In my last 8 weeks I have been learning about wikis, blogs, and podcast. This has been a very interesting and learning experience for me. I have seen blogs of my nephews and others and wondered how they worked. My biggest problem was knowing what to put on them and remembering to post to them. I have enjoyed this class even if it has taken me out of my comfort zone a little bit. I have learned that stepping out and trying something new can be and enjoyable experience. I plan to have more ways to use the things that I have learned in this class.

For my assignment I am to post to my blog two goals that I have that would be attainable within a two year period. What I have chosen for my two goals are first to create lessons to use a Smartboard in the classroom. I teach art and there are not very many if any lessons that use the Smartboard. I want the lessons to engage the students and make it so they can use the board as well. I have used the WiiMote Smartboard for simple things, but I know there are art teachers all over the country that have them but do not have lessons to use them with. These can help a power point be more interactive and engaging for the students.

My second goal is to introduce my colleagues to ways they can use wikis, blogs, and podcast to help engage their students and introduce them to different technology. I would like to help more teachers become technology immigrants maybe not technology natives but able to work with technology and not be afraid of it.

YEA! I finally learned to post my interviews. Thank you to Michelle for helping me find out how to post the interviews using divshare. This is easy once I followed all the steps and got wav file transformed into a mp3 file.

http://www.divshare.com/download/9655108-357

I know this is probably not the right way to do this and I will keep trying to get it to download but here are the interviews that I did for our application 5. I did like the comment that the young man made about a teacher that has the students use their cell phones to send him their survey answers.

Interviews with Students

I am going to try and upload my interviews with my students so that you can hear directly from them how they use technology. As I stated in my previous blog I was surprised at what I learned from them. One student had his first cell phone the second student could not live without hers. My classes are a good mixture of male and female overall, but the Hispanic population of my classes is greater than the other ethnic races. My school is 80% Hispanic, 18% Anglo, and 2% African American and Asian. I did talk to other students but did not record their responses because they would not let me but I did learn that most students have a cell phone that they use regularly and they all were stumped at trying to figure out how technology could be used better at school. Yes they all thought they should have access to MySpace and those kinds of places only because of social issues not academic. Because it is not used in the school the students cannot see past the box they have either put themselves in or been put in. Hopefully before some of these students graduate they can see the great potential and benefit of technology in school and how it will prepare them for the outside workforce.

student interviews

I have interviewed two of my students for the podcast and was surprised in what I learned. I interviewed a male student and a female student, the male was Hispanic and the girl was Anglo. When I interviewed the young man he told me he had just gotten his first cell phone about two months ago and he forgets about it until it goes off. He has not gotten use to it yet. He could live with it or without it. He said his friends get mad because he doesn't answer it all the time. He is a very smart young man, has a computer at home and uses it, but he is not bound to technology. The girl on the other hand could not live without her cell phone and being able to text her friends. She uses her phone not only to text but as a mini computer, check email, look up stuff on the net, etc. Neither one of them could think of a way that teachers could use technology in the classroom, but they did feel that it was an important part of their lives and something they would need for the future.
When I took my art class to the art gallery I was the only one that had a camera, all the rest used their cell phones to take pictures. I had my cell phone but a camera is what came to my mind first not the cell phone. Amazing to me is how differently we think about getting the same job done. I guess we are doing the same thing only differently. Teachers must be able to modify and adjust all the time.

In reading about the 21st classroom I feel that communication in the form of writing is very important. Students in the 21st classroom will need to be able to communicate with people from all over the world. When I posted my discussion post I said that students must be able to read, write and communicate their ideas.
In looking at the 21st century website unlike most schools that see only English, Math, Science, and Social Studies as the core subjects they include other subjects such at the arts in the core subjects list. In the website they show several areas that students work in to learn. What I see in the 21st century classroom is that there are so many areas that need to be utilized to make the whole child. We barely touch on the capabilities of the students in our classroom with the basic classes they have to take. Using technology there are so many areas we can touch on that are out in the world and not just in the classroom.

teaching students about blogs

I was amazed today when I took my students to the computer lab and told them they were going to set up a blog account and post to the HHS Art Class Blog. Two out of 17 were all that had a blog page. I was surprised. I guess I was expecting them all to have one and know what they were. I have two students in my class that are ELL students and it was fun watching them set up their blogs and then they asked what you used them for. I told them they were like Facebook or MySpace but it was just about them. A way to post things about themselves so people could keep up with what was going on with them. They got excited about them. I got excited for them. All the students have posted something to the page so that I can see if they got on. Some of the students have started posting comments about our field trip to meet Kenneth Wyatt an artist in our area. They are to post to at least two other student's post and to leave a question to ask Mr. Wyatt. After the field trip I am going to have them post again on their impressions of the trip. We shall see how it works out.