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.

Week 7 - Digital Storytelling

This week, we learned about digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is using computer based technologies to create a short story. These include text, pictures, videos, and audio. There are many ways that one can go about this. You can use iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. These can take some time to learn how to use and put together but these are the most individual and show more personality of the maker. Easier ways include PowerPoint and even websites such as animoto.com that will make it for you. Using PowerPoint, you can change the transitions between slides, add sounds, and include text easily! The down fall of those though is that it doesn't have as much personality or flexibility like the other ones.

This could have many different uses in education. Digital storytelling could come in handy when just trying to keep the kids interested in the material you are covering. This could work well for just adding variety to your instruction to mix things up and keep kids' minds stimulated. These could also be a great way for introduction of material or people. Earlier in the school year, it could be a great way for kids to open up to each other and to the teacher. It seems like it could be a great way for the teacher to introduce themselves and their lives on the first day. Kids might respond better to teachers and other students knowing that they maybe have something in common. It might also be good for younger kids to see how teachers are a lot like their parents (have a spouse, have kids, have pets, etc.). This could help with kids' separation anxiety. It could be cool to have an assignment in the beginning of the school year where all students make a short video that shows their family and maybe hobbies they have. This could be a great way for kids to open up to other students they might never have before because they see that they have things in common even though they may look different.


This video from YouTube helps to show how students need new stimulation and new ways to think. It's neat because it shows the student perspective on digital storytelling.

Week 5 - Information and Media Literacy

This week dealt with how to present information that is both effective and visually pleasing. We looked at PowerPoint, Hypermedia, and Multimedia. We covered what Multimedia and Hypermedia are and how they can be effective. They are both really great for stimulating different parts of the brain. These can be great for people with different learning styles. Combinations of different types of media together can be educationally pleasing to the greatest number of people. This week also shows how to use PowerPoint more effectively. It showed the importance of consistancy, contrast, proximity and repetition in presentations.

This information will be really great in the future. I know that it will be very useful for teaching. Elementary School students may not respond well to PowerPoint generally. However, with the use of multimedia, I can make learning more fun for them. When learning is fun, kids want to learn more. Also, it's much easier to disguise to the kids that they are actually learning if it's in a fun movie or cartoon. Multimedia makes this more possible. If I chose to teach kids that are a little bit older (so that they can handle more information at once), I now know how to set up an effective PowerPoint. I know that just because the presentation may have pizazz, doesn't make it easier to comprehend the content presented. It can actually hinder the learning process. When in doubt, simple is better and more effective.


This YouTube video just shows a lot of very common multimedia examples. It shows how multimedia is used everyday.

Week 4 - Copyright, Plagiarism, and Ethical Issues

This week, we learned a lot about copyright and plagiarism as well as the ethical issues behind using someone else's information and thoughts. Copyright applies to all tangible and creative works including literary, dramatic, musical, choreography, artistic, video,text, pictorial, architectural, and certain other works. There are ways to get around the copyright laws such as it's not valid in countries that didn't sign the copyright treaty, works published before Dec 31, 1922 are fair game, copyright only exists for 70 years after the death of the author, and the Fair Use Act which allows limed usage of copyrighted work without permission from the copyright owner. We also learned about Creative Commons, a new kid of copyright. Creative Commons allows the copyright owner to put conditions on their copyright agreement. This week was really informative.

In education, teaching on these topics are essential (maybe not so much at the Early Education Level). It becomes more important as the students get older. These topics are huge. Plagiarism is going to be brought up in every class as they go through their education. Also, it becomes increasingly important after they are done with school because at the later age it has more consequences than just a bad grade on a paper. They can be sued and fined and mess up their life just from something stupid like forgetting to give credit to the person who actually made the things they are presenting. It is important to educate students on the proper uses of sources and citations and well as deciphering which sources are reliable. It's also important to show these kids examples of what can happen if they improperly use something that is copyrighted or plagiarize. Students need to see that their action can have serious consequences so they understand the importance. You can do this by showing them a news story or something where someone got in serious trouble for copyright infringement. This makes the topic more pressing and real for students.



I chose this YouTube video because it is a quick overview of a lot of information that we went over this week. It talks about practical uses of Fair Use and copyright.

Copyright Blog

This is a video from YouTube. It was created with clips from Disney movies. It explains pretty much everything needed to know about Copyright. Purty nifty if you ask me!

Week 3 - Web Technology

This week, we discussed Web Technologies. This was definitely eye opening. It brought up the reality that kids know way more about the internet than I do, even at 21 years old. This is great and scary. Younger people can teach us many things through their knowledge of the web. They also have access to infinite resources through the web which can expand their world knowledge. However, this can be very frightening in the sense that parents have no idea what their kids are up to because they don't always understand the risks behind the internet.

Web Technologies can be useful in education through just knowledge of them for parents and students. In such a technological age, as educators, we need to make sure that plenty of technology is used in our instruction. This helps the kids think that we aren't dinosaurs that don't know anything about our students or the changing times. This will also be good for informing the students and the parents on the risks (physical and emotional) and benefits of using the web. The reading for this week was great. I wrote a paper in high school on cyberbullying so seeing this in the reading excited me. It is important to edcuate not only students but parents on the proper use of the web. It's also important that they know that it's not only people the don't know that they need to worry about but very often people they do know that can pose worse threats. It's important for kids to see that although myspace and facebook may be fun and they may look cool if they have the most "friends". It's dangerous. Some of their "friends" could be online predators as well as kids they go to school with that could use these technologies to bully them. Also, these sites give a false sense of security to these kids and they might share more information than they should on the web.



These YouTube videos are kinda funny but also scary. Can you imagine someone saying all those things to you? After hearing it so many times, you would start to believe it. That's even scarier. I chose these short videos to give examples of how cyberbullying can cause hurt and resentment.




This YouTube video helps to show how anything you post is public. It really is available on the WORLD wide web. So be careful.

Week 2 - Educational Technology

This week, we learned how educational technology applies to many fields. Tape recorders and videocassette players are how we used to use technology. In the 1920s-30s we saw slides, radio, and sound recordings being designed and used. Educational technology can be used in everyday use or even business as media and audio visual communications as well as social tools such as blogs, wikis, web pages, and social networks. It can be used for vocational training or instructional systems in any field. It provides us with active learning techniques and practical applications. We also saw a video about a meeting of a group called TED. In this video we got to see some really cool inventions that were designed specifically for practical purposes such as clothing shopping in Prada, cubicals that aren't awful, recycling of roof runoff water at the Millennium Dome in London, and a tool for scuba diving without getting wet.

In the education field, educational technology will be very useful. It will make it easier to cater instruction to more students. It adds more aspects to the traditional audio, visual, and kinesthetic ways of teaching. It help combine these on a regular basis and maybe could help the students learn faster because they are stimulating more parts of the brain at one time. I think it would be neat to see how many trees we can save by doing more assignments on computers. It could be really cool to inspire kids by showing them some of these videos and then have them try to invent something. It gives them practical ways of critical thinking. Also, in such a technological age, kids will be more comfortable showing what they know using technology. Plus they will think it is more fun because it's not the boring way that most of us older people are used to.


I chose this video from YouTube because it shows how teachers can effectively use technology in the classroom.