Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators & Students Statewide (ACCESS)

Along with ALEX, ACCESS is a great tool that can be used for future and current teachers. ACCESS's main goal is to create equity through additional educational offerings for all Alabama public high school students. ACCESS is great to use for students to prep for a major test. You can use ACCESS to get ready for a graduation exam for example. ACCESS can be used as an actual class participation so long as you have a computer.

There are plenty of resources available on ACCESS, such as the Alabama Virtual Library, ALEX, chemlab, and more. A good feature in ACCESS is Connecting Access Staff and Teachers (CAST). Some things that come from this feature are; open source technology information, supplemental reading and interesting links for distance learning tips, helps for ongoing changes in the Desire2Learn Learning Environment, chat room for teachers and staff only, discussion boards and content specific blogs, and content specific group collaborative tools.

Click hereto see the ACCESS website.

Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX)

ALEX is a great website for teachers to use, regardless of subject you may teach. ALEX provides you with a ton of different things such as, exercises for each subject, lesson plans, websites, and much more. It covers basically every subject from English, to Math, to Driver's Ed, to Technology Education. A future or current teacher could use this website to help them form their own guidelines for how their class is run, how they can set up their tests and so on.

One of the things I like most about ALEX is the podcast treasury. In this, you can listen to many different podcasts from any subject. For History class you can listen to a podcast of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights. You can listen to interviews from professionals in each field. Not only will the podcast help the students in the subject you are teaching, but it will also help them get familiar with technology and ways they can use it.

Click hereto view the ALEX website

Dear Kaia

The videos of Kaia blew me away for the simple fact that it amazes how young a person can be and still share her life with others around the world. Originally, her father helped set it up for her just for her family to see how Kaia's life was progressing. It is now used for Kaia to interact with people around the world. I can barely remember being three years old and having about ten people that I interacted with a daily basis. Kaia is interacting with millions.

Many people might think this is a very bad and dangerous idea. Putting their three year old daughter on the internet for millions to see can seem like a pretty dangerous move, but I think as long as the Dad is relatively smart, which he certainly seems, he can supervise this project and make sure no harm could come of this. I think this is a great idea and expect many others to follow this lead.

Click hereto see Kaia's page

New Media Literacy

The New Media Literacy project is a great idea put forth by a very bright group of people. The project is preparing young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world. This is a great idea, because many students who graduate college graduate with classmates who are the same race as them.

Some of the techniques included in the project is including other literacy works from other cultures into our English classes. Methods like this can help teachers and students be more equipped to handle life outside the classroom, especially with the growing number of minorities in America.

Click hereto see the new media literacies website.

NML Staff

The new media skills covered in the video are definitely skills that people must possess to be effective citizens in the near future. I think I have a few of the skills listed. Some ones I definitely can work on are negotiation, visualization, and distributed cognition. The only way to acquire these skills are to get as much real-life practice in them as I can.

Click hereto see the NML video.

The Networked Student

Wendy Drexler's video of the networked student was an excellent one. I think it is a great idea to use this method of teaching students in many cases. For one, when you have a class where the teacher lectures 95% of the class, it is almost impossible for students to pay attention to what they are saying. Learning is done best through experience. Using the method explained in the video, that is what this whole class is based on. Students experiencing things for themselves, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes.

These types of classes offer many advantages. The teacher is still a part of the course because they still set guidelines and are there if the student needs help. The good thing about networking is you can compare your work and have it evaluated from many people around the world, not just your teacher. You can also download podcasts of similar classes taught by other professors. The students can use skype to interact with their classmates, teacher, and other students and teachers around the world, giving them a much better learning experience.

Overall, I think this is a great idea to use for classrooms. I know in some classes, math for example, you probably could not use this method as effectively. However, any class that can be taught best with interaction should definitely look into using networking. Whenever a student is finished with the class, their work will still be saved and other students can pick up right where that student left off.

Click hereto see "The Networked Student" video

This is How we Dream.

The "This is how we dream" video was pretty impressive in how it demonstrated the way our society is becoming when it comes to writing. We are relying less on word processing and more on multimedia videos to express how we feel. To me, there are several positives and negatives that come with this. The positives are it is much more motivating to be able to express your opinions and views through multimedia because it is not nearly as boring as just plain writing. With multimedia, you can literally show an audience what you feel with actual video and audio footage.

Some negatives about writing in multimedia is students might lack writing skills by using it too much. It takes a lot of practice to be able to learn proper writing structure. I know I have been practicing it for years and I am still not where I should probably be. I think a good mix of word processing and writing in multimedia would best benefit students.

The question of whether or not I am prepared to write in multimedia can be answered two different ways. I am definitely prepared to learn to write in multimedia because that's the way our World is headed. I am not prepared quite yet in the sense that I still have plenty of practice to do before I am comfortable with it. Any teacher that is not willing to adapt to this method will probably have a difficult time holding a teaching job.

Click here to see the "This is how we dream" video.

Duke University and iPods

Duke University is starting an amazing trend with the use of iPods in the classroom. According to http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/12/ipodupdate.html, Duke University expected 1,200 students to use iPods to enhance classroom material by the Spring of 2006. One professor, Mark Williams, used a photo iPod this fall in his “Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain” course to house a visual glossary of 500 human neuro-anatomical structures and terms comprising text descriptions, images and corresponding audio pronunciations.

Duke is doing a smart thing by incorporating iPods in their classes. Instead of fighting a no-win battle of not allowing iPods in the classroom, they are not only allowing them, but using them as part of lessons. It can make classroom interaction much better. Of course, there will be some teachers that will be skeptical of such an idea. However, as Duke’s vice president for Information Technology and CIO Tracey Fruthy puts it, "there is always a risk associated with introducing a program nobody had ever tried before. The increased use we’ve seen has been a direct result of faculty and student innovation. We expected we’d have this kind of interest, and it’s exactly the success we thought, but couldn’t be certain, it would be.”

Click here to learn more about Duke University's use of iPods.

iTunes U

There are many things a future teacher can take from iTunes Uiversity that can make them a much better teacher. You can learn about podcasts, videocasts etc. If you would like to know who all is using iTunes U, then schools like Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale may ring a bell. Teachers can use itunes for public lectures. That way, if a student is out sick, they can simply go to iTunes and it would be like they were still there.

Another good thing about iTunes U is the fact that students can to it from their cel phones, and thier iPods. Teachers should take full advantage of anything that can be used in an educational sense, that students can get access to on the things they spend the most time with.

Click here to see itunes U website.

Dr. Christie's website

Dr. Alice Christie's website on technology had a ton of different things to offer on ways of becoming a better teacher. I think an important thing all teachers should know when bringing technology into the classroom is to be safe when letting students use it. Dr. Christie has a great slide show on things every teacher and student should know before using the internet to get information. It also answers the question many have on if technology is good for students. Christie points out that 70% of parents who now have internet report that their children have the same grades now that they did before they had internet. 26% report that their children have higher grades now.

Even though the internet can be very useful for students schooling, it can be very hectic for their life at home. 71% of messages that students get from facebook, myspace etc., are from people they don't know. Also, bullying can now take affect not only on campus, but in the student's own home via internet. There are many pitfalls that can come with the internet that every teacher should be aware of so that they can help their students deal with these issues.

Click here to visit Dr. Alice Christie's website.