I tunes University

The website I found was Apple Education where I read about the I tunes university. It had four main points. The first point was that you could access the university anytime...(24/7). The second point was that you could sync your I pod with the I tunes store and learn while you were eating a meal or doing something else besides sitting at a computer. The third point was that it had vivid learning because it has audio and video. The fourth and final point was that school could open all or part of their content to the public and anyone who wanted to learn could get on and read what the school had put on it.

I think that I would use this if I was teaching middle school or high school, but not elementary school. I think that kids are too young to be exploring the internet in that way. I posted a blog a couple of weeks ago expressing my feeling about this subject. Let kids be kids! So no, I will not use I tunes university in my elementary classes unless it is required.

iPods

I read up on how Duke University was using iPods to help in the classrooms. Duke University gave each freshman (1,650 students) a free iPod. Each iPod will be preloaded with course material, campus events,...etc. This will be a trial to see how they will be affective. They anticipate the students will find numerous ways of using the iPods to benefit learning classroom material. In addition to giving the freshmen iPods, the upperclassmen will be able to share 150 iPods for which the course requires. On the website it explains how students can use the iPod to record lectures and are able to pause and rewind.

It goes on saying that other school are using ipods and some even have agreements with Napster. I think using iPods in the classrooms is a great idea. Especially if it's FREE! haha I think this would and will be a great tool for students.

To view this website click here.

My Presentation

Geocaching

I was looking over Dr. Christie's website wondering what I was going to find to write two paragraphs on when I came across a podcast and I thought...what a great time to watch one since that is what we are about to be doing in class. Her podcast was on geocaching; something I had NEVER heard of! I was very interested!!!
Geocaching is when you use a tracking device to locate "cach" There are satellites in space that send signals to these gps tracking devices and help us find the geocach. People can travel all over the world looking for the cach. Dr. Christie says that teachers can use this in classrooms by giving the students gps devices and letting them find cach's of their own. The teacher would of course hide the cachs to where the student could find them. I really like this idea and I think the students would find it fun. Since resess has been taken away from the students, having them outside doing this activity would be something they would really enjoy. If you would like to learn more about geocaching, you can visit this page HERE.

Wikipedia

First of all let me just say that if I were doing a report and needed information off the internet, I would not do my research on Wikipedia. What I just read and listened to about people changing the information on wiki just makes me not want to use it even more. YES, it does have a lot of information on it, but who wants to accidentally get wrong information? NOT ME! My brother looks up stuff on Wikipedia and he will tell you that he loves it, but I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Not sure if I'd tell my students to use Wikipedia as a reliable source.

180 Days??

I went to fischbowl and picked April. It talks about how there are supposed to be 180 days in the school year in Colorado that are instructional days, but for some reason the students never get all of the 180 days. There was a slide show that gives a list of everything that takes place during a typical school year, with "testing days" and student and teacher absences, and many other different things. Please look at the slide show-HERE. I agree with this. Students says there just isn't enough time to get everything done and this proves them right.

Best of 2007

"If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write."-Karl Fisch

Hmm...not sure if I totally agree with this statement. Yes teachers do need to know how computers work, but it's very over-rated if you ask me. When I was in elementary school I certainly did not use a computer. I might have thought it was cool but I was doing what kids did before this technology ma ham started...playing with dolls and coloring and just BEING A KID! I have a daughter and when she gets in elementary school I don't know if I'll want her knowing how to use a computer. Kids need to be kids. This is what Karls whole blog boils down too...teachers being computer literate so that they can teach their students to be computer literate...but when exactly does it gross the line!? Does it cross the line when your child plays on the computer too much and fails a grade...or does it cross the line when your child is innocently playing on a kid website and porn pops up? I just don't know about all this computer crap! I'm really aggravated with this guys outlook on the whole thing!

International Blogs

Once I did the last assignment it wasn't that hard to do this one. The first blog I found was a website ran by BBC World Service and it allowed international students to sign on and write a blog about their life and then a teacher would sign on and tell them what they could work on with their writing and English. I thought this was an excellent website. There are students from all over the world, it's great! BBC World Service

My second international blog a found was a man by the name of Stevie. He was born in Beverley, England and is not teaching English in South Korea. His blog talks about his everyday life in Korea and his experiences teaching English in South Korea. He seems like he's really intelligent and I like his style in the way he posts his blogs. Stevie

United States Teachers Using Blogs

The first blog I picked was a professor by the name of Anne Davis. She works for Georgia State University as an Information Systems Training Specialist in the College of Education. She has lots of different projects going on and one of them was visiting fourth and fifth graders at an elementary school. She introduced them to blogging and they loved it! She said that she was very impressed with both of the grades at how well they picked up everything. The students have their own blogs and anyone can go and read them. http://itc.blogs.com/newsquest/








The second blog I found was a first grade teacher named Kathy Cassidy. At first I was a little confused because I didn't know how in the world a first grader was going to "blog" but as I read the entries I started to understand it. What the teacher did was she selected a topic, then she asked the student what they thought about the topic and she helped them type it out on the computer and then finally she put at the end what the first grader was trying to say. She did an excellent job! You can read the blog entries at this website-Click Here

Fisch Bowl

I thought that was an excellent video! At first I wasn't too sure what to think about it, but as it neared the end I thought it had a great message. Pretty much what I got out of the video was that the world is growing in technology and we are using computers for a lot of things. So we need to be making sure that our future generations are up to date with these technologies. We need to be making sure that our schools are teaching kids how to correctly use computers.
Having computers in schools will help our kids learn how to operate them. I think that it is our jobs to make sure our kids' schools have the computers in them. We need to be making sure that our school boards are putting computers in the schools for the kids to learn off of. Overall I think that computers will be a great thing for our future and our kids future.

ACCESS

As I read the power point for Access, I was a little confused. I'm not really sure if this is meant for actual highschool students or college students. In part of the power point presentation it seemed that through this organization they were hiring "e-teachers" and so I'm thinking that high school or college students can register online for a course and then sign on the web to see an e-teacher and get the lesson that way.
I think this is taking away from how the school are already set up. In high school, I think that a student should be in class to get a hands on experience and then in college, they already have online courses, so I don't see how this new organization is really going to change a students grade level by having an e-teacher on the screen. I would not recommend this to anyone.

My Thoughts on ALEX

I think ALEX is a great program for both students and teachers. It is well outlined and the website is very easy to get around. The website has eight areas to explore. The first area is Courses of Study. Here you can find different subjects with detailed lesson plans for grades K-12. The second area is Web Links. On this page there are websites that students and teachers can visit to help them out in school. The third area you can click on is Lesson Plans. This is another way to get lesson plans by subject and grade level. The fourth area is Search. Here you can search the website for certain things you are looking for. The fifth area is Personal Workspace. Here you can create lesson plans and create your own website. The sixth area is Professional Training. This is a page where teachers can get access to more up-to-date material, such as new methods for teaching. The seventh area you can visit on this website is Distance Learning. Here you can learn through the web. To do this you would click on a link that will navigate you from Alex.com to Access (Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide). The eighth and last area is HELP. Here you can get help on problems you may have throughout the website.
I really enjoyed this website. I will defiantly use this when I start teaching. I find it very beneficial to me and probably the student as well.

Get to know me

As you already know my name is Ashley. I'm a junior majoring in Elementary Education. I've been attending South since 2003. I was previously majoring in Nursing but I changed my mind. I work at Providence Hospital as a nursing assistant and working there lead me not to want to be a nurse. I hope to graduate Spring of 2010. I will have been in college for 7 years! HA! I hope to teach in the public schools.
A little on my personal life...I have a two year old. I'm a single mother. I was born in Orange, Texas but moved to Mobile when I was 3 months. I enjoy going to Disney World. I've been 5 times. Hopefully when my daughter is 5 or 6 I will be able to take her. I graduated from Mobile Christian in 2003. Hmm...Don't really know what else to say. So I'lll end it here.

Welcome!

Hey this is Ashley Wheeler. I'm an elementary education major and I'm excited about taking this class. I hope this semester goes well. Hopefully I will get to know each and every one of you. See you in class!!