Overall Hybrid

I really think it is neat that we don't all have to be present in a classroom anymore! There are endless possibilities to hybrid classes. They can be a bit challenging at times if the technology does not want to cooperate. It sometimes is a little difficult to figure it out if you are not very technology savvy but we made do! I think the most complicated part was when we did the project with our group and our only communication was typing to each other, but it was a new experience. I found the story about that persons sidekick phone to be astonishing! I can not believe the termoil that a silly phone caused. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it is also very scarey. I think we are just begining to learn its full potential.

I would have to say that out of our two classes the first one was much better. I liked being taught by the instructor opposed to having to read and follow directions. It was also nice being able to type questions to him and getting a response right away. It would have been even cooler to have a headset that would have allowed all of us to talk. I am sure there will be many more hybrid classes in our futures so we had better get used to it! =)

Feb 18th hybrid class

This weeks class was very challenging. It was a lot of material to try and figure out on our own, and was a lot of reading. The information about copy writing is very useful in the classroom so we do not get ourselves in trouble. There are so many different confusing rules to know about copywriting that I am to scared to use anything in class. I will defintely keep the printout we received as a reference tool to help decifer what is okay and what is off limits.

David Thornburg took a much different approach about cheating in the classroom. I never thought about cheating in the perspective that he brought up. One teacher was expressing concern that one of her students was texting to another student that was in the library looking up the answers to a test for him. This teacher wants to not allow students to have this type of technology in the classroom. Thornburg points out that the questions we should be asking shouldn't be able to be looked up on the internet or in a book. The types of questions that we should be asking should require more thought out answers. I really found his approach on education to be very interesting and I think it will defintely have a place in our future. Why should we teach students to remember things that the answers are at our finger tips. As adults if we don't know something we just do a search for it to find the answers. Our students are merely coping what we do everyday! Now a days we have to challenge them to think a little deeper than true or false and multiple choice.

I am not very big on social networking, but the story about the sidekick phone helped to put social networking into perspective. I never knew that there were that many people that actually read so much on the internet and follow other peoples lives and stories. It is a little unbelieveable and kind of scarey to think that so many people can get involved with something as petty as a cell phone being found in a cab. Wow!

I never knew that our schools website had this program Scholar. It can be very helpful for doing projects and research. It is especially neat that you can follow your classmates on there. I am very new to bookmarking and tags, but I see how it can be beneficial. Diigo is a very new site for me, I am having a hard time figuring it out and am going to have to ask for help in class on thursday. Maybe my brain just decided to give up at that point, either way I will need help!

Hybrid class

I really enjoyed our hybrid class this week, it is pretty cool that we were able to have class from anywhere. I chose to go to the computer lab because I wasn't sure exactly what to do on my own. Cherish was there to help us lost lil souls!! Even though we weren't able to talk to each other it was still pretty cool. Being able to break off into separate groups and being able to instant message each other was fun too. I don't believe this would be used a ton in an elementary school setting, but would be very helpful for online courses or if the teacher was out if town or sick. It would also come in handy for guest speakers from anywhere in the world.

I really liked that we could message each other and draw cool stuff. Our group did a project about hello kitty. At first it was a little frustrating to not be able to communicate with our team face to face, but once we got going we worked pretty good together. We got to find out some pretty cool facts with everyone elses projects too. this was a very good way to learn good communication skills for students.

We also made our own flyers, and learned how to personalized them with logos. This is fun for teachers to use in their classrooms to award students for different things. Over all I would say our hybrid class was enjoyable and very helpful!

Feb. 5th class

I really enjoyed learning how to use animoto, it has so many uses in the classroom. It would be very fun to have students make videos of themselves to get to know one another. Instead of show and tell we could make videos of their family and pets. I shared my videos with my husband and he was so excited, he wanted to make his own video. Animoto also has many uses outside of the classroom. You could make a slide show for a wedding, or of pictures throughout the year to share with family members. The really cool part about animoto is that you can email your videos to anyone!

I found that the google forms where a lot easier than the other form website we were using. It is more user friendly and is convenient to use while logged into my gmail account. There are so many reasons that we can use forms in the classroom, any where from permission slips to getting emergency contact information about students. I am really glad that we are getting all of these resources to be able to use with our future students!