web 2.0

I found the website kobobooks.com. It is a place where you can get an application for your iphone and download books from a list of millions. This could be useful for a reading assignment. The teacher could assign a book from the website and the students could read it anywhere they are. I would venture to say that withing the next ten years just about every kid will have at least an iphone; and what kid doesn't bring their phone with them everywhere they go? They will have no excuse not to read the assigned book. Also this is a good site to find out what books are being read the most right now and it makes it easy to find books you would be interested in.

Final Reflection

I learned a lot from this class. I am not an extremely tech savvy person but I learned how to do a lot of things that will make a difference in my classroom. It is easy to see that the world is shifting toward being almost completely technological. Everything will be done with computers and super small cell phones and it will become increasingly important to keep up with technology.

I love all the resources we were exposed to during the class. I will definitely use a lot of the things I learned about in my teaching career. I am going to study this out a lot more so that I can be super effective as a teacher. I will always try to remember to not use technology just to use it and that it should enhance the learning process. I like that the teaching field is open to being adaptive to the changing times. I will have to adapt myself more as well and learn more technology so that I can be a successful teacher and citizen.

Internet Safety

I had the opportunity to watch a lot of videos on the isafe website. Ever since the last class period, I have been telling all my roommates about the importance of limiting the amount of personal information that they post on the internet; especially on Facebook. I have since taken my birthday off. One reason is for safety reasons and the other reason is to see who really remembers my birthday, which is in three and a half weeks.

My roommate Joe is always up for learning new things and he really enjoyed learning about internet safety. Of all my roommates, I think that he would be the one to actually change what he is doing.

One of the videos I watched was a video made by student about the dangers of internet chatting. The video showed a student chatting with a girl and they decided to meet on a Saturday. When he arrived he was picked up by the girl's "father" and they began driving away. As they passed a school, he jumped out of the car and ran inside. The man chased him inside and the student called the police before the guy could stop him. The police came and arrested the guy and it turned out that there was no daughter.

It is important to not share any pertinent personal information online; especially when chatting. First of all, you shouldn't chat with strangers, much less give them any personal information. There are many people online that have nothing but the worst intentions and just want to take advantage of people that aren't educated about these things. Identity theft is a big crime today and for someone trained enough, it is surprisingly easy to steal someone's identity. For these reasons and others, it is important to be extremely careful and picky about what you put online.

The Interview

Education Festival

I actually found myself unexpectedly enjoying the education festival I attended last week. I went in not knowing what to expect but I quickly discovered what was going on and jumped in. I had the opportunity to talk to a few presenters about their projects as well as just look at a few posters. They all were very organized and easy to read which made it an easy atmosphere to be in. It was obvious that they presenters were passionate about their topics. Most of them were research projects so the posters had their findings on them in boxes, graphs and charts. I could tell that they had spent a lot of time and effort making them. It was also interesting the variety of topics that were presented. I was surprised to see projects about subjects that I have been thinking about like how to help students understand the importance of doing well in school to better prepare themselves for their futures. I also saw a project that I am participating in. Lucy Ordaz is doing a project researching the effect of reading groups in middle schools and I go and volunteer each Tuesday and Thursday morning and read with some students. It was neat to see what her findings have been.

Video Reflection

I really enjoyed making this video! Justine and I worked hard on it and used our limited video making skills to come out with a fairly good video. It will be published on this site as soon as I figure out how to do that! We didn't run into too many problems during the production process. We only had to do one take which helped cut down on the recording time and the amount of footage we had to go through. I think that if I had to make a video by myself I could do it, it just might take a while. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be when we started and it made me want to make more videos. The only problem with that is that I have an HP which is apparently less effective for movie-making. We shall see!