that?), we should be ethical just because it's right.
Matt talks about a way to prevent cheating -- use creative and nontraditional forms of assessment!
"Another thing that can be done is to get rid of traditional tests and replace them with some other type of evaluation. group or individual projects can easily be made to show learning of a unit's concepts.for example, instead of taking a test on cells- what is mitochondria for? and what does the nucleus do?- a project could be to compare a cell and something familiar to the student (idea from marta adair). the student compares the cell and its contents to the postal service: the post office is the nucleus because it takes in all the new information (out-going letters) and processes what has to be done to get them to their correct destinations. the mitochondria is represented by money. in order for the cell (postal service) to work, it needs a sorce of energy (money). this allows the students to be creative and work together in generating concrete anchors to abstract concepts. this will help them remember what exactly the nucleus does instead of remembering that the answer was"
Interesting post from Jonathan about how much we should be involved in protecting students. There's a real ethical dilemma for you! How do we balance professionalism with our moral responsibility to help students become decent people? A quote from Jonathan:
"In my classes, this semester, I have been told that I should not try to play a role in my future students' personal lives and that I am not there to be a friend. I respect such opinions of my professors and naiive student teachers. Well, I don't see how one can't be a friend and a confidant to the students. They spnd most of their adolescence in classrooms with teachers. Whether people like it or not, teachers often have greater influences on kids than parents and are the people who they spend most of their time with until they graduate."
Here's a great question from Jared - I encourage you to go to his blog and discuss it!
"There is a film that really has facilitated some of my thinking. The movie is The Emporer's Club. In the film, Kevin Klein is a teacher at a private school. He finds out that his student that he liked a lot was cheating in an academic competition. For various reasons, he lets the cheating pass. Then, many years later, he comes to discover that this former student, now an important figure in society, still resorts to cheating for personal gain. How responsible was Kevin Klein's character? How responsible are we, as teachers, for the honesty of our students? Let me know what you think."
Why students should publish
Some of you may have wondered why the big deal in this class with the web (blogs, wikis, etc.). Part of it is that I feel it is very important for students to be public about their work. Written reports that go straight to the teacher and nobody else serves nobody. If we're going to put the work into learning something, shouldn't that knowledge be shared with as many people as possible?
But that's only part of it. I also feel that the more students must show their work publicly, the better that work will be. As David Wiley said recently at the AECT conference I attended, "open peer review always improves quality IF you actually care what other people think about you." There's some healthy debate at Dave's blog about whether this is true, so read it if you are interested. I, for one, agree with this statement and feel that it is usually (maybe not always) true. I know I have been much more careful and thoughtful about what I put on my blog since I learned several of my peers and others are reading it.
This is partly the purpose for blogs and wikis - free publishing! Students can publish their thoughts and feedback in a public arena. Will Richardson had a thought recently about this that every technology tool should have a publish feature. Wouldn't that be cool if a student could make an iMovie, and then publish it to the web? Or make an Excel spreadsheet, or Publisher document, or Photoshop file, or ANYTHING and then publish to the web and all of our aggregators would notify us that this student has something new for us to look at, and we can all look at it and learn, and then we could give feedback, and we'd all be better because of this exchange ...
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I do think it'd be cool!
But that's only part of it. I also feel that the more students must show their work publicly, the better that work will be. As David Wiley said recently at the AECT conference I attended, "open peer review always improves quality IF you actually care what other people think about you." There's some healthy debate at Dave's blog about whether this is true, so read it if you are interested. I, for one, agree with this statement and feel that it is usually (maybe not always) true. I know I have been much more careful and thoughtful about what I put on my blog since I learned several of my peers and others are reading it.
This is partly the purpose for blogs and wikis - free publishing! Students can publish their thoughts and feedback in a public arena. Will Richardson had a thought recently about this that every technology tool should have a publish feature. Wouldn't that be cool if a student could make an iMovie, and then publish it to the web? Or make an Excel spreadsheet, or Publisher document, or Photoshop file, or ANYTHING and then publish to the web and all of our aggregators would notify us that this student has something new for us to look at, and we can all look at it and learn, and then we could give feedback, and we'd all be better because of this exchange ...
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I do think it'd be cool!
Some of you may have wondered why the big deal in this class with the web (blogs, wikis, etc.). Part of it is that I feel it is very important for students to be public about their work. Written reports that go straight to the teacher and nobody else serves nobody. If we're going to put the work into learning something, shouldn't that knowledge be shared with as many people as possible?
But that's only part of it. I also feel that the more students must show their work publicly, the better that work will be. As David Wiley said recently at the AECT conference I attended, "open peer review always improves quality IF you actually care what other people think about you." There's some healthy debate at Dave's blog about whether this is true, so read it if you are interested. I, for one, agree with this statement and feel that it is usually (maybe not always) true. I know I have been much more careful and thoughtful about what I put on my blog since I learned several of my peers and others are reading it.
This is partly the purpose for blogs and wikis - free publishing! Students can publish their thoughts and feedback in a public arena. Will Richardson had a thought recently about this that every technology tool should have a publish feature. Wouldn't that be cool if a student could make an iMovie, and then publish it to the web? Or make an Excel spreadsheet, or Publisher document, or Photoshop file, or ANYTHING and then publish to the web and all of our aggregators would notify us that this student has something new for us to look at, and we can all look at it and learn, and then we could give feedback, and we'd all be better because of this exchange ...
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I do think it'd be cool!
But that's only part of it. I also feel that the more students must show their work publicly, the better that work will be. As David Wiley said recently at the AECT conference I attended, "open peer review always improves quality IF you actually care what other people think about you." There's some healthy debate at Dave's blog about whether this is true, so read it if you are interested. I, for one, agree with this statement and feel that it is usually (maybe not always) true. I know I have been much more careful and thoughtful about what I put on my blog since I learned several of my peers and others are reading it.
This is partly the purpose for blogs and wikis - free publishing! Students can publish their thoughts and feedback in a public arena. Will Richardson had a thought recently about this that every technology tool should have a publish feature. Wouldn't that be cool if a student could make an iMovie, and then publish it to the web? Or make an Excel spreadsheet, or Publisher document, or Photoshop file, or ANYTHING and then publish to the web and all of our aggregators would notify us that this student has something new for us to look at, and we can all look at it and learn, and then we could give feedback, and we'd all be better because of this exchange ...
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I do think it'd be cool!
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Here's a great thought from Sheldon about why flexible copyright is important:
I'll finish my post with another cool quote from Sheldon about what all of this ethics talk is about anyway:
"I believe that all knowledge comes from previously discovered knowledge, unless it is revealed truth then it comes from God when and how He sees fit in His loving kindness to us. I could see many good uses of such a program. Give an idea and let others advance it, then you can see what they did and improve it more yourself."As I understand it, that's really one of the key reasons for the flexible copyright push--the idea that for society to progress in knowledge we need to share what we already know so we can learn more ... together. I make something, you make it better, and we all benefit. It's really a cool, unselfish and humble way of looking at things. As Sheldon says, nobody really creates new knowledge anyway -- it always comes from bits and pieces of pre-existing knowledge. Interesting that the hebrew word for "creation" really means something more along the lines of "organize." That's really what creation is -- reorganizing old stuff to make something new.
I'll finish my post with another cool quote from Sheldon about what all of this ethics talk is about anyway:
"I think that all these things mainly comes down to protection of rights. Someone who has an idea should receive credit for it (for instance my great grandfather actually developed the geiger counter but then Geiger stole it and patented it), you should be able to share your ideas, you have the right to access public information, and it is a right to be protected from unwanted material, viruses scam artists and such. I think the most useful thing to me was just to make me aware of all of these different issues. I had never really thought of exactly what copyright is or what I can legally use etc."
Friday, November 12, 2004
Techno Cheating - Be prepared, but don't fear
Great comment from Erin about our techno cheating discussions:
I think she's right! If we are well-prepared as teachers, we won't need to worry about students getting away with too much. I read an article about this where the author concluded that the best way to prevent students from cheating -- whether with technology or otherwise -- is to know your students. If you know them well enough, you'll know what work is theirs and what work isn't.
I do think technology might mean we need to assess differently in the past. For example, you can go to Google Answers (I showed you the early birds this a while back) and for the for the right price get any answer you want from smart researchers who'll do the work for you. Well that kind of destroys the validity of send-home tests, huh? The proliferation of English papers online also hurts the validity of student papers on generic, popular topics.
But maybe that just means we need to test differently, or different kinds of knowledge than we've done before.
Just something to think about!
"One subject that seems to be the focus of many of the blogs is the issue of cheating. Perhaps we sound pessimistic, but I think that being prepared is key to being a good instructor. "If [we] are prepared [we] shall not fear."
I think she's right! If we are well-prepared as teachers, we won't need to worry about students getting away with too much. I read an article about this where the author concluded that the best way to prevent students from cheating -- whether with technology or otherwise -- is to know your students. If you know them well enough, you'll know what work is theirs and what work isn't.
I do think technology might mean we need to assess differently in the past. For example, you can go to Google Answers (I showed you the early birds this a while back) and for the for the right price get any answer you want from smart researchers who'll do the work for you. Well that kind of destroys the validity of send-home tests, huh? The proliferation of English papers online also hurts the validity of student papers on generic, popular topics.
But maybe that just means we need to test differently, or different kinds of knowledge than we've done before.
Just something to think about!
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Look at you go!
Hey class, more kudos in order. Try googling "Technology Integration Wiki" and see what comes up at the top!
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
There's more to blogging than text ...
Blogs don't just have to share written ideas, they can also share visual ideas. There are blog engines that help people start photo blogs, just like we've used Blogger for text blogging. I've also talked a lot about Podcasting, which is audio blogging, and now here's a post on video blogs. To quote:
If this interests you, find out about some of the photo blog, podcasting, and video blog tools out there and posts them as comments to this post so we can look into this more!
"Not too long ago Slashdot featured a post about photoblogs. It claimed that photoblogging is the next big thing, but really it has been around a while (notice how lots of folks posted a link to their photoblogs!). I think the next big thing will be VideoBlogging. Many have seen Peter Jackson's cool King Kong Video Blog, but you don't need whole a camera crew to blog using video."
If this interests you, find out about some of the photo blog, podcasting, and video blog tools out there and posts them as comments to this post so we can look into this more!
Students band together for fair copyright law
An interesting article from Wired magazine about students fighting abuse of copyright law by promoting more use of flexible copyright law and open source alternatives.
One of the really cool aspects of flexible copyright law is that it gives more freedom for teachers to let students learn by RML: Rip, Mix and Learn. Basically this process means a student rips a copy of something, mixes it to give it their own spin, and learns tons through this process of remixing and creation.
An example from the article:
"Pavlosky and other Free Culture leaders are finding clever ways to illustrate the importance of copyright in their daily lives with projects like Undead Art, which challenges students to remix the cult classic Night of the Living Dead, now in the public domain, and turn it into something new -- like a zombie techno video or comic short."
While I'm not a fan of Night of the Living Dead, I am a fan of this idea. Instead of having students learn about writing, or art, or music, have them create. For example, have them rework a famous mystery story into a romance, and learn about both styles of writing in the process. Or have them learn about Roman culture by remixing a popular song so it reflects typical B.C. Roman culture. Or have them learn science by recreating classic experiments with modern twists.
Don't YOU learn more by doing? So will your students. And flexible copyright lets us legally use more of the media available out there for these kinds of projects.
One of the really cool aspects of flexible copyright law is that it gives more freedom for teachers to let students learn by RML: Rip, Mix and Learn. Basically this process means a student rips a copy of something, mixes it to give it their own spin, and learns tons through this process of remixing and creation.
An example from the article:
"Pavlosky and other Free Culture leaders are finding clever ways to illustrate the importance of copyright in their daily lives with projects like Undead Art, which challenges students to remix the cult classic Night of the Living Dead, now in the public domain, and turn it into something new -- like a zombie techno video or comic short."
While I'm not a fan of Night of the Living Dead, I am a fan of this idea. Instead of having students learn about writing, or art, or music, have them create. For example, have them rework a famous mystery story into a romance, and learn about both styles of writing in the process. Or have them learn about Roman culture by remixing a popular song so it reflects typical B.C. Roman culture. Or have them learn science by recreating classic experiments with modern twists.
Don't YOU learn more by doing? So will your students. And flexible copyright lets us legally use more of the media available out there for these kinds of projects.
Great resources for making good webpages
Many of you have indicated that you think web design could be a very important skill for you as teachers. Well, Dr. Allen, who teaches another section of IPT 286, posted some great resources on her blog. These sites can help you know how to make web pages work, and how to make them look fantastic.
Design Websites
Here are a few websites that either demonstrate or teach (or both) good design principles:
http://www.lynda.com - an awesome site with all the latest tips and links to training companies and free resources, (tips on color, inspirational web sites (look in lower right hand side for the free resources info)
http://www.mundidesign.com - a site that teaches design principles (with interactive models), shows good examples of Flash interface design, and provides you with a change to try out different color schemes in a web page context
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html - this online app lets you set colors while automatically generating related color schemes
http://www.webbyawards.com - a site that you can see all kinds of different sites that have won the "webby award" for good design
http://coolhomepages.com - the website that hosts the most effectively designed websites on-line (financial, Flash, educational, fun, corporate, etc.)
http://ucda.com/
http://www.graphic-design.com/
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/
http://www.commarts.com/
http://www.lorrainepress.com/QandA.htm
http://www.elementkjournals.com/
http://www.lynda.com - an awesome site with all the latest tips and links to training companies and free resources, (tips on color, inspirational web sites (look in lower right hand side for the free resources info)
http://www.mundidesign.com - a site that teaches design principles (with interactive models), shows good examples of Flash interface design, and provides you with a change to try out different color schemes in a web page context
http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html - this online app lets you set colors while automatically generating related color schemes
http://www.webbyawards.com - a site that you can see all kinds of different sites that have won the "webby award" for good design
http://coolhomepages.com - the website that hosts the most effectively designed websites on-line (financial, Flash, educational, fun, corporate, etc.)
http://ucda.com/
http://www.graphic-design.com/
http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/
http://www.commarts.com/
http://www.lorrainepress.com/QandA.htm
http://www.elementkjournals.com/
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Math CD-ROM you might check out!
If any of you are interested in teaching math, Mike Handy from another section recommended a new software called ModuMath. Don't know much about it, except that he liked it!
Why learning about ethics is important
From Lindsay:
This assigment has kind of grown on me. Earlier today I was thinking about how great it is that we are learning how are student cheat, what we can and cannot show in the classroom and other ethics issues. We are essentially getting the upperhand. I know many teachers who start teaching and no clue about how big of a problem cheating is. Let's face it, not all students or all people in the world are honest. When we out in the real world teaching I think we will be somewhat prepared.
Thanks Lindsay! Hopefully most of you feel this way. Ethics is sometimes dry and boring to learn ... but very important, especially since students look up to teachers as role models. If we don't show them that ethics is important, who will?
This assigment has kind of grown on me. Earlier today I was thinking about how great it is that we are learning how are student cheat, what we can and cannot show in the classroom and other ethics issues. We are essentially getting the upperhand. I know many teachers who start teaching and no clue about how big of a problem cheating is. Let's face it, not all students or all people in the world are honest. When we out in the real world teaching I think we will be somewhat prepared.
Thanks Lindsay! Hopefully most of you feel this way. Ethics is sometimes dry and boring to learn ... but very important, especially since students look up to teachers as role models. If we don't show them that ethics is important, who will?
Monday, November 08, 2004
Update on what's due this week
Class! I told ya in class this week that the only thing due this week was your blog post about the ethics mini lessons. However, I said last week that I wouldn't grade the wiki pages until next Monday, just in case you needed extra time to tie up loose ends. Don't worry and fret over the wiki pages if they're done, however! I just thought some groups may not have had time last week to do everything they wanted to with the wiki pages.
Speaking collectively, and not necessarily individually (does that sound familiar?), the wiki pages looked really good. Learning about ethics is never really pleasant because it's kind of a boring topic. But I hope this was somewhat enjoyable and useful. It appears that you really got down to the meat of the issues on your wikis, and that's what we wanted -- so good job!
BTW - if you wanted that URL that I gave today in class for the interactive virtual world, it's at tappedin.org.
It really is quite a cool and useful tool for networking with other teachers with similar interests as yourself.
Speaking collectively, and not necessarily individually (does that sound familiar?), the wiki pages looked really good. Learning about ethics is never really pleasant because it's kind of a boring topic. But I hope this was somewhat enjoyable and useful. It appears that you really got down to the meat of the issues on your wikis, and that's what we wanted -- so good job!
BTW - if you wanted that URL that I gave today in class for the interactive virtual world, it's at tappedin.org.
It really is quite a cool and useful tool for networking with other teachers with similar interests as yourself.
Blogs names a "must have" educational technology
Interesting! Nobody knew about weblogs a year or two ago, now an article in E-school News named blogging one of their "must have" educational technologies. Here's a quote from the article:
Speak up! I hope to hear your ideas on this one (even if you're from another section)! Be sure to give rationale for your ideas. "I think Excel is a must have because ..." etc.
"Rolfes also touched on the growing importance of comprehensive student information systems used to track and monitor student progress, as well as the use of blogs as an increasingly popular tool for building stronger school communities--spurring much-needed communication among students, parents, and educators."This would be a really interesting discussion for our class! What do you think are the "must have" and "must learn" technologies for teachers? If IPT 286 was only a one-credit class (grin), what one or two technologies do you think should be taught because they would be valuable to ANY teacher, no matter what their subject matter expertise is?
Speak up! I hope to hear your ideas on this one (even if you're from another section)! Be sure to give rationale for your ideas. "I think Excel is a must have because ..." etc.
Protecting yourself from Phishing scams
Well, since one of the groups is studying internet security this week, I thought this article might be appropriate that I found today about how to protect yourself from phishing scams. If you've never seen one, phishing is when a scam artist sends you an email that looks like it's from Ebay, Amazon, your bank, or something else, and asks you to click on a URL and go to the website to verify your information. You click on the URL, it takes you to a website that looks exactly like the real one, you enter your financial information into the website, and the scam artist has you. It can be nearly impossible to tell the real thing from the fake thing, so the general advice is don't click on any URL that comes in an email. Your bank knows you're smart enough to remember how to find their website yourself, so they won't give you the url in an email.
Why are we studying about this stuff this week anyway? Why is it YOUR responsibility to know about viruses, scams, internet security, etc., and why is it YOUR responsibility to teach your students? For starters, if you are taking them to the computer lab, you need to teach your students how to not mess up the school's computers with viruses. If they are swapping files with each other as they collaborate on projects, they need to not be swapping viruses with their peers. If they are supposed to do homework at home, they need to know how to not mess up their home computers. Anytime we do something on the Internet, we need to be educated about how to do it safely. The problem with the Internet is that scammers are changing their methods every week, so that's why as teachers we need to keep ourselves up to date about scams and how to protect ourselves.
And by the way, did I ever mention that blogs are a GREAT way of keeping up to date on what the latest scam/protective method is? :-)
Why are we studying about this stuff this week anyway? Why is it YOUR responsibility to know about viruses, scams, internet security, etc., and why is it YOUR responsibility to teach your students? For starters, if you are taking them to the computer lab, you need to teach your students how to not mess up the school's computers with viruses. If they are swapping files with each other as they collaborate on projects, they need to not be swapping viruses with their peers. If they are supposed to do homework at home, they need to know how to not mess up their home computers. Anytime we do something on the Internet, we need to be educated about how to do it safely. The problem with the Internet is that scammers are changing their methods every week, so that's why as teachers we need to keep ourselves up to date about scams and how to protect ourselves.
And by the way, did I ever mention that blogs are a GREAT way of keeping up to date on what the latest scam/protective method is? :-)
Saturday, November 06, 2004
What if the students had GPS phones?
This just in from the Cool Gadgets department: Nokia has released a new camera phone with GPS capabilities! I'm thrilled because I really need GPS - I can get lost in my own neighborhood. But could this also have educational capabilities? This week we're studying ethics, including technology-based cheating methods and how to combat them. One student wrote on her blog that we should not allow cell phones in class because of the possibility that they could be used for cheating. I think that if it is a day when you're going to have a test, then yeah, you should probably have them put the phones away. But there are good uses for camera phones too, especially if they start to carry GPS capabilities. Imagine sending your students on a science scavenger hunt where they follow GPS coordinates to different examples of plant and animal life and then take pictures of what they find there. That's just one idea, do you have any others?
I believe GPS could be a very powerful addition to the classroom, especially in science. And if the students, or at least some of them, already have the technology, then why not use it?
I believe GPS could be a very powerful addition to the classroom, especially in science. And if the students, or at least some of them, already have the technology, then why not use it?
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Are you really blogging?
Midterms have come and gone, and it's time to stoke the blogging fire in the class again. Remember that there are points associated with your blogging. In the past, we've had mandated assignments where students HAD to reflect on what they were learning about educational technologies. This semester I wanted to give you more ownership and freedom by telling you to reflect and blog whenever you wanted, about whatever you wanted, as long you did it.
But many of you aren't doing it! In part because of that, next week there is a required reflection assignment: reflecting on the ethics mini lessons. But you need to do some spontaneous thinking, reflecting, and writing. And short replies to other people's blogs saying, "Yes, I agree with you!" doesn't work! You don't need to blog long, but we want to see that you're thinking, reflecting, and considering different ways technology could be used in your careers.
Blogging is more than just writing about what you think about something. Blogging is synthesis, creation, and regeneration of ideas. You read something on the internet, you quote it, link to it, talk about it, synthesize it into your own context, and rework the idea so that it is now your own. There have been some great examples of this in our class, unfortunately many of them weren't about educational technology but other issues! That's fine too, but let's also talk about class issues.
Here's one example of an excellent blog posted by a student in another section, Lynette Willard.
Using excel in the classroom:
Excel has many uses for teachers as well as students. Teachers can use the program to keep up with grades without using a book or teachers as well as students can mostly use it for organizing data and forming tables, graphs, charts, etc. I found many great websites that gave reasons and examples on how to use it. One website: http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/kadkins/strategy.htm#Kindergarten gave ten reasons on why it should be used. They are:
* integrates real life situations with technology.
* increases communication.
* supports many levels.
* engages students in higher level thinking skills.
* supports the principles and standards for school mathematics
* applies to cross curricular activities.
* is a great management tool.
* compliments and enhances instruction.
* is motivational.
* is just plain fun!
It provided ways to use in several different grade levels. One example for Kindergarten/first grade was making a bar graph and a pie chart showing the number and percentages comparing the pets the children have. Excel can be used to organize data from all subjects including math, science, reading, english, and writing. The teacher can make KWL charts, timelines, multiplication review, and checklists among other things. The students can organize pretty much anything into excel. The students could even use it to make a presentation for the class and show the data they found. This can all be done in the classroom or prepared beforehand to show the students a finished product. Excel allows one to continually add information on so it is great for ongoing experiments that may last for weeks, months, or the entire school year. If for some reason a teacher is not very familiar with the excel program there are websites that show how to use excal and answer questions about it. These websites could be an easy way to show the students how to use the program also. I really loves using excel and find it useful when I have a lot of information but want a neater way to have it in my notes or have a way to organize it and make it easier to read and understand. I will definitely use it in my classroom.
Granted, you don't have to write your posts as long as Lynette's but I loved how she read something on the internet, thought about it, and applied it to her own situation. That's when you're doing quality blogging!
Enough of the soapbox. Hope to hear some of your great ideas soon! This class ebbs and flows as far as homework load, so when we have an off week without a lot of homework, let's get blogging! And go Cougs!
But many of you aren't doing it! In part because of that, next week there is a required reflection assignment: reflecting on the ethics mini lessons. But you need to do some spontaneous thinking, reflecting, and writing. And short replies to other people's blogs saying, "Yes, I agree with you!" doesn't work! You don't need to blog long, but we want to see that you're thinking, reflecting, and considering different ways technology could be used in your careers.
Blogging is more than just writing about what you think about something. Blogging is synthesis, creation, and regeneration of ideas. You read something on the internet, you quote it, link to it, talk about it, synthesize it into your own context, and rework the idea so that it is now your own. There have been some great examples of this in our class, unfortunately many of them weren't about educational technology but other issues! That's fine too, but let's also talk about class issues.
Here's one example of an excellent blog posted by a student in another section, Lynette Willard.
Using excel in the classroom:
Excel has many uses for teachers as well as students. Teachers can use the program to keep up with grades without using a book or teachers as well as students can mostly use it for organizing data and forming tables, graphs, charts, etc. I found many great websites that gave reasons and examples on how to use it. One website: http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/kadkins/strategy.htm#Kindergarten gave ten reasons on why it should be used. They are:
* integrates real life situations with technology.
* increases communication.
* supports many levels.
* engages students in higher level thinking skills.
* supports the principles and standards for school mathematics
* applies to cross curricular activities.
* is a great management tool.
* compliments and enhances instruction.
* is motivational.
* is just plain fun!
It provided ways to use in several different grade levels. One example for Kindergarten/first grade was making a bar graph and a pie chart showing the number and percentages comparing the pets the children have. Excel can be used to organize data from all subjects including math, science, reading, english, and writing. The teacher can make KWL charts, timelines, multiplication review, and checklists among other things. The students can organize pretty much anything into excel. The students could even use it to make a presentation for the class and show the data they found. This can all be done in the classroom or prepared beforehand to show the students a finished product. Excel allows one to continually add information on so it is great for ongoing experiments that may last for weeks, months, or the entire school year. If for some reason a teacher is not very familiar with the excel program there are websites that show how to use excal and answer questions about it. These websites could be an easy way to show the students how to use the program also. I really loves using excel and find it useful when I have a lot of information but want a neater way to have it in my notes or have a way to organize it and make it easier to read and understand. I will definitely use it in my classroom.
Granted, you don't have to write your posts as long as Lynette's but I loved how she read something on the internet, thought about it, and applied it to her own situation. That's when you're doing quality blogging!
Enough of the soapbox. Hope to hear some of your great ideas soon! This class ebbs and flows as far as homework load, so when we have an off week without a lot of homework, let's get blogging! And go Cougs!
A cool way to engage writershttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
How about this as a cool way to engage students in writing in an English class? Flickr is an online photo storage and publishing tool that allows you to easily upload and display photos for all the world to see. It's becoming very popular, and people are posting all sorts of random photos. Now the trend is towards flicktion, which is fiction based on Flickr photos. You just upload a random photo, and students try to write a fictitious story that might explain the photo. Cool idea! To read more, go to an article on weblogg-ed, or check out some fliction pieces here.
By the way, we had a really cool Blogging story started one week, and I'm dying to hear what happens to the hero and the girl of his dreams that he just bloodied accidentally on the way to his test! Let's continue the saga! I'm posting the direct link back to this story, and encourage to continue adding your voices to the tale (and if you haven't read it yet, do -- we've got some creative people in class).
The Eternal Tale link -- http://teach2edify.blogspot.com/2004/10/eternal-tale.html
By the way, we had a really cool Blogging story started one week, and I'm dying to hear what happens to the hero and the girl of his dreams that he just bloodied accidentally on the way to his test! Let's continue the saga! I'm posting the direct link back to this story, and encourage to continue adding your voices to the tale (and if you haven't read it yet, do -- we've got some creative people in class).
The Eternal Tale link -- http://teach2edify.blogspot.com/2004/10/eternal-tale.html
Educational uses for Podcasting
Remember I've blogged a couple of times about Podcasting, which is the combination of blog technology and mp3 players, like IPods. Well, now there's a blog dedicated to research in Educational Uses of Podcasting and author Steve Sloan offers these preliminary ideas:
In my opinion Podcasting is a great tool:
* for distance learning
* to facilitate self-paced learning
* for remediation of slower learners
* to allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content
* for helping students with reading and/or other learning disabilities
* for multi-lingual education
* to provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations
* to allow guest speakers the ability to present once to many sections and classes
* to allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing
* to offer a richer learning environment
He also talks about a teacher who instead of asking his students to buy a textbook, gave them their textbook in mp3 format that they could download to their IPods. Wow. Wouldn't that be cool!
Here are some more ideas about how I think Podcasting could be valuable in schools. Now, I know what you're saying, "IPods are too expensive. Nobody will have an IPod at my school." Think outside the box! DVD players are now 15 bucks at the bookstore. IPods will get cheaper in future years.
Here are some ideas:
- Foreign language: A daily conversation in the language being learned that students have to listen to. Maybe at key points of the conversation, they record their voices responding to one of the characters. Then they send their recordings by rss to their teachers' IPod for assessing.
- Students taking turns summarizing the day's lesson for the rest of the class to review if they wish
- English Literature students realizing there is more than one way to tell a story (i.e. you don't always have to write good literature, you can speak it too).
- Student presentations recreating events from history (you might not be able to make the French revolution look good on video with a bunch of high schoolers, but maybe you could recreate it well on audio)
- Personal reflection journals that are spoken, instead of written
- Journalism students could learn radio journalism instead of just print journalism, which would give them all more to do anyway (I know, I did journalism in high school and played a lot of tetris)
- Maybe even the yearbook students could create weekly audio "yearbooks" that keep students connected throughout the year instead of just one published book at the end of the year.
etc. etc.
I think there are many more ideas, but I want to hear them from you! Any other ideas?
In my opinion Podcasting is a great tool:
* for distance learning
* to facilitate self-paced learning
* for remediation of slower learners
* to allow faculty to offer advanced and or highly motivated learners extra content
* for helping students with reading and/or other learning disabilities
* for multi-lingual education
* to provide the ability for educators to feature guest speakers from remote locations
* to allow guest speakers the ability to present once to many sections and classes
* to allow educators to escape the tedium of lecturing
* to offer a richer learning environment
He also talks about a teacher who instead of asking his students to buy a textbook, gave them their textbook in mp3 format that they could download to their IPods. Wow. Wouldn't that be cool!
Here are some more ideas about how I think Podcasting could be valuable in schools. Now, I know what you're saying, "IPods are too expensive. Nobody will have an IPod at my school." Think outside the box! DVD players are now 15 bucks at the bookstore. IPods will get cheaper in future years.
Here are some ideas:
- Foreign language: A daily conversation in the language being learned that students have to listen to. Maybe at key points of the conversation, they record their voices responding to one of the characters. Then they send their recordings by rss to their teachers' IPod for assessing.
- Students taking turns summarizing the day's lesson for the rest of the class to review if they wish
- English Literature students realizing there is more than one way to tell a story (i.e. you don't always have to write good literature, you can speak it too).
- Student presentations recreating events from history (you might not be able to make the French revolution look good on video with a bunch of high schoolers, but maybe you could recreate it well on audio)
- Personal reflection journals that are spoken, instead of written
- Journalism students could learn radio journalism instead of just print journalism, which would give them all more to do anyway (I know, I did journalism in high school and played a lot of tetris)
- Maybe even the yearbook students could create weekly audio "yearbooks" that keep students connected throughout the year instead of just one published book at the end of the year.
etc. etc.
I think there are many more ideas, but I want to hear them from you! Any other ideas?
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
A copyright/fair use blog!
I just learned that the Association of Educational Communications Technology has a copyright blog that one of their committees maintains. This is a great organization, so this blog might be one to keep an eye on, if you are interested. I think it's new, so I'm not sure how much info is on there right now, but maybe you could take a look!
http://aect.motime.com/
http://aect.motime.com/
Question about the assignment
Sarah brings up a good question:
"We are also a little confused with the rubric page- are we to have an activity, do we just teach, or do we just have people go to the wiki page and figure it out themselves? It does not explain the assignment clearly"
Here's what I told her:
"Answer: You teach a mini lesson because just showing people your wiki will be boring. The wiki is there because you won't be able to teach everything in seven minutes, so if people want to learn more, they go to your wiki and you have already compiled all of the resources so they can "one-stop shop" so to speak and learn all about the issue at your wiki."
"We are also a little confused with the rubric page- are we to have an activity, do we just teach, or do we just have people go to the wiki page and figure it out themselves? It does not explain the assignment clearly"
Here's what I told her:
"Answer: You teach a mini lesson because just showing people your wiki will be boring. The wiki is there because you won't be able to teach everything in seven minutes, so if people want to learn more, they go to your wiki and you have already compiled all of the resources so they can "one-stop shop" so to speak and learn all about the issue at your wiki."
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Copyright and Fair Use
First off, if you missed class yesterday, you need to jump on the ball soon and join a group. I talked to Jared today, and Jared, how about being in the Flexible Copyright group? I also emailed a couple of other students. If you haven't heard from me and missed on Monday, email me and then I'll assign you to a group. Do this quickly so your group doesn't do all the work (and get all the points).
By the way! All groups should have their names listed on their group wikis so if a newbie joins your group, he/she can contact you. Remember that you can email anyone in this class through Blackboard.
If you need links to this week's assignment, here they are:
This week's assignment - http://msed.byu.edu/ipt/west/a_Ethics.html
Our class ethics wiki - http://ipt.byu.edu/~wiki/28x/Fall04s3/Technology-RelatedEthicalIssues
Here are some other resources that you might be interested in and that might help you study up on your topics for this week:
My PowerPoint slides on copyright/Fair Use - I used to teach ethics lecture style before we decided to let you teach yourselves as a group. These slides have condensed some of the basic info that we taught down into one presentation
Copyright Jeopardy! - test your knowledge of copyright and fair use by skimming through this jeopardy game.
Article on Technology cheating - good article about how to prevent kids using technology to cheat.
Have fun this week learning about the ethical use of technology!
By the way! All groups should have their names listed on their group wikis so if a newbie joins your group, he/she can contact you. Remember that you can email anyone in this class through Blackboard.
If you need links to this week's assignment, here they are:
This week's assignment - http://msed.byu.edu/ipt/west/a_Ethics.html
Our class ethics wiki - http://ipt.byu.edu/~wiki/28x/Fall04s3/Technology-RelatedEthicalIssues
Here are some other resources that you might be interested in and that might help you study up on your topics for this week:
My PowerPoint slides on copyright/Fair Use - I used to teach ethics lecture style before we decided to let you teach yourselves as a group. These slides have condensed some of the basic info that we taught down into one presentation
Copyright Jeopardy! - test your knowledge of copyright and fair use by skimming through this jeopardy game.
Article on Technology cheating - good article about how to prevent kids using technology to cheat.
Have fun this week learning about the ethical use of technology!
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Friday, October 29, 2004
Remember the focus!
I'm grading your lesson plans, and have been pleased with some of the really creative ideas you've had! One thing I have noticed, however, is most of you are listing things like "make a powerpoint," or "make a website," etc. as your learning outcomes. Is that really what your purpose for the lesson is? I hope not! Your purpose should be to teach science, math, history, or something, and the technology should be a resource, not a learning outcome. I know that it's easy to lose that focus in our class because we talk about technology so much, but we should always keep it in context. Remember the "mindtools" article?
Anyway, I'm not really docking points for it, so don't worry - but I do hope that for the rest of the semester, you can always remember that technology is a possible means to a learning end ... not the end itself.
On another note, Erin had this interesting post about class management:
"One of the biggest challenges with using technology in the classroom is keeping the students on task and out of sites they shouldn’t be looking at. (I subbed in a high school technology class this spring and was shocked by the amount of time the students spent doing anything except their assigned work. The Instant Messaged each other, emailed their friends, checked out movie and song websites and played computer games. I am not entirely sure how to combat that however, I am sure that the teacher CANNOT sit behind his/her desk and trust the students to stay on task. The allure to get off task is far too high if they are left to themselves!) "
Anyway, I'm not really docking points for it, so don't worry - but I do hope that for the rest of the semester, you can always remember that technology is a possible means to a learning end ... not the end itself.
On another note, Erin had this interesting post about class management:
"One of the biggest challenges with using technology in the classroom is keeping the students on task and out of sites they shouldn’t be looking at. (I subbed in a high school technology class this spring and was shocked by the amount of time the students spent doing anything except their assigned work. The Instant Messaged each other, emailed their friends, checked out movie and song websites and played computer games. I am not entirely sure how to combat that however, I am sure that the teacher CANNOT sit behind his/her desk and trust the students to stay on task. The allure to get off task is far too high if they are left to themselves!) "
Weblog technology for kids
A new technology, Kidzblog, has an easy to use, and fun to watch interface to encourage elementary kids to blog. For parents and teachers, there are security features to protect the kids. How cool is all this? Can you imagine a class of fourth graders expressing opinions, analyzing stuff they've learned, and telling stories through blogs? What a great way to motivate kids to write! Check out the technology -- it looks fun!
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Important announcement - put names on homework!
Hey class,
One thing that will help Alyssa and I immensly when we are grading your stuff is if you would PLEASE PUT YOUR NAMES ON YOUR HOMEWORK. This is especially important when you are posting your homework on your blog. Many of you do not have your names on your blog, so when we are grading, we know that "ILuvElmo.blogspot.com" did the homework, but who is "ILuvElmo" anyway? Same thing with emails, make sure you always put your name on the email if it's not in your email address. If you are worried about putting your first and last name on your blog for the whole world to see, then sign all your homework posts with your first name and last initial, or something like that.
A better idea is to probably just to put your name in the paragraph at the top of your blog that explains your blog. This paragraph shows up in our aggregators so we'll know who you are. You can rewrite this part of your blog by going to Blogger and going to your "settings".
One thing that will help Alyssa and I immensly when we are grading your stuff is if you would PLEASE PUT YOUR NAMES ON YOUR HOMEWORK. This is especially important when you are posting your homework on your blog. Many of you do not have your names on your blog, so when we are grading, we know that "ILuvElmo.blogspot.com" did the homework, but who is "ILuvElmo" anyway? Same thing with emails, make sure you always put your name on the email if it's not in your email address. If you are worried about putting your first and last name on your blog for the whole world to see, then sign all your homework posts with your first name and last initial, or something like that.
A better idea is to probably just to put your name in the paragraph at the top of your blog that explains your blog. This paragraph shows up in our aggregators so we'll know who you are. You can rewrite this part of your blog by going to Blogger and going to your "settings".
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Congrats! Our class is referenced by a major blogger
Congratulations class! Will Richardson pointed all of his readers towards our IPT 286 class wiki as a good example of using wikis in education. This is very exciting because Will's blog, weblogg-ed.com is one of THE most widely read education blogs out there. Great job!
I have a question for you: Does knowing you have the possibility of being seen and read by anybody out there influence how you write in your blogs or wikis? Does it matter? Does knowing this about your audience shape your ideas and what you write?
BTW-we're going back to the wiki in a week for the Ethics assignment, and who knows who will be reading!
I have a question for you: Does knowing you have the possibility of being seen and read by anybody out there influence how you write in your blogs or wikis? Does it matter? Does knowing this about your audience shape your ideas and what you write?
BTW-we're going back to the wiki in a week for the Ethics assignment, and who knows who will be reading!
Monday, October 18, 2004
Applying Mindtools across many disciplines
A few students have blogged their frustrations that there don't seem to be many technologies applicable to their specific fields (such as history, language learning, home ec, etc.). Remember that there are subject-specific technologies, like geometer sketchpad, that only work for one subject. There are also Mindtools (remember our article we read at the beginning of the year by David Jonassen, still available on Blackboard--you can also search for "mindtools" on Google and gets lots of stuff). Mindtools are great because they support higher-level learning in any subject. They are subject-independent; they are merely learning tools. Examples of these types of technologies are Excel, Concept-mapping tools, web authoring, desktop publishing tools (like Publisher and InDesign), and others.
Here are two other content-independent technologies that with creativity can be used for many different disciplines:
One is Muds and Moos and MUVEs. They sound weird, I know, but they can be useful. These are virtual online worlds, where students "enter" a place and can interact with different objects in the room. Think Legend of Zelda, except with an instructional instead of entertainment purpose. I'll bet there are some out there built around Roman society where students could "experience" life in Roman society ... virtually. I've also been to a Shakespeare one that pretends to let you experience Shakespearean England.
I've also seen a very well-developed virtual world used to teach environmental issues and social studies. The students go on an expedition and enter "Atlantis," where a young lady of Atlantis pleads with the students to help her save her nation. They are suffering from a burgeoning population, corrupt governments, and many of the same social and environmental issues that we deal with. The students have to solve the problems in "Atlantis" and they can see the results on the screen of their decisions. This helps them understand how policy and culture affect our own world.
A second useful tool that can be creatively applied to many disciplines is computer-supported collaboration. This is stuff like blogs, wikis, discussion boards, instant messenging, etc. With these technologies, you can hold "debates" with "political philosophers" through online communication. Or, you can help students communicate with real or pretend "authorities" on a certain subject. For example, I heard of one teacher who asked a Literature professor from the University to pretend to be "Shakespeare" in a chat room, and her high school lit students asked "Will" questions about his life and writings. You could do a similar thing with famous people in any discipline--just find someone who really knows the person to pretend to be the person. The kids know it's just pretend, but it's still a fun and different way to learn about somebody.
What other ideas do you have of "subject-independent" technologies that could easily be used for many different subjects?
Here are two other content-independent technologies that with creativity can be used for many different disciplines:
One is Muds and Moos and MUVEs. They sound weird, I know, but they can be useful. These are virtual online worlds, where students "enter" a place and can interact with different objects in the room. Think Legend of Zelda, except with an instructional instead of entertainment purpose. I'll bet there are some out there built around Roman society where students could "experience" life in Roman society ... virtually. I've also been to a Shakespeare one that pretends to let you experience Shakespearean England.
I've also seen a very well-developed virtual world used to teach environmental issues and social studies. The students go on an expedition and enter "Atlantis," where a young lady of Atlantis pleads with the students to help her save her nation. They are suffering from a burgeoning population, corrupt governments, and many of the same social and environmental issues that we deal with. The students have to solve the problems in "Atlantis" and they can see the results on the screen of their decisions. This helps them understand how policy and culture affect our own world.
A second useful tool that can be creatively applied to many disciplines is computer-supported collaboration. This is stuff like blogs, wikis, discussion boards, instant messenging, etc. With these technologies, you can hold "debates" with "political philosophers" through online communication. Or, you can help students communicate with real or pretend "authorities" on a certain subject. For example, I heard of one teacher who asked a Literature professor from the University to pretend to be "Shakespeare" in a chat room, and her high school lit students asked "Will" questions about his life and writings. You could do a similar thing with famous people in any discipline--just find someone who really knows the person to pretend to be the person. The kids know it's just pretend, but it's still a fun and different way to learn about somebody.
What other ideas do you have of "subject-independent" technologies that could easily be used for many different subjects?
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
I will be there Monday, but I'll be there late
Hello class,
If you remember, we're not holding class on Monday. However, I said I'd be there to help students with questions on their projects. I am now ammending that to say that I will be there ... late. One of THE landmark, HUGE people in my field is coming to BYU to speak to my department, so I'll be listening to him on Monday (he's also a BYU alumni - cool!). He's presenting from 2:30-4:30, so I will come after that and get to the McKay Lab sometime before 5 p.m. I can then stay an hour or whatever is necessary to answer any questions and offer help.
So I will be there on Monday, but I make no promises until 5 p.m.!
If you remember, we're not holding class on Monday. However, I said I'd be there to help students with questions on their projects. I am now ammending that to say that I will be there ... late. One of THE landmark, HUGE people in my field is coming to BYU to speak to my department, so I'll be listening to him on Monday (he's also a BYU alumni - cool!). He's presenting from 2:30-4:30, so I will come after that and get to the McKay Lab sometime before 5 p.m. I can then stay an hour or whatever is necessary to answer any questions and offer help.
So I will be there on Monday, but I make no promises until 5 p.m.!
Blogs go political - Catch the local story!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
A lot of people are talking about how bloggers have influenced the political scene this week. It was bloggers that kept Howard Dean's campaign alive. It was bloggers that blew the cover on Dan Rather and CBS's story using false documents about Pres. Bush. A student from Dr. Allen's class linked to a story about how impactful bloggers have been this year. In our own class, Jared and Caroline have been doing some political blogging, in fact it sometimes has gotten a little heated! And blogs can get that way, for better or worse--but discussion is important and blogging may be just one more way to discuss ideas.
In case you are interested, KSL radio is airing a story on Friday morning about this issue. It will probably be on their website later that day (and did I mention you can add an RSS feed for KSL to your aggregators?) :-)
In case you are interested, KSL radio is airing a story on Friday morning about this issue. It will probably be on their website later that day (and did I mention you can add an RSS feed for KSL to your aggregators?) :-)
Monday, October 11, 2004
Wrapping up class today
Like promised, here are some URLs and other tidbits that I mentioned in class and promised to put on my blog.
1. The URL to the Office of Information Technology Workshops is http://www.it.byu.edu. Click on "training" and then "courses by date."
2. Remember that everyone this week is supposed to blog and discuss the following question: "What technologies do you feel will be most valuable to your specific teaching goals, how confident do you feel in these technologies, and what kinds of lesson plans, learning activities, etc. would you use these technologies for?"
3. The direct link to this week's assignment is here. If you want to check the assignments for next week, and the week after, it may give you a better idea of where to go with your project. This week the homework is light, so start learning the technology you have to learn for this project. Don't save it to the last week or you'll be hating life!
4. Remember to zip me off an email as you start to come up with an idea and check with me to see if it's an appropriate technology (especially those of you that are not required to learn a specific technology). You can email me at rw@byu.edu.
5. If after class today you still think web design is your thang, and you want to learn more, here are some resources for you:
A good place for tutorials on Composer and other programs — http://www.fgcu.edu/support/
A good site on web design, from a graphic artist perspective — http://mundidesign.com/home.html
Another good site on web design — http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kjob/wbi/Index.html
There are, I'm sure, many much better websites on web design and many better tutorials for Composer. Do a search on Google and you'll find lots. Let me know if you find one you really like and I'll add it to my blogroll.
1. The URL to the Office of Information Technology Workshops is http://www.it.byu.edu. Click on "training" and then "courses by date."
2. Remember that everyone this week is supposed to blog and discuss the following question: "What technologies do you feel will be most valuable to your specific teaching goals, how confident do you feel in these technologies, and what kinds of lesson plans, learning activities, etc. would you use these technologies for?"
3. The direct link to this week's assignment is here. If you want to check the assignments for next week, and the week after, it may give you a better idea of where to go with your project. This week the homework is light, so start learning the technology you have to learn for this project. Don't save it to the last week or you'll be hating life!
4. Remember to zip me off an email as you start to come up with an idea and check with me to see if it's an appropriate technology (especially those of you that are not required to learn a specific technology). You can email me at rw@byu.edu.
5. If after class today you still think web design is your thang, and you want to learn more, here are some resources for you:
A good place for tutorials on Composer and other programs — http://www.fgcu.edu/support/
A good site on web design, from a graphic artist perspective — http://mundidesign.com/home.html
Another good site on web design — http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kjob/wbi/Index.html
There are, I'm sure, many much better websites on web design and many better tutorials for Composer. Do a search on Google and you'll find lots. Let me know if you find one you really like and I'll add it to my blogroll.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Are the videos too long?
Class,
Many of you have already done the assignment for this week, so this might be too little, too late. But I have heard from a couple of students that some of the videos are too long, and some of the videos won't allow you to stop and rewind videos so you can reflect during the video like I suggested. I'm sorry on both accounts. I've seen some of the videos, but not all. I'm especially less familiar with the Nets Digital Video Library videos. Granted that this is only a one-credit class, don't spend more than about 2 hours doing the homework this week (that's what they tell us is reasonable). If the videos are longer than 20 minutes or so, don't bother watching the whole thing, or maybe just skim through what you don't see to get the idea. That should leave you enough time to reflect as a group, type up the reflection, get it posted, and deal with any technical issues along the way.
Sorry if this assignment became burdensome to some groups. In class I said the videos would be 15-20 minutes because the ones I had seen were that long. I'm sorry some of the others are longer than that.
Many of you have already done the assignment for this week, so this might be too little, too late. But I have heard from a couple of students that some of the videos are too long, and some of the videos won't allow you to stop and rewind videos so you can reflect during the video like I suggested. I'm sorry on both accounts. I've seen some of the videos, but not all. I'm especially less familiar with the Nets Digital Video Library videos. Granted that this is only a one-credit class, don't spend more than about 2 hours doing the homework this week (that's what they tell us is reasonable). If the videos are longer than 20 minutes or so, don't bother watching the whole thing, or maybe just skim through what you don't see to get the idea. That should leave you enough time to reflect as a group, type up the reflection, get it posted, and deal with any technical issues along the way.
Sorry if this assignment became burdensome to some groups. In class I said the videos would be 15-20 minutes because the ones I had seen were that long. I'm sorry some of the others are longer than that.
Moving ... but going nowhere (BYU game)
Could anything be more frustrating than losing to 1-4 UNLV at home? I will say this for BYU: they keep the games interesting. Remember the good ol' days when we were up by 30 at halftime? Do we really think we could ever do that with our current offense?
So what I want to know is who greased the pigskin? We really could not hold onto the ball. But take away the turnovers and our offense really did well (except score points -- I'll get to that). Curtis Brown was a monster with his second straight nearly 100-yard rushing game. Beck threw for 350+ yards. So if we gained all those yards, why were we moving the ball but not going anywhere near the endzone all night long? Take away the defensive interception return, and we only scored one touchdown. Against UNLV. Oh yeah, and did I mention they were only 1-4 before tonight?
So here's my question: Why can we move the ball but not score? Is it playcalling? Do we get jittery on third down? Do we get scared inside the 20? Do we have too much confidence in Payne and would rather just let him take care of scoring for us? Is it miscommunication? Miscues? What? Some of you might say turnovers, and tonight that might be true, but we haven't had many turnovers this year, but scoring touchdowns has still been a night-in, night-out problem. Our only real arrow in our quiver is deep to Watkins or Collie. Other than that, we really struggle to get in the endzone.
Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better already. What was your take on the game?
Bring on the basketball season!
So what I want to know is who greased the pigskin? We really could not hold onto the ball. But take away the turnovers and our offense really did well (except score points -- I'll get to that). Curtis Brown was a monster with his second straight nearly 100-yard rushing game. Beck threw for 350+ yards. So if we gained all those yards, why were we moving the ball but not going anywhere near the endzone all night long? Take away the defensive interception return, and we only scored one touchdown. Against UNLV. Oh yeah, and did I mention they were only 1-4 before tonight?
So here's my question: Why can we move the ball but not score? Is it playcalling? Do we get jittery on third down? Do we get scared inside the 20? Do we have too much confidence in Payne and would rather just let him take care of scoring for us? Is it miscommunication? Miscues? What? Some of you might say turnovers, and tonight that might be true, but we haven't had many turnovers this year, but scoring touchdowns has still been a night-in, night-out problem. Our only real arrow in our quiver is deep to Watkins or Collie. Other than that, we really struggle to get in the endzone.
Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better already. What was your take on the game?
Bring on the basketball season!
Friday, October 08, 2004
Wikipedia passes 1 million pages!
A milestone recently for Wikipedia. The online encylopedia that is really just a big wiki now has over 1 million pages. Read more about this at E-School News Online. The best part of all of this is that it is free -- free knowledge to anyone who wants to read it. Isn't that a neat characteristic of the Internet, the ability to chip in together as members of a worldwide community and give each other free access to knowledge.
BTW - Rich Culatta here in the College of Ed helped create a wiki website for worldhistory.com where you can go to a specific date in history and add important events to the timeline. Someone needs to go there and post April 6, 1820!
BTW - Rich Culatta here in the College of Ed helped create a wiki website for worldhistory.com where you can go to a specific date in history and add important events to the timeline. Someone needs to go there and post April 6, 1820!
Best Educational Websiteshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
The Center for Digital Education just released their awards for the best educational websites of 2004. Go check them out! There are some for students, some for teachers. This goes back to the discussion I started earlier this week about whether you might not need to know web authoring as teachers.
BTW - Look closely and you'll see one of the websites is actually a BLOGSITE!
BTW - Look closely and you'll see one of the websites is actually a BLOGSITE!
Blogs in education
E-School News just published an interesting and lengthy lists of reasons why you would want to maintain a blog as a teacher, reasons why you would want to have your students blog, and reasons why you would want a class blog. There are many good ideas that I think could be applied to many different disciplines to check it out! At the bottom of the page is a link where you can respond to this article and post your own ideas. I encourage y'all to do this! After several weeks of blogging, you should all be able to have some good ideas about how blogs could be used in the right context.
More on Podcasting
Another online article on Podcasting (audio blogging using an IPod). This is really a good example of how blogs can be useful as a learning tool. Podcasting is something so new that it hasn't been written about in anything except internet articles and blogs. Ask around - in fact ask computer geeks who aren't bloggers and they may not even know about it (many of my computer-crazy friends don't). It's growing super fast too: in this article, a guy said the number of hits on a Google search for "podcasting" is growing by leaps and bounds every day (I guess I'm adding this post to that hit list).
Anyway, if we were to wait for the "traditional" way of learning about this new technology, we'd have to wait for some researcher to hear about it, then he'd do a 6-month study about it, then he'd take 6 months to write his article, then the journal would take 6-12 months to review it, accept it and publish it, and then it'd finally get published so we could read it (if we happened to be subscribed to that journal). But with blogging, the technology could be invented today, and maybe we'd know about it tomorrow (if we were subscribed to the right people). When you start using blogging as a way to keep up-to-date on new ideas, you can learn about things really, really fast.
Anyway, if we were to wait for the "traditional" way of learning about this new technology, we'd have to wait for some researcher to hear about it, then he'd do a 6-month study about it, then he'd take 6 months to write his article, then the journal would take 6-12 months to review it, accept it and publish it, and then it'd finally get published so we could read it (if we happened to be subscribed to that journal). But with blogging, the technology could be invented today, and maybe we'd know about it tomorrow (if we were subscribed to the right people). When you start using blogging as a way to keep up-to-date on new ideas, you can learn about things really, really fast.
Turning in group evaluations
Danielle and others have asked how to turn in your group evaluations of this week's assignment. Please email me them, or if you want, hand them to me at class next week. Don't put them on the discussion board because I want you to be honest and not afraid that your groupmates will see what you write!
Go Cougs tonight! Any predictions on the game? A candy bar if anyone nails it. I'm predicting BYU 31, UNLV 10.
Go Cougs tonight! Any predictions on the game? A candy bar if anyone nails it. I'm predicting BYU 31, UNLV 10.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Web Authoring as an educational technology
Macromedia, the people who make Dreamweaver and Flash, the two best programs for producing websites, have now released a site license for K-6 schools. I read about this in E-School News Online. This means that getting these programs for K-6 schools will be cheaper, so more schools will be able to do it.
We have used blogs and wikis in this class, but we haven't done real web design (we do teach it in the 2-credit class). I did mention to you that if you wanted to do cheap and easy web design, you could download Mozilla Composer for free.
My question is this: How important do you think web design will be in your future teaching? I have talked and surveyed many of my students from the elementary education section of this course, and they usually tell me that they thought the web design part of the course was the most important thing they learned and that they plan to use it as elementary teachers.
What do the secondary teachers think? Do you plan on ever using web design? Would you use it as a teacher? Would you have your students use it in their homework? Is this something that would be valuable to your careers?
Just to get the conversation going, here's what Carla and Sheldon said in their reflection for hte assignment this week:
BTW - if it is something that you are interested in, you could do web design for one of your upcoming class projects ...
We have used blogs and wikis in this class, but we haven't done real web design (we do teach it in the 2-credit class). I did mention to you that if you wanted to do cheap and easy web design, you could download Mozilla Composer for free.
My question is this: How important do you think web design will be in your future teaching? I have talked and surveyed many of my students from the elementary education section of this course, and they usually tell me that they thought the web design part of the course was the most important thing they learned and that they plan to use it as elementary teachers.
What do the secondary teachers think? Do you plan on ever using web design? Would you use it as a teacher? Would you have your students use it in their homework? Is this something that would be valuable to your careers?
Just to get the conversation going, here's what Carla and Sheldon said in their reflection for hte assignment this week:
"A classroom website can be very effective in allowing students to collaborate and share information. We would like to have a classroom website for our classes to publish work on, see updated information, communicate outside of class, and show parents/families/friends what they are doing in class. A website expands classroom learning to a larger scope. "
BTW - if it is something that you are interested in, you could do web design for one of your upcoming class projects ...
Visual Internet Searching?http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
I just read about vivismo.com and Grokker, which are tools that represent internet search results visually by stacking the search results into categories so you can pick the category that best represents what it was you were looking for.
An article by e-school news describes it this way:
An article by e-school news describes it this way:
"Let's say, for example, you're curious about accommodations in France and enter a search for "Paris Hilton."Google recognizes this as a search in the category of "Regional-Europe-Travel and Tourism-Lodging-Hotels" but still produces page after page with links about celebrity socialite Paris Hilton and her exploits. That's because Google's engine ranks pages largely based on how many other sites link to them, sending the most popular pages to the top.
If you run the search on Grokker, however, the resulting circle shows all the possible categories of information the internet offers on a search for "Paris Hilton"--including reviews, maps, and online booking sites for the Hilton hotel in Paris, which are all but buried in the Google rankings. Now you've much more quickly found not what is popular among internet gawkers, but what is genuinely useful to you."
I tried out vivismo.com, and my initial impression was that I liked it. I'm interested in what you guys think. Why don't you try it out and tell me if you think Vivismo or Google would be more useful for your students.
Can't find it on google?
Well, we talked digital resources last week, and Google is an awesome digital resource for teachers or anybody. The next week, I showed the early birds how to use Google more effectively. For those who missed it, here are some URLs.
For better Google searching that gets more specific results, try either:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en or
http://www.google.com/dirhp
There is lots more stuff Google can do, and if you're interested, you might look here.
Anyway, as awesome as Google is, there are times when you still can't find something on Google! What do you do (after shaking and pounding the computer, of course)? Well, you can now go to http://www.cantfindongoogle.com/ and post on the discussion board what it was you couldn't find. Maybe someone will find it and respond to your post. Maybe they won't. Either way, Google gets better by finding out where the bugs are (if they are checking this site, like they should!)
For better Google searching that gets more specific results, try either:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en or
http://www.google.com/dirhp
There is lots more stuff Google can do, and if you're interested, you might look here.
Anyway, as awesome as Google is, there are times when you still can't find something on Google! What do you do (after shaking and pounding the computer, of course)? Well, you can now go to http://www.cantfindongoogle.com/ and post on the discussion board what it was you couldn't find. Maybe someone will find it and respond to your post. Maybe they won't. Either way, Google gets better by finding out where the bugs are (if they are checking this site, like they should!)
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Podcasting and application to foreign language
Well, if you like blogging, and if you like IPods, you'll love Podcasting. You can post audio files, which are sent by rss feeds to all your buddies' computers. They can then download your daily, or weekly, or whatever, audio file into their IPods and listen to it. If you want to read more, here's a news article, and here's Adam Curry's blog, where he posts a daily audio essay.
How cool would that be? Can you imagine getting a daily audio file from, say, lds.org? How about if your professor posted things to you every day? What if your best friend, or boyfriend/spouse, did that? Could this be better than email? What if you could record your voice into your computer, and then send it by rss to your friend's IPod, and they would hear it the next time they plugged their IPod into their computer. Fun!
Will Richardson started talking about some educational possibilities for this technology on his blog:
Let's continue the discussion! How could Podcasting be used to help you teach your subjects? I know IPods are expensive right now, but in a few years they'll be as cheap as $10 walkmans (remember when portable CD players were pricey?). So let's be futuristic and assume our students have IPods or could have them.
In closing, the article says this about Podcasting and why it might take off and get popular:
How cool would that be? Can you imagine getting a daily audio file from, say, lds.org? How about if your professor posted things to you every day? What if your best friend, or boyfriend/spouse, did that? Could this be better than email? What if you could record your voice into your computer, and then send it by rss to your friend's IPod, and they would hear it the next time they plugged their IPod into their computer. Fun!
Will Richardson started talking about some educational possibilities for this technology on his blog:
"..now let's take this into the classroom, huh? Foreign language students can now read their homework responses which automatically get sent via RSS feeds to their teachers who download them to their iPods or other player to listen to them. Or, the teacher creates a daily broadcast that his students download and listen to. Or, each day, one student does an oral reflection on the class that then gets sent around to kids who miss the class."
Let's continue the discussion! How could Podcasting be used to help you teach your subjects? I know IPods are expensive right now, but in a few years they'll be as cheap as $10 walkmans (remember when portable CD players were pricey?). So let's be futuristic and assume our students have IPods or could have them.
In closing, the article says this about Podcasting and why it might take off and get popular:
"But Podcasting -- like blogging -- seems to combine the best of the Internet with the best of traditional media. It's a way for someone to create and distribute a show to 40 people. And it also would allow a media company to distribute audio content to millions."
Podcasting and application to foreign language
Well, if you like blogging, and if you like IPods, you'll love Podcasting. I guess there is a way now to post an audio file, have it feed (through rss, just like our blogs) into other people's computers. They can then download your daily, or weekly, or whatever, audio file into their IPods and listen to it. If you want to read more, here's a news article.
How cool would that be? Can you imagine getting a daily audio file from, say, lds.org? How about if your professor posted things to you every day? What if your best friend, or boyfriend/spouse, did that? Could this be better than email? What if you could record your voice into your computer, and then send it by rss to your friend's IPod, and they would hear it the next time they plugged their IPod into their computer. Fun!
Will Richardson started talking about some educational possibilities for this technology on his blog:
Let's continue this discussion. How could you use this technology in your teaching? Now, I know IPods are expensive and not very many have them. But eventually they will be as cheap as $10 walkmans. So let's think futuristically here.
In closing, the article says this about Podcasting and why it might take off and get popular:
How cool would that be? Can you imagine getting a daily audio file from, say, lds.org? How about if your professor posted things to you every day? What if your best friend, or boyfriend/spouse, did that? Could this be better than email? What if you could record your voice into your computer, and then send it by rss to your friend's IPod, and they would hear it the next time they plugged their IPod into their computer. Fun!
Will Richardson started talking about some educational possibilities for this technology on his blog:
"..now let's take this into the classroom, huh? Foreign language students can now read their homework responses which automatically get sent via RSS feeds to their teachers who download them to their iPods or other player to listen to them. Or, the teacher creates a daily broadcast that his students download and listen to. Or, each day, one student does an oral reflection on the class that then gets sent around to kids who miss the class."
Let's continue this discussion. How could you use this technology in your teaching? Now, I know IPods are expensive and not very many have them. But eventually they will be as cheap as $10 walkmans. So let's think futuristically here.
In closing, the article says this about Podcasting and why it might take off and get popular:
"But Podcasting -- like blogging -- seems to combine the best of the Internet with the best of traditional media. It's a way for someone to create and distribute a show to 40 people. And it also would allow a media company to distribute audio content to millions."
The Eternal Tale
As I mentioned in class, I'll start a story here, and please post your additions to the tale as comments to this post. Other sections might do this as well, and maybe we can have a fun time seeing which class writes the best story!
BTW - I apologize for the lame start -- I'm just going to go with the first idea for a story that comes to my mind. It's up to y'all to make it good!
The Eternal Tale
By IPT 286, Section 5
"Who's that?"
"I don't know, but I think he plays for the football team."
"He is so freakin' hot! I hope he is in my American Heritage class."
Ryan ignored the comments, but he couldn't help but crack a wry smile. Like anybody else, he enjoyed the flattery that often accompanied him around campus. Being a student at BYU is going to rock! he thought to himself So many girls ... so few weekends for dates!
Only 19 years old, Ryan was just beginning his first semester at Brigham Young University. Now two weeks into his newfound freedom as an adult, on his own for the first time, Ryan was enjoying the social scene at BYU. Maybe a little too much, he thought as he grimaced at his Palm Pilot, which beeped to remind him he had a test in a half hour -- a test he hadn't really studied for.
After snagging a gordita from Taco Bell in the Cougareat, Ryan scanned the dining tables to see if he knew anybody with an open chair at their table.
Then he saw her.
And he kept looking.
He couldn't stop.
She was perfect--the most perfect girl he had ever seen. I have to meet her, Ryan thought, because ...
BTW - I apologize for the lame start -- I'm just going to go with the first idea for a story that comes to my mind. It's up to y'all to make it good!
The Eternal Tale
By IPT 286, Section 5
"Who's that?"
"I don't know, but I think he plays for the football team."
"He is so freakin' hot! I hope he is in my American Heritage class."
Ryan ignored the comments, but he couldn't help but crack a wry smile. Like anybody else, he enjoyed the flattery that often accompanied him around campus. Being a student at BYU is going to rock! he thought to himself So many girls ... so few weekends for dates!
Only 19 years old, Ryan was just beginning his first semester at Brigham Young University. Now two weeks into his newfound freedom as an adult, on his own for the first time, Ryan was enjoying the social scene at BYU. Maybe a little too much, he thought as he grimaced at his Palm Pilot, which beeped to remind him he had a test in a half hour -- a test he hadn't really studied for.
After snagging a gordita from Taco Bell in the Cougareat, Ryan scanned the dining tables to see if he knew anybody with an open chair at their table.
Then he saw her.
And he kept looking.
He couldn't stop.
She was perfect--the most perfect girl he had ever seen. I have to meet her, Ryan thought, because ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)