Cellular Phones and Plans

So my contract is almost up with my cell phone and I'm looking for something new. Any advice that anyone gives is greatly appreciated.

1) Cell service: Cingular is my current service and they're great outside of Gville, but anywhere in the vicinity of Gville they're awful. Can anyone recommend a cell service that is reliable in and out of town.

2) Smartphones: I'm looking at smartphones and blackberries and other cellular pda type things. Any advice? What I'd love is a phone that runs on a satellite service as well as allowing for wifi access when indoors. What would be amazing is one that can run on voice over ip for calls as well, but I think I'm just dreaming at this point.

3) 3G service: I know Cingular just gave Gville 3G service for I guess it's satellite based net, but anyone know about the reliability and speed of this and other similar services from other cellular companies.

Thanks and hope everyone had happy holidays!

End of Semester and Iraqi TV

So as the semester comes to a finish, I'm just taking a short break from completing my book review and final paper. Besides blogging, I'm watching an absolutely amazing show that I TIVOed from Discovery Times Channel on TV in Iraq. It's amazing how media and technology has changed over there since the fall of Saddam Hussein. One girl spoke about how the day after Saddam's fall, there were satellite dishes everywhere when before they were illegal. Satellite retailers were selling $100 dishes for more than $400. Where under Saddam's rule there were two channels, both run by Saddam, now there are over 30. Before all you could see was Saddam on TV, and if your TV broke all you had to do was "put up a picture of Saddam" and you wouldn't miss anything. Now they have game shows, soap operas, sitcoms, stand up comics, and even their own version of American Idol called Iraq Star. They even have a show called Labor and Resources that is basically a home improvement show for houses that were bombed.

What's really amazing about all of this is that it's all going on even though death and war is all around them. The finale of Iraq Star had to be moved to Beirut for fear of bombings in Baghdad. During the filming of a soap opera, the cast and crew were told that one of the cast members was arrested for being an insurgent.

I don't see any other showings of this program this week, but if you get a chance, make sure that you watch this. (EDIT: I've just found a link that might show it. It's a RealPlayer file though so good luck. ^_^ http://www.journeyman.tv/?lid=56089) It's absolutely fascinating and really shows the effects of technology and media on the world. The last line of the program sums it all up: "Iraqi's have taken television, a tool as powerful as any weapon into their hands."

6 Words

Problem-solving
Impact
Media
Multimodal
Inconclusive
Productivity

EME5054 Presentation

Brooke- Instructional Design
As someone who is going to be engaging in instructional design for the college of ed next semester, I found this website very helpful as a review of the basics and an introduction to the next level. Some interesting parts of Brooke's presentation for me were that there are 40+ models of ID.

The review of ADDIE helped as well as the activities related to the two models discussed: Dick and Carey and Kemp Morrison and Ross. In the activity we were told to create Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches, our group using the Dick and Carey Method which we found out is very linear, constraining, inflexible and involves front end processing assuming that your hypothesis is correct

The Kemp, Morrison and Ross model however is flexible, encourages revision, lets you skip around to different parts of the model and is not systematic.

There is no 1 right model.

Michiko's presentation on Gerentology is something I'd never really thought about as being an issue in Ed tech when it comes to the elderly. I was very interested in her use of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in Gerentology as my RPG book creates a similar hierarchy related to Role Playing Games (See my Book Review on Swords and Circuitry)




Maslow's Hierarchy in Gerentology Linquistics
Basic Life Needs- In america learning English
Safety
Love and Belonging
Self Esteem
Personal Growth and Fulfillment- In Japan learning English

Vasa's presentation on SQL and password protection left me a little frightened. I can't believe how easy it was for him to hack into accounts, yes I know it was fake but still a scary thought. Although I didn't quite get the whole coding situation, I got the point of the presentation and applaud Vasa on such a difficult project.

Denise's presentation on Culturally Relevant Teaching reminded me of my time at Metcalfe. A lot of what she said was extremely relevant to even Gainesville.

Critical Article of Technology

Integrating technology into teacher education: a critical framework for implementing reform. Valerie Otero, Dominic Peressini, Kirsten Anderson Meymaris, Pamela Ford, Tabitha Garvin, Danielle Harlow, Michelle Reidel, Bryan Waite and Carolyn Mears.
Journal of Teacher Education 56.1 (Jan-Feb 2005): p8(16).

http://find.galegroup.com/itx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2CUS%2C%29%3AHQE%3D%28__HR__%2CNone%2C41%29sn+0022-4871+and+iu+1+and+sp+8+and+vo+56+%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=CCLSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&searchId=R1&currentPosition=1&userGroupName=gain40375&docId=A126933987&docType=IAC

EME5054 Positioning Projects

As stated in my last post, I thought it would be interesting to see everyone else's positioning assignments. So getting feedback from classmates saying the same, I made a wiki to post our projects... http://positioningprojects.pbwiki.com If you'd like the password, please either ask me or email me and I'll let you know. ^_^

Peer Reviews

With our final projects in the Positioning Yourself in the Field complete, last night we finished our peer reviews of up to three of our classmates' projects as well as our self evaluation. I found it very interesting to see the fruits of our labors in final form, and really enjoyed learning about Instructional Design a little more from Brooke, Information Architecture from Ben, and although it was a little over my head, trying to learn about physiological and socio-cognitive changes produced by exposure to virtual environments.

I'm not sure what they thought of my game (or if it even worked for them... I know Ben had problems opening it), but I really enjoyed looking through Brooke and Ben's websites (Great jobs designing both of you!), and reading through Baird's Lit Review.

I'd be interested in seeing the rest of my classmates' projects as well... Maybe we could start a class wiki with links to each of them. ^_^

Progress! Lots of Progress!

Just a quick 3:30 AM update on Sunday night. Lots of progress this weekend even with taking Saturday night off to get a little culture in my otherwise work filled weekend (If you haven't seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, I'm not sure if it's still playing or not after Thanksgiving Break, but it was hilarious!) Anyway I've finished my Positioning Yourself in the Field assignment which includes the Introduction and first chapter of the Role Playing Game. It can be found at actsoup.net/FCAT.zip It is a zip file, and includes the game, a ReadMe and my Purpose, Coverage, Synthesis and Application paper. Hopefully I'll be able to add some more to the game for my presentation but I'm going to be spending a great deal of time on trying to get a school to let me do any kind of test of the game because there's no way I'm going to make it back down to Tampa by the end of semester.

Anyway it's nearly 4AM and I have to teach at 9:30 so I better head off to bed, just wanted to blog my excitement at having progress this weekend. It's still not what I hoped for the semester but as previously stated, I bit off way more than I could chew and I feel like I'm back on track now. ^_^

Biting off more than I can chew

Strep has prevented me from doing much work this week. I feel like I've slept from the time that I left Norman right before class last Thursday until this Wednesday, and because of that I'm way behind again. Darn you stupid sickness!

Anyway this weekend I caught up on my online course and finished everything from it. Of course that's after spending until 5Am last night toiling with Javascript. Now on to finish reading Swords and Circuitry and keep building the game. I've completely finished the introduction and am in the process of Paul Revere's Ride, but I have to get something in by tomorrow night for Dr. Dawson's class including what I used from my annotated bilbiography to make the game. There's no way I'll have a completed product or even a completed part of the product that I'm testing for Dr. Ferdig's class, but at least I'll have something that I can show my classmates... I hope. ^_^

Anyway enough of a break from reading and building the game. Time to get back to work. STRESSED!!!!!! Can't wait for Thanksgiving.

Professional Web Presence

Just a quick update that my Professional Web Presence has been updated and moved to a new server. I'm having problems with my domain name however and geocities won't let me move it to my new webhost yet. So for the time being my PWP is at http://actsoup.dreamhosters.com/KeithNewhouse. Over December break I'm going to revamp the site completely, but for now I've just updated it with my current projects, and fixed up my CV.

A special thank you to Bryan for letting me know about dreamhost, who I'm also working with to finish our Contribution to the Department project. I'll post that today when we finish it.

No Significant Difference

For the No Significant Difference and Media Debate article, I chose Effective Student Outcomes: A Comparison of Online and Face-to-Face Delivery Modes by Jane M. Carey (http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews/deosnews11_9.asp). The article compares learning by asynchronous web based classes and synchronous face-to-face. I found the article to be well written from it's first sentence of the introduction, "A myriad of studies have concluded that there is no significant difference in the learning outcomes of online students and face-to-face students" for which Carey cites multiple authors (Russell 1999; Barry and Runyan 1995; Cheng, Lehman, and Armstrong 1991; Martin and Rainey 1993; Moore et al. 1990), to Carey's lack of ego in realizing that so many others have written similar ideas and she is only adding her feeling to the fray.

Carey like her predecessors found that through her studies there was no significant difference in learning from a face-to-face encounter versus an online class. She bases her findings on outcome measures that include gain scores (difference between pretest and posttest knowledge), grade expressed as a percentage, and student satisfaction as demonstrated by a course in management information systems.

Social Networking for Jade

For my blog post for Jade I looked at an article called "Should You Join a Social Networking Website?". It can be found at http://socialnetworking.knowhow-now.com/blog/are-you-interested-in-meeting-new-people-online-if-so-there-is-a-good-chance-that-you-have-heard-of-social-networking-websites-before-social-networking-websites-are-in-a-way-like-a-community-they-allo/ . Except for the fact that the article has the longest web adress known to man, I found it to be a good introductory source for those taking the first steps toward joining a social networking website. It gives a basic understanding to what social network sites are as well as reasons to join and a few examples.

Presentations

Two great presentations on 11/2. Just a few things about each that I found interesting:

Dan talked about Merlot and Reusable Learning Objects: Learning Objectified. I really liked his definition of RLO- Any digital resource that can be reused in the service of education or training that supports a learning objective.

Very detailed presentation, and got me thinking about my former 2nd grade class and my SmartBoard. I wondered if he did any research on using RLO's with SmartBoards etc?

Kathryn did her presentation on Lifelong Learning and Personal Learning Objectives. In small groups we looked at what Lifelong learning meant to us. Our group came up with various definitions and anectodes:

We figure that everyone is participating in some kind of lifelong learning because you are learning no matter what you do. For example, Ben likes to read the newspaper because he learns, but some people also do lifelong learning through National Enquirer. Learning about JLo's latest love affair may not be as important to some people as learning about World Affairs, but you're still learning about something that can create a social connection.

Another anectode involved my watching and learning what happens on One Tree Hill, and then transferring my learning to Jade. Even just biting down on chocolate taught Mary that eating chocolate with caramel before having to speak is not a great idea. ^_^

In Kathryn's presentation I also really enjoyed her Instructional Designer Role Play. My partner Denise asked me as Instructional Designer to help her get her photos online, and I asked Denise how to make a movie. I was much more impressed with her Instructional Design than what I said to do. She gave me multiple options, and was very confident with her solutions. This may be something I need to work on, especially as my iMovie lesson blew up in my face today from technological problems.

Annotated Bib and Game Updates

Annotated Bibliography is done! I had some colleagues look it over and they said it was pretty good. I may make a few changes and I may be asked to fix a few things, but I think it turned out pretty good for my first one.

The game is going pretty well, however I still only have one school for testing. If I don't hear from anyone by the middle of next week I'm going to start making school visits to meet with principals. I should have done something that could be used by college students and forced it on my EME4406 class. ^_^

My IRB was resent out with compensation and assent. We'll see what happens with that.

Gaming IRB + Gaming Class EME6931

I got my IRB for the gaming class back and I just have a few minor changes to make to it.

1. Include compensation in the informed consent.
2. Need assent script (an assent is what you will say to minor
participants in age appropriate language). If you need an example there
is one provided for you on our website.

In other gaming news, I've started working on the story and created a few maps for the beginning of the first level. I still have no ideas on the introduction however. I'm hoping Swords and Circuitry will help me with that.

I presented on RPGs and other games in Secondary Education for my class as well as teaching some basics of RPG Maker XP and I think most of the class enjoyed it. I had a few of my classmates tell me that I did a great job. I wasn't sure as I was doing it, but I'm more confident of my performance now.

Just as with my Foundations course I'm hoping a To Do List will help me with the rest of the work for this class as well now.

Finish Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning by Monday: So far really enjoying the book especially about digital immigrants vs. digital natives. It's interesting because as much of a digital native as I am, I can already feel myself in certain aspects becoming an immigrant and being surpassed by those younger, not in many areas of technology, but there are definitely some.

Pick a second book to read and review: I have a few books I'm thinking about for this. The first is my RUBY book, and the second is the second book that I have on Interlibrary Loan about Storytelling and Character Design in RPGs. I'll have to discuss it with Dr. Ferdig on Monday.

Gaming References: I don't think we've started these as a class, and I haven't kept strict records of websites or articles of interest, but I have links all over the place and I'm going to make it a point to start using Delicious more or search for a bookmark program that works for me because as much as I like Delicious, I need more. ^_^

Create RPG: Now that I've messed around with RPG Maker XP enough, it's time to start working on the actual game.

Create Pre and Post Test for Study: Since I've found out that there is no such thing as FCAT Explorer for History Dr. Ferdig has suggested that I create a Web based history test with questions that would be similar to an FCAT based on the historic periods that I use for the RPG.

Test RPG: Still no word from Lincoln Middle School or Kanapaha. I'm going to start emailing some more principals this week, as well as sending my IRB to Lincoln and Kanapaha.

Paper (Make a Headline!): After testing comes the paper of my findings. Before I write it, I have to read some other papers to get a feel for the format, layout and language that I should use.

EME5054 Confusion Untangled

So I think I've been a little bit confused over the assignments, so I'm using this entry to clear up and plan out each of them.

Weekly Weblog: I've been blogging although I feel like I've fallen a little bit behind in it as well as commenting on other blogs. This is one of the things I will catch up on in the next few weeks. The blogs that I do have, incorporate multimedia so I'm ahead with that one.

Positioning Yourself in the Field: My final product will be the RPG from my Game Theory Class along with reading the book Swords and Circuitry and a list of ideas from the book that I've used in my game.

Authentic Technical Development: I've been working on learning RPG Maker and the RUBY Programming Language which is used in RPG Maker for advanced features, but is also the up and coming web programming language. I'll be posting my contract tomorrow as well as printing it out for class tomorrow.

Personal Progress Toward My Degree: Next Tuesday I'm going to start looking at my Plan of Study and complete some of the paperwork as well as email Dr. Dawson and Dr. Ferdig about times that I can meet with them about my Plan of Study. I also want to talk about what I would have to do if I wanted to apply for my PhD or EdD. I haven't decided on anything yet, but I'm having such a great time with my graduate studies so far and feel that continuing my education is definitely an option. I've researched a few jobs and will continue to, but I think my RUBY technical professional development will greatly aid me in job searching when it comes time.

Contribution to the Ed Tech Program: I'm working with Bryan on writing a letter to accepted graduate students to give them a more personal experience and help them decide on a graduate program. So far no progress so I have to talk to Bryan this week about it.

Group Project: Based on chapter 6. My assignment is to explain Constructivism in 5 mins, and add to the wiki at http://eme5054.pbwiki.com

Other assignments and self assigned projects: Although I'm not required to at this point, I'd like to start using RefWorks and make it a point to remember to use it while researching for this class as well as others. Also as I am thinking about going for my Ph.D or Ed.D if I have time this semester, I'm going to do a book review like the rest of the doctoral students.

I think that about wraps it up for EME5054 Foundations. To be continued for my other two classes as well as things that I have to do for the class I teach.

Book Review

For my book review I will be reading one of two books (whichever comes in on my Interlibrary Loan first): Swords & circuitry : a designer's guide to computer role playing games by Neal Halford, Character development and storytelling for games by Lee Sheldon. These books will help me greatly in creating a narrative for my Role Playing Game for Dr. Ferdig's class. My review will focus on the techniques described in the book as they apply to my educational Role Playing Game.

Positioning Yourself in the Field Part 2

I've decided for my Positioning Yourself in the Field assignment that it will be way too much this semester for me to research tech coordination for school district and I'm just going to bring in some of my research on RPGs so that I can focus on one thing and do that much of a better job on it. Along with this I plan to explore the areas of test prep using games because only by seeing where we are and where we've come from in the field of educational gaming can I hope to create my RPG and have it improve upon current issues in educational gaming. I figure it's a lot broader than just focusing on how FCAT is created, but it's narrower than educational gaming in general and it will greatly help my research for Game Theory and Design.

My RUBY book arrived from Amazon on Monday and I've read through the introduction. I'm very excited to get started on learning the language.

EME5054 Paradigms and Technology

In class last week we discussed the paradigms of learning being Positivism (related to behaviorism and drill and practice), Interpretivism (related to constructivism and cognitivism), and Critical Theory (related to Realism). For each of these we looked at examples of technology that can be used to teach in these paradigms.

For class this week we have researched to find other examples.

Postivism
Typer Shark- Typer Shark teaches touch typing by having students type the letters they see appearing on sharks racing across the screen.

Geosense- While a much more difficult drill and practice Geosense shows a city of the world and the student has to click on a world map where they think the city is. It is however very addictive for grad students (I spent a few hours on it this week ^_^)

US Constitution Trivia- More of a Postivist Assessment website, the main part of it is a quiz on the US Constitution that is self checking.

Interpretivism
Terrafly- Allows your student to type in a city and gives lots of facts and charts and images that a student can explore

Exploring the Planets- Allows students to learn about the planets through graphics, charts and games.

The Biology Project- Allows the student to explore different topics in biology.

Powerpoint of Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology is about Epistemology and the Design of Learning Environments. The Powerpoint below charts the chapter in what I feel is a much easier to understand and effective way than the book.

Authentic Technical Professional Development

For Dr. Dawson's class I was torn for my positioning myself in the field assignment between either doing something for my RPG, or something to do with technology coordinating for the district or a school. After much debate I've decided to stick to the game idea. The game is going to take up so much time and I just think I'll be spreading myself too thin if I try to add another major project in this semester. So for the Positioning I'm going to do the research on what kind of research goes into educational games, and for the professional development I'm going to learn how to program in RUBY which is an up and coming programming language that is going to be extremely useful not just because it's what RPG Maker XP uses, but it's being predicted that it will be a major programming language for Internet and Web2.0 apps in the coming year. A quick look at Amazon shows 7 different books that are on preorder for this language as well as 3 that have been published this year. I ordered RUBY for the Pragmatic Programmer yesterday and it should arrive by Tuesday.

Learning Theories and Behaviorism on Lost

No matter how many times I read about learning theories, I do not understand them completely. It's not just me though. I polled every education major and teacher on my buddy list today and not one of them knew the differences between the theories. I understand Behaviorist Learning Theory, and Constructivism because they've been smashed into my brain over and over again and I think I finally get Situated Learning Theory now, but any of the others and I'm completely lost. I made a fun inspiration though that shows basic definitions of a bunch of learning theories.


On a related note, a sneak peek of the new season of Lost last night showed a great example of behaviorism. Sawyer is in a cage with a button that has a picture of a fork and knife on it. He pushes it. A voice says, "Warning". He pushes it again. "Warning." The man in the cage next to his says, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." As he's doing this, all I can keep thinking is if he gets shocked I'm going to be so excited to see Pavlovian experiments on this show! (A little twisted I know, but hey I'm excited when I can seem intelligent^_^) Sure enough, Sawyer pushes the button again and it shocks him throwing him back against the bars of his cage. That should help Sawyer learn that pushing the button is not a good idea just as the man in the cage next to his learned before. Check it out!

Blogger deleted my last post!

Blogger deleted my hw for EME5054. So here we go again and I'm backing it up on my email. TAKE THAT BLOGGER! :-P

As previously stated in my blog, I have no idea what I want to do once I graduate from the Ed Tech program with my Masters, but I started looking last semester at jobs on Monster and Chronicle, and I'm looking again for EME5054

So a few paths I'm thinking about are:

Tech Coordinator for schools- Even with this there are two paths that I'm thinking about. The first is involving myself in the classrooms at an individual school as the tech teacher and arranging Professional Development for the teachers, or working at the district designing technology curriculum which again would probably involve some professional development for teachers.

Educational Software Designer- Again two different paths, either in designing what the programmers will create, or actually creating the programs.

Distance Education- I'm interested in looking into developing Teacher Professional Development online which I started last semester.

College Professor- I'm really enjoying teaching my EME4406 lab, although I'm still trying to get into teaching college students. It's been tough getting all my educational ideas to apply to college level, especially as I'm teaching a class on secondary education. I am really enjoying it though and as I get deeper into the semester I'm sure I'll become more at ease with it.

So what do I need to become qualified for these positions?

I'm working on learning programming. One of my goals this semester is to learn some gaming languages. I'm starting with RUBY which can be used in RPG Maker XP, but I'd also like to learn some Flash, C# (I know a little C++ but could use a refresher), and I really need to learn to use Dreamweaver more effectively with CSS. I'm hoping that as I'm teaching EME4406 I'll be able to learn a lot more myself as I'm trying to teach my students.

First week of classes/ Game Theory

It's been an exciting first week of classes. Teaching EME4406 has been going real well. I have an average of 4 students in each section. The website is still a work in progress, but it's getting there. My coteacher fixed most of it up, and I just have to play with some of the headings for the lab section. http://education.ufl.edu/Courses/EME4406

I'm especially excited about my Game Theory and Design class with Dr. Ferdig. I was up half the night on Monday because every time I was about to fall asleep I would get a new idea for my final project for that class. I've already started doing research for the class, and can't wait to get started on the project itself. I'm creating an educational RPG for either 7th or 8th graders. I'm not sure of the details yet, but I have a storyline set up, as well as a potential testing base. One of the things I have to figure out in the next week is how I want it to be used, whether it's going to be for parents to help their children, or for teachers to use with their students, or even as FCAT practice. I probably will not talk too much about it on here though until close to the end of the semester, unless I have a question about something in it.

EME5054: What is Instructional Technology? What are some journals and associations in Ed Tech?

In Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology by Reiser and Dempsey, Section 1 discusses what Instructional Design means. Whenever I'm asked by my friends and family what I'm doing as an Ed Tech major, I've always just said finding and implementing computers in classrooms, but after reading this section there's so much more to it than that. "The field of instructional design and technology (also known as intructional technology) encompasses the analysis of learning and performnance problems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation and management of instructional and noninstuctional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performnace in a variety of settings, particularly educational institutions and the workplace. Professionals in the field of instructional design and technology often use systematic instructional design preocedures and employ instructional media to accomplish their goals. Moreover in recent years they have paid increasing attention to noninstructional solutions to some performance problems. Research and theory related to each of the aforementioned areas is also and important part of the field." (p7)

So basically, it's the process and tools used to incorporate technology into a learning environment or workplace.

Chapter 26 discusses different journals dealing with instructional design

The International Forum of Educational Technology and Society "encourages disscussions on the issues affecting the educational system developer and education communities. The forum conducts multiple online discussion threads on specific topics concerning the design and implementation of integrated learning environments. The discussions are aimed to be definitive and helpful in reaching conclusions that are then disseminated to the public. [http://ifets.ieee.org]" This journal is not located in our library or on the Ed Tech page.

Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE) is an online peer reviewed journal, established and jointly sponsored by five professional associations (AMTE, AETS, NCSS-CUFA, CEE, and SITE). This is the only joint venture of this kind in the field of teacher education. Each professional association has sole responsibility for editorial review of articles in it's discipline. [http://www.citejournal.org] This journal is found in our library as well as on the Ed Tech website.

The American Educational Research Association AERA which is listed on the Professional Organization page of the Ed Tech website is "concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and evaluation and, by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results." I keep hearing about this organization in my classes and from my colleagues in the department and I'm glad to finally know what it means.

Final Week of Class

I can't believe how fast these 8 weeks have gone! It's been stressful, but I've had a lot of fun and learned a lot in all three classes. In the coming weeks I have a whole bunch of projects that I'll be working on and including various elements from each of the classes: I'm preparing to teach the lab portion of EME4406 Integrating Technology into the Secondary Classroom, I'm creating a Professional Development Workshop that I started last semester, but am going to include more from these classes as well, and I'm fixing up my Dad's publishing company's website, and thinking of including a webquest as well as a few other fun activities to go with his Rockhound Science Mysteries series of books and CD-Roms. (http://www.earthkidspublishing.com)

I've had a lot of fun though, and can't wait for the fall semester! ^_^

Wikis, and Bookmarks and Culminating Activities... Oh my!

Coming up to the last week of class...
Interesting information about Wikis. I've used Wikipedia and a few others for some research, but I haven't made one yet. The info in our readings for this week will come in handy this coming week in my Media in Literacy class though. We're creating Wikis on Tuesday for using media in the classroom. My group is making on Using Sitcoms to teach Narrative. We'll see how that turns out. ^_^

I looooooove Delicious. Social bookmarking is great. So many interesting links from classmates, and I've also subscribed to World Cup tags so I can get all my World Cup background info as it's uploaded to the net.

As for the culminating activity for 5405... I loved the book. Anyone who has any interest in Multiple Intelligences, read Intelligence Reframed. Writing the paper on it was a little rough, but I got through it and I think made enough connection with technology even though the book doesn't really go into detail on it. Thank you to those who read my rough draft for your comments. As I said, it was extremely rough and although I really wasn't in the direction I wanted to be with it, I think some of the things you said helped. ^_^

Post for Week 6

One of the most exciting things I learned this week was how well the subscriptions on delicious works. Bloglines is so much fun to use to look at all of the work the class has been posting on, but I was especially excited today when I logged in and saw that there were 31 websites listed in my UFET subscription. Everything from digital photos to webxact info to webquests were listed. What a great way to share with others that are interested!

As for my final paper. I appreciated some of the comments that I was given on it. It was just a rough draft (where I had three other papers, two powerpoints, a couple of postings and a whole bunch of pictures to take in the same weekend) so obviously I wasn't expecting anything close to perfection from it. The next draft is coming along better especially since I've added a whole bunch of information from a few chapters that were added after the edition that I read based entirely on technology and media. I hope to post that by Wednesday so I can get some feedback before it's due on Sunday.

My only other comment for this week is that I really should not have taken three summer classes at the same time! ^_^

Internet-based Instructional Activity- Option 2

#2 Educational Resource

In Dr. Ferdig's class I created a Professional Development Workshop on using the Internet in the classroom. I also made an online version. For this assignment, I decided to take what I previously made and improve upon it as well as share it with some other teachers and the teachers who originally attended my workshop. So far the new teachers have really enjoyed it, and the teachers who already attended my workshop found it very helpful as review for what we went over and liked the little additions I've made from what I've learned in this class as well as EME6205 my digital photography class.

The online workshop is available here:
http://plaza.ufl.edu/knewhous/PD/internet.html

Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

As I said in the last post, I was first introduced to Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (although the existential one is new since then) during my sophomore year of college. My professor Dr. Daniels thought that Gardner was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and as it was a technology in education class along with the short biography that we wrote on Gardner we were given an activity to incorporate technology into a lesson plan using a few of the MI's. My group consisting of my friends Logan and Christine decided to create a lesson plan for history on the 60's decade. In our lesson we used clips from the movie The 60's with Julia Stiles, had the students create a Powerpoint of the 60's along with either writing a story about three icons from the 60's or performing a short skit.

Curriculum Links on Weather

Linguistic: Read about tropical cyclones
Logical Mathematical: Our Town- Thermometer Math
Spatial: Make Weather maps for bulletin boards
Bodily-kinesthetic: The Rain Game
Musical: Sing along with the weather dude!
Interpersonal: Each group presents a skit about the effects of weather on events such as picnics.
Intrapersonal: Create a science journal on the weather
Naturalist: Create a weather controlled environment such as aquarium or terrarium
Existential: Adopt a city and view weather there.

Culminating Activity

For my culminating activity, I've chosen to do the book review on the book Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century by Howard Gardner. I've been interested in Howard Gardner since my sophomore year of college when we had to write a short biography about him for one of my education classes, but we were never able to get really in depth, especially regarding the use of technology in the MI's. As a teacher, it was always very important for me to give my students alternate assignments using the MI's, sometimes that included using technology, and other times it may not have. I've found that I learn using nearly all of the MI's, and I hope that by reading this book, I can learn how to help my students learn more effectively and how I can relate the MI's to technology more effectively.

Week 2 Assignments

Had a lot of fun taking picture this week to demonstrate my mastery of various functions of the digital camera. I got some great pictures of friends, as well as my apartment building, and I even learned a little more about my camera. ^_^ So check it out: http://plaza.ufl.edu/knewhous/digimastery

I also created an account on bloglines.com Up until now I've been using MyYahoo but this is so much easier and had much better features. Once I have a little time for playing with it I'll try to jazz it up and turn it into a page to call home! http://www.bloglines.com/public/actsoup

Still working on my Teaching Tool for the photography class, as well as the website review. Also did a whole lot of work on a Social Studies Essay Test book that I've been doing layouts for.

Other than that just getting ready for my face to face class starting on Tuesday on Media in Literacy. I'll update when I have the teaching tool and website review complete.

Introductions Part Two

For my EME6205 Digital Photography class the first assignment was to create an introduction using at least five pictures. I decided to take a project that I had worked on in my undergrad where I made an introduction in the form of a Playbill Biography, and update it as well as fine tune it. The finished product can be seen here. http://plaza.ufl.edu/knewhous/intro/ Enjoy! ^_^

Thoughts on Social Software (based on Wikipedia)

It's interesting, but until reading the Wikipedia Article on Social Software during Chris Cessums' Presentation on Social Software last semester in Dr. Ferdig's class, I'd thought the term "Social Software" was fairly new. I'd only heard of it referring to blogs, wikis, and maybe Facebook and Myspace. After reading the article however I realized that I've been using Social Software since I started using the Internet. Even back when the Internet was just white text on a black background, free for use from my local public library, the first program I downloaded was ICQ to talk to my best friend Sara, as well as my brother's ex girlfriend who'd moved to Australia. After that I'd subscribed to a Buffy the Vampire Slayer newsgroup on Usenet, followed by emailing forwards (and receiving many more) to and from anyone who would let me send them.

Since then of course email has had many more uses, I've uninstalled ICQ only to become addicted to Aol Instant Messenger, and I must check Myspace and Facebook at least ten times a day. I've had three different personal blogs including two with Livejournal and one with Aol.

I love how much Social Software has developed and where it seems to be heading. Myspace has become such a valuable tool for me. Recently it's helped me get in contact with people I haven't heard from in close to ten years (including one friend who's now on Broadway and told me that he can get me free tickets to his show if I can make it up to NY, as well as another friend who is now a famous author on Long Island and is sending me an autographed copy of her book!) Actually this weekend I plan on getting my webcam working so that I can make my Social Software experience even more fun as my best friend from childhood has just created his first Aol Instant Messenger screen name and bought a webcam. We haven't seen each other in over ten years other than in pictures, and I can't wait to see and hear him!

Introduction

I'm a 22 year old graduate student at the University of Florida going for my Masters, (and maybe eventually Doctorate) in Educational Technology. I am currently enrolled in EME6205 Digital Photography as well as EME5405 Using the Internet in K-12 Classroom.

I currently use the Internet for everything from email to getting my news headlines, keeping up on current technology, keeping in touch with friends, downloading music (legally), and I also enjoy a good Yahoo Crossword Puzzle once in a while. ^_^ I should also mention that I'm addicted to Aol Instant Messenger, Facebook and Myspace and can be found on at least two of the three twenty four hours a day even if it's just an away message!

I'm very excited to be a part of this class and am thrilled to be starting the road to my Masters. I hope to get out of this course new and interesting ways to help students learn as well as helpful ideas on how to get other teachers to integrate the Internet into their classrooms.