Blog Post 15

Final Project Geocaching

Final Report on PLN

Ok! My PLN has evolved immaculately! It has grown so enormous that sometimes it's hard to keep up! I am following so many professional scholars and educators that I highly recommend for all education majors! For example, I just got off of Twitter and the last follower that posted is a baldwin county librarian who is also an instructional designer with an informative webpage with all sorts of creative ideas and helpful hints for anything you could imagine. Her last post was a link to pedagogical considerations for developing an online tutorial! Something I'm sure I'll be needing help with one of these days! I'm also a dancer/dance teacher/choreographer and I follow inspirational dancers who keep me on my toes (get it? lol) and never let me forget how dance can feed the sole. Along with education learning and dance leaders I also follow religious inspirators to keep my spirit in check ; ) These things take up a multitude of my PLN space and are constantly adding to my brain power with their posts, videos, pictures, links, and powerful happenings that follow them around (I created a word for the "postable" products... "postable"). Love it! Twitter is also used for advertising and broadcasting important news! When I graduate, you better believe within the first 5 minutes of being done with school I will Tweet about receiving my diploma and completing another chapter in my book!

C4T #4 Summary

Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connected Classroom

First I commented on Skype in the classroom in which I am a huge fan of! This post was mainly about how Skype is a valuable tool that many teachers discovered can break down the walls of their classroom. Steven Anderson, the creator of this blog, is looking toward getting teachers started with Skype and connecting their classroom to the outside world. A short and sweet (but helpful) Skype video accompanied this post to further explain the benefits of Skype. I totally concur with the points Mr. Anderson was making and how well Skype can be used for collaborative educational purposes. I believe it can truly broaden the horizon for children and administrators who are willing to accept and work with it. For example, one thing I plan to do with my kids is get them communicating with a person (student/teacher) from another country! Not only will it be a friend, a peer, or an advisor for certain things, but also an educational tool to experience and hopefully break language barriers, chance to see other cultures, etc. and so forth! The possibilities are endless! So, guess you can say I'm pro Skype!


Next, I read a post titled What's wrong with Google telling me everything?. Love this post! This one really striked my fancy because I Google EVERYTHING these days! I google definitions of words for school papers or just socialization purposes. I google meaningless things or religious things, health facts and calories, holidays, recipes, anything imaginable! The possibilities are endless with google and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing as long as you search thoroughly and properly. However, I am concerned about relationships and the effect it may have on peoples connections with one another. For example, before google I would just go to my parents for answers to my questions, and if they didn't know then I would go to another person (friend, family member, wise elder, etc) who I thought would know. Sometimes I would even seek out a stranger for information, leading to a new friendship/acquaintance. Whether significant or not it usually led to a great conversation of some sort or more information that I didn't know (either about that person or the topic at hand). Interesting none-the-less. Isn't this what life is all about? Connecting with people, bonding, building relationships, learning from someone more experienced? I think it is and believe it to be a crucial part of human development. If we go to google (I'm guilty of this) those connections or lack there of, are only made with the computer thus not fully reaching the potential that the "question asking task" could reach... taking away our bonding, relationship building, and even friendship establishments. With teachers, if the child came to ask a question, you may learn important information about the child that you would never have otherwise surfaced. It's a window of opportunity (the question asking to a person as opposed to a computer that is).
So... I guess what I'm saying is that Google has it's pros and cons (just like everything in the world). We should just be weary of the extent to which we rely on the internet, and always search for a useful source!
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Blog Post 13

Alabama Learning Exchange
The Alabama Learning Exchange is a website for educational purposes. This website can assist you in so many educational areas. Teachers can post and share their lesson plans to ALEX, to broaden and expand their learning world. I have already used this tool to create a lesson plan for my future class and I'm not even a teacher yet!. It also offers "courses of study," allowing you to choose the grade and subject for further detail and shows you the basic curriculum of what they should be going through. Secondly, it has all sorts of weblinks for teachers, administrators and even students to lead you in the direction you would like to go. Furthermore, ALEX has a "personal workspace" option for you to add whatever it is you want, a search engine to maximize your assistance, "professional learning," where you can go to the ends of the educational systems and which ever department you might need, and last but not least a "podcast treasury" with any kind of podcast you can imagine... and it's free! So as you can see, ALEX is such a professional, reliable and available source for helping, informing, entertaining, teaching, learning and so much more! I love this website and think it absolutely brilliant! I am so thankful to have a site where anyone can go and leave or post a lesson plan, find a lesson plan, clear up any confusion about the educational system, help manage a classroom and teach closer to the curriculum. It is such a beneficial website, everyone should check it out!

ACCESS Distance Learning
"Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide" is incredible! This website provides classroom courses and teachers via technology. Its' goal is to create equity through additional educational offerings for all Alabama Public High School students. It has announcements, and support centers and like ALEX has weblinks to offer. This site is very informative, easy to navigate, and figure out what you're looking for. Like ALEX, I feel it was well created and does a great job of getting it's point across to the public... which I believe to be a positive and helpful educational tool to the outside world.

Progress Report for Final Project

I am working with my favorite, Jessica Battles! She and I were both inspired by Dr. Strange's geocaching comment in his video of how to get started for our final project. We have decided on geocaching because we both have a little experience in this and feel that it can be a great learning tool to incorporate geography and GPS technology. We haven't yet decided on a location or what we are going to leave for the next geocacher to retrieve but we are so stoked to get started and believe it will be a great final project!

Project 15- Book Trailer