Week 6 of Cedo 535

The item that I have decided to use fully in my professional life is a class wiki.  I am going on my 3rd week of using this now, and it is working very well.  The students can easily access this and enjoy having a centralized place were they can see what we have been doing in class and have the opportunity to edit any information they feel needs to be changed.  Since I have already started to incorporate this in my classroom, it is very easy to measure how well it is working for me.  I can look at all of the edits made by the students and figure out how much participation the students are having within the wiki.  I feel that this experiment will turn into something I use as a full time tool not just in my current Civics class, but in other classes I teach in the future.  It really does make teaching easier and learning for the students a more interactive task.

Week 5 of Cedo 535

This week, I started a Wiki and used Eyejot with my Civics class.  My wiki coincides with the work that my students are doing in class.  After a week of using it, I would say it has been a success.  The students have enjoyed entering their thoughts and what they have found for their assignments.  I have seen a lot of great collaboration with the students and they have done a fine job of fixing mistakes that students have entered in the wiki.  It really has helped take my class to another level of thinking.  I now plan to use this wiki for the rest of the year and years to follow.  I would also like to start a wiki for other classes I teach.

Eyejot has been really fun.  I have sent two Eyejot messages to my students the past week and posted them on Facebook.  The messages relate to our topic in class The Articles of Confederation.  I have got positive responses from my students.  They said it's fun and also makes them think more when they can see and hear me on the computer asking them about what we are learning in class.  Eyejot is yet another great tool that I wish I had years ago.  It's so easy, yet so useful!

I really can't believe this class is almost over.  We have gone through five weeks already and learned a ton.  I think this class has been one of my most beneficial in the whole program up to this date.  I look forward the last week and any new tools that I will be learning about.

Week 4 of Cedo 535

This week we had to work on a podcast or screencast.  As decided to do a podcast using a site called Eyejot.  Eyejot is very easy to use and is free.  It's a great way to record your self as a video message and either send that message to someone via email or post it somewhere someone can see.  As I was doing this, I came up with a great idea.  I currently have a Facebook page for two of my classes.  I typically post questions on the page for students to answer.  I think I'm going to try to post some Eyejot messages that the students can watch then respond to.  This may be more interesting for some of the kids rather than just responding to some written questions.  They seem to like to see me on video when I share videos of me in class, so this may be a way of extending their learning.  I will have to try this and update at a future time.

Week 3 of CeDO 535

I have really enjoyed the topics we have been exploring in this course.  This week is no exception.  The two major topics we were investigating this week were RSS feeds and Photo sharing sites.  I made my first Google Reader to collected RSS feeds from various websites.  I wish I had known about this earlier, it really is neat and useful.  It basically collects information from sites you subscribe to and sends it to you.  This eliminates the need for you to go out and look for the information.  It's like email for web information.  I can see my self continually using this for my personal and professional life. 

I also added photos to my Flickr account.  I actually did have a Flickr account set up from a few years ago, but never used it.  I now have added more pictures and can share those pictures with others.  I'm not sure if I will use it more, but I may.  At this point, I do put all my photos on Facebook and share them with my friends there.  I also back up my computer with Mozy, so I will have to see if I will use Flickr more or not. 

Overall, this week has been interesting and I am looking forward to the second half of this class!