I have really enjoyed blogging, much more so than I anticipated I would when this course began. It is a personal diary in many ways, but it can be shared, and people can read your innermost thoughts. And people can respond to you. That in and of itself demonstrates the communicative power of the platform and the openings it permits and encourages. It has a wide range of educational purposes, allowing students to explore, articulate their thoughts, organize, interact with others, and form groups. I can see having your students prepare and maintain a subject-related blog in almost any subject matter in secondary education.
Another nice feature of blogs is their multimedia capabilities. The digital imagery and sounds which you can incorporate into your blogs enhances learning and appeals to a wide range of learning styles and preferences. You are communicating on many different levels of intimacy and in many streams of sensory acquisition. You will see a plethora of pictures on my blog, as I really believe in the power of imagery and the visual stimulus.
Finally, the blog's self-storage of prior posts and comments serves as a written legacy, a catalogue of thoughts and correspondence, which you can refer back to again and again as time passes. What a wonderful feature! You don't have to search through old papers and notebooks, it is right there at your fingertips. And it is focused in one place, not scattered over dozens of e-mails that get lost in your e-mail inbox over time. Organized, historical, and archival, features that an aspiring social studies teacher, slighty left-brained, is bound to appreciate and enjoy!
Neverending Quest-ions
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Final Words
Please take a minute and go to my wiki page, at this link:
http://billmcgillicuddy.wikispaces.com/Parting+Thoughts+-+Something+I+Think+About+as+a+Parent
I saw this poem posted in an appliance store, fell in love with the words, and copied it. If you have children of your own or even in your class, they are a precious gift. When they grow up you realize it more and more. I dearly wish I had back a thousand days with my kids when they were younger. The innocence of childhood is the stuff of life, and nourishes us all.
Farewell, everyone, and enjoy the summer.
One last photo from flickr?
http://billmcgillicuddy.wikispaces.com/Parting+Thoughts+-+Something+I+Think+About+as+a+Parent
I saw this poem posted in an appliance store, fell in love with the words, and copied it. If you have children of your own or even in your class, they are a precious gift. When they grow up you realize it more and more. I dearly wish I had back a thousand days with my kids when they were younger. The innocence of childhood is the stuff of life, and nourishes us all.
Farewell, everyone, and enjoy the summer.
One last photo from flickr?
Final Reflections on ICP
I wanted to say a few words about the powerpoint I did on flickr and photobucket. I enjoyed the assignment very much because I find the photographs on flickr, the site I really explored, so beautiful and moving in many ways. How can a person in general and our students in particular not come away from some of these visual images without deeply implanted impressions and sensations? I am certainly a "written word" kind of guy, have been my whole life, but the visual image is powerful and moving. Our children need to balance visual stimuli with the written word, watch the movie, see the play, but also read the book.
I learned a great deal about the sharing capabilities of flickr, the group functions, and the organizational aspects allowing creation of sets and groups. If I were to do this all over again, I think I would follow my lesson plan more than the slideshare powerpoint, as the latter was designed to accomplish the overall lesson objectives in 10-15 minutes. You need more time than that to truly explore any software. The lesson plan calls for group formation and creative endeavours together, and that is the way to really appreciate and utilize the program.
I think images would be indispensable to almost any curriculum area. Children learn through photographs, cartoons, seeing how things work. How can a verbal explanation of "The Great Wall" compare to photographic images of this architectural marvel? You can [occasionally] lecture in your classes but you should intersperse these digital images throughout the lesson to really communicate with your audience. In English, imagery such as dew drops on a leaf can be stunningly portrayed in a photo, not only by written words.
In Math, concepts could be displayed by images to enhance understanding. Science, same thing. The host of possibilities is endless. This software makes incorporating photos in your web pages, blogs, whiteboard teaching, and wikis so easy and lends itself to constructivist learning with students authoring their own creations. And collaboration is built into the program itself, with the group features and sharing abilities. Most of all, it is great fun and instructional at the same time. How can you go wrong bringing this tool into your classroom?
I learned a great deal about the sharing capabilities of flickr, the group functions, and the organizational aspects allowing creation of sets and groups. If I were to do this all over again, I think I would follow my lesson plan more than the slideshare powerpoint, as the latter was designed to accomplish the overall lesson objectives in 10-15 minutes. You need more time than that to truly explore any software. The lesson plan calls for group formation and creative endeavours together, and that is the way to really appreciate and utilize the program.
I think images would be indispensable to almost any curriculum area. Children learn through photographs, cartoons, seeing how things work. How can a verbal explanation of "The Great Wall" compare to photographic images of this architectural marvel? You can [occasionally] lecture in your classes but you should intersperse these digital images throughout the lesson to really communicate with your audience. In English, imagery such as dew drops on a leaf can be stunningly portrayed in a photo, not only by written words.
In Math, concepts could be displayed by images to enhance understanding. Science, same thing. The host of possibilities is endless. This software makes incorporating photos in your web pages, blogs, whiteboard teaching, and wikis so easy and lends itself to constructivist learning with students authoring their own creations. And collaboration is built into the program itself, with the group features and sharing abilities. Most of all, it is great fun and instructional at the same time. How can you go wrong bringing this tool into your classroom?
Home Stretch!!
Well, here we are, coming to the home stretch. Eric is participant 3 with the chef hat! Crazy week for me, had to go to the shore for several days and clean. I have filthy hands and fingernails, cleaning and scrubbing. I am now
"Cinder-fella" to my friends.Well, have now seen most of the ICP's which were collectively quite good. Alot of creativity in this class. Mine on flickr and photobucket can be seen at the following link:
http://www.slideshare.net/WilliamMcGillicuddy
The Twt:In Action video portraying several technology applications in the Wichita Public Schools was worthwhile, especially to see the varied implementation, the remote classroom apparati, and the young ages at which students are using Web 2.0 tools and platforms. The practical advice on creating a photo album in powerpoint was also informative. I was impressed with the LoTI in this district. I also liked the reminders in the blog article about establishing a virtual learning community through blogs, instead of individual blog postings isolated from the web of readers. The link for the article is as follows:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html
Reminded me that I would have liked to have spent more time reading my classmates' postings if time permitted. The reciprocal interchange between author and readers is the true learning process offered by blog platforms.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Reflections on Week Four (W/E 6/12/08)
I thought the two most useful things in this week's readings were the "Authentic Assessment Toolbox" and the "Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages."
Links are http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm & http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/webcrit.html respectively.
I really liked the format of the Toolbox. It was straightforward and crystal clear, starting with definitions, concrete examples of authentic assessment from teachers in the author's course, and then a nice compare and contrast section outlining the differences between traditional assessment and authentic assessment. I thought his point about a teacher not really having to choose between the tw
o was insightful, likening the process to preferring a chauffeur who could both pass the written driver's test and also perform well on the road to one or the other alone.
I also liked the side-by-side chart of defining attributes of each type of assessment, followed by his "fleshing out" the chart and describing the benefits of constructivist, performance learning as opposed to the narrower confines of recall and contrived responses in traditional assessments which do not accurately reflect true learning.
With the data smog and profusion of websites out there, I think teaching information literacy is extremely important for our students. They must be able to make reasoned, balanced appraisals of the trustworthiness of internet sites, as not every one is worthy of reference status by any means. The five criteria are short, pointed questions which virtually every student can use to assess a site to evaluate its merit, integrity, and authority. If a web site display any weaknesses or deficiencies
, a student quickly knows to enlarge the search or look elsewhere. With the sheer abundance of materials out there, all claiming to be authoritative, this skill is critical for the net generation learners. Kind of like separating the wheat from the chaff.
Links are http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm & http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/webcrit.html respectively.
I really liked the format of the Toolbox. It was straightforward and crystal clear, starting with definitions, concrete examples of authentic assessment from teachers in the author's course, and then a nice compare and contrast section outlining the differences between traditional assessment and authentic assessment. I thought his point about a teacher not really having to choose between the tw
o was insightful, likening the process to preferring a chauffeur who could both pass the written driver's test and also perform well on the road to one or the other alone.I also liked the side-by-side chart of defining attributes of each type of assessment, followed by his "fleshing out" the chart and describing the benefits of constructivist, performance learning as opposed to the narrower confines of recall and contrived responses in traditional assessments which do not accurately reflect true learning.
With the data smog and profusion of websites out there, I think teaching information literacy is extremely important for our students. They must be able to make reasoned, balanced appraisals of the trustworthiness of internet sites, as not every one is worthy of reference status by any means. The five criteria are short, pointed questions which virtually every student can use to assess a site to evaluate its merit, integrity, and authority. If a web site display any weaknesses or deficiencies
, a student quickly knows to enlarge the search or look elsewhere. With the sheer abundance of materials out there, all claiming to be authoritative, this skill is critical for the net generation learners. Kind of like separating the wheat from the chaff.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
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