Where's the magic wand?????

This week we explored tools for creating podcasts and discussed ways to build learning communties to facilitate interaction and critical thinking. With all these tools available, what are the implications for changing the way we work, teach and learn?  What is preventing us from such changes? If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change and why?

Wow, what a question.  I think I would like to have some face to face classes sometimes on some of this technology.  It’s very difficult to “get it” if you’ve never been exposed to it without some help sometimes.  I know we can have help on-line but it’s much more difficult to communicate by writing about something in this case than it is to just have someone “show” you live and in person.  I think this is probably one of the main problems on why we are not seeing change.  People get frustrated after spending hours trying to figure out how to do something and then get nowhere with it.  If I could wave a magic wand, I would wave it and have a person magically appear that knew all the ins and outs of this stuff so that I could have them show me, help me understand, and then disappear again until I need them.  Of course they would stay current on everything and could give me new ideas as well.  How awesome would that be, your own personal tech guru right at your fingertips.  Well, since that ain’t happenin’ I guess I’m going to have to figure something else out….frustration coming on…..

 

Is it credable????

Blog Reflection #5

When I decided to investigate the article “California’s Velco Crop Under Challenge” I wondered when I looked at the list if any of them had any real truth to them based solely on their names.  When I went to the site, I had a nice chuckle and thought it was quite funny and very unbelievable.  I wondered why anyone would make up such a story about the background, issues and status of Velcro growers in the state of California unless it was purely for entertainment or exactly for a lesson like we were learning.  I clicked on the author’s name for information and found an extensive biography that was totally bogus.  When I checked the website by analyzing the links, there was not much more credibility available.  Nine links appeared which all seemed to be bogus as well. 

I chose to do three searches for this subject by using “Yahoo,” “iGoogle,” and “go.com.”  Yahoo came up with the original article, followed by a link to Newsvine and then Dilgo.  There were no bogus website warnings in that search.  iGoogle came up with the original site, followed by Newsvine and the fourth search down indicated that this might be a bogus site and how to check it.  Go.com came up with advertisements for buying Velcro first and then listed the original site, followed by Newsvine and no bogus website warning. 

The site to check the author would not load on my computer for some reason so I was unable to perform that check but did read the bogus biography of the person.  It would be interesting to know if this person was actually real or totally bogus.  I’m sure more searching would answer that question.

I will defiantly use these tools when doing information searches in the future.  There have been a few occasions when I wondered about the credibility of a website and would have liked to have had tools to be able to investigate them.  It is so important to be sure the website is accurate, especially when you are depending on that in the field of education or if you are going to be presenting information on the subject matter to someone else in any media or form. 

I’m fairly confident that any information that I have used in the past has been credible, only because if I was suspect of it, I did more extensive searching, didn’t use the information, or gathered information from known reliable sources.

It is critical that our students understand that websites may not be all they are cracked up to be if they are to be informed members of the community, no matter what that community might be, home, school, local, state, country and world.  If we do not teach them to investigate and analyze information they will just believe anything and will never search for truth. 

I’m not quite sure about Delicious yet.  It will take some getting used to since it has changed the format of Firefox.  I’m hoping that when I access other links that they are not all intermixed with mine so that I can keep them all straight.  I thought the concept was awesome so I will be hoping that getting everything organized and understandable in my terms will help me.  I’m not sure that adding all my existing bookmarks in the very beginning helped and maybe if I would have left it from scratch then I might have liked it better.  I’m sure after working with it for a while, I’ll enjoy it and reap the benefits of social networking.  It will certainly be advantageous to be able to organize and use links that are not only important to me but that other people in my network find important and useful as well.  It would certainly save time if someone else already liked a site, found it useful, and made comments on its application for others to use as well.  

Assessment for Learning

Assessment For Learning (AFL)

In this week’s assignment, we were asked to decide which tenent of “Electronic Portfolios as Digital Stories of Deep Learning” did we most related to and why.  I chose the tenent that stated:  “AFL should take account of the importance of (and foster) learner motivation.”  I thought of this as a very important part of learning in the classroom as well as through any type of technology.  If learners are not motivated to learn, it doesn’t matter what you present to them or how it is presented, it won’t matter unless they are open to learning it.  One of our biggest challenges as educators today is the fact that we, the teachers, are becoming more responsible for the students learning.  We cannot force them to learn.  Why isn’t there a shift of more responsibility being put on the learner instead of the teacher.  This is not as prevalent in college-level courses today, but it might be in the future if something doesn’t change in the lower levels.  We obviously have to assess how we can motivate learners but in the same token, learners have to be responsible for becoming motivated to learn through their own desires.  Thinking that using more technology will increase motivation may not be the answer.  Just because there is advanced technology available, this does not mean that the learner will use it to its full potential or as it is intended to be used.  Computer-based learning can be run through very quickly without the student really connecting any real learning to the process. 

We were also asked this week about the potential for portfolio assessment.  At this time there are a lot of pros and cons on using this method for assessment.  I believe that in a higher level of education, this probably has more value than at a lower level.  Having a portfolio of work would be an advantage to the student since it would be an excellent point of reference to return to at anytime in the future and almost at the learner’s fingertips.  However, if the portfolio is not created so that it can stay open for as long as the student desires then I think it might be more trouble than it is worth.  Being able to go back and reference something digitally would be much easier than trying to find it scribbled or written in a notebook somewhere that is falling apart and not as organized as a computer based tool would be.  It would be a huge advantage to be able to access all the information that you have learned in one nice place. 

I believe the creation of my portfolio will not only help me to reflect on my own learning, but also to advance my skills in the field of technology.  Having the ability to learn about new technology that is available to us both as teachers and students can only benefit our ability to be as successful as we can within our profession.  Having to learn how to input the information also helps us internalize not only how to do something but also the things that are new to us.  Many learners need to write things down to internalize them and this procedure does more than that.  The creator has to write it, or in this case, type it, figure out where it goes, make sense of how the technology works to accomplish a goal, and reflect on how successful they were at achieving a goal. 

Edcuational Technology Concept Map

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