540 wk 1

Wow! I hate stats. I am not a big fan of math even though my grades in the past have not been bad, but it does not come quickly to me at all. I took an accelerated stats class in college, got like a B+ or A- and hated it. I am not sure what the correlation is between this class and the rest of the program, but I am eager to find out. I do not collect any data or use a lot of stats in my life or classroom. I will from time to time review a statistical finding that interests me, but I could definitely live without it. I have had my doubts about other classes over that last 10 months, but I will find it difficult to make this useful in my daily life. I will keep an open mind because I do view myself as a lifelong learner, but the outlook is bleak.

535 WK 5

This week there are a few things that I can translate into my professional and personal life. I have found myself slightly enjoying Richardson's book and agreeing with a lot of what he says. There were a lot of good points in chapter 9 that made me reflect upon what we have learned. One of the bennefits of using web education is that not only are these great tools to enhance education, but mastery of these technologies comes as a byproduct of that education. Students that use technology in school become even more comfortable with it in life.
I also took some time to explore other web 2.0 tools that we didn't necessarily cover in class. Social bookmarking sites like Diigo and Delicious are very useful for myself and my students. Media sharing and storing sites like Flickr, Zoto, and Pixorial make it easy to share, edit and store pictures and video. These tools are things that I plan to put to use in my technology classes. Any tool that I can use that is web based that allows for easy storage and access of materials.
As we progress through this program I am pleasantly surprised to find more and more useful tools for myself and my students. Web 2.0 tools will not only enhance my information delivery systems, but excite students about technology tools and the content that I teach.

535 wk 4

This is kind of an interesting week for me. I am crazy busy right now at school and with my personal life and I was dreading even starting our homework this week. As you may notice I always post my blog by at the latest Friday afternoon and here we are Saturday morning. Might not seem like a big deal, but for me its crazy. I am excited to start my Ning, I finally made the desicion and I am ready to get started. I also found screencasting to be really cool. It is something that I had done once a long, long time ago and forgot how to even do. I used ScreenCastle and it was AWESOME! Really easy to use and I recorded the steps to setting up a blogger account. I plan to use this screencast shortly when I get my kids ready to start blogging. I also thought the conversation about crowdsourcing was interesting and I was really interested in the R&D innocentive site. This week was very busy, but very useful for me.

535 wk 3

This week we did a few things that I find useful. The RSS reader is a new concept to me and I related it to the google alerts we used previously. I signed up for Google Reader because I wanted to be able to access it from any computer or even my Ipod. I will use reader to monitor the class blogs to see when others post and I also added some blog searches for the packers and a general automotive repair topic, this will allow me to start following other blogs. Also I know that I can use reader to follow a specific topic and filter the internet to find information on that topic from the sources I choose, that could be useful.
I enjoyed reading more about Ning and putting some thought into if I am going to design a Ning or Wiki down the road. I am still not sure, but it was nice to see how others in education are using Nings.
I also started a Flickr account to manage my professional pictures. I thought I had an account already, but I actually use Shutterfly for my personal pictures and I was confused. With Flickr I will be able to back up all of my pictures as well as share them with others.
This has been a very useful week and I look forward to using these tools more in the future.

535 wk 2

I enjoyed the discussion on micro blogging. I am not all that thrilled to have made a twitter account because I am not sure it is useful in my busy life. If I had a phone that had the internet, maybe it would be more fun, but I don't. Blogging for class does interest me however, I think it is a great way to communicate with students and also give them a forum to express themselves and maybe be more creative than they are in a live classroom. I also found a number of educational blogs to model. I did not find any blogs in my content area, but that does not surprise me. When I start my blog, maybe others in the automotive industry will follow.

535 wk 1

What did we do this week that I can use in my job? Well, I never thought that I would say this, but I am interested in using blogs in my classes. Teaching automotive and collision repair is rare. No one in the state does anything like I do in the classroom, and sometimes I have trouble being creative enough to put ideas to use in my classroom. Blogging was one of those things that I thought I could never put to use in my classroom. After reviewing some of the resources this week I have been inspired to at least try blogging. I am going to start by adding an automotive blog to my school website and TRY to post once a week. Once I get established in my own schedule, I will require students to occasionally post a response to my discussion. This will be a great place to start in my classes and I know that I can grow from there!

530 wk 6

Well here we are, 15 credits down and I dont know how many to go. I am glad to see that we are at the half way point. 530 was a great class and I am glad we got to use tools like animoto, voicethread, and prezi. I have enjoyed seeing the work that I was able to create and I am looking forward to including these tools in my classroom. I may begin to use these tools as soon as next week and I will have my students using some of them soon. My only complaint seems to be a common theme for me during this program and that is that we cover too many of these tools too quickly and I don't feel like I get enough of a chance to master any of them. I am looking forward to the next class and I am glad that I can begin to see the fruits of my labors in the classroom.