EDM 310 blog assingments are now complete

It was a great semester for me. I would like to thank the people I worked with as partners (Virginia and Sarah) and everyone else in the class, including Dr. Strange of course, for making the class very pleasant. Good luck to all of you in the future.

Thanks, Emmett

EDM 310

In class this semester I learned many things. First firefox is better than internet explorer. How to prepare a slide show presentation, how to use a word processor extensively. How to write html titles and alt tags. How to use spreadsheet functions in a address book, multiplication table and payout table. I would of liked to put a comment box on my web site but don't know if it would of been too complicated or if it's available on google pages.

Wikipedia

I hate wikipedia. It is not a very reliable source and it is the first link that pops up when you use a search engine. It is not reliable because anyone can change the entries. I found it very comical that Wal-Mart tried to edit paragraphs to make wages look better and adjectives were added to a political candidates entry to make him look less intelligent or racist or some companies who had entire paragraphs deleted to keep their image. This is comical because on a web-site anyone can edit who would care if someone said anything negative about you. I have used wikipedia in the past but will be very careful in the future and if I get any information from wikipedia I will be sure to confirm it with a more reliable source.

Itunes University

ITunes University is a really cool tool for students. They can download course content for use on the iphone or ipod. That is awesome since it can be with you through the day. This would be great for work when you had big test coming up. You can find material from other schools and faculty are allowed to limit the amount of information guest are admitted to view.

I'm not sure how it differs from similar online sites. But you can never have too much education. I think students could definitely benefit from using iTunes University.


Learn more about iTunes University

ipods!!!

In August 2004 over 1600 ipods were given out to incoming freshmen to study the academic uses of the ipod. A June 2005 report found that experiment was successful but some limitations were encountered. The limitations included license accusation and combining audio and video just to name a couple. It was very useful in recording of lectures, group discussions, or practicing a public speech. All of the impacts to the institution were positive, from increased awareness of technology's role in the classroom to the publicity the school received from this study.

Students in foreign language classes had access to audio course content. This is great for them because learning a foreign language can be very difficult. All the other fields of study in the survey reported the ipod to be useful as well. With most of the student feedback being positive. To view the report in its entirety click on the link below.

Duke University's final report

How many days are really in a school year?

In elementary school everyone had a class that did the countdown of the days of school (180). I always wondered how much time you are not spending in class/learning. Barry Bachenheimer and Karl Fisch have done the hard work and found students "miss" from 60 to 65 days of class each year due to pep rallies, guest speakers, state exams, final exams ect. This was a lot more than i thought. Mr. Bachenheimer actually estimated time spent in the class learning was 46 hours a year on average.

I agree to this to a certain extent but not all lessons learned in school come from the classroom. Guest speakers educate kids on not smoking, not doing drugs and sex education. And you have to count that towards education. Don't you? I think this list should of included field trips. They were great, but you didn't learn much. You were just going to see what you already learned about. Thats kind of like exam review days, which I'm still debating if it should be included or not. I have included a link to this blog below.

"180 Days?"

Image with Title and Alt Tags

technology illiterate

I believe Mr. Fisch hit the nail right on the head. A teacher is not preparing her kids for the future if she is not using technology in his/her classroom. Teachers should be using power points and email to keep in touch with students at the very least. Also blogs in traditional subjects is a good way to keep kids from falling behind.

For a teacher to not be educated on technology is completely unacceptable. If they didn't know anything about computers or cell phones, kids would just "my space" or email their friends during class, or text message the whole time. Technology is very important to being a good educator today, and that importance will only continue to build and leave stubborn educators behind.

Math blogs

Mr. Harbeck teaches math in Winnipeg, Canada. He is using blogs similar to the way we use them in my class. The students are given a assignment, and required to post it to a blog. They may just have to write about what they learned in class that day and give an example, or they may be given a problem and asked to explain how they came to the correct answer. This helps pick out shy students who may not fully understand but are afraid to ask. This prevents the old "the dog ate my homework excuse" and I believe it would cut down on the amount of homework problems.

Mathematical blogs

International Blogs

K. Lehman, or as her students call her Ms. K, is a high school teacher in Yangon, Myanmar. She teaches English and multimedia. She has a very cool blog. It contains videos, pictures, post of what went on in class. All of the clips I viewed were very interesting. She tries to keep the students involved with many different links included in her blog and website.

Ms. K's classroom blog

High School Blogs

Albany High School in New York has a school blog. They use this to keep students informed of events around campus. Students can post comments about themselves, what they do, what they are interested in, ect. I think it would make the students feel more involved in school and let them know the school cares about them. It could also be useful to set the story straight on the outrageous rumors that always seem to be spread around high schools.

Albany High School Class Blog

classroom blogs

Kathy Cassidy is a first grade teacher using blogs to help teach students and keep parents informed. Everyday she post what went on in class and what the students learned. She also post pictures and videos to view. Students have their own blogs too, which are kind of funny cause of the missed spellings. It helps keep parents involved and they can even listen in on class and interact with the students.

Mrs. Cassidy's Class Blog

Access evens the learning field

ACCESS is an educational web site. It is designed to even the educational opportunities for all the students in Alabama. Some courses are not available at all schools and some schools don't even offer an advanced diploma. All you need additional in Mobile County public schools is 2 foreign language credits. This is excellent for a kid who goes to one of these schools.

The resources available to teachers and students is incredible. There is live video and audio conference, virtual office hours, flexible schedule, allows students to converse with students from other schools, offers web based lectures, plus several others. This is a great way to improve education in Alabama, and other states who don't have similar programs should look at ACCESS and adopt a program like it.

Adding a picture to your page

This is a picture of the logo of the Miami Dolphins pro football team.

Teaching with ALEX

Alex will be extremely useful in any classroom. Kids who are absent have opportunity to view lessons and not fall behind the rest of the class. The best advantage I see is it invites the parents into the classroom. Now when kids are asked what they learned in school and they say "Nothing", the parents can go online and say "No, you better know about this!" This can improve parent-student and parent-teacher relationships.

Starting a career in teaching is gonna be difficult. It will be nice to get ideas from other teachers and adopt them or change them up and make them my own. It will help me find the best way from me to get through to the students. The students will also be able to review my lesson plans at home, which could be a very effective study guide.

ALEX

ALEX is a educational web site "funded by the Alabama department of education (http://alex.state.al.us/showpage.php?lnk=welcome). ALEX stands for Alabama Learning Exchange. It provides lesson planes for teachers and students using a file and sharing system. Similar to that of the popular site youtube.com, files are stored on the site and you have access to them.

ALEX can be used by educators to share lesson plans or by students to view them and can be accessed from any Internet connected computer. They also offer distance learning which eliminates the classroom. There are several courses of study from arts education to technology education. A search engine is provided on the sight for easy access to what your looking for. ALEX is an extremely useful site, that will educate students and help teachers grow.

Did you know?

The clip was very interesting to me. Several of the facts were mind blowing. Its hard to believe China will have more English speaking natives than the U.S. For a second they threw me off with the "Shift Happens", I thought it was some kind of hardcore Nissan advertisement. I guess they are trying to say change happens, but trying to use current lingo. I think it works and delivers an effective message.

second blog

this is my post,