New Academy Class

I'm in a new Academy class this year. This time I'm taking Google Tools for Educators. We're learning about all the cool tools that Google has and how to possibly use them in our classes.

Reflection 4 (1/9)

Tonight we worked with the beginnings of podcasting. It seems pretty cool. I liked how easy Audacity was to use. We just had to hook up the microphone and start talking. Editing was easy too. Amazing how a few clicks can make you sound very well spoken. ;-) I think that students would really like recording and making audio files.

It would be really cool if I could make some "how to" audio/video presentations for solving different types of math problems (such as factoring) and put them on my school page. That way, if a student forgot how to solve a problem they can check it out online and get the help they need, even if they are not at school.

However, I don't know how to do the video part yet and I would need help synching up the audio. I will also need help on getting the file put onto the web. I think this sounds like a good project for next semester/this summer, depending on how long it takes me to figure it out.

I would also like to put together some type of project for my students where they look at how math is used in different careers and in every day life. I'm still in the very early planning stages, so I'm not sure what technology will work the best for what I want to do.

Reflection 3 (12/12)

Well, better late than never...

Our last Academy class was good. We got time to just play around with what we've learned so far by posting to the class moodle, adding our definitions to the class wiki and having some time to work on our blogs.

We then had a short intro to podcasting and RSS. I am looking forward to our next class where we will get some more time to expore how to use these tools in our classes. I started reading the chapter in our book about RSS. I have always wondered what that was when I saw it on websites. I think I'm going to start my own bloglines page so I can get used to using this very cool technology. It will be nice to only have to check one website instead of many to get the info I want. :-)

Reflection 2 (11/28)

This week's class was once again filled with lots of information. We talked more about blogs and we started learning about wikis. I really liked our discussion of Wikipedia and whether it is a reliable resource or not. I think it's pretty cool that any entry can be edited/corrected by anyone around the world. I do see where some people could be sceptical on the validity of the information, since they don't know who actually wrote the entry. However, isn't part of our job as a teacher to teach student how to determine if a source is legit? I think I would let my students use Wikipedia as a starting point. They can take the information from there and check it's validity in other "more reliable" sources.

I am having a very hard time figuring out how to use all this technology in my classes. I "teach" two blocks of glorified study hall, so I doubt I can use it in there. My other class is TAP Math. I want to something for that class, but I have no idea what. The vast majority of the class is individual work in packets, not direct instruction from me. My students range in ability levels from very basic math to advanced algebra. Some of my students are from other schools and are in TAP to make up credits. One or two of my students are taking math for an elective credit. With such a variety of student abilites and very little direct instruction from me, I'm wondering how I can integrate this technology into my curriculum.

Reflection 1 (11/14)

Our first AWE class was very interesting. I know blogging and other forms of technology are very prevalent in the lives of my students, but some of the facts that we learned are astounding. Over 70,000 new blogs and web posts a day. The fastest growing age group on the Internet is 2-5 year olds. 97% of students believe that tech use is important in education. That's huge!

I am not that much older than my students and I do have a lot of this technology. I have email, a blog, and 2 IM screen names. I have Facebook and MySpace accounts. I send text messages. The only thing I don't have is an i-pod. But my dabbling in all these forms of communication are really minor when compared to my students' usage. I am interested to find out just how much time, effort, and money my students put into all their tech toys and communications.

I think this class is going to be really fun and interesting. I still have no idea on how I can integrate this technology into my classes, but I'm really looking forward to learning how it can be done. I would love to give my students who don't have access to some of this technology the opportunity to learn how to use it. I would also like to make class more enjoyable for all my students. I figure if they love to use all this technology at home, they'll probably like to use it at school.