7 Digital Photography

Over the past few weeks my Mom has been begging me to send her pictures of the snow and of the Frozen River, and thanks to digital photography, she is able to see what i wake up to every morning. I love taking pictures and after I got a digital camera for my 17th birthday, I became official photographer of any events where I had a camera. It's great being able to edit out red eye, crop pictures and print out what quantity and size I need on my own time. I'm not sure if it really saves me any money between buying photo ink and paper, but it has taught me a lot about computer programs and printer options. Even with simple software any picture can be edited, distorded, added to or anything like that. Last year i was editor for my school yearbook and it was the first year we began to use digital photography. We had one team picture, the ice hockey team, where a player was missing. They left a space for him in the photo and then took another seperate photo of him a different day. We were able to paste the individual into the group shot virtually seamlessly. It was much easier for layout and design when you could see the photos right on the moniter. It was a big step for our school's yearbook, and it made the process of cropping pictures, and organizing pages a lot cleaner, more organized and simple. Digital photography is definately one technology I couldn't imagine not having. The "old method" seems virtually obsolete now.

6 Power Point and Word

In grammer school I learned how to use programs such as Microsoft Word and Power Point, but since then I have learned both of these programs are both more complicated and useful. Before this class I never knew about many of the features of these programs. For example in grade school I learned how to make a simple pwere point presentation with slide transitions, text and graphics. Lately I've been discovering a lot of other great tools that are part of powerpoint. You can use it to publish a website, show movies and make a great game of jeopardy. I have also learned a lot more about Word, and Excel including how to make graphs, flow charts, tables and all sorts of visual aids. Schools should teach students more then just the basics of these programs, because most students don't know about all these features. The problem could be that many instructors don't know the full extent of the programs either. Most programs come with instruction manuals as thick as phone books, and no one wants to read all of that. There are many "Dummy" books that try to make these programs easier to understand. As time goes on the programs continue to get updated, but the consumers fail to keep up so many of the benefits are lost. So I guess my point is that everyone should explore these programs a little more. There are lots of simple ways to get creative witht them.

5 Technology In College: Resaerch

One of my good friends really surprised me this morning when she asked me "How do I find outside sources for my paper?" I of course assumed that this is the kind of thing that everyone learned to do in high school. She needed to find "Scholorly articles." for her paper. She said she had been using google, but wasn't sure what articles were considered scholoarly. Luckily for her, i had just gone over this in class. I told her a few quick things like addresses ending in .edu or .gov were usually pretty reliable. I also explained to her how a website like "wikipedia" would not be a good rescource because anyone can go in and edit the information.
Being confused by what's "good information" and what's "bad information" makes sense. It is hard to tell who is a professional and who is just making stuff up. At Marist, it's easy to find good information because so many of the texts that are found in the library can be found directly online. Then you know what you are finding is legitimate information.
Tonight I also learned about a website called www.whois.com which gives information about the publisher of the website. The most common example to show how deceiving websites can be is www.martinlutherking.org. What seems like an informative website, is actually headed by a white supremacy group. If you searched "Martin Luther King" through Google this website would come up. Most people wouldn't notice such a mistake. So I guess the point of my blog this week is that everyone should be taught how to research online and find the best sources for their project.

Second Life Education Buildings

After exploring Secondlife for a while, I did eventually figure out where to find some educational buildings. I searched topics such as "classroom," "campus" and "education" and finally got to explore a little.

First I went to "Edunation" . There I discovered "The Consultants-E". I even managed to get a picture ...
The main purpose of this building is to help companies and higher education institutions use instructional technology, design online courses andhelp to train educators in online teaching and learning. They also screen other online recources and help teachers learn how to use them. aThe Consultants-E have woked since the mid-1990s and in 2003 they became a limited company. What's good about "Edunation is that it is PG so students' don't have to worry about nudity, obscenities etc. It is strictly a learning environment.

Another location that I visited was a location for Seminars. Here is a picture of it...Now to be quite honest i wasn't sure exactly what to do here at first. However if you search around, you will find a small laptop which has a choice of slide shows on it. My guess is that an educator could put together a slide show and either a class, or anyone who is interested could watch it on the big screen. This feature i will have to look into more. I think the reason second life may not be the best learning environment is it can be confusing. It almost offers too much. You would need someone very knowledgable to intruct people on how to get where they need to go.

I teleported to several different areas including a few art museums. I went to one, The Linden Gallery of Resident Art, which i liked most. I'm not sure if you could consider them a learning environment, but I would. It's a way for people to see and learn about art without having to take a trip to big museums in NYC. It may not be Monet, but all art can be appreciated. As for learning. Students may have to write up critiques. There may even be a way for those who are interested in digital design to post thier own works and begin to create a portfolio. Or it could simply be a fun and relaxing learning expirience.

Finally I traveled to Campus Second Life. If you search "campus" you will come across anything from virtual NYU to Wizard schools. There were 33 classes at the campus including "Exploring Creative Writing," "Contemporary Performance" and dozens of others. This location we offers teachers some land on a temporary basis to use as a 'headquarters' for their class to meet. Details about Campus: Second Life can be found here: http://www.secondlife.com/csl. On Campus there is a public meeting area, a sandbox for building, a pictureboard for sharing photos, and a sculpture garden.

I still say that second life is grat oppertunity for learning. It is easy to access, and once you get the hang of navigating, ver efficient. There are thousands of people willing to teach there skills and even more who are already using this program to learn. To me it seems safe, especially with the many pg areas. Many places also have rules to which you abide like a regular citizen. I am definately pro secondlife education, and i hope that maybe i will get to "take a class" with it too. If you want to read up on it at all, check out this link http://secondlife.com/education.

Teaching Video

This week we watched a video on a teacher's first year at school. Jennifer is an eager and excited first grade teacher who is ready to take on her job. The video shoes how she prepare before the school year starts, how she deals with parents on the first day, plans future lessons, and takes care of her class. It also showed some of her student teaching experiences. It follows through how she handles school life and home life including a new addition to her family and tries to find a balance (and time to sleep).You can find the video at this link http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4196998872085873728&q=first+year+teacher&hl=en.
At first I was a little shocked by the video, the way they spoke about the first year of teaching and took a negative attitude towards was intimidating. However, my mom is a teacher, so I heave heard from her both the good and bad about teaching. Whether it be troublesome students, overbearing principals or long hours, I've seen my Mom work through it all. I can't say that this video really changed my perspective on teaching. I know that it is going to be tough especially the first year. It will be a lot of work to build a portfolio.
As for dealing with parents, it was good to see that they were receptive to a young teacher. I think as long as you are prepared, parents will trust you. She prepared well for the parents and was able to answer their questions. She was also able to keep her students in check as well. She taught them lots of songs, and encouraged their get togethers like Halloween. As a teacher, seeing students have fun and sing and learn is the most rewarding thing. I think Jennifer definitely has her priorities strait when it comes to teaching.
A few other teachers and administrators had positive things to say about Jennifer, and teaching in general. One teacher described the first year as a "bear." But that is to be expected. The teacher who helped Jennifer with her student teaching told about how creative Jennifer was, how enthusiastic she was and how that is often the case in new teachers. They had positive feedback about how Jennifer re-evaluated lessons. She knows when to speed up, slow down, and go over things again.
I liked Jennifer's comment about how there would not be doctors or lawyers without teachers. I know that my parents were skeptical at first about my major choice. But i continue to remind them about the benefits of teaching both intrinsic and extrinsic. I do worry about "teacher burnout" but i could see that happening in any career. Hopefully I will never have to deal with a situation like that.
Overall I think that Jennifer did a good job handleing her students especially while being pregnant. She was good with her students about telling her students about the baby, handleing pagents at school, and taking care of discipline and learning as well.

4 Technology in College: Second Life

In my learning through technology class we are working with the virtual world known as Second Life. It is more or less a virtual world where you create your own character ad live as that person. You can explore, get a job, buy land, and do basically anything that you could do in real life. It could also be used as way to educate. A teacher could set up a virtual classroom where students from all around the world could meet. I personally think it is a great way to educate. You can "meet" people and interact with them safely. Of course as with anything else a student would have to be careful about sharing information, but that is just common sense. I myself have not done a lot with second life, but I plan on getting more into it as the class progresses. Some people argue that second life is not a good educational tool because of the innapropriate content that it contains. However I beleive that if a portion of the world was regulated and used specifically for schools, it would not be a problem. After all, such things occur in the real world and teenagers learn to deal with them.