Week 3

This week I found our activities rather useful. Not that the last two weeks have not been, but I have yet to find something that I could directly use in my classroom. This week I found that something with the google docs spreadsheets. I use Xcell in my personal life for organizing my massive golf club collection, organizing expenses, and at my second job for managing shipping and sales. I am not an expert in this program, but I use it pretty well. I have used formulas before simpel A1+A2=A3 type stuff, so the recipe one was alittle more complex, but it worked. For me the google aplication worked just as well or even better given the web based format and easy access from anywhere. The only problem I had was that it didnt display the formula of the cell in a header at the top of the screen. Other than that I thought it was a good program and I will implement it in my own life and in the computer class that I am going to teach next fall. I hope this marks the beginning of some really useful technology tools!

Ced0515 wk 2

Boy February seems like it is flying for me! Its fun to look ahead on our schedule and see that we are almost done in one year even though we are just starting. Thus far I have found most of our activities to be very useful. I was wondering going in to this program what I would learn. I have already gained from activities like online word processing and bookmarking. Both of these are tools that I haven't used before and now I don't see myself ever working without them. The online word processing has been great for these classes, allowing me to collaborate with others and share documents, as well as being able to work easily from one computer to another. The Delicious bookmarking has done a lot of the same things for me and has made keeping track of all of these different websites we are using a lot easier. I don't currently have a lot of use for some of our exercises in the classes I teach, but they are all things that I find useful in my life and in preparation for my classes. I also think that in the future the use of presentation programs like empressr will be something useful for me. A lot of what I am working on in my professional development is the updating of my curriculum and the use of technology that goes along with that. I am excited about what we have learned thus far and am looking forward to including it in future classroom presentations and lessons. I am satisfied with what we have done so far and I hope that the rest of the program will build on many of these same ideas and tools that will help me better relay information to my students!

CEDO515 week 1

The programs we used for class this week were interesting. I found the graphic programs roxik and offtype to be kind of fun. I started by using roxik, but then realized that I can never draw people or anything like that so the template that looked like a scarecrow did not work for me. I then switched to offtype and found myself faced with a blank canvas and a complete lack of inspiration, which is why I could never be an artist. So putting aside cabin fever I drew a nice golf montage that you can see on my profile page. This was kind of fun but I dont see any use for it in the classroom.

The presentation programs were different. I veiewed quite a few of them and I didnt know what to make of it, they kind of reminded me of youtube. I had alot to look at, but I didnt really see the point. Finally I made a account for empressr which I found to be like power point at first. Then I began to use it and found that I had a lot of other functions than I would with power point like the share button and the ease at which you can embed music files. I have made power points with music a few times and it never seems to work out easily. Empressr had a menu that dropped down and you controlled the audio file from there. Sweet! EASY! I could find myself using that in the future as soon as I figure out how to make those slide shows private.(if you can)

Using technology in the classroom wk 2

Since I am a technology education teacher, you would think that all of this is second nature to me, but its not. I have been working to update my curriculum and scatter in technology where I can for the last two years. I have come a long way and I and my co-workers are proud of my progress.
The things we have begun working with in class may also prove to be valuable additions to my classroom. The social bookmarking has already paid off, since I have had two computers crash this week and delicious has enabled me to still access all of the sites I needed for class. AWESOME! I have also enjoyed the ease of accessing these websites from home and work on multiple computers. I will share this with my students for sure.
Online storage is another issue. I have used moxy while in college in order to share large files with classmates. It was very beneficial then and still would be today. I do take video of some class projects and online storage would be an easier way to share those videos than burning copies for every student!
The discussion on how to use the web cam last night during class was interesting to me as well. Being able to share the classroom and do distant learning with a student who is sick or maybe even with someone in a different school would be really neat. The best thing that I thought of for my students is to record class discussions and post them on the internet for students who miss class, not doing things live, but using the web cam to record and share later.
I did also find some personal interest in the browser comparison. The last two weeks I had trouble logging on to our classroom and accessing my email on my brand new laptop. This was frustrating as you can imagine at 8:00 when class starts and the new computer with web cam doesn't work! I found that by switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox, I was able to access all the sites and everything went smoothly from there. So in the future I will share different browsers with my students so that they know they have options.

week one

I have had a rough start to this program! I'm not overwhelmed by the technology, but it is a lot of new information at once. I was confused about how to log in both this week and last week. Once I figured it out this week, I had computer issues. Last night at 8:05 I was running two laptops, neither of which were logging on to the ning. My brand new laptop has a web cam on it and it wouldn't load the site, while my three year old laptop was just plain having a melt down. When I finally logged on I was so mad, I don't know if I picked anything up from class. It was very nice to be able to watch the recording of class from start to finish again today. As far as my experience with this techy stuff, my degree is in Technology Education, but my expertise is not in computers or communications, it is automotives. This will be a learning experience for me, but I have been updating my curriculum and adding the things we learn in this program will fit very well with the direction I am heading in. I'm not sure what is meant by a web link, but I do have a prior blog on the website of the company I work for part-time Bob Burns Golf. (www.bobburnsgolf.com) and the blog is (http://bobburnsgolf.wordpress.com/behind-the-blogger/). We just revamped our website and our blog and I am not even listed as an author yet, but the new website is an improvement. That's all for now here's to hoping my technical difficulties don't continue next week!