My EDM 310 Blog Posts are now complete!!! Yay!

To my classmates,
This semester I have actually been able to interact with ya'll and have discussions as a class. This has allowed me to become more confident in my other classes where I am usually very quiet and shy. Thank you for being so friendly and allowing me to share this experience with each of you! Also to Mr. Sullivan, I enjoyed your class and I encourage you to keep teaching and allowing other students to have the experience that I did! Thank you for being so patient with me and allowing everyone to grasp the information before moving on. This class was well worth my time!

Twitter

Twitter is a website that people can log on to and type what they are doing. Each person types to the answer to the question “What are you doing?”.Tweets are added anytime someone wants to add to them. These tweets can range from very personal information like "I am going to take a shower" to education resources such as "Class tonight is cancelled". It can be useful at times but also can be taken advantage of if needed. This could possibly be a good resource to use in giving information to students and teachers but I believe that twitter is used mainly for personal reasons. I would not use twitter in my classroom due to the over personal messages that most people post. There are other ways to relay information rather than using twitter and I believe that it would be more successful leaving out the personal information.

itunes university

iTunes University is available through iTunes. It is opened to universities to output information to it for their students.The students can sign in to the Internal iTunes U Site for their information from their teachers. The teachers have to right to assign user ID and passwords to access the Internal iTunes U Site. There is also an External iTunes U site that is accessible to all the iTunes visitors. This can help with finding students to attend in the future or maybe it can be used just to share the university's information and knowledge with the world. Many schools create both internal and external sites.

Using this site could be very useful to me as a student. This could allow for information to be spread freely between students and teacher which could result in a new way of learning.

EDM 310

During this semester I have learned more than what I ever expected to learn through this course. I now use google documents on a daily basis and I feel confident with the skills that I have acquired through this course. I enjoyed learning about blogging even though I wasn't a big fan. Another thing that I learned that has proved to be very useful was spreadsheet skills. I have been using these spreadsheets lately and am becoming very fond of them. I have learned alot in this class and will use the information to benefit myself and others in my future classrooms.

EDM Podcast

After listening to a couple of our own podcasts I realized some improvements that could have been made. It would have helped if we had each rehearsed our podcasts on the microphone before hand so that the stage fright wouldn't have been so obvious. There were many verbal fillers that could have been avoided due to the fearfulness of creating the podcast. Another improvement would be to make the conversation more personal rather than just stating information. Overall I feel like we all did farely well on presenting our topics and learning along the way. Many things could have been better but I think for our first podcast it was very successful.

Pros and Cons of Blogging

This semester I have mainly been following Jarod Pierce's blog. He stays well up to date and always adds something to his blog that grasps my attention.
One benefit of blogging is that it allows students to keep up with their classmates. While I may not enjoy blogging myself, I do enjoy reading other people's blogs at times.
A con that I have noticed is that blogging is so time consuming. While trying to balance work, school, and family, blogging is the last thing on my mind. It is also alot of work to keep up with all the posts week to week.
Overall I believe that blogging can be helpful and useful at times but I don't enjoy it.

ITUNES UNIVERSITY

The iTunes University is a portion in the iTunes store directed towards education. The iTunes University has many sections of different topics , and several universities are subscribers and contributors. These universities include Duke University, Stanford University, and The University of South Alabama. These universities upload pod casts of lectures, student assignments, and announcements.

As a student and future teacher, iTunes University provides me with the information I need to educate myself in becoming a better educator. Also, I can not only use it for school, but it has many pod casts that offer teaching tips and how to handle situations in the classroom. As a teacher, I can use iTunes as class assignments for students. This not only gives them the opportunity to work on their own, but it makes them learn how to use computers and to become more aware of future in technology ahead.

Dr. Christie

Dr. Alice Christie received her Ph.D. in Educational Technology and Language and Literacy from Arizona State University. She currently goes around the country and gives workshops about education and teaching younger students. From reading her website it seems that many people have come to honor her wisdom and love going to her conferences and workshops. She seems to be a determined individual who has achieved much success.
This website could be very useful for me as well as any other aspiring teachers. The website Dr. Christie is designed to give all teachers insight on how to "mold" the students into future teachers themselves. One of the nicer things on this website that I enjoyed were her podcasts that she posted. Each podcast has a different teaching cue and are very simple to follow. And with Dr. Christie's open and somewhat funny delivery, it is easy to listen to as well.

Educational Ipod Use

According to Duke University, the first university to distribute ipods to incoming freshman as educational tools, ipods are a way to capture lessons, lectures, and other forms of educational media. Before reading this article, I was curious as to how an ipod can be used to learn rather than entertain. I understood that internet access can be helpful in the classroom. But these ipods were equipped with recorders and such to capture every conversation needed to assist students in the classroom. The ipods were said to be used for repeating needed items such as music, vocabulary lists, and audiobooks. This feature would come in handy during music literature when the students are required to match a composer with the work. This feature could also be acheived on a regular computer as well, minus the convience of a handheld device such as an ipod.

This approach to learning is still in testing and I believe that it depends on the operator rather than the equipment itself. Having an ipod to use in the classroom is more of a luxury rather than a necessity. It is not needed to perform daily assignments but can be used to expand availability to information.

Is Wikipedia Reliable?

Wikipedia is a well known source that cannot always be trusted. Just because it is one of the first reference websites to pop up on the internet when someone types it into a search engine doesn't mean that you will necessarily find accurate information there. Wikipedia, because it is a free reference source, has one huge drawback: anyone can make alterations to the articles, articles that too many people take as fact.

People who own specific companies, such as Walmart, can change things written about their business to make them seem too good to be true. In fact, they are. Changing or editing Wikipedia is not illegal. It was designed to be able to let anyone edit its content. Although some of the information found on Wikipedia is truthful, you can't ever completely trust what you read on this site. When referencing Wikipedia, it is good advice to check several other websites to make sure the information you are receiving is accurate. I would not recommend using Wikipedia when writing research papers, for instance. It is important that your sources for research or any other papers written for school are reliable, accurate, and non-debatable.

EDM Podcasts

The first podcast that I listened to was about “How technology is used in classes at South” by Mat Cline and Jill Ravette. I thought that they did a good job discussing how we use technology in the classrooms. They went over our online classes we offer, power points given by teacher, and how we use blogspot to communicate with other classmates. Matt talked about how he struggled in one class because the teacher did not have power points to give out which made it hard for him to study. Then Jill discussed all the perks of having an online class and the people it helps out like the ones that are to busy to fit class time into their schedule. Over all I think it was a good way to tell of South’s technology filled environment that we offer.
Things that I would have changed about Matt and Jills broadcast to improve its quality for there listeners would have been the way they talked throughout it. He should have collected his thoughts and then said something in a complete sentence with out using his connecter word. Then for Jill she was thinking of all the information she had written down that she had to get across. By her thinking to much caused her to speed up her speech which made it hard to follow what she was saying. The best thing for her to do is to have note cards make with bullets of what to talk about.

The second podcast that I listened to was “Burp Back Education” by Ashley Denson, Sandy Presley, and Robyn Terry. They did an excellent job with this one it was very informative and gave examples on how to prevent burp back education. Ashley started it of by telling what burp back education is and how it is pretty much just students hearing then repeating on the test what the teacher has taut. In this education there is no chance for the student to interact with what they are learning so they can not retain the information is what Sandy shares with us. Then all the women give examples on how to prevent it.
A few adjustments would be to try not to interrupt each other when speaking. . After Listening to both though it sounds pretty tough but now hearing them has given me some ideas on how to make my podcast a success.

What would Shakespeare think?

Karl Fisch’s post “What Would Shakespeare Think?” creates a lot of thought about the American education system. Fisch entices his readers to think about what it would be like if a teacher today had William Shakespeare in his or her ninth grade English class, Albert Einstein in his or her science class, or Picasso in his or her art class. All of these men were great thinkers, who thought outside the norms of their societies and pushed beyond the boundaries of what was accepted. Fisch discusses how these men changed the way of thinking instantly, not gradually. This is an interesting concept to ponder. In today's school system, the curriculum and structure of the classroom is closely controlled and there would be no room for dipping into some of the exciting thoughts and ideas of certain gifted students.

My Presentation

Click Here to see my presentation

Boston Terrier Picture Alt and Title Text

Did you know?

I didn't exactly know what to expect before watching the video, but what I learned was amazing. I had no idea about the different statistics that was shown on the video. It's mind blowing to believe how much our world has changed due to technology, and how much further it will come in the future. Our school system must be prepared to educate each student to the potential that this century is asking for. Through technology, I believe that this world will be brought to a new level of learning and the jobs that we see today will be much more advanced. With all of the technology that has been introduced to us in the past decade there has been rapid development and the communication world has boomed. The world is a technology based society and our role as teachers is going to be to do our best to keep up and make sure that our children get the education they need to become successful.

ACCESS

ACCESS Distance Learning (Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide) is an education initiative of the Alabama Department of Education. It provides opportunities and options for Alabama public high school students to engage in Advanced Placement (AP), elective, and other courses to which they may not otherwise have access.This program offers many new experiences in rural areas where teachers and supplies might be limited. Through video conferences, outside student connections, and other forms of teaching, students can be exposed to new methods of learning. This creates a different environment that will provide success in the future. It allows for more advanced classes to be offered in the school system and to further educate students before entering the college level. Students learning in the access program are taught by well certified teacher from the state of Alabama.

This program is an incredible experience for high school students. Having exposure to online courses helps to prepare the students for future college courses. It also helps the student to start to take learning to a new level and take responsibility for his or her self.

ALEX

Alabama Learning Exchange is an online resource for educators in the state of Alabama that was made to share many types of educational materials and information to assist in the classroom. Through ALEX, the educator has access to many types of tools. These tools include links to websites, lesson plans, and also different courses of study. This availability offers new opportunites for teachers to take education to a new level for their students.

Having this access will be very helpful in the future when teaching will become part of my everyday routine. I believe that this program will greatly assist in creating lesson plans and learning some other skills from educators in the state.

More About Me!

Some of my all time favorites hobbies are shopping, bowling, tanning, and spending time with my friends and family. I also enjoy spending time with my boyfriend Christopher!! I'm also a drummer even though I dont play much anymore. I love music and consider it one of my passions in life.

A little info about me

My name is Tiffany Blocker. I am 19 years old and a sophomore at USA. I just recently changed my major to health education and plan on mastering in guidance counselor education. I graduated from Alma Bryant High School in 2007 and was part of the Mobile Azalea Trail Maids. I am the proud mother of a 5 month old boston terrier named Samson and he is my pride and joy. I will post more information later!!

A link to my university

Click Here to go to the University of South Alabama web site.

My First Post

My name is Tiffany!!