Working Hard on 4th Course

With the fall nights creeping quickly up on us I ponder how far I have come with the process of this master's program. I am now in the middle of my fourth class and seem to be able to speak knowledgeable about technology among my classmates and peers.

The other day at school I had my entire class using the few computers in my classroom to work in small groups on writing. They were so engaged and excited. Their enthusiasm caused them to engage in two paragraph assignments instead of just one. They were amazing wanting so much to do more. That is the real light bulb a teacher seeks to find in her classroom.

The Night Before Vacation

I am sitting here close to 12:30am trying to finish up my homework in order to head out tomorrow and enjoy my family vacation. It has been an intense last two weeks trying hard to complete all my course work. I am happy to say that I am excited about all that I have learned in this course. It is amazing what is out there and available yet I hadn't even started to use any of these tools. I am grateful for EDU 651 since it has given me the opportunity to try new things and also become somewhat current in what technology can do.

Blackboard as a LMS

Blackboard is the Learning Management System that Ashford University uses for its online courses. This week my class assignment wanted me to compare Blackboard to other online tools and have me evaluate them to see if they could replace Blackboard. After looking at the other applications NING, PBWORKS, and FACEBOOK I have concluded that they are not up to the quality or focused on learning as Blackboard is at this point. I do think they could be used in education but not as a stand alone interface. The programs were designed for social networking and I feel that they are correctly designed for that purpose.

DELICIOUS ACCOUNT - WEEK 5

I have created a delicious account which is a social bookmarking tool. It is so cool. You can bookmark and tag sites. You can also see how many other people using delicious have bookmarked the site as well. As an educator you could have students tag their bookmarks with a title specific to you. This way you can follow their research and also have the class share different sites they have found.

Learning About Our Future Generation and How They are Wired

I was amazed today as I read an article for USA Today about how the current youths' brains maybe wired differently. This really explains how my niece and nephew act in social situations. They seem to be unable to realize that they are rude and disrespectful with the use of their technology. Texting friends while in the company of others to me seems rude yet the new generation is not fazed by it. I was in the company of my niece and her friend and they sat parralle to each other and never spoke a word but had a huge dialog going with someone on the other end of their Texting.

Why Can't I Remember My Passwords?

This evening I have spent quite a bit of time trying to remember all my passwords to websites I have created for my master's class. This time it took me about 30 minutes to get what I needed and I am still not sure I will be able to remember them after I go to bed tonight.

School is in Full Session (Week 2)

The school year has gotten off to a great start. Our oldest child has headed off to kindergarten and loving it. Our youngest is back at daycare and adjusting to the new morning routine around here. I on the other hand seem to be trying hard to keep my head above water.
With being a mom, wife, teacher, and student this fall has really kept me on my toes. Trying to pace myself and pioritize what needs to be done first. I have learned and completed my week two assignments for my 3rd master's class. They included working on my Blog, creating a Twitter account that is linked to this Blog, and designing a wiki at PBwiki.com.
I have met many challenges this week with the assignments. Trying hard to adapt a wiki for my first grade class seems very difficult. I have decided to do a type of story writing with one of my favorite first grade writers. We will explore the stories written by Barbara Parks and also read her biography. We will compare and contrast how we are like the main character, Junie B. Jones.
I feel comfortable with this portion of the task but am not sure if the wiki will be the right application to use for this project. I have looked at the different types of access I could allow my students and their families to have at the wiki and I am thinking maybe read only. They will still have an opportunity to make comments and I feel that is where they can respond to the questions I wanted to to do.

Summer Days are Drifting Away

Since summer has begun my blog page was so far away from my thoughts. I have completed 2 out of the 10 courses for my master's program this summer. I am sitting now trying hard to complete my first big assignments for tonight. It was so hard today to get motivated to complete them. I have discovered that I am in need of feedback from my instructor. My second instructor was always making comments and yet my new class started on Tuesday and I haven't heard from her yet.
School starts for me on Monday and then I will have a really juggling to do.

Late at Night / Second Life

It seems that the computer has started to call me late at night. I tend to get on here to just look at something really quick only to realize that I have been working for about 6 hours. School is out for the summer so that is nice. I am home with my two kids and have a nephew here for a few days to vacation. I hope tomorrow I will be able to be on top of my game even though I will be really tired.
I have spent some time researching 2nd life and don't think I much care for it. I think students could get lost in the program and miss what they are to be learning. When I tried to sign-up for an account it seemed that I would be assigned to a community and could meet all sorts of different people.

Blog Research for First Grade Blogs

I have spent about 3 hours today researching teachers' first grade Blogs. Most of them were newsletters to parents. It looks like the ones that allowed comments gave up on their blogs due to lack of interest from the families. This is discouraging because we are always being asked to do a better job on home school connections.
I did research a few and saw that the blog post were done in the classroom and students were able to respond to questions with pictures and stories. My favorite blog I found was

Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337

Web Cams

I spent sometime yesterday trying to get my webcam set up for my assignment for next week. It is so funny how technology has changed because my webcam is pretty old and the quality is so grainy. Hopefully it will work for the assignment I am doing and I will experience enough to get the project uploaded to YouTube for a great grade.
Back too Blog assignment.

Taking Daughter to the Doctor

Today found me at the doctor's office with my 3 year old. She ended up having double inner ear infections. I felt bad and asked the doctor how long he thought she had them. He said by the looks of them probably 5 to 10 days. When then headed off to the store and picked up her meds and some groceries. We came home and she is now down for a long nap. Hopefully she will be on the mend soon.
While she is sleeping I am hoping to work on my blog page for my Monday due date. Week 2 big writing assignment. I need to create a PowerPoint and give details on how to sign up for a blog and also if it is useful in education.
Hopefully I will find it useful since I am an educator.

Working on More Research

My daughter has finally gone down for a nap so now I can get back to looking around the internet in search of educational blogs. I have also invited all my classmates to checkout my blog and try out my survey. I am not sure what I will see after they have visited but am interested and knowing what this whole blog is all about.

Working on my Blog Assignment

I am trying today to do some research on Blogs. I am so fearful of these things right now. I am hoping with the research I can become more comfortable with sharing personal information on the web. I am going to search some educational blogs today and hope to find some that would fit my first grade environment.

Home with a Sick Kid Today

Today is my three day countdown to the end of another successful year. I was going to do a bunch of stuff at school to get my room ready to shutdown for the summer. Yet last night at 11:30 my three year old daughter arrived at the side of my bed to inform me she had thrown up.
So Greg my husband "volunteered" to take to the couch while she climbed in with me with an ice cream bucket and continued to be sick most of the night.
I got up at 6 to discuss with Greg who should stay home today. So here I am. Hopefully he will volunteer to come to school next week and help with the summer packing.

Learning Techologies

Trying hard to research learning technologies and map them to the learning theories. So far I have gotten video conferencing, blogs, wikis, podcast, social bookmaking, streaming, YouTube, FaceBook, and Skype.