Reflection

EDM310 has been an interesting and very knowledgeable class for me. Before I came to this class, I had never created a blog or heard of podcasting, and thought google was just for finding information. This class educated me on the different technologies that can be used in my educational career. I really enjoyed the class. As technology is always changing and advancing, I know the class will also, but most of all this class advanced me. Thanks for being a great educator!

Tweeter

I have learned from Twitter that it is an interesting and unique social network. My reactions to Twitter is amusing. I believe the benefits of Twitter for the teacher will great for the professional realm for communication between teachers but for the classroom I believe it will not benefit. With Twitter you can visualize a reader following your page as if they were reading a daily newspaper column. The negative aspect of Twitter is that it is more public than personal as with Facebook. Anyone can read your page unless you block it as with Facebook your page is automatically block. Also, you have followers and not friends and therefore you have to keep it more professional, interesting and indepth. As an indiviual, I would not use Twitter, but on the professional side, as a teacher,I would use it to communicate with other teachers. Twitter is a good social network for professional indiviuals.

Podcasts

Smartboard Lesson 150, Finally the Future, the name of the Podcast. They were located in Canada. It sounded like a radio show. The host encouraged the listener to stop driving. They doing like a finale. They would make wise statements in regards to a fruit tree, pruning away and making way for the new in relation to their finale. Music would start to play after a brief pause of the discussion. The hosts would consistantly through out the podcast advertise Joan (the host) website.

Kidcast #48 First Impressions. It started out with music and what they do. The speakers gave introduction and description of the product to be used. He gave his personal opinion of his likes and dislikes on the product for teachers that wanted to use podcast. MacBreak weekly: it started out with music as if you were in a movie theatre with a surround system. The host gave credits for the show. The hosts also provided you with McIntosh information.

Edtalk: This podcast started out straight to the point...no music, no advertisement/entertainment to catch the listeners attention. This Week in Photography started out with their credits, and proceeded with click sounds from a camera then music started to play. They started out their discussion with personal views of photography and how to photograph when you are on a time frame, an example: photographing the birth of a baby. They continued to explain how to work a certain type of camera and pocket wizards.

Each podcast was unique in its on way. But they basically sounded like radio broadcast or radio shows with the exception of Edtalk. Edtalk was more of a live discussion board.

Domestic Blog (Weber School District)

Weber School District of Utah had a very interesting blog. This school district use their blog for teachers to reach out to students and parents. There blog was broken down into categories. One category was technolgy blog, career and technical blog, and support blog. Here is a sample copy from their career and technical blog......

CTE stands for Career and Technical Education, however in Weber School District CTE most often stands for Career and Technical Experience! Our teachers work extremely hard at making the education our students receive much more than just an education, but more of an experience that will help propel them towards a successful career and life! Our pre-engineering, Project Lead the Way senior students have just completed their final EDD (Engineering Design and Development) class and were able to have a fantastic culminating learning experience because of the cooperation of Autoliv, which is one of our cooperating business partners for Project Lead the Way.

CTE stands for Career and Technical Education, however in Weber School District CTE most often stands for Career and Technical Experience! Our teachers work extremely hard at making the education our students receive much more than just an education, but more of an experience that will help propel them towards a successful career and life! Our pre-engineering, Project Lead the Way senior students have just completed their final EDD (Engineering Design and Development) class and were able to have a fantastic culminating learning experience because of the cooperation of Autoliv, which is one of our cooperating business partners for Project Lead the Way.

Domestic Blog(Arizona)

I visited the blog site of Arizona school district....the name of the blog is Arizona.com. The teacher for the blog had the blog broken down......the teacher had an opening summary blog and an option for the visitor to go into the site to read more blogs if desire. Read the following....it is a sample copy from the Arizona k-12 blog:

A K12 vice president confirmed that AZVA sent papers written by middle school and high school students to India to be scored and commented on. It seems unlikely to me the practice was confined to just one school. After all, in July, 2007, K12 filed a letter of intent to acquire Socratic Learning, the company hired to do the outsourcing. You wouldn't likely consider buying a company unless you were planning to make extensive use of its services.

Google Rumored GDrive

It seems like a cool idea. It would be convenient, but at the same time it would not be as personal as your own PC. With the GDrive, it's like, google behind the scene, has access to your personal data even though someone else may not have your password. I believe even if the GDrive hits the market, it will still be the consumers choice. We would still have the option to purchase our own computer. I truly don't believe that computer companies would stop selling computers to individuals to only serve the google participants.

Changing the way we think

The Internet itself has spoiled people. To some extent, I do believe, a great a majority of people think differently now days then before the Internet became popular. Before the Internet, we had to think, and research by hand and our minds were stimulated and purposely focused. Now days, we have the Internet to be our minds; in some from few typed key words, we have basically what we are looking for with our minds lying dormant and unfortunately becoming idol.

ACCESS

I believe the Access inititative is a great program. It gives the student a greater opportunity to succeed. A remarkable opportunity is that the Access program is extended to students with special needs. The program has it's accountability, making it more sufficient for everyone. An example would be that the school system has their responsibility in keeping the communication lines open between the special education teacher and the e-teacher. The program, also give the opportunity for special education students to attend summer school. Overall, the Access Inititative is a great success for the entire school community.

ALEX AND ACCESS

Alabama has two well known educational initiative programs. These two programs are ALEX (Alabama Learning Exchange) and ACCESS (Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide).

ACESS objectives are to provide additional resources for teachers and advanced diplomas and, courses, additional courses for all students, advanced placement for high school students. There is also a distance learning for the high school students. One of the learning methods of the distance learning is video conferencing. ALEX and ACCESS have many similarities. Alex's breakdown of additional courses beyond the basics of language, math, science, social studies, and physical educational are arts education, career/technical education, driver and traffic safety education, health and technology education. Also foreign language courses are available. Character education is also offered in which includes counseling and guidance.

Alabama also offers other initiative programs. One of those programs is the Fatherhood Initiative. The Fatherhood initiative program was developed to further the welfare reform goal of strengthening families, enhancing child support collections and addressing other needs of children who are growing up with out the involvement of natural fathers in their lives. Another program is the Alabama Middle School Initiative (AMSI). AMSI is a school improvement reform. Also, Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is another program in which the program works to increase the capacity of Faith-Based and Community Organization within the state to better complete for funding opportunities. Each of these programs play apart in a student's academic achievement and as well as giving the teachers an access to a successful classroom teaching experience.