Distance Education/Virtual Schools

This week we talked about Distance Education and virtual schooling. This is getting an education over the internet without having to go to campus constantly. There are schools like University of Phoenix which the majority of it's students don't even live in the same state. Valencia is a Florida school that is based largely on distance education. Also, Florida Virtual School is a grade school distance education program in which there aren't live classes to attend. There are many benefits to these programs. Students with disabilities don't have to be forced to sit in a classroom when they could be disrupting others. They can just watch lectures online. Also, with these programs you could go back and watch a lecture as many times as you need to in order to understand the material and therefore work at a pace that is right for you. I think the best benefit to distance education is that it is cheaper. There doesn't need to be funding for the operation of a school so all that needs to be paid for is the internet connection, learning materials, and the teachers salary. There are also cons to distance education. We did a survey in class and most people did not learn as much from an online class. It's more of a relaxed structure so it's easy to get behind on material. Unless you are completely motivated to learn and love the class, it's hard to make yourself watch lectures or pay attention. For this reason, a lot of people don't get what they need to out of distance education. Also, it can be hard to communicate with teachers when it's solely internet based. The whole idea of virtual schools and distance education is a neat idea though and I hope one day we might be able to work out the quirks within the program.

In education, I can obviously use this concept. I could use this idea to teach or to learn. I could possibly do my doctorate completely over the internet if I wanted. This way I could continue to teach while attending school. I could also choose to teach with a school like these that are mostly internet based that way more students could be educated. However, I like face to face interaction more. I could use this concept though to place lectures online maybe for students that are going to be absent so that they know exactly what they are missing and get virtually the same experience as being in class.


This is a news clip of an Ohio station. They did a segment on distance education letting the public know some of the benefits.

Web Presence

Creating a Web Presence is a very cool concept that I had never heard of before. It's basically your resume in a website version. This is very user-friendly and shows that you are more technology savvy, which all employers want now-a-days. Also, a great plus to creating a Web Presence is that you don't have to print a million pages when you're on a job hunt. You just tell someone where to go virtually and all the information is there. This is environmentally friendly as well as cheap for you. These are also great because you can include more information than if you were handing in a traditional resume. You can add pictures to this so it is easier for the employer to picture you in the setting as well as get a little insight to your work ethic. It also displays more personality. If you're choosing a salesperson and you have a very dry person with a great education and a very friendly person that looks comfortable making presentations, you are going to pick the one you can have the most confidence in. This concept is very unique and a great way to set yourself apart from the cookie cutter resumes and boring applicants.

In education, a Web Presence can definitely be used to find employment. Also, after you've started teaching, you can also keep it so that parents can look at it and know their child is in good hands. It helps the parents to have more confidence in your abilities as a teacher. Also, because it shows personality, it can help ease a parent's stress about parting with a child for the first time when they can visually see that you are a warm individual who is fully capable of educating their child. Also, you could make an assignment for kids to design less formal versions of the web presence. This could be used for getting to know your students better as well as the students getting to know each other better.


This video talks about why a business needs a website. Using a Web Presence for a business can definitely extend your range and bring in new customers. In a fast pace society, it also makes things very user-friendly and easier to find through search engines as well as easier to decide if that is the business they want to use.

Open Source Software

This week, we learned about open source software. Personally, I think open source software is genius. Using an expensive program and making it free and making it possible to customize it is a great concept. It helps the companies and the little people like us. Yes, the companies who originally design the program may lose money in the shortrun. However, this gets their name out there and people see what it's like and may cause people to use other items that the company makes which will be beneficial in the longrun. Open source software is great for users because it's free and it can be edited to make it better for typical users or even for customizing for certain uses. Anyone can edit it if you know computer code. This is a neat idea because you could make it better for someone else down the line or maybe think of a neat component that no one else thought of implementing in the software.

Before this week's lecture, I had not heard of open source software. Now I have the free version of Microsoft Office and free virus protection. I can use this concept in any field and for personal use. In education, however, I can use this idea to help kids use tools like Photoshop for promoting creativity without making them pay the ridiculous prices for it. Also, I could require students to have software that is Microsoft office compatible such as openoffice.org. This way we are all using the same software and papers can be sent over the internet instead of wasting so much paper.


This video introduces a console for open source gaming where you can edit/write games in plain English. Open source software is a great concept for gamers. You can make an existing game more challenging or even add more levels to a game you love!

Tech Tools for Critical Thinking

This week we were introduced to a bunch of new sites dealing with technology tools. We discussed mind-mapping and looked at some websites for those. This is a cool idea that used anyway but now I do it virtually and with more ease. We also talked about social bookmarking which is awesome. The old way of this concept is in saving favorite or most used websites like you would on a "favorites" or "bookmark" menu using your internet provider. However, those are only tied to one computer. The new way is using a site like delicious where you can post your favorite websites to a host website. Using the website, you can add relevant tags to these so that people trying to search a topic similar can find those common websites that actually help with their topic. Essentially, you can search through everyone's "favorites" to find reliable websites that other people use for a particular topic.

In education, mind-mapping can be used for brainstorming as a class or individually. It would be really great when it comes time for 5-paragraph essays. Yes, these things could be done on paper. However, doing them over the internet is great for sharing ideas and sending your mind-map to someone else. These are neat for lesson plans and are very user-friendly. Social bookmarking can be used in education to share websites based on interests. It would be easy for teachers to share other useful education websites with their colleagues. It could also be good for parent-teacher-student relations. The teacher could suggest websites dealing with material that the class is learning as supplemental information or as a compliment to something already taught. By making a tag such as "Ms.Walburn'sclass", it makes things easy to find and more exclusive because no one else would search that.


This video walks you through how to use Delicious as well as another social bookmarking page Diigo. I found it very useful.

Concept map of Folksonomies in Education

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a pretty cool concept. This is where more than one computer can use the same expensive programs over the internet for much less cost. These basically have a database over the cloud (internet usually) that everything is stored into. This is really great because you don't have to worry about your computer crashing and losing all the info. Also, many people can access one tool so you can work on the same project or use the same program. Examples are Google Docs/Presentations, YouTube, and Blogger.

This cloud computing tools can be used in education to provide unlimited information storage as well as give all kinds of kids an advantage of using expensive programs over the internet by sharing a connection. Also, it can really help the kids on group projects because they are all using the same database. So, just in case they can't meet up, each person can log on, work on their respective part, and save to a remote database. This way they don't lose information in the event of a computer crash.


I chose this video because it explains cloud computing and makes it a clearer concept.

Sounds

Sounds can be useful in many different ways. Sounds can be applied to PowerPoint presentations to make them more effective. Sounds can also be edited as we did this week to be many different sounds in one track. These can make it way more personal and individualized. These can also be used for digital storytelling in that maybe one song is not appropriate for the entire presentation. However, with these skills, we can mix the sounds and make the audio actually match what is being presented. This is also great because people learn in different ways. Instead of a presentation or a lesson being strictly visual, we can make it appeal to the auditory learners and make it more interactive.

Leslies Podcast - mp3 - Walburn,Leslie F
My sound is the aftermath of a car crash. It gives more of a personal account of what goes on in someone's head after the accident.