Bob Dylan Video

The idea is that the man is speaking about the event that just happened to him. He opens announcing it was the late 1960s. At the time of the event he speaks of a time he was talking to his a Rabbi in an ally, this is suppose to be kind of like the philosophers of the day type moment. Almost like this is the most unlikely place that great minds are meeting to speak, but great wisdom is spoken. I also saw the man as being blind and he will speak metaphorically on “seeing” and “hearing” which is a reference on some of the topics we spoke of this week.

Week 4 - Blog Posting #8 -Reflection on Blogging

Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 2nd Life

Ah second life how I want to fall in love with you! You are the one who got away, the one that should be right, but I just can’t get it. This so called educational opportunity sometimes to me feels more social the educationally successful. I also feel Second Life is outdated. I feel that with all the advances we have in communication on the Internet, why go into a virtual world? Another problem I see with second life is I am not sure who its virtual area can compete with such application as Google Earth. I am a gamer and I do enjoy playing games online, but I feel second life does not offer anything beyond exploring in a virtual world, it has no hook! I need a hook! Yet as the blog assignment calls for I began my journey!

Multiple Intelligence

I found this area to be very interesting. There was much info on multiple intelligences, so cool exhibits, but once again nothing that blew my mind!

Blooms Taxonomy

Once again lots of great information, but could just as well been pretend on any website. I really tried to dive in and hopped that some of this info would help me fall in love with second life, no luck. Also in both area’s nothing that I didn’t already know!

The teacher corner

The teacher corner is a place that allowed teachers to communicate with one another and share ideas. This led to the discovery of IMteacher.eu, a communication tool for teachers. I did find this to be great collaborative for teachers. One problem I has was there was no one there! I really was hoping for a sense of community somewhere! When I log onto face book I am guaranteed to find at least half a dozen people to talk with, collaborate with, or find new and interesting information.

Another problem I have with second life is ease of use. Many of the areas are very confusing and sometimes hard to navigate around. I hope I find a class that truly makes me fall in love with second life!

I found these 2 videos that talk about some of the pros of Second Life, but I visited these areas and had a hard time finding the community aspect they are speaking of. I guess this is another problem i have with Second Life isn't consist. The second video really touches and some of the pros and cons of Second Life! Enjoy!

Week 3 - Blog Posting #6 -Communities of Practice

Being Italian-American I have very often been apart of many social networks. As I spoke about in my prior post social networks are nothing new they have been around for years, its just now they are online. Even our social networks in life, from our schools to our churches are going online. Social networks all us to stay in constant communication with one another, as well as send a local message even further. Any interest you may have, ideas you want to discus can be accessed through these social networks.

One social network our school has used to communicate with students, parents, and teachers is edline. If you are not familiar with edline check out the video bellow. Edline is a closed social network that allows information to be shared among a community of learners. Many schools throughout the country use this, I encourage you to check our their website if you have never heard of it. This allows you to create one stop shopping to all the websites and information for your classes.

I have used edline for about 7 years now and each year I find something new and exciting to offer my students. A few years ago I discovered embedding on edline which allowed me to included many of my Web 2.0 tools right on my edline page. I use YouTube, Podcast, Twitter, and many other Web 2.0 tools, that I have been able to embedded in my edline page so students don’t have to go to multiple sites to get information from my multiple websites. Edline also allows students to upload and download assignments, allowing a greener approach to your classroom as well. The only copies I make at work now are for tests. Any handout or reading I have my students do they must download from edline. This has not only saved me time, but also helps teach my students responsibility. I have truly enjoyed using edline and believe that this example of a social network shows the power of many of these Web 2.0 tools to help the 21st century learner achieve success.

Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

Social media has taken over our life, or has it? One thing that is changing faster than technology is the way we use technology to interact. My grandmother just figured out how to e-mail, good luck getting her to create a Facebook or Twitter account. These technologies are moving so rapidly its hard to keep up, I remember social media when Friendster was the start of things, then MySpace, and who can forget the old Facebook. Now we are awaiting the next best thing, I mean who would have thought that MySpace would seem like a ghost town compared to Facebook.

No matter how these technologies continuously develop one thing stays the same, they are all used to communicate socially. I found a great site that talks about these foundations of this idea of communication. The key to success in education is the communication of ideas to our students, so why not use any and all communication devices available?

I have been able to incorporate many social media tools to use in my classroom. I have found great success using YouTube and podcast in my classroom. I have used both to teach lessons, give exam reviews, or just keep students up to date on the happenings in my classroom. This year I have been very excited to welcome twitter into my classroom. I feel it has been a great success and my students have really enjoyed it. Its help more with keeping students organized as I have been using Twitter to update on due dates and other important events in my classroom.

One thing that I fear with social media is the use of Facebook. I feel the students still haven’t figured out how to use it properly, so this creates a problem for teachers. I think it would be a great resource in the classroom, but students sometimes put compromising items on their Facebook that could create a conflict of interest for teachers. I really like the discovery of Ning so you can create your own controlled social network. I really would like to try next year to create some type of social network for my students. I truly feel that teaching religion this could really benefit my students.

Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

There is an indisputable change in the way we are approaching education. This change is not only the advance, but also the integration of technology into the classroom. The new term of educational interaction with the Internet has very often been called Web 2.0 or Classroom 2.0. Teachers today can be classified into two categories Before Computers (BC) and After Computers (AC). This is the term very often referred too as Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. I see these two groups are not always classified as younger and older teachers, but those educators who are comfortable with using technology in the classroom, and those who are not. Very often it is important to get these two groups to work together and each must be able to communicate well with one another and have the desire to learn (Goldfield, 2001). Teachers have a powerful ability to reach their students, but many teachers forget that they are also great learners. The faculty members who are integrating technology in the classroom are also teachers, and therefore cannot only teach students, but also teachers. It is important that these teachers using technology are apart of the worldwide technology community. They should be contributing to the Web 2.0 community (Davis, 2006). This will help them be better teachers to the students and other faculty members. For true success and integration of technology, it is important to evaluate our teachers as we do our students. Schools must look at their staff and se who can be the teachers to teach teachers; who is BC, and who is AC. By working with these groups and evaluating, you can design an educational program to help all teachers better understand and develop technology.

Evan after this mastery learning does not stop. A whole new level of learning takes place, the actions of filtering good information from bad. The Web 2.0 community can be very “noisy” if you don’t know how to listen. I composed the video below to take a look at just how much information is available to us, and how the Web 2.0 community can sound very noisy if we don’t know how to listen!

Davis, V. A. (2006, October 12). The Web 2.0 Classroom . Retrieved September 15, 2009, from
Coming of Age V2.0 : http://k12online.wm.edu/Web20classroom.pdf.

Goldfield, J. D. (2001, Spring). Technology Trends in Faculty Development, Preprofessional
Training, and the Support of Language and Literature Departments. Retrieved September 14, 2009, from ADFL Bullitin: http://web2.adfl.org/ADFL/bulletin/v32n3/323102.htm

Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy

In two weeks my son officially turns version 2.0! Over the past 2 years I have endured many projects, from painting to putting together cribs and countless toys! One thing I disliked was building the premade furniture, all these pieces and instructions that I had to read to put together this one piece of furniture. Some of the things I enjoyed the most was painting his room, hanging decorations, and playing with my son in his room. In both cases I had the opportunity to create, but when I didn’t have to stay in the box I feel I was able to have more fun!

Our students are the same way, they want to go online and be involved. The have such a desire to be involved they do many things at once. The may be playing games online while sending a IM, and text messaging all at once, this has lead our students to be massive multitaskers. The APA online calls this "executive control" processes the mental CEO. I love this term because to me it describes exactly who the 21st century learner wants to be, they want to be in charge. They article does say that multitasking can cause less effective effort on single task, but in many ways the questions is this really that bad of thing? If we can do many things, doesn’t that make us learn more? Is it ok to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none?

The 21st century learner has channeled this desire to be a CEO of themselves via their YouTube channel. The 21st century learner is not just using Web 2.0 technologies, they are learning how to manipulate, improve, and reinvent many of the technologies their parents are struggling to learn. Bellow are 4 videos that speak of everything from jail breaking the iPhone to changing the layout on your favorite video game system. The jailbreak allows the used to use applications that Apple does not offer. This has not been approved by Apple, where as it does void your warranty, but they do celebrate their developer program that created the software. You can find tons of videos on YouTube with teenagers and sometimes even younger teaching you how to jailbreak your iPhone. Now this obviously creates an ethical issue, but this is mostly questioned among adults, not the 21st century community. Students are taking their talents online and creating amazing websites and helping others pretty much free of charge. The greatest thing about these online tutorials is that they are done on a peer-to-peer level that is spoken in a language that is easy to understand. So ethical or not the language and allows students to become apart of the manipulation of many of these Web 2.0 technologies, taking them to another level.