Internet for Educators Summary

Internet for Educators has been a valuable course that I have enjoyed very much this term. I've learnt many new things and expanded my Personal Learning Network in the process.

The most valuable thing I've taken from our Internet for Educators course is the importance of connecting our students with authentic learning outside the classroom. We are able to do this by using the technology that is available to us. The internet allows us to be in contact with people around the world and using tools such as Skype and blogs we are able to connect with people that may have the answers to our questions. There are millions of people worldwide that are more than happy to share their expertise and we need to tap into this resource.

I have created a Mindmeister Map that summarizes my learning in Internet for Educators. Mindmeister is neat program that allows you to create mind maps in an easy to use format. I will definitely consider using Mindmeister again.

Click on the link below to my mind map and let me know what you think.

Summative Project

Alec Couros

Today our class had the opportunity to listen to Alec Couros. Alec is a professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina.

Alec spoke about the use of Personal Learning Networks (PLN's) to collaborate with people from all over the world. These networks allow teachers, students and parents to connect with people that they normally wouldn't have the opportunity to connect with. The most important aspect of this is the children having the opportunity to collaborate with other students and experts. Students are able to tap into the expertise of others in a way that makes the learning real and exciting. These things can be done through the use of Twitter, Youtube, Skype, Google Docs and many more.

Alec used a program called Elluminate to carry out his talk with us today. This is the first time I have seen Elluminate used and basically it is a program that allows a host to invite guests to join in on a discussion. The guest are able to message the host and other guest while the tutorial is taking place. This allows users to interact with each other and ask questions when needed. The host is also able to show tutorials and speak to them while others watch and interact. Overall I thought that this program would be good for teaching an online course.

Some other interesting sites and applications that Alec mentioned in his discussion that I would like to research further include Tweet Deck, Drop It To Me, Classroom 2.0 Ning, and Reddit.

Weblogg-ed Edublog

One of the tech tasks for this class has been to follow and edublogger. I have spent numerous evenings checking out different education bloggers and one that I have been following a little closer is Weblogg-ed by Will Richardson. 

The blog is mostly dedicated to the use of audiocasts, weblogs, wikis, and other technology being used in the classroom. Will also comments on current events in the news and around the world.

I had a hard time picking one education blog to follow but this is the one I finally decided on. I'm not going to say it is an amazing blog but it offers some interesting material that gets you thinking about different issues.

Internet for Educators Presentations

This week we had the opportunity to share our presentations about various ICT issues. These presentations included topics on Internet: the good, the bad and the ugly, personal ICT devices in the classroom, filtering and blocking in schools, history of the internet, social media in school and mobile devices in the classroom.

Internet: the good, the bad and the ugly was by far the most entertaining presentation that we were treated to.  You definitely put some time and effort into your video and brought up some of the pros and cons of the internet. Good job guys!!

I found the presentation on social media also to be quite interesting as it gave us some new ideas on how to use social media. A great example is iTalkie.com. It allows you to connect with people that speak a language that you would like to learn. You can then talk to these people in your language or the language you would like to learn. Who knew this even existed? I sure didn't.

Everyone did a great job and it was just too bad that we didn't have more time ask questions and get some conversation going.

Blogging Prompts for Teacher Candidates

Found this interesting Google Doc on George Couros' Twitter feed.

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

Found this interesting article on Facebook so I thought I would share it with you all. What do ya think????

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

     Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

     That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).

     Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE....

That's $585 X 180= $105,300

per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

     What about those special

education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an

hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's

something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher's salary

(nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days

= $277.77/per day/30

students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Mobile Devices in the Classroom

Check out this Google Doc on the pros and cons of mobile devices in the classroom.