Just another day in Technology-February 18, 2010

Today we talked about chapter 4. Amanda and Kelsey did the chapter presentation and I thought they did really well. I really liked the presentation tool that they used. They used Prezi which I thought was confusing to make presentations but they made a really great presentation! I think that I would use this presentation in the future now, whereas a few weeks ago I would have steered away from it. I really liked this chapter content because it was more relevant to the other classes and learning. I love writing so learning how you can incorporate technology into writing was great to learn about. I also liked how they gave us several resources that we can use in the future. I think that they are useful for early education which was great.

Next we talked about other resources that we can use to incorporate technology into writing. We talked about many different tools that we can use to create concept maps. I think that this is a great thing to use to plan and organize their writing. Next we talked about student publishing on the internet. We talked about several sites such as readwritethink.org. It is a website that helps students write more effectively. It was a fun interactive website for teachers and students. We talked about another resource for online publishing by Google called Google docs. It is meant to be a collaborative writing tool.

Next we talked about some cool tools. We talked about BrainPop. We have seen a lot about BrainPop in our other classes. We also talked about Dweeber. It is a social networking site for children which is nice for them. We also talked about Skype. It is a video conferencing site, it is not geared towards children but it is nice for distance learning. She talked about how you can talk to people in different places or have "guest speakers" from other places talk to your class from their home. We also talked about ePals.com, it is a learge global community of connected classrooms. Teachingdegree.org is a resource that gives examples of how Skype can be used to enhance learning. It also has a getting started links to help if you are not familiar with Skype.

We also talked about different contemporary issues. One of the issues that was addressed was CyberBullying, it was very useful and relevant to talk about this issue because it is a big issue when it comes to students being online. We were introduced to many resources that we can read up on the subject. The next issue that the class talked about is obesity and video games. I am very surprised about the impact that video games have on a child's weight. We talked about some things that we can do to promote activity while using video games. We also talked about the issue of the time spent in school. Students only spend 14% of their year in school. So we talked about how short of a time children are really in school.