Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Second life: confusion

Alan Hudson is the senior lecture at London Metropolitan University he has been doing a lot of work lately with elearning and he has been doing a lot of teaching with second life.



My most significant take away from this video was that Alan has been having a problem with elearning because the students have to become familiar with the system of elearning before they can even begin learning. There isn't a very good way to learn about second life, the orientation is somewhat confusing and sometimes people don't even make it pass the orientation before giving up. There is a program that has exact replicas of some areas in London so people can familiarize themselves with London through that way of learning. They are working hard to find a way to make second life easier to navigate and I think that is great that individuals want to help others in that way.

I have never got a chance to use second life, it looks very interesting. People seem to really like this program, and think it's fun. I think it can be used in a way that can be good and educational.

I think I would use Second Life in my classroom, as long as I could teach it in an educational way. I think my students would get a lot from using second life, social skills, cognitive growth, problem solving skills etc. I think this video is great because it is people trying to find different solutions to make students and people learn second life easier and better. I really hope to have that kind of attitude with my classroom, to want to find a solution to make learning fun and easier.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Google Doc Survey

I recently created a google doc survey, I would love to see your response!

Who is your favorite actor or actress?

To date only one person has responded to it saying that Reese Witherspoon is their favorite actress.


UPDATE: Only three people were able to respond to my survey but I like both the actresses and actor they choose!

Sam and her love for technology

This digital youth portrait was over Sam, Sam loves the computer she even stated that if she wasn't in school she would be spending up to 12 hours on the computer. Her teachers think she is really creative, they have a lot of faith in her that she will succeed. Sam looks at technology as a trial and error type of thing, she doesn't give up if she doesn't get it the first time, she just goes back and tries something different. She has a good attitude for learning new things.





Sam uses media on a lot of her projects which sets her apart from the rest of her peers and giver her an interesting edge. She loves to do other things then just media, she enjoys being outside which is a good combo to have. But then again she loves being on the computer, she can create things, she can be a different person. She likes playing video games but she uses them to help her learn problem solving. Her friends think she is creative to.

I hope to have the attitude when I become a teacher like Sam's educator and parents. They don't look at world of war craft as a video game they look at it as a educational game, it is helping her build social skills and problem solving. Just because something is fun doesn't mean it is educational.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Parallel Play

This video was about Paula White and the title was Parallel Play or Collaboration–Leveraging the Wiki Platform for High Quality Work. She created a wiki space for her students and other and everything she shared is on this wiki.








She has been using wiki's for 3 years. She started this all because of a blog that she asked for other to share with her wikis that showed true collaboration real thinking for the kids. She wanted to involved students more deeply in learning. she got online and looked at examples of wikis's to find how people feel about wiki's. She found a few on collaboration but none for the students. She stated that wikis help engage students. She also expressed that students have to want to blog and wiki about certain things, you can't push them. You need to motivate them, give them something that they care about so that they can be engaged more authentically.

Wikis are definitely motivating I think they can be a very powerful tool to involve students. This video can connect with my experience in many ways. Ms. White wants to motivated children in her classroom and on the web, and I think that is very important when teaching students. She also wants to create something that will help them learn. Her students were excited by how she presented the wiki's. She explained using wikis and helped me have a better understanding.

I hope to use wikis in my classroom someday, one of her students did a wiki over a math assignment and by doing that she gained more than if she were to just do the assignment. I think that by encouraging students to do things outside their box you are preparing them for future challenges.