RSS

I have been trying to keep up with my RSS but this is really hard. I have been really bad at reading all of the new articles that are getting posted. I have been trying my hardest though! I just wonder how teachers, with such a busy schedule are able to read all of these articles? I feel that technology is important to implement in the classroom, but it is really hard to keep up with all of the new technology. I mean my RSS gets lots of new messages everyday. However with out my RSS I would be spending hours and hours looking up the blogs I am following. The RSS makes following blogs much less time consuming. Maybe I just have to put aside time everyday to read my RSS blogs. If I block out time for this and put it in my schedule, I might be able to keep up on all the blog posts! I am going to try it! Thank God for my google reader, I do not know what I would do with out it!

tweetdeck

This week I have been following my educational twitter accounts on tweet deck. It has been really hard for me to completely figure tweetdeck out. So far it is going well, I was able to search for edchat and follow those tweets. They were very informative, but twitter is still very weird to me. I am not a big fan of twitter, maybe it is because I have not learned how to use it to its full capabilities. I am working on better navigating my twitter account. I also am at a lose of what to put on my twitter account. Is anyone else having trouble getting used to their twitter account? Any suggestions as how I could learn to like it more? Maybe I am missing the whole idea with my twitter. Please let me know! Meanwhile I will continue to read others tweets and keep playing around with it to get more comfortable.

Cell Phones in the Classroom

The other day my CEP teacher said something that I found to be really interesting, he said cell phones can be used in the classroom to take polls and check for the students understanding. This was astounding to me! Cell phones in the classroom, how weird. I mean usually teachers are yelling at students when they pull out there cell phones in the classroom. So I did a little research to find out what cell phones are used for in the classroom. I found a very interesting website which tells us the obvious reasons cell phones are banned from classrooms, but it too tells us how cell phones are useful in a classroom. Here is the site http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/cell-phones-in-the-classroom , check it out!

Majority of highschool and even middle school students have a cell phone they carry around with them. I found that cell phones can be used to text message in a constructive way, teachers can make polls or multiple choice questions and have the students send a text message of which letter they think the correct answer is. This is neat because as the students send in their answers they can see the chart change. Also every student is able to participate and no one is embarrassed if they gave the wrong answer because no one knows who answered what. I like the thought of this because the students all are learning and their confidence is not jeopardized in any way. I feel also believe by taking polls of what the students think is the correct answer allows you as a teacher to know what your students are understanding and what they are not understanding.

So yes I agree that cell phones can be productive, yet at the same time they are a huge distraction to the students. So I am not sure on where I stand exactly when it comes to implementing cell phones into teacher lesson plans. What do you think about this? Are you for or against using cell phones as a use of technology in the classroom?

Web Page

Last night I started to work on a web page I am going to use as my career portfolio. I was overwhelmed with all of the possible ways to lay out a page. I can not believe how much information you can fit on one page! I was amazed! I played around with a few things, but I feel as if I have not even touched the surface of the various possible ways I could set up my website. I never understood how web pages were created, and now I am aware of all the hard work that goes into them. When I eventually get my web page done, I feel as though my information will be able to be accessed by many schools very easily. This will be great because I will be able to apply to many different jobs with much more ease, and convince for them and myself. Who knew the internet would be so helpful when it comes to my future career! I surely never even thought about this!

Words Words Words

This week in class we started an RSS account and have been reading a few professional blogs.  I am a TESOL or ESL minor so I am reading a few blogs regarding this topic. On http://www.esl-lesson-plan.com/archives/2010/01/words_of_the_decade.php, I am following this blog, they are talking about how words are constantly being made up by movies and other popular people figures.  How can we expect our ESL students to learn how to understand the meanings of English words when we are making up words which do not carrying proper meaning by themselves. The meaning has to be explained most of the time to other people before it is known automatically by other people.  It is difficult enough for ESL students to learn the meanings of words which do exist in our English vocabulary.  So why do we feel the need to make up words?  Most of the time we already have words in the English vocabulary which will express the same meaning as this new foreign English word. If you go to this blog you can look at a few words which have been created recently. English is complicated enough, do we need to complicate things for our ESL students even more by making up new words.

  

Blogs

Since I know have been to most of my classes at least once for this semester I have learned that blogging has become extremely popular in the educational world. Four out of the five classes I am taking this semester are using blogs as a part of their ciriculm. This is so strange to me because before this semester I have never read a blog and have never posted a blog.

The blogs are very helpful when it comes to my classes because we are able to post our opinions on a topic we are discussing in class and react to other classmates posts. I have found it very helpful to share ideas or see how other people interrupt readings we have done on various education topics. It is helpful because in class not everyone gets a chance to share their views or is just to shy to do so in person, but the blogs allow you to share your opinion and you do not have to face people to do so. The blogs have also been helpful because if I forget where exactly and idea came from that I wish to incorporate I just go back to the blog and look it up! It is as easy as that! I do not have to search through hundreds of pages of notes, I just scroll down until I find it! Now I see why blogs are so nice to use in an educational setting! Blogs are something I will definitely keep in mind when I become a teacher!

My Introduction to Technology

Today I walked into my CEP416 class not knowing how this semester is going to go. I grew up in a house with out the internet for my entire life, so when it comes to using the computer I am not the most knowledgeable. I can do the basics and I am getting much better at using search engines. But when it comes to creating a blog and a twitter account I am lost. Twitter is a foreign idea to me, but opening the account was not nearly as complicated as I thought it would be. I feel like twitter is a great way to connect to people instantly. The only thing that has been holding me back from writting in a blog or a twitter account is the lack of competence when it comes to technology.

When I was in middle school my family did not even own a computer, if my sisters and I needed to type something for homework we would use the typewriter we had. Let me tell you a typewriter is much more complicated then a computer! So needless to say I have little to no knowledge when it comes to using technology. This course has already doubled my ability with what I know how to do with technology! If I can make a blog and twitter account then I am confident that anyone is able to! I look forward to learn how to implement more technology into my teaching style! Stay posted to see how a very technologically challenged person can learn how to make her life so much easier by learning the ropes with this foreign idea of technology!