Emily's Blog

Memorize

2009-12-17T22:55:00.002-05:00

I found a really cool site that can help out everyone who loves to study with flashcards!

www.memorize.com

It asks you questions and you think about the answer, click show answer and then tell it if you got it right or wrong. If you got it wrong, the program will put the question back into the "pile" and ask you again later.

This seems like a neat new way to study. It is definitely easier than writing out possibly hundreds of flashcards. However, I find that part of the process of learning with flashcards is the act of writing the information down. Handwriting facts helps me to remember them longer. This could be a good tool for using in the classroom though. The class could work in groups or even as an entire class to review information learned in a previous lesson. It would be a fun way to review information in the classroom!

Wikis, Blogs, and Webpages

2009-12-17T22:18:00.002-05:00

Wikis, blogs, and webpages are three useful technologies that can be helpful in a classroom setting. Wikis are probably the best tool for allowing individuals to collaborate with others. One individual can start a document and then invites others to come view and/or edit that document. This makes it very easy for groups to work together on a project without sorting through several emails and attachments.

Blogs are an excellent tool for one individual to write their thoughts or post information and articles they find. They allow easy access for others to view what has been written, but blog posts can only be edited by the original author. Readers can leaves comments though that can often start an interesting conversation strand.

Webpages, like blogs, can only be edited by the original author, but there is no place for readers to leave feedback. They are good for posting a professional profile (as we did) or another source of information that does not require input from others.

Therefore, if you are doing a project that requires multiple users to having editing rights, a wiki would be the appropriate tool. If you are completing a project that you would like feedback on, but would only like yourself to be an editor, then a blog is the tool for you. Finally, if you are doing a professional project that is for display only and does not need any feedback, a webpage is perfect!

100 Helpful Websites

2009-12-15T18:27:00.002-05:00

http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/21/100-helpful-websites-for-new-teachers/

I just found this blog that I wanted to share with everyone! It has links to 100 different websites for teachers. The links are categorized as:
- sites for new teachers
- sites for all teachers
- inspirational sites
- technology in the classroom
- blogging in the classroom
- using twitter in the classroom
- educators who blog
- social networks and forums
- video sites
- freebies

There are a lot of really cool and helpful sites on here, especially in the new teachers sections! For instance, I went to the "New Teacher Hotline" link and found several podcasts addressing interesting issues. The very first one I am going to listen to is "#29 - Flight Risk."

A Collaborative Use for Wikis

2009-12-15T18:04:00.002-05:00

The wiki that I created for this class was a mock class website. I created a page for contact information and a page for class photographs. Using a wiki like this for communication between the teacher and parents would be extremely useful in the classroom. It could eliminate an abundance of papers for permission slips, party sign-up sheets, and weekly notes. I am currently doing my field work in a first grade classroom and I am amazed by the amount of papers that go home each week. As a parent, I would be overwhelmed with keeping track of everything going on in my childrens' classrooms. Therefore, as a teacher, I will definitely use a wiki to post all papers sent home. That way both the parents and I have any easier job of keeping track of all of the paperwork. I am aware that not all of my students' parents have computers at home so I think I would send home a note during the first week of class asking parents to notify me of whether they would prefer to use the wiki or receive paper notes each week.
In addition to using a wiki for parent/teacher communication, it is a great tool to use for student collaboration. I could assign a research homework assignment where each student is responsible for a different subtopic of the lesson we are learning about. Then, after the students research their area, they can post the information to the wiki. This would allow all students to see it at home and also for me to be able to display our collaborative research in class. If I gave a few days to complete this assignment, then all students (whether they own a computer or not) could complete it by using a computer at their local library.

PLNs

2009-11-29T09:35:00.002-05:00

Over the course of the semester, a large part of our class assignment has been to develop and utilize our personal learning networks. Within the first few weeks of class we had to create an account for the following: a blog, twitter, google reader, delicious, and a website. I was extremely overwhelmed by all of this at first, but I have come to see the usefulness of most of them throughout the course.
Twitter, I must admit, is the only account that I do not think I will continue to use. I can definitely see how it works for some individuals, but I don't think it is the best tool for me. In order to utilize twitter, I feel like you have to be on your computer, following the conversations non-stop. This is too hard for me to do with my busy schedule.
My blog, however, I have learned to love. I was skeptical at first because I have friends that use blogs to simply complain about their lives. After using a blog to report on and read about new updates in the world of technology, I love it. I don't feel like I need to be on my computer all day in order to follow what everyone is writing. I login whenever I have time and am able to read only the blogs that interest me.
Google Reader is a life saver! Because I enjoy utilizing blogs for information, google reader makes it so much easier to keep track of all of the information. I have it set as my Firefox homepage and therefore am able to view any new posts every time I open the internet. If I don't have time to read a blog, I simply leave it unmarked and come back to it later.
Delicious I have not really used much since the beginning of the semester. I think I would definitely use it more once I am a teacher to find helpful websites, but right now I am not actively adding to my delicious bookmarks.
My website, although we have not done a lot with it yet, has been helpful. In this age, it is definitely good to have a website when applying for a job. Also, most teachers have a class website, so it will be useful then too.
Overall, I am thankful that we were introduced to PLNs in this course. I had never really heard of using all of these tools for other reasons that simply updating individuals on random aspects of your life. However, they are very useful for finding information about our future career and I'm glad I know how to take advantage of them!

Google Translate

2009-11-20T21:40:00.005-05:00

This week I decided to try out google translate. I was reading an article on some updates google has made to the program and decided that this was something I could possibly use in my future classroom.
Obviously, google translate is a program that has the ability to translate text from one language to another. You can even select "detect language" if you are unsure of what language a word belongs to. As I was using google translate, I discovered what I consider to be the most useful aspect of the program: the ability to translate entire websites or documents. Here is an example of our week 11 assignments page translated from English into Spanish.

This would be extremely helpful in a classroom with ELL students. This would be an easy way for me to ensure that the student is understanding instructions or that his parents are able to read notes that go home. Communication is key to education and google translate definitely helps to break the barrier between languages.
The only issue I possibly see with google translate is that because it is a computer doing the translation, it probably will not be 100% accurate. Unfortunately, I do not speak any foreign languages, so if any of you speak another language and happen to try it out, let me know how accurate it is!

World Clock

2009-11-19T21:36:00.002-05:00

I just found this awesome website!

http://www.shambles.net/worldclock/worldclock.swf

It has a running display of various statistics for the world. For instance, it displays world population, births, deaths, Earth temperature, cars produced, etc. You can even decide whether you want it to display the numbers just for today, for the past week, for the past month, or for the past year. In addition, you can click the "now" button to reset all of the statistics and see how the numbers grow from the time you click the button.

I was super excited to try this out and I think students would be really interested as well. It could easily be used to in conjunction with a social studies, math, or English lesson. There are several topics that would spur interesting responses for a journal writing session. However, there are certain statistics that would be more appropriate for old students to see (abortions, suicides, etc. Therefore, you would need to be careful about what age students you use this website with. For the right age group, this could be an awesome resource though!

SafeSearch

2009-11-16T06:40:00.002-05:00

I was reading the articles in google reader and stumbled across an article about google's safe search filtering setting. Apparently google has always allowed parents to control a safe search filter, but now they are allowing parents to lock that setting. I was thinking how this is a really good idea for parents with younger children at home, but it is an even better idea for teachers. Being future elementary teachers, we want our students to have the opportunity to experience and learn from technology. Unfortunately, some teachers shy away from letting their students use the internet because of the possible pictures and sites they may come across in their searches. Using google's safe search feature, teachers will be able to protect students from seeing inappropriate websites while protecting themselves from possible lawsuits. Google even made their safe search browsers with a large, special symbol up in the corner of the screen so that an adult can easily see from across the room that the safe search setting is working on that computer. Knowing that features such as this exist makes me feel a lot better about having young elementary students search the internet for assignments!

Smartboard Technology

2009-11-15T18:38:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsugden/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I am unable to attend the hands on sessions, so this week I decided to learn about the technology of smartboards. There is a smartboard in my field placement classroom at Bennett Woods Elementary in Okemos. I have seen my CT use it quite frequently for various types of lessons and she allowed me the opportunity to create a lesson for this past week using Smart Notebook 10. It surprised me how simple the program was to use – It is like powerpoint, but even easier.
The way my CT usually uses her smartboard is for her math lessons. She has scanned all of the activities and lessons into the computer and made a notebook for each of them. She is able to write on the screen to do the first couple problems with the students so they know how to complete the rest of the lessons. In addition, the first graders are learning about money right now, so my CT will have pictures of coins on the screen. The students are able to come up to the screen and use their finger to drag the coins into groups to make a certain amount of change.
The way I used the smartboard was almost identical to how I would have used powerpoint. I scanned in pages of a book that I wanted to read to the students so they could see it better. I also made a slide with pictures of a tree on one side and labels on the other. A few of the students came up and drew a line connecting each picture to the correct word.
Although at first I was very impressed by the smartboard, I must admit that I am a little disappointed. Maybe I have not been witness to the full capabilities of the technology, but it seems to me that having a normal projector and a white board in the classroom is not only sufficient, but a lot cheaper. Yes, having a touch screen is very cool, but that seems to be the only difference between a smartboard and other existing technologies. The touch screen component only engages a couple students at a time (at most) and in a first grade classroom, this is an issue. I hope throughout the remainder of the school year I am able to practice on the smartboard more and find more uses for it, but as of now I don’t really see the need to have one in a classroom setting.

Purdue vs MSU

2009-11-15T18:36:00.000-05:00

Sorry these posts are so late this week, but I have been gone since Friday in Indiana without the internet. This weekend I went down to Purdue University for the MSU vs Purdue football game (yay Spartans on your victory!). Afterwards, my boyfriend showed me around the campus and I was noticed how different it was from MSU. It was interesting because unlike State, there are no roads in between the buildings. Once you get on campus, you pretty much have to walk everywhere because there are no roads that run throughout the buildings. It creates a different feeling than MSU’s campus. Although it was definitely more convenient, I think I still like MSU’s campus better. At State you get to walk along the river and still feel like you are semi-part of a community other than college students. At Purdue, there would be absolutely no need for anyone other than students and faculty to be on campus. It was nice to be able to compare campuses so that I can appreciate MSU’s beauty even more!

Digital Storytelling Reflection

2009-11-08T15:46:00.002-05:00

As you can see I did my digital story on Thanksgiving. I thought about the things that my first graders are learning about and Thanksgiving is currently a major topic in the classroom. They are discussing their family history and where their ancestors came from. One aspect of Thanksgiving that I thought was lacking was how different families celebrate the holiday. I think it is important to show students both how everyone is alike and different at the same time. Having students complete a digital story on their celebration of Thanksgiving would give them the opportunity to see those similarities and differences. Because first graders probably do not have a lot of experience uploading pictures and recording their voice on computers, I would probably assign this for homework as a family project. This would still allow students to create a story by putting together the various components (pictures, narration, etc.)
Working with VoiceThread to complete this project was not too difficult. The aspect I like most about the program is that it is extremely simple to upload pictures and add voice or text narration. The aspect I dislike the most is the timing of the slides. You can only set the length of each slide in seconds, and they all have to be the same. When students are doing a project like this, they may find that they have a lot more to say for one picture than another. This would be problematic using VoiceThread because I don't think it is possible to have slides individually timed. However, this is not a huge issue, especially for the work that a first grader is going to be completing. All-in-all I think that it being user-friendly makes up for this flaw.

Digital Storytelling

2009-11-08T12:41:00.004-05:00

First, I tried to create my story in Joggle. However, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to use it, and never could manage to get sound into my story. So I eventually decided to use VoiceThread again because it is user friendly and I liked the outcome last time.

This is a story about how I celebrate Thanksgiving. I created it as an example that students could look at while creating their own Thanksgiving stories!

Personal Learning Networks

2009-11-08T11:36:00.002-05:00

I will admit, I was a bit skeptical of how helpful a PLN would be. However, I have actually found it to be quite useful. At first I was a little overwhelmed because I had to go out and search for all of these various blogs and article sites to add to my google reader. Now that I have a good base and only need to add a site when I happen to come across a helpful one, I am able to see the benefits much more clearly. I have my firefox homepage set to my google reader so that whenever I open the internet, I get a glimpse of new happenings in the worlds of technology and education. This allows me to quickly view the titles and decide whether or not there is anything interesting that I need to read into further.

Specifically, I have found a few helpful blogs on reviewing children's literature, as well as a couple blogs dedicated to announcing new technologies and how to integrate them into education. Being a teacher involves being a lifelong researcher and the having a PLN will make that a hundred times easier. I have places and people that I can go to if I need ideas, too bounce ideas off of, or to simply share my ideas.

The largest negative quality of having a PLN is probably the ability for it to be endless. I feel like every person needs to set their own limit to how much of their time it going to absorb. Because there are an endless amount of blogs and websites that are updated on at least a daily basis, you could spend your entire day reading these updates. Although researching and collaborating are important aspects of teaching, it is important to also have time spent thinking by yourself as well as time away from teaching in general!

Our End of the Day Routine with Voice!

2009-10-25T18:35:00.004-04:00

Our End of the Day Routine

2009-10-25T17:09:00.003-04:00

Here is the slideshow that I created in google docs. I actually found that I like using google docs more than powerpoint for creating simple powerpoints. There are not as many features as in powerpoint, but this is kind of nice for creating a short, basic powerpoint. My slideshow is geared towards a 1st grade classroom to teach them an end of the day routine.

FlickR

2009-10-22T07:18:00.002-04:00

I just read an article discussing a new addition to the FlickR website. Apparently, starting this week, users can tag people in their photos instead of just adding notes to them. The device looks extremely similar to Facebook's tagging feature, but does have its own characteristics. The following is an example produced by FlickR employees.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pkingdesign/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I began to think about the implications of this on us as future teachers, and I think they are huge. We all know that businesses look on Facebook and MySpace to check out our profiles. Most people either delete or censor their account before applying for jobs. However, now that photo sharing sites such as FlickR and Photobucket are implementing a tagging feature, our pictures could possibly be all over the web. It is going to continuously get more difficult to censor the pictures that we don't want future employers to see. I wonder if this will have any impact on the kinds of pictures people allow others to take with them in it?

Google Docs in the Classroom

2009-10-18T20:54:00.003-04:00

Considering the positive and negative aspects of Google Docs, there are still many uses for it in the classroom. It would definitely be difficult to use with younger students, but for students in the fifth or sixth grade I think the following uses would be possible:

1. Students in a newspaper class could use Google Docs to help each other write stories. If more than one student is writing a story, it can often be difficult for each student to have an equal part in writing the article. However, with Google Docs, both students can be logged on and take turns writing aspects of each article.

2. Students in a history class working on a group project can use Google Docs as a place to post information they have researched. It is often hard to find a way to put everyone's information in one place so that it is accessible to everyone, but with Google Docs, it is possible and in fact very easy.

There are many other helpful uses for Google Docs in the classroom, but they all have to do with collaborating with classmates. This is a major aspect of classroom learning and it is great that there is a program out there to help teachers with it!

Google Docs

2009-10-15T16:55:00.002-04:00

As with every technology, Google Docs has its ups and downs. It just so happened that today in my TE science section, our instructor was using google docs to demonstrate the types of activities we can do with our students. It worked really well and was awesome because we could all see the changes being made right in front of us on our laptops. Being able to collaborate with peers and teachers is a definite plus. I also really like the fact that you can share your documents in two different ways. You can let some people view and edit your document, while lettings others only view it. I must say that this is pretty cool. It definitely will help make students want to use peer revision before handing in papers. And even for those students who already use peer revision, it is a lot easier than keeping track of email attachments. I email papers to my boyfriend to read all the time and it does get really confusing to keep track of which is the updated version. With Google Docs this is no longer a problem!

However, I do not have all good things to say about Google Docs. Unfortunately, when you upload a document from word it messes with the formatting a little bit. This would be okay except for if you try to fix it, the words get even more scrambled around. Maybe this wouldn't be as big of a problem with an actual paper, but for doing a resume, I would recommend typing it in Google Docs from the beginning rather than trying to upload it later. I already had a resume so I uploaded it and I am still not finished fixing the formatting!

Field Trips

2009-10-13T16:37:00.002-04:00

For the social studies section of TE 401 we went to the Michigan Historical Museum today. We talked a lot about planning a good field trip and I thought the information was really helpful to know for thinking about our future teaching careers. There are three types of planning needed to prepare for a field trip: logistical information, mental preparation, and having a focus.

Logistical information involves everything about the actual plans of the day. So where the group will meet, what the group will be doing, and what the group will need to bring. Having this type of information helps to diminish any anxiety in the students about going on a field trip.

Mental preparation involves learning about the topic you will be studying while on the field trip. This can be reading articles, having discussions, researching, etc.

Having a focus is probably the most important aspect of planning a field trip. If students have a reason to be on a field trip and they know why they are there, they will be able to concentrate easier and focus on the information that is important for them to know.

These three areas give a very broad overview of how to start planning a trip. I also found the following website that gives really good detail about each aspect of planning a field trip. Although each teacher might do things slightly different, this gives a great outline of things to think about when you have never planned a field trip before!

http://www.campsilos.org/excursions/hc/fieldtrip.htm

Google Earth Continued

2009-10-11T21:32:00.005-04:00

Here are a few more cool things that teachers can do with Google Earth:

First, there is an application that allows you to scan back to previous years to compare what an area looked like in the past with how it looks now in the present. This would be a really useful tool for teaching a social studies lesson. A big part of elementary social studies is learning how our world changes and what impact humans have on the world. An example that teachers from my hometown (Saline) could use is the "new" high school. Saline built a new high school in 2004, so if you look on Google Earth before that, the area where the school is now was all swamp. Showing students a comparison of these pictures would be a good introduction to a conversation on human impact on the Earth.

Another interesting application is the sunlight tracking tool. You can slide the bar across the day and watch the sunlight patterns for the day. This could be helpful for a science unit on the sun. You could track the sunlight patterns for an area in Michigan and then track the sunlight patterns on the same day for an area in California and compare them. This gives students a visual way to learn information about the "rising and setting" of the sun.

From what I have explored, Google Earth seems like it would be a really useful application for inside the classroom. The only limitations I can see right now are that it might be difficult to use Google Earth in a lower elementary classroom. It does take a few moments on concentration to be able to learn from, so younger students might not have the attention span for it. Also, the map is sometimes a little blurry when you try to zoom in too close. This might make it difficult to show any real detail while teaching.

Google Earth

2009-10-08T14:08:00.005-04:00

This week I decided to learn more about Google Earth. I have seen people use Google Earth before, but I have never used it myself and I was interested in how it could possibly be used within the classroom. I watched various tutorials on teachertube and google, and I am also working on exploring the application myself. I will update my blog with new ideas as I discover them.

One video I found illustrated a way to use Google Earth for teaching perimeter. If you go to the tools tab, there is a ruler. You can select which measure you would like to use (feet, inches, miles, etc.) and you can also choose whether to measure the distance of a single line or a path of multiple lines. This could be a useful tool for teaching perimeter because I could show students that adding up the distance of all sides of a shape equals the perimeter. However, it would be more meaningful to them if I use a building they are familiar with, for instance their school. Kids would be more interested and remember the information better, therefore making Google Earth a helpful classroom tool.

Facebook Tracks Moods

2009-10-07T17:12:00.003-04:00

So I read the following article today on webware that amazed me in both a good and bad way.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10367736-36.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

Apparently Facebook launched a new application titled "Gross National Happiness Index." It uses words from status updates to determine the overall mood of facebook users. The fact that a computer can determine the overall happiness of a group of people amazes me. However, it also concerns me. I wonder how accurate this application is. It tallies words such as "happy," "awesome," and "yay," as positive words and words such as "sad," "doubt," and "tragic," as negative words. I could easily update my status with the following:

"I doubt I have ever been so far from being sad."

According to this application, the words "doubt" and "sad" would make this statement negative. I would argue that this is misrepresenting what the sentence is saying. Maybe I am thinking about it too much, but I don't see how picking individual words from a status update can accurately portray a group's mood. Applications such as this make me wonder if computer technology tries to go too far in taking on the role of a human. I think that human judgment is the only true way to tell a person's mood and I don't see an issue with that. Why would we want a computer to think like a human?

Slideshow

2009-10-05T07:43:00.002-04:00

Here is the slideshow that I created in Photoshop Express! It shows the editing that I performed to a picture taken at Mote Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida this summer.

Giant Squid

2009-10-04T21:47:00.005-04:00

Here is a picture I took of a giant squid from the Mote aquarium in Sarasota, Florida. I visited the aquarium this summer while I was on vacation. This picture would be interesting to share with students because it is one of only a few in the entire world that has been found and recovered to the surface. Engaging students in rare facts is a good strategy to keep their attention and interest.

Giant Squid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Images in the Classroom

2009-10-04T21:03:00.003-04:00

I think images are an important part of learning. Many students, including myself, learn best if they can visualize what the instructor is talking about. For instance, I am in a middle ages English class right now and my professor always makes a point to bring up pictures of what the characters we read about might have looked like. Being able to see a picture of what we are reading helps me with organizing and remembering information. Therefore, I will definitely try to use images as much as possible when I am a teacher. They will be especially helpful because I am probably the world's worst artist.

An example of when I would use images is in a math class. Geometry was always the hardest part of math for me because I could not visualize the 3D shapes on a blackboard. I could help students that have the same difficulty by bringing up images from the web, such as the one below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntopia/ / CC BY 2.0

Twitter

2009-09-30T20:11:00.003-04:00

First, I must admit that I always thought twitter was rather pointless. I thought that it was a waste of time for people to post to the world their normal everyday activities. "I am going to the bathroom...I am sitting on the couch...I am eating dinner." What is the point in letting everyone know what you are doing every second of the day? Plus, how do people find time to constantly post updates about what they are doing? Aren't they ever too busy doing what they are doing to update the rest of the world? Because of this, I never in a million years thought that I would have a twitter. However, my views about it have changed slightly.

I will come right out and say that I don't think twitter is the most effective means of communication for collaborating educators. To me, it would make more sense for teachers to gather in a large chat room. The limited amount of characters makes it hard to get across a point in any decent amount of detail. Therefore, I don't think I would ever use twitter like that as a teacher.

However, I do find twitter extremely useful for this class. I like how you can post questions for specific people or a specific group of people. It is easier to check than several blogs, and for simple questions there is not usually a need for lots of characters. Twitter might be a good tool to use with students who are participating in group work. It would be an easy way for them to communicate at home because they would not all need to be on their computer at the same time.

All-in-all I see the usefulness of twitter in certain situations. Maybe once I become more familiar and comfortable with using it I will change my mind. For now though, I think in most situations there are other technologies that I would prefer to utilize.

Michigan State

2009-09-27T18:01:00.002-04:00

Okay Spartans, what is your issue? We need to start winning! Why is it that after we lose once, we lose our confidence and can't seem to win again? We need to pick it up next weekend against Michigan!

Technology Integration

2009-09-27T17:18:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to be in a placement where the school has had enough funds to incorporate a lot of technology in the classrooms. Last year I was in a second grade classroom and there were three computers and an overhead machine. The teacher used the overhead machine one time while I was there and the computers were used for the students to take reading quizzes. Other than that, the students were allowed to use the computers during free time for playing games.

I was a little disappointed in the way the few computers were utilized. There were several assignments that would have been perfect for introducing the students to researching information on computers. I understand that it might have been difficult because there were only three computers, but it would have been possible while te students were there. Instead, the computers were seen mostly as a tool for playing games. It was unfortunate that these students were not given the knowledge of what is possible to do with a computer.

"Public schools hire foreign teachers to fill gaps"

2009-09-22T20:43:00.002-04:00

So I was reading the State News today and came across this article. A significant number of teachers have been laid off due to budget cuts and many recent graduates cannot find teaching jobs. However, many school districts are hiring foreign teachers to fill shortages. These shortages are usually in math, science, world languages, and special ed, and tend to be "urban struggling schools." I guess I don't understand this on two levels. 1 - Why would the school districts hire so many foreign teachers right now when our unemployment rate is ridiculously high right now? 2 - Why aren't more teachers willing to teach in urban schools? Yes, it may be a challenge, but it can't be scarier than not having a job at all!

Overwhelmed

2009-09-20T22:05:00.004-04:00

So in the past two weeks I have created an account on blogger, twitter, delicious, google reader, and google sites. I am slowly getting used to managing each one, but it takes me a long time to do what seems like should be simple tasks. Not to mention the fact that I have a hard time even remember to check each one. I'm barely ever on facebook which I've had since freshman year. Now all of a sudden I need to manage about 4 additional websites as well. Hopefully I will get into a groove soon enough and it will all become automatic.

My Technology Experience

2009-09-13T13:23:00.003-04:00

I would consider myself to be pretty average when it comes to technology. However, most of the technologies that I utilize are not online. Growing up I always had PC, but since I've been in college I have used a PowerBook and I love it! I use word and powerpoint quite frequently for class, I use excel to keep track of my personal expenses, and I use iCal to organize my various activities. I do have a facebook, but I am never on it because all of the new applications and features frustrate me. I receive emails whenever someone posts on my wall or writes me a message so I never have to check it.

I hope that by taking this class I will become more familiar with online technologies that will help me as a teacher. I know there are a lot of helpful resources out there, but to tell you the truth I am a little too stubborn to go and try new things for myself. I'm hoping that this class will force me to expand on what I already know so that I do not become completely out-of-date with technology.