Week Eight: Cloud Computing

In the past, we have always had access to our files at school through "My Files." This year that has gone away because we have switched over to Windows 7. As a result, all teachers were encouraged to use "Cloud Computing" as a replacement to "My Files." For this projcet I used something I was already working on. There are 5 teachers in the math department that teach Geometry and we were all working together to create a final review sheet since we were all giving the same final exam. Cloud Computing allowed us to do it over the weekend at our individual houses instead of having to all drive back to the school to meet. Some of us live 30-45 minutes from the school so it wouldn't ahve been a very good use of our time.

Week Seven: Microblogging

For this activity I decided to joing twitter. I am much more of a reader than a poster. I myself do not see myself "tweeting" a lot in the future, but I do enjoy reading the tweets of others. I think twitter is very user friendly and it has been very easy to find people to follow. I even like that if you are wanting to follow some type of famous person they let you know which one is verified to be that person. The most useful person I am currently following is our school athletic director. I enjoy following him because he attends all of our school sporting events and tweets updates. It's too difficult for me to attend everything but I still like to be involved. I also follow a few teachers at school that are in my department. I am a KU graduate so I also decided to follow KU because it helps me feel connected and up to date on what's going on. For me, microblogging will help me stay connected and current on the things that are important to me. I love that it's a very flexible way of doing that.

Week Six: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I went ahead and created a "Delicious" account. I wasn't too sure about whether or not I would use a social bookmarking site, but after digging deeper I did find value in it. As a traveling teacher, I have three different classrooms that I teach in and I use 5-6 computers at school on a regular basis. I also work from home quite a bit. I've always been a big "favorites" user. but that only works if you use the same computer every time. With Delicious, I don't have to worry about it. It's like having an internet based favorites list that goes with me anywhere I have internet access. I has been pretty easy to use and I think it could come in handy in the future.

Week Five: RSS and Feed Readers

Acticity #1 -
I chose the google reader because I am in LOVE with all of the other google apps that I currently use. I love that I don't have to go out and find information, it comes and finds me. My only concern is that it can suck you in. I was subscribed to about 30 different feeds and I would get hundreds of new posts to read each day. That was WAY too many for me to keep up with. I now have a much better system that works for me. I have folders to organize where they go and that helps me tremendously. I have an Architecture folder with 5 subsriptions and a Geometry folder with another 8 subsrciptions. Even those can get a little overwhelming if I don't stay with it frequently. You just need to train yourself that not everything is going to be worth reading and you have to pick and choose.

Week Four: Photo Sharing

This photo was taken by Marco Barbieri and it belongs to the Lights and Lines photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightsandlines/5315246823/in/photostream). As an Architecture teacher I really enjoy this particular collections.

Before this semester, I had never used Flickr. I have found how useful Flickr can be through a number of assignments and project that I have worked on throughout the semester. It has really made my presentations look much more professional by including interesting photos from Flickr istead of clip art, which is what I had typically used. It takes a little more work on my end, but the results are totally worth it.

Effective Instruction

The first paper I read, A Model of Effective Instruction, focused on the four elements of QAIT: Quality, Appropriateness, Incentive, Time. The part of this that I personally struggle with is the Incentive component. It's important that students are motivated to do the work you are assigning. This ties back to what Alan November was talking about. He found a way to do that by getting the students involved in their communities and taking ownership of the problems they were working on. I would love to do that, but I'm not entirely sure how to.

The second paper I read, Principles of Effective Instruction, had two main principles that it focused on. The first was the idea of reflexive learning. That means that students need to reflect on what they are learning. I agree that this is incredibly important to student success in terms of complete understanding and retention of the material. My issue is that it feels like there's never enough time to allow for that to happen in class. We are being told we have to include more and more into the curriculum every year and I feel we don't get to go as deep into as topic as we should because there is never enough time in the school year. The other principle is support. There are three different types of support that were discussed: cognitive, motivational, and emotional.

I think it's important for a Technology Integration Specialist (TIS) to be an effective instuctor. The role of a TIS is to help classroom teachers become more effective instructors. Ultimately, students are more successful when their teachers are effective instructors. This means it starts at the top with the TIS and trickles down.

"This week we began studying presentation design. I had no idea..."

that C.R.A.P. (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity) was one of the most useful acronymns in the design world. I realize that I do many of the things you really shouldn't do with presentations. My goal from this point on is to focus more on making the visual aids eye catching.