Final Blog Post

Two of the most useful technologies I have learned this semester are blogging and Google Docs. The blog is great for both personal use and also for school use. This way even if my school doesn't have online technology that I can use to put in assignments and things, I can still create my own blog to keep my students up to date on what's going on. Google Docs I really like because you can easily save things online. Also, multiple people have access to what you've written. This would be a great technology to use when students are working on group projects.
Engaging students in active learning can be done by having students be a part of the technology instead of just having them watch it. So students should work on creating their own presentations and posting them to the class blog, or creating a movie and uploading it to youtube.

Final Project

This is the website for the virtual tour. It has a lot of really great information and pictures.
http://www.europeanvirtualmuseum.net/virtual_museum/virtual_museum.asp?lingua=en&tab=0

http://worldhistorymuseumtour.wikispaces.com/ This is the lesson that I devised for the wiki. I have to say that nothing wanted to work for me. It was quite complicated figuring out how to link my page to the words "Virtual Field Trips" under the label of social studies. I never could find the first screencast you talked about in the second screencast. Everytime I went through the left hand tool bar on your Teaching with Technology website it said the page was under construction.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASe7EJ1t5CiJZGduM2d0bWZfMTIyNjQ4OGZw&hl=en
This is the lesson plan that includes the screenshot of the museum website.

I never could figure out how I was supposed to create an artifact using the museum website. Sorry.

PLN Assignment

Instead of subscribing to blogs through Google Reader, I subscribed to news sources that had to do with technology and education. A lot of them were actually really interesting. http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/ talks a lot about different things going on with technology both in education and in the world outside education. It sometimes had useful things, but it was more the author's opinions than anything new and educational.
http://www.deseretnews.com/utah is one I chose because I thought it would be wise to be up to date on what is happening in Utah since this is where I'll be starting my teaching career. In the education section of the site there was a lot of interesting news about the technology being implemented in schools, such as one post that talked about Utah students having greater access to technology than students in other states. Still, although informative, it did not ever introduce me to anything new or give me new ideas for my classroom.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/index.html?partner=rss was great because it talked a lot about what was going on in the world of education in the United States. Technology, although usually the lack of, was a common theme in the stories presented. They often quoted from the United States Department of Education. I enjoyed seeing what new things were happening in education at a national level.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ was great because it included multiple links to great technology that could be used by teachers. It even led me to the virtual tour I used for my final project. It was overall the most helpful in the way of introducing me to more available technology that will be helpful in my teaching.
http://ezinearticles.com/?cat=Reference-and-Education included many articles about education but very few that pertained to technology and its uses in the classroom. Even still, the information from the articles will be helpful to me as a teacher in the future.

Final Project

I think I would like to do something with virtual tours. As a history major, my subject will include a lot of things that my students will not be able to have access to. A virtual tour would allow my students to visit places where important events in history took place. So far I haven't found any that are fantastic, so if anyone has any ideas of where to look I would definitely appreciate it.

iMovie: India's Caste System

Internet Safety #3

I watched all of the PBS Frontline documentary "Growing up online." It was really interesting to realize how recent the internet is. This is the first generation who has never known life without the internet and it's amazing to see how far we've come. It's also amazing to see how little people seem to worry about predators online. So many people interact with people they've never met online and freely share pictures and information. It's dangerous. I hate that it is so easy to get into someone elses network and steal or share their information without their knowing. The internet can be a great tool but without taking precautions it can be harmful.

Internet Safety #2

I talked with my sister-in-law about internet safety. She is 16 and a junior in high school. I found a way to not make it awkward by waiting until she was doing something on the internet. One day when I went over she was posting new photos to facebook. She showed me them and was telling me all about them. Some of them were of other people and I asked if she had permission to tag those people. She said she hadn't asked but she was sure they wouldn't care. I pointed out that once a picture is online there's no way to get rid of it completely so maybe she should be careful when posting pictures of herself and others. She had never heard that before and thought it was very interesting and also scary. She was very receptive and I talked with her about some of the things that were in the voicethread for the internet safety week like using pictures that were more ambiguous and putting on settings that only allow certain friend groups to see them. I do not know if it will change anything for her, but at least she has now heard the information and is aware of it.