Last blog for class/ Low-cost presentations powered by the cloud

This class has been very time consuming but I know I discovered new technology and will continue to keep playing. This class is better to look back at than to be involved in I really liked playing with the sites but did not enjoy typing reflections on the threads. I know it has caused me to be better at typing but still I find posting for class intimidating and a slow process, now blogging is another story. I do not know if I will continue on twitter but will keep up my Google reader so if anyone posts to their blog I will see it. I hope to spend staff development time this summer really exploring options with my smartboard I know I am just scratching the surface of what I can do. I also will continue to play with Skype ( Kristin I think many of us are new to this) especially when I bite the bullet and pay for Quest Bundling. It is hard to believe that we will be graduating in less than 3weeks.
This caught my eye and I just had to add it, I think clouding is going to really be an economical factor for education in the near future. Low-cost presentations powered by the cloud
Slidelive offers affordable presentation services for professors, especially for distance education
By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor

SMARTBoards and Customizing the Notebook Toolbar

thought some of you new to smartboards might like this video hyper link thru the title

link to power point

playing with linkng powerpoint

tagging wordle for presentation

using this wordle in my presentation is made from words I use as tags in Delicious
4/26/09

journal writing 4/23/09

Added thoughts to thread 5 and 6 this morning, to school early to play with video casting on Skype. Last night Jeannie, Barb and I were able to have a conference call on SKYPE I have video but was not successful with that because of the dial up connection I tried to view Barb's video but even that was not good and usually disconnected us. The audio portion was fine a little hard to hear at times. It took some work to find Barb and Jeannie's address but now that I have them when they are on line I will know. I think Skype will be a communication tool I will use in the future especially with family and when I get off dial up and onto DSL. I am still planning on doing my presentation on tagging (and word clouds) even though I have learned and spent a lot of time exploring voice and video casting, which I plan to use on my smart board

smartboard info

Barb clicking on this title should get you to one site that has some smart board info I also think amy had a previous blog that gave some good smart board sites most of the ones I am using now are more advanced hope this helps diane

barb just found another article that links to a site I use you may like this
ttp://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/2009/04/smart-boards-and-the-bbcs-one-minute-wonders.html
I think you can copy and paste it to get to it

weekly reflection 4/22/09

I am actually kinda pumped right now, and will do this reflection for the last few days. If I do not do it now, I will be busy trying things and may forget to reflect most of what I am doing. First off I have two chapters left in Disrupting Class (which I will finish soon). I have finally found some answers for my senior high students who have low math grades and need my class to graduate. I dropped the written text very early this year and have been struggling with what curriculum to use. I used as a guide the MCA standards because now I have juniors with seniors and they must pass the 11th grade MCA's. This book gives me a sense that I have been heading in the right direction and if I continue to use technology may be able to find approaches and lessons that will spark that intrinsic motivation.
Related to this, is the need to organize what I am doing and hope to do. One thing I have been working on this week is researching tagging. As I showed in class Wednesday night my i Google is a useful tool for me and I will continue to use it well after class. I have unsubscribed many email posts and run them through my RSS feeder so I can scan and book mark in one place. I have read a few articles about tagging and right now it seems slower for the PC's than MAC but i am such a novice now that they have enough for me. I like the idea of not having to weed through all my files that have similar words instead using specific files that have uniques tags which link them together. Will try to explain this more in my class presentation, this is what I think I am going to do. I still keep playing with voice threading and interactive video. I was able this week to link my voice to lessons on the smart board and have spent about 2 hours today downloading Skype and hope to have it set up soon. This all said any one of these could turn out to be my final project. This class has been a great teacher that the more I learn, the more I know I need to keep everything organized, otherwise I go back to it and do not remember what I did or can not find the same site or directions.
I have to say I am hoping I do not go onto our Concordia site and find I have a whole different assignment I need to address.

math explodes

Audio Weekly Reflection using Voki

Twittering Good Friday service

"OMG! Twittering The Passion Of Christ
In a marriage of Christian tradition and digital technology, Wall Street's Trinity Church is using the micro-blogging service Twitter to perform the story of Jesus Christ".

now I knew I had to join twitter or be left in the dust.
(title will link you to the article)

clouding (article linked here)

I am very intrigued with clouding and the financial possibilities it could offer our limited education budgets. Attached is a 6 page article and I will continue to post references to other articles I run across.
to reference the article click on the title.

week 4 reflection

week 4 reflection: since Lisa taught me how to us stick notes I have been keeping a log and will now start new for next week
4-1 (5 hours) reader review & Concordia tech update a,b,c thread 3
4-3 (6:15-7:15 AM) checking Concordia and blog site
4-3 (9:10 -2pm) working on tab 4 and new thread
4-5 (6:30-1:30) responded Patrick posted to my blog (tech replace teachers?) added
quote to my blog title added post to Paul's forum question added a forum question
added a blog on sharing and a shared post ( this was an overload session but I was on
a roll)
4-7 (3:30-5) worked on voice for computer Voki site reviewed clouding article
bookmarked GOOD but very long will post link
4-8 added Voki to blog site
4-8 (3:30-6:00) worked with Chad and Lisa helped set up blue tooth mouse to be a mock
smart board helped Chad add smart notebook onto his computer.
4-8 (9- playing with updates and posting to other blogs

Flygirl Has A Voice

Preview my shared link

I tried something different on my blog site called shared. It is on the left corner of this page. It was not an educational article but one I thought those of you with little children and buying highchairs might be interested in. Now that I understand what I can do with this section I will post interesting finds there and will know what they mean if I find them on other sites

technology replaces the teacher ( click here for link to article)

Read a very interesting article and post on Education Week; 14.4 million dollars spent on testing the effectiveness of reading and math software programs has found few significant learning differences between students who used the technology and those taught using other methods. Attached link to the article click on title of this blog but in summary key points I found of interest are:

• that is a lot of money to spend on research
  
• one blog attached reflects that who makes the programs may have a significant affect (educators or businesses)
• study results which were designed to be unbiased showed even software makers consider who is teaching as critical. “These studies are intended to wash out all the variation in school environments, teacher quality, resources­—all the things that we, in fact, know make a difference when it comes to student learning,” said Margaret A. Honey, a technology expert who is the president of the New York Hall of Science.
• Only critical readers and thinkers can use these computer based programs independently

Cathy this made me think of you with your adults who want a teacher not a computer to learn from. The computer is a tool and we as educators become so important monitoring it is used appropriately while supplying constant guidance and feedback.
This makes me think about cooperative learning groups and how they do not function if you give them little to no, direction, guidance, intervention or feedback.

In reference to my title, since the data reported there was no significant learning change,which implies it is not better, does that mean that it is as good. If that is true could we see very large computer based courses needing less teachers?

Journal update

finished thread 4 stand a and b will continue with stand c on Sunday. I am sure the site will be full of post at that time, I am going to go back and post to thread 3 strand d by replying to other posts instead of posting a new one, it seems a little to late too do that. If anyone has a good podcast site I am interested in trying a very basic podcast I have a mic and can make a recorder work but do not know exactly where to store it so it has a url so I can embed it as a link

Need to connect to Twitter on Sunday and see if I can follow colleagues

Start research on what to do for project Sunday