Digital Pictures

I'm really enjoying the digital pictures and video portion of the class. Taking and posting pictures is not something that I do a lot or am that familiar with. Often I feel like everyone knows more than I do in this area and I glad to be working with it more. I also feel like there are are a lot of ways that I could use this is my classroom. Maybe I could assign a project where the students have to make a sideshow of pictures that represent something we are reading in class or even making a video project. Overall, I'm finding this interesting and useful!

Google Docs

Today we worked on doing a project with Google Docs and I really liked it! I think it is a great program and have actually started using it in my everyday life. One downfall is that if you accidentally delete everything you can't really get if back, which sucks kind of. But overall it's a great program and I'm glad I got to learn how to use it!

Febuary 2, 2009

Today we learned about Wikis. I'm actually really enjoying learning about different internet resources and I actually feel like I'm getting better at using them! The only thing is that I probably will never use them in my classroom. I could be wrong and maybe by the end of the semester I will change my mind, but as of now that is how I feel. I could have something to do with the fact that I'm not totally comfortable with it and it takes me a long time to create things. Hopefully, as this class continues I will be able to do things faster and with more confidence.

Blogging In The Classroom

I really have mixed feelings on whether blogs in the classroom are a good idea or not. Obviously, they help students to practice their writing and can express their opinions in a online place, but one of the downfalls I foresee is that the students won't really care about it. At UT many teachers have utilized the discussion board application on Blackboard, where students can make entries and comment on each others and basically have a online discussion. Sounds like a great idea, right? But in my experience it is a waste of time. Blogs and other online discussion tools are only useful if they are taken seriously, like other graded assignments. It's hard to get kids to take online posts seriously because they simply cannot be graded like other writing assignments because they are informal by nature. So, the only thing a teacher can really grade on is whether the students have done it or not and most if not all students will probably just type out a couple of lines that they didn't put any thought to. Therefore it wastes the students time and the teachers by having to grade them.

Getting Started

Hello! Blogging is awesome!

Getting Started

Hello! Blogging is awesome!