web 2.0

It has been awhile since I blogged. Today I looked at some more web 2.0 sites and did the survey that was required for the class. There are a lot of neat things out there. I have gotten into a few of them, but I am taking it slowly. Much of this is very new to me and I want to get comfortable with what I am in right now.

I looked through the web 2.0 things. I never really thought about it being different than what the internet was first designed for. I have gotten involved in some of the web 2.0 sites. For about the last year I have been using craiglist to try and get rid of some junk around the house that we no longer use. Here recently we are trying out Skype. My step-daughter is going to Spain for a year to school. We thought this would be a great and inexpensive way to keep in touch. Also, we purchased a web cam so that we can see here and she can see us. My 4 year old loves it!!! Right now she is in Michigan doing a math REU, so we are testing it out now while she is there. It was very easy to set up and use.

I also listened to the digital citizenship pod cast. It got me to thinking that we should be teaching students how to appropriately use the internet instead of just blocking sites that they cannot go to. At home, most parents do not take the time or don't know how to go about blocking sites, so they have access to them there anyway. If we show them and take the time to teach them appropriately they will have the tools to be safe on the internet.

I read the article "Understanding Digital Kids". It made me think about what our kids are doing and learning in today's world. I think it is great that they are learning all of this technical stuff, but I also think they need to learn the basics. It said that students need to be engaged and have fun with their learning. That is true, but they also need to learn how to adapt to things that are not so interesting to them. I consider that to be a life lesson. When they do get out into the real world there will be things that they do not like and they need to adjust to them instead of becoming more of a problem.

Friday, June 19th, 2009

I just go done looking through the multimedia creation section. There were some interesting things to do with those. I can't see how I could implement them into my classroom though. The animoto one reminded me a lot about photostory that I have used to put together some of my own photos. I like doing that a lot.

Sites that I liked

http://www.teacherfiles.com/clip_art.htm
I really like this site for the different clip arts or titles. They are colorful and fun.

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/
This is another site that I really liked. I liked the clip art and it also had animated clip art.

Week #3 June 17th

This week we are to do the digital imaging and multimedia sections. I have gone through the digital imaging section and bookmarked a lot of sites to my delicious bookmarking site. I also made a avatar and downloaded it as my image in this blog site and also on my new flickr site. I set up a flickr account to show pictures. I kind of like that site and hope to use it some more. My flickr address is http://flickr.com/photos/connieburgers.

I still need to go through the multimedia site, but am waiting until information gets put on that tab. We also need to do a project called Virtual Field trip. I think I have an idea as to what that is supposed to be about and have somewhat started working on it.

That is all for now. I we post again after I have gotten more done.

Week #2

This week I learned about Digital Natives and Immigrants. I can definitely see that my step daughters and my 4 year old are digital natives. My 4 year old likes to play games on the computer and beats me playing Mario Cart on the wii all the time. My step daughters text on their phones all the time and I haven't a clue how to do that. I am definitely a digital immigrant. Many technical terms I do not even know what they mean. I will be building my vocabulary over this next month. For instance, I didn't know about blogging. This is my first time ever doing this.

Start of Class

I just read about what we will be doing in this class and I am a little worried about it. I am hoping I can figure out how to do each of the items that need to be done. The good thing about this is that I will be learning many new things.