The End!

How bittersweet it is! Here I am at the end of my grad program and feeling a mix of emotions. I'm excited to have my weekends back. No more spending my entire weekend doing school work but on the other hand I've learned a great deal that I don't think I would have been brave enough to learn on my own. This has been an awesome program and I'm so glad I did it. My husband was just reminding me the other night of my first class I took and how I cried almost the entire semester because I didn't think I could do it. Well I did! Embarrassed now by how foolish I was it was a great experience. I've never been more motivated to implement all this cool technology in my classes. I just hope this motivation keeps up to keep exploring more uses of technology. I've had fun using technology to teach with this past year and I know my students have enjoyed it as well. I've done some really cool things from having students create web pages, digital stories, pod-casts and even creating 360 panoramic images to create virtual tours for a class.

I wish my classmates the best of luck and a great end of the semester!

CSS

The Basics of CSS

    When I first looked at csszhengarden.com I thought CSS was like what you do on MySpace with your backgrounds. I though CSS was "templates" others posted for you to use to make your pages personal. Well, while I still see CSS as a way of personalizing your web pages I'm beginning to see that they are not necessarily for public use.

    According to one website http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/css-history CSS was created in 1994 by a man named Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. However, several before attempted attempted their hand at creating similar products of CSS but it was Lie and Bos's that took off. On another website, http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp CSS was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to deal with the many HTML tags that the different browsers were adding.

    CSS was designed to save time and frustrations when designing multiple web pages for sites. How? Well CSS allows the creator to create just one web page layout and apply that layout to multiple pages of their site. When you want to make a change all you have to do is make the change on your CSS file and the changes are updated automatically on all your pages instead of manually changes each page individually. You would want to use CSS if you have a multiple page site to create a harmonious site with little effort on your part. While CSS is a great time saver, a disadvantage is that older browsers may not display what is in the style tags correctly.

    CSS complies with the ADA by creating Aural and Braille applications. Aural creates screen readers that will talk to the user repeating what is displayed on the screen and Braille applications will transcribe and emboss Braille files.

    Until now I had no clue what CSS was, in fact I'd never heard of it so I did not use CSS on my multiple page site. I went and set my pages up to be identical but I manually did the coding on each page. Now that I know what it is I would use it 1. to create colors and fonts that flowed from page to page, 2. to create an image that would appear on each of my pages, kind of like a trademark symbol and 3. to create page layouts that were identical to make it easier on the viewer.

    I'm still a little shaky on CSS. I understand what CSS is and what it does but I'm still not sure I'm comfortable creating a CSS file. I guess the one question I have is can you create a CSS file using a program that will write HTML for you (like Kompozer) or do you have to write the code yourself (like using word pad)?

 

Sources used:

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/css-history

http://csszengarden.com/

 

 

    

Nice & Easy

It was a relief last week to have an assignment that was much easier than the past. I'm pretty comfortable with web building and FTP so there wasn't much research involved this week. That being said, I'm only comfortable with static web design. Creating sites that allow users to leave comments or interact I know nothing about. I wouldn't mind learning about that but at this point in my career I don't think I need to worry with it. I'd be to afraid that if my web page for my classroom allowed students (or parents) to leave comments that they may be inappropriate. Still though, I would someday like to learn to do more than just what I've done on my fairly simple web site.

On another note only a month to go! This is my last semester and I'm so ready to be done. It's been a long, exhausting journey. Last weekend I bought myself lots of new books to read and am looking forward to this summer when I can sit and relax and read something other than educational journals!

HTML...oh my!

So I put this assignment off and off because I thought it was going to be easy. HAHA! I've never wanted to throw my computer across the room more than I wanted to this past weekend. I had done a little dabbling with HTML but that was junior year in my undergrad program (5 years ago). I had forgotten pretty much everything so I was back at square one with learning the ins and outs. Still thinking this wouldn't be to difficult I procrastinated until late afternoon on Saturday and ended up spending my Saturday night still trying to write HTML. After semi-mastering what I was doing I got my page together. However, I don't really see the point. There are so many FREE web building sites that will write the code for you, why is it necessary to learn to write code? And, what is the point to "comments"? I read and read and don't think I understand.

I think I will be sticking with my program I use to build my web site that is free. It's working just fine!

Thoughts About Jing...

So Jing is a great concept BUT I found it really frustrating that you couldn't edit your work before submitting, or saving. I used another similar program in another class that allowed you to capture your work (although now I can't remember the program). If I remember correctly you could do some editing, like you can in Audacity. I must have re-recorded my project 8 times because I kept messing up and having to start over. Anyone else feel this way or know how to edit in case I missed that feature.

Online Classrooms...love 'em or hate 'em?

This last week I have truly learned the benefit of the online classroom. This year our school district joined forces with Southeast MO State University to bring OIS to our district. OIS is basically SEMO's version of blackboard or Moodle (if you've ever used Moodle). It allows a teacher to supplement activities beyond the classroom. Several teachers (mostly our veterans) have complained and refused to use to program. I've been using some of the OIS features but haven't by any means been using it to its full potential. Last week however I was home sick 3 1/2 days with a respiratory infection. It was not fun. Not wanting to let my classes fall 4 days behind I was able to keep my classes going by posting discussions, quizzes and assignments in the OIS system . Because it's web-based what I did at home was instantly available to my students at school. And I was able to get a start on my grading because they submitted their assignments digitally to me. Awesome! I know the students were probably not happy with me but my classes are pretty much on track and I can now continue on with my classes as normal. If I didn't look like death last week I would have considered posting a vodcast for them to watch but I didn't want anyone to see just how lovely I looked last week!

We teachers (especially us high school ones) are constantly out of our classrooms because of conferences, meetings or student trips. I believe the online classroom could also be used in these situations too, not just when sick. Does anyone else have experience with an online classroom? What are your thoughts? Do they belong in secondary, or even elementary, schools?

Confused

So I also forgot to add my Delicious tags to my blog. I've now done that as instructed but I am still not seeing the application working. I've tried going to my classmates blogs and I'm not seeing theirs either. Or I see the icon but then nothing happens. I'm lost. I know we are all technology majors and this should be a seemingly easy thing to do but it seems the easiest task sometimes turns out to be the hardest!

Copyright

Copyright, Fair Use & Creative Commons Licenses...What Does It All Mean?

According to the United States Copyright office “Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. code), to the authors of original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and certain other intellectual works” (2006). A creative commons license (CCL) "expands the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons) With a CCL it allows the creator to establish which rights they reserve and which rights they waive. Doing this allows others to build apon or improve the original work without getting in trouble. Fair use is refers to "the conditions under which you can use material that is copyrighted by someone else without paying royalities" (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=fair%20use).  

So what does all this mean? From my understanding copyright doesn't mean having a legal license. If it is YOUR original work; spoken or written, it is copyrighted. That means that virtually everything we see or hear is technically copyrighted. I was taught (in my younger days) that if you used another's work you needed to give credit. However, with the invention of the web and access to millions of documents sometimes finding a name to give credit to is impossible. As teachers we constantly research and incorporate others ideas into our classrooms. I know for me personally I use the internet a lot and I often don't show my students where my information came from. That's where fair use comes in. According to the 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law it states that the following situations are acceptable for use:

            Quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or

           comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for

            illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of

            the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief

 quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to

 replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a

small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or

judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel

or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

I interoperate this to mean that as long as you are not reproducing one’s entire work, it is acceptable to use. CCL's are a new concept to me. In fact I hadn't heard of CCL's until the other day when I was messing around on Flickr. The author can set their CCL to varing degrees based on what they want to allow others to do to their work. There are four types of CCL's that I found at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/.

1. Attribution: allows others to copy, distribute & display your work and deviate your work as they please as long as they credit you as the original creator.
2. Share alike: allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
3. Noncommercial: basically the same as attribution but for noncommercial purposes only.
4. No Derivative Works: allows others to copy, distribute and display your work only verbatim.

In my daily lessons, I tend to follow the rules of fair use. I never quote verbatim. I research and then rewrite what I've learned in order to teach my students. The only time I do use other's works is in my interior design class. I do use classic artworks to help teach certain concepts in design. Because I am an educator using these works in an educational setting this falls within the rules of fair use so I'm ok. When I have my students do research, however, I have them follow the rules of copyright. They are always required to site their sources and follow the guidelines for citing sources. As I mentioned before I don't have much experience with CCL's. I think if I really start to expand my lessons using Flickr then CCL may be something I will implement but for now I don't really see the need for it in my classroom.

 

Works Cited:

United States Copyright Office. Copyright [data set]. Retrieved from

            http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

 

Podcast

I created this podcast to help my child development students remember what they need to be doing while out in the field. Once they start their field experiences I don't see them for 2 months. Even though I tell them to stop by if they have questions many of them don't and wait until the last minute to get help. I plan on uploading this to my class website so they can access it anytime for reference. Hope it helps!

Social Bookmarking

 

Social bookmarking is a "way to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking). Social bookmarking sites, such as Del.icio.us, allow users to save favorite sites and share those sites with everyone or a select group of people. These sites work just like using the "favorites" button in internet explorer but the main advantage to using a web-based bookmarking site is you can access your favorite sites from any computer with an internet connection. This You Tube video on social bookmarking helps explain the benefits of social bookmarking also.

 

There are many social bookmarking sites available, most free of charge. I had been using Porta-Portal. Porta-Portal works much like Del.icio.us except it doesn't give the count of others who have also booked that site or allow you to see what others are bookmarking. The main feature in Porta-Portal I like is you can organize your sites so when you log in everything is already in categories instead of having to search tags. I'm a very visual person so having it all laid out where I can easily see my sites is helpful for me. Another reason I (and several of my co-workers) use Porta-Portal is because it is not blocked on our school's network; Del.icio.us is unfortunately.

 

In Del.icio.us there are several features that can help the user. One feature is when you save a site you can enter tags. A tag is a way to organize your information. When you want to search for specific sites you can type in your tag words. Based on the tags you've entered, Del.icio.us will pull up all the websites that match your tags. Instead of having to scroll through all of your saved sites, entering tag words can find your information fast.

 

The numbers to the right of your bookmarks are the number of users who also have that site marked. The advantage to this is because Del.icio.us is public, or social, you can see what others have bookmarked. For example, if you have a site bookmarked it is possible that the people who also have the site bookmarked share the same interests as you. By looking at their bookmarks you may find new and interesting sites you hadn't previously heard of.

 

The subscription feature is another way to see what others are bookmarking based on your tags. For example if architecture is one of your tags, as others tag sites with architecture it will alert you. This is another easy way to learn about sites without having to search all the sites yourself. If you don't like the site you can delete it from your bookmarks.

 

I think social bookmarking sites are great. I love that I can access my saved links from anywhere. Del.icio.us is a great site however, I will probably continue to use Porta-portal because I'm already familiar with it and I can access it from my work. I don't use social bookmarking for my classes but I do use it with my co-workers. As I mentioned before several teachers that I work with have Porta-Portal accounts. You can access each others accounts as a guest. It's been nice for sharing sites that we think would benefit each other. I can see how this could be used in my classroom. I could bookmark sites that I want students to use. However, on my current class website I already have a page with links for students to use so this may be a bit redundant.

 

 

Web 2.0

According to Wikipedia "Web 2.0 describes the changing trends in the use of the World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0). Most of us use Web 2.0 applications daily and never give much thought to them. I know I didn't until I realized what Web 2.0 was. To sum it up, Web 2.0 is blogging, is social networking, is wikis, is photo and video sharing sites. It is web programs designed to give the user freedom to upload and share what they want without having to actually create a website. Instead of just using the web to get information, it allows users to be a part of the web.

Web 2.0 opened the door for many web users. I think the web 2.0 concept is what made the World Wide Web boom. I think the pros would be the freedom it allows users. Non tech-savvy people can socialize and interact with people globally with little effort. It has allowed the world to interact with each other with ease. I think another pro is what it has done for education. With Web 2.0 educators can easily access information and can expose students to the thoughts and opinions of others through the use of wikis and blogs. It would also encourage students to leave their own messages or thoughts on others websites and then see what their response is. I have also heard of teachers using Facebook for educational purposes however, I have not actually seen this. I'm curious how this would work.

One of the biggest cons I can think of with Web 2.0 is that it does make everything you do public. I work in a high school where Facebook and MySpace are all the students care about. I see so many fights because of what one person posts on their page. The other downside is that the pictures you post or the videos you upload again are all public. You have to be careful what you do or say so it doesn't get you in trouble. I know you can set your profiles to private, but like with anything, you can get around that. My students have shown me how you can get onto private profiles on MySpace without the owners permission. Another con of the web 2.0 is that you have to be careful about the information you find. Because anyone can edit information on these websites you have to be careful that the information you find is factual.

The biggest Web 2.0 applications I'm familiar with are MySpace and Facebook. I'm on Facebook daily. I also use Blogger (for this class and another class). I also use Yahoo for a lot. I use the calendar to keep track of what's going on. I also use Yahoo as my homepage to get quick access to weather, news, celebrity gossip and e-mail. Another application I use is Snapfish. Here I upload photos and can share them with my family and friends. Google is my favorite search engine. I know it is probably the oldest but I'm comfortable with google and like its information.

As far as using these applications in my classroom, I don't use many of them sadly. I use Wikipedia often to find information but I typically don't let my students use this site. When I use Wikipedia I also find other sites with the same information to verify that the information is correct. Students, however, typically find the first site they come across and trust that the information is correct. Because of this I typically require that the websites they use are .org, .gov, or .edu. These sites are not typically Web 2.0 sites so I trust the information is accurate. I had intended to use Blogger in my classroom to have students blog about current events. Unfortunately the school district I work for has blogging, and other social networking sites, blocked. I've started using the forum in OIS to have students collaborate but I'm not sure this is the same as true blogging. As I mentioned before I'm curious how teachers are using Facebook for classroom purposes. I think this would be great but problematic at the same time.

I have a friend in another district who uses blogging in her classroom. She posts topics related to her lessons and lets the students voice their opinions. This has allowed the students to have some say about what goes on in the classroom. For example, once she posted how they like to learn. Many of them replied they liked games. She now plays a lot of games with them to help reinforce the material and the students are loving it. I've seen other teachers use YouTube and TeacherTube also. It seems if students know that their work will be public they try harder and it gives them a sense of pride in what they've done. I attempted to have students create videos for TeacherTube. It was a disaster but I will try again.

Web 3.0? This is a little tricky. I've read several websites but don't really see what the difference between 2.0 and 3.0. Here is a video I found on YouTube about Web 3.0. After reading an internet article on Web 3.0 I'm beginning to think that with 3.0 anyone can do anything. In 2.0 users have the freedom to edit information based on the limitations the created has set. In 3.0 you can create applications and programs with no knowledge about how to actually create them. You computer can do it all for you. How? That I'm not so sure about. It seems very futuristic to me. Like robots taking over our world!

RSS Thoughts

Here is my thoughts on RSS readers...

RSS Thoughts & Experiences
According to one website RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (www.whatisrss.com). However, according another website RSS means Really Simple Syndication (www.rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html). Both sites however, did agree what RSS did. RSS allows web users to stay current with what’s going on with their favorite websites by viewing just one page instead of hitting each individual page. The convenience of this is you don’t have to waste time searching each site for updates. When you log onto your RSS site you can quickly see what has been updated and what hasn’t. You can even read the updated articles right there instead of having to go to the website.

There are two types of RSS readers; web-based readers and those you download. The web-based reader, I feel, stays more current because it will update even when you are not on the web. The readers you download are nice because they can be used even if you do not have a web connection. However, it won’t update if there is not an internet connection so whatever you had the last time you logged on is what you will still have now.

During the setup I really didn’t have any problems. I installed BlogBridge and Google reader. The BlogBridge set up went smoothly; however, once I get it installed I felt a little lost about what to do then. I got my websites in fairly easily but I didn’t do much beyond that. I know you can group your sites, put in clip art for your sites and set up the reader so it will find sites based on your interests but I didn’t do all that because I just didn’t like the overall feel of the BlogBridge reader. The Google reader I felt was a breeze getting set up and going. When I log into the different readers, I like the Google one much better. The Google reader, I feel, is much more user friendly. One example of this would be that it took me almost two weeks to figure out how on the BlogBridge reader to make the articles go away after I read them. It really annoyed me when I would log in it would tell me I had like 90+ articles to read. Really I didn’t but I didn’t know how to mark them as read. With the Google reader that wasn’t an issue. It’s a minor detail, I know, but it really annoyed me.

When it comes to using RSS readers in classrooms I can see the potential. I could put a RSS link on my classroom webpage which would help parents stay informed each time I update the page. That would be very helpful for parents to stay informed about homework. But I would have to assume parents have RSS readers. That is about as far as it would go for my classrooms. I found some good educational sites but not anything that would be good for the subject I teach. I teach an elective so it’s often hard to find good quality sites with information relative to what I teach. So this is not something I really see myself using in my classroom. However, if I did decide to use this I don’t think it would be hard for students to set up their own accounts. I did it in no time and most students seem more tech savvy than me so I don’t think they would have a problem doing this. They would probably enjoy it more than me.

I can see the benefit of the RSS readers but for me it doesn’t tickle my fancy. I’m just not an internet bug. I have my few favorite sites but I enjoy actually going to these sites. One thing I noticed on the readers when it comes to the blogs is it only shows the author’s entries. If someone comments on the author’s blog it doesn’t show that. So for me I would prefer to go to the actual blog site so I can see comments that have been made. For me I don’t think I will continue to use the readers. I still prefer to get my news from my couch with a cup of coffee watching the TV. I don’t like to use the internet to get the news. Part of my problem is I spend so much time reading for school and work that I just don’t have time, or energy, to spend another hour or two reading all the feeds that come in.

Unknown author. What is RSS? RSS Explained. Retrieved January 31, 2009, from http://www.whatisrss.com/

Unknown author (July 6, 2004). What is RSS. Retrieved January 31, 2009, from http://www.rss.softwaregarderncom/aboutrss.html

Open Source...What the Heck?!?!

I'll admit, I'd heard of OpenSource before but never gave much thought about it. I always thought it was the "free" version of Microsoft Office. That must mean it was crappy and didn't perform well, right? Well, I still don't consider myself an expert by any means but here is what I gather...

OpenSource is created by people not necessarily liked to computer software companies. OpenSource software may be created by numerous people. Because of this it allows for more kinks to be worked out because more people review it. OpenSource allows access to source codes that anyone can use and really doesn't cost much, if anything at all. Additionally, you have the rights to redistribute or modify the license as you see fit.

The terms free software and open source are often confused. Most people believe they are one in the same, however, according to wikipedia.org "Free software' focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users and 'open source' focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS) What I believe this is saying is free software is just that; free, and while free is good, it's not great. OS believes in peer-to-peer reviewing, thus tweaking their products making them better.

I found a lot of OS licenses under categories such as education, NASA, open communities but I when I clicked on the links for the OS within these categories I really couldn't understand what exactly the programs were. So if someone reading this can explain to me how to determine what the heck I would be downloading that would be great!

In education some of the applications I use include SMART tools and SeaMonkey .
SeaMonkey is a free program that allows me to create and maintain my classroom web page. I will soon be teaching students how to create their own web pages! SMART tools I don't think is free but it was for me because I have a SMART board. I use this program daily and really can't remember my teaching life before I had it.

This is all I have for now... Till next time!

Introduction

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I'm excited to be in the "blog scene". I've had this account for a little over a year now but haven't done anything with it. I'm just not good at coming up with topics and keeping up with it, although I'd like to get better. I had the idea to create a blog for my classroom but again that didn't happen. Maybe once I get in the habit of blogging and maintaining my blog I'll finally do it.

I'm excited to get this semester going. This is my last semester and then I'm done...for now! I'm graduating this May and plan on taking some time off. Eventually I would like to earn my Doctorate but mentally I need a little time off. I'm not really in a hurry. I really don't have any plans that would use my Doctorate; it's just a personal goal I have.

The last books I read were the Twilight sagas by Stephenie Meyer. I'm shamefully in love with the books and the characters. I like to read but these were the first books that engrossed me 100%. I literally couldn't put them down. I know they are targeted toward teens but I still recommend them to anyone. Give them a try... Check out the website: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html

As you probably know the first book in the series was made into a movie. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjNDE2fMjI

Thanks for stopping by!