Journal #7 The Beginners Guide to Interactive Virtual Field Trips NETS I, V

Zanetis, J. (2010). The Beginner's guide to interactive virtual field trips. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(6), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=March_April_No_6_1&Template=/MembersOnly.cfm&NavMenuID=4516&ContentID=25443&DirectListComboInd=D

The article suggested new ways for kids to virtually visit and explore experiments, museums, historical sites, processes in organizations, watch demonstrations of certain fields, they can also attend some special events and festivals. There are two possible (VFT)Virtual Field Trips; Asynchronous VFT and Interactive synchronous VFT. The Asynchronous VFT are site that are live but rather are web-pages that guide you through a particular location or it provides podcast that show images of the location and relevant imagery and may provide written information about the place or topic. Interactive synchronous VFT is a live broadcast that comes from organization, historical place or museums. There video conferencing is done with an educator that guides you through a tour filled with information pertaining to the organization or place. The interactive VFT also provides activities and study guides sometimes, where students could become more involved before or after the lesson.

What are some of the websites for the Asynchronous VFT and how might they be helpful in the class?
www.efieldtrips.org This one is cool because it has 4 helpful components: It has an Expert tool that lets you ask question, it provides a hosted Webchat where students could discuss with each other, Virtual Visit which is the video guide into the place and the Trip Journal which allows students to write down their ideas.
www.accessexcellence.org/RC/virtual.php  This site has health and science fun lab lessons.

www.gaillovely.com/VirtualFieldTrips.htm It has links with tours of museums and places. It also has map visits, travelogues and read along tours.

How could my school have the Interactive VFT and is there a charge? 
 You need to have a video conferencing software that is video compatible with h.323 and capable of IP based connections.  You need to find a video equipment vendor that may assist your school.  There is a charge for having the software and for the programs.  You can try to see of videoconferencing companies offer grants and funding resources.  Once you establish the programs you need  to find reliable programs like the Creative Interacting Learning and Collaboration www.cilc.org.

Journal #6: Blogging NETS II, V

Blogging is an online shared journal where people can post diary entries about their personal hobbies or experiences. It can be used as a social network since many may comment and reply to others blogs. It is a great tool for engaging in similar discussion with people. I checked the thread "Great Classroom Blogs" and thought was cool that teachers are sharing classroom blogs so it can give students and teachers similar techniques and discussions. The person asked teachers to put up blogs that they thought as being great in order to encourage her peers to make blogs. I liked cheking out the "Virtual World" which was made by solely 5th graders, it had different cool posts where students learned how to do things by story telling. There was some nifty ways to teach kids things which help them enjoy assignments. http://www.boxoftricks.net/ Someone also suggested this site which does have general knowledge on how to use tech things. I also looked at "How can i link my Word document onto my blog?" and it had different ways like using scribd to embed, or use "clouds" kind of online storing like Adrive.com and getdropbox.com, it also adviced to place your word document into google docs and just place a link that people can access to that document.

NETS PowerPoint- NETS II, III

This was a Microsoft PowerPoint that talked about different ways to incorporate technology devices and websites into a Grades 3-5 NETS.NETSed422

View more presentations from Jessica .

NETS collaborative Rubric PowerPoint Rubric- NETS II

 This was a collaborative Rubric we made in class for our PowerPoint in Rcampus.com.

Newsletter-NETS I, III

This was a Newsletter  made on Microsoft Word for a fictional third grade class.
awesomeNewsletterjm

Social Bookmarking Delicious-NETS I & IV

1)
National Archives 

• I read "Designs for Democracy" and how 200 years of the government were invested in 125 designs done to illustrate the government in different times.  It's value is great as a primary source because it demonstrates the styles and forms of democracy at the time.  In the classroom it would be helpful by showing students the types of government designs they had and see how it changed styles and significance politically.  It is great they have it online so technology keeps it permanently intact and looks as it did the first time of clear and sharp. This site could be used for projects and can also lead into other projects where students themselves can form their own ideas of designs.  Kids can use these designs to assist research projects about the time period the are searching for by incorporating the style and attitudes of that time.

2)   
National Education Association

•    The type of student groups that experiencing Achievement gaps are the racial and ethnic minorities such as Native Americans Indian, Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, blacks and Hispanics.  Other groups affected are bisexual, lesbian and gay groups.  Also, English language learners, students with disabilities, students from low-income families and boys and girls can be affected from achievement groups due to intimidation from being prejudiced against. 
•   One of the areas that best fit me to teach  about culture would be to Network with parent, family, minority, and faith build organizations to help design and implement their own ethnic diverse group to make it realistic and keep students connected that the school itself is affiliated with this group one way or another.  As a Christian and Hispanic it best fits me because I am very close to my family and relate that just how the community itself can influence how you think about culture and dealing with different people.    
• Another are that fit my teaching style would be to engage staff into discussions and activities about culture.  It would be cool that we each have our own blog and maybe each bookmark in delicious good links that talk about culture.  Maybe be good to post our own culture so other could get to know each other more culturally so when we bump into each other realize that we are in similar visions together.  We could motivate each other to attend activities that involve each others beliefs.
• The last area that suits my teaching style in promoting culture would be  gather and use resource materials that relate to culturally diverse groups that can be used by staff.  I'm not sure what these materials would be but I'm sure that as the school year goes we can continue to gather materials and resources that would be needed for different cultures that could be fun. These materials can involve people once they see that people are interested in using the materials for their class or to bring school staff together.

3) 
Stop Cyber Bullying

•       My score on the quiz of cyber bullying was a 10.  I notice things have been some what fun and I never really thought they were that bad.  I guess taking pictures of friends while asleep or saying things that I might think as funny about stereotypes or putting down other sport teams should not be posted on your status.  Also I have grown up with older brother so It would be easy to get into his profile or username in games online and act like him.  I hope to mature in many of these things that I thought to be funny before and move one and realize I am not giving best example if I continue.  
• One of the areas I read about was how IMin is becoming more common.  It can be used by students to cheat or become prey to some sexual predator on free IM places like Yahoo, aol, and MSN.  They can protect themselves by not responding to messages from stranger and learning how to block them. Children should be reminded not to open up suspicious IMs since they can be viruses.  The most interesting thing i learned was about tracking IMing, by a software called "Spectorsoft".
• Another area that was interesting was about teenangels.org and how they are being trained by government and FBI to learn how to make programs that can work offline to speak of the dangers of internet safety for teenagers.  It good to know that teens are making these programs so other teens can feel more connected to their peer's advice.  One cool thing was finding out that they have a program that reads the "teen talk" and Lingo that can then translate to English.  

4)   
Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators

•  One of the areas that interested me from the Subject Access was Art & Architecture. Here they had links to websites that like discovery.com and other sites that encourage students to become artistically inclined. they also have websites like ArtsWork that show curriculum and lesson plans that students do in different Art fields.  They emphasize the importance of arts in case you need to protect the arts to your school and try to use the information to make the arts a priority in your school. I also like the fact that they brought legoland as an option so the kids' imagination can flow and they can see how their designs can make amazing things.
• An area that interested from  Teacher helpers was the digital gadgets concerning the pod-casting. It is very cool that they show you where you can watch pod casting from class across the country and from different grade levels.  It reminds me of Youtube but it is more educational and it displayed by grade level and subjects.  They have radio and short video clips of diferent areas that you can teach your kids.  It is pretty interesting since it involves kids from other kid's their age.  It gets them to rule the digital world.  Podcasting can maybe be used on a filed trip and share experiences as well as cultural experiences like of kids have home videos of places their own parents have been.  It will get kids to want to have digital devices where they can share their own experiences and culture with their peers.

5)  Multiple Intelligences

• Bodily-Kinesthetic 83%
• Musical 88%
• Intrapersonal 81%

In the "Multiple Intelligence Thrive in Smartville" video I learned that children learn in diferent ways whether it is physical, visual, musical, logical, reasonable etc.  As educators we need to try and grade children not just in grades but in rubric that shows hat the child has mastered and been successful.   They do pre and post test to figure out each child's' learning ability.  Once teachers start to figure out what strengths child has they let them learn individualized or groups accordingly to their learning style.  The whole school is layed out like small town where students can strenghten their weaknesses by having jobs and responsibilities that lets them use actual adult like of duties that requires them to use subject matter like math, science and social abilities, along with other subject areas.

6)  Teaching Tolerance
grades 1-5, Art and social science, Tolerence
In the lesson they made the students first discover where their name came from by interviewing their parents and asking how and why they got their name.  Then they seek photos of their family and cut out of magazines things that make up who they are.  Through the year they would discuss about world religions and how their name has some religious meaning. I would ask kids if their name states really who they are.  I'd portray the differences and similarities that they hold about how mean it can be when they make fun of their name and the similarities of like of their posters.  Children see other children posters and find out more about each other. I would use this lesson to do posters of famous people in history like they did.  Posters are great way for them to get to know each other and visually see things about people in history.

7) Multicultural Education and Equity Awareness Quiz

•  

Compared with their U.S.-born peers, how likely are immigrant men in the U.S., ages 18-39, to be in jail or prison, according to a 2008 report from the Immigration Policy Center? 5 times more likely

I just try to think of the reasons why this is and how the government does not help immigrants and how discrimination is against those that are not citizens.  This is a reflection in how our society works.  It shows how more harm is done by those that are being ignored by resources or maybe are being discriminated by other and how it influences the bad ways.

According to UNICEF, the wealth of the three richest people in the world is roughly equal to the combined Gross Domestic Product of: 48%poorest countries

 It is just crazy how money is being kept by people who could feed millions.  I don't know why people do not work on helping people with resources.  I do not know how the richest people sleep knowing that in their lifetime they won't even spend all the money but it will be handed down to their generations for greed and power. 

8)Netiquette Guidelines

90% It is important for children to know the etiquette in cyberspace in order for them not become bullies someday and think its okay.  The internet world its easy to try and have fun :-> but if we grow to have manners and treat people online nice because it is all humans we are networking with.   

Journal # 4 Finding students who learn with media NETS II, V

Bull, G. (2010). Finding students who learn with

Publish Post

media. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(5), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=February_No_5_4&Template=/MembersOnly.cfm&NavMenuID=4495&ContentID=25255&DirectListComboInd=D

 In the article they talked about a program that creates movies from kids's stories. The program is called Primary Access movie maker, it is found in  www.primaryaccess.org. They also have another specific website that is specifically for making stories;  www.primaryaccess.org/story.  Students with this program can work with Media and incorporate it into their glance and research about history, social studies, etc.  The students could narrate a story with their voice and place text if they wanted it to be visual.

Wouldn't the use of technology take more than rather than just writing essays?
They observed classes and showed that it takes the same amount of time by using the program as it would just writing an essay.  The program uses simple to use setting which allow the students not to take so much time trying to work on the tequnical process of creating their short movie.

How do students benefit from using this programs?
Using this program can help those students that are better in working with technology and using visual to get them invloved in the activity.  It helps those students that work better with the research and traditional writing part to express their research through technology.  It also helps them all to learn how to find primary resources online and easily incorporate it into a movie.

Journal #3 Keeping the Peace NETS IV,V

Levinson, Matt. (2010). Keeping the peace. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37(5), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org  /AM/Template.cfm?Section=February_No_5_4&Template=/MembersOnly.cfm&NavMenuID=4495&ContentID=25237&DirectListComboInd=D

 The article talks about a Middle School that struggled with what teachers, students and parents thought about using technology.  The school encouraged the students to take home a laptop and use a program where the students could chat.  Some teachers didn't like it and thought it was a distraction during class.  While some parents thought that the children were not ready to use such a way for communications.  Some parents admitted that they themselves were not ready to prepare the kids for the "Chatting" feature required for their school work.  All the students on the other were annoyed by the idea of not being able to iChat anymore.  There were also parents approved the idea of Chatting because it removed clicks and helped their peers stay connected if they were not very sociable in person.  Students protested because the iChat feature did assist them with their h.w. and eased the process.  The school's decision then was to cancel iChat to keep the peace between parents, teachers and students.  There is more that is trying to be done to better prepare parents, teachers and students with the idea of iChatting.

How are schools trying to make the iChat safe for students?
The schools will make an IM program for use at school with teacher permission within the school's network and limited to student use only.   Parents will be encouraged to attend workshops teaching them ways and tools for their students to be safe.

 Should children be allowed to use Chatting applications in middle school?
 I think they should because they need to learn how to use the tool and become aware also of the dangers of using technology and how it can harm others as well as themselves.  In Middle school is the perfect transition to try to understand about different mediums and the evils as well as the benefits of using them, technology being one of them.  Chatting online being a social program has the same issues as any like sex, drugs, violence, bad habits and a lot of these issues are already being talked about in middle school.  Students need to be taught the rights and wrongs at an early age or else they will find and use things without their parents permission.  This is why parents, students and teachers should be taught about the subjects and not put it off till High school.   If children have the desire to learn new things we as educators should not limit them but guide them to use mediums for right choices.  It is the 21st century and we need to catch up with not only technology but the kids' interest.