Rachel brought up an interesting question -- why blog? There are a lot of types of blogs -- academic blogs written by professors to political blogs to personal blogs about what someone ate for lunch. :)
One thing that I still find quite amazing, is that when 'experts' have blogs, anyone can go and access their writings. You can also often even comment on their blog and they might reply. For example, on the Becker-Posner blog, they write about issues related to economics. Becker is a Nobel-prize winner.
Given that they are good writers, bloggers can often make almost any topic interesting and accessible. For example, take a look at the Language Log. I had never realized that linguistics could be so interesting (and funny).
Communities also tend to develop around blogs. For example, there will be a blogger on some topic, and people will comment who have their own blogs, and suddenly there is a real community developing.
Here is a blog about blogs in education.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Comment on Posts 1 and 2
A few highlights:
Jenna's post on the issue of censoring the internet in public schools. This is a very interesting topic.
In his post, Malcolm talks about learning to 'pass the exam'. How could technology be used to make 'passing the exam' a side of effect of really learning, rather than the goal of learning? On a related note, Caroline talks about technology allowing teachers to present information in an interesting way. What's the difference between presenting information and teaching? Is there one?
And, in case you didn't know, Dr. Keller (who developed the ARCS model) is a professor here in the College of Education. Check out his 'official site'.
Jenna's post on the issue of censoring the internet in public schools. This is a very interesting topic.
In his post, Malcolm talks about learning to 'pass the exam'. How could technology be used to make 'passing the exam' a side of effect of really learning, rather than the goal of learning? On a related note, Caroline talks about technology allowing teachers to present information in an interesting way. What's the difference between presenting information and teaching? Is there one?
And, in case you didn't know, Dr. Keller (who developed the ARCS model) is a professor here in the College of Education. Check out his 'official site'.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Stuff for your blog
This isn't directly related to education, but is related to blogs -- the New York Times has an article: 'Some Bling for Your Blog'.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Week One Comments: What we want to learn, what we will learn, etc.
Hi all,
Since everyone is writing a blog, I thought I would too. I'll probably make some comments on your blog entries, and talk about various random items related to class and technology in education. I won't post anything critical to class here, so its up to you if you want to read or not. But, you might find some things interesting.
First, I have to say that I enjoyed reading everyone's first blog entry, and I now have a much better idea as to where everyone stands in their technical knowledge. For some, many of the 'technical' things we will learn will be review. For others, it might be brand new. There seems to be a wide variety of skills, but I hope that everyone will learn a lot from this course, regardless of entering skill level. And please feel free to make suggestions.
Alot of people mentioned that they were interested in learning how to integrate technology into teaching. This is definitely something we will discuss in class. Several people also mentioned PowerPoint. We'll work on both making effective presentations and learn how to create an interactive program (i.e., a game, practice activity, etc.) using PowerPoint. Excel was also a program a lot of people said they didn't know much about. In this class, we'll learn how to enter data, make some calculations, and create charts. Feel free to preview the assignments in the course website.
I'll also work on posting some resources, interesting/informative websites, etc. to the class website throughout the course.
On a separate note, I enjoyed reading that several of you had computer courses in highschool (and even gradeschool). It's hard for me to even believe this (and it shows that I'm older than I might look), but I had never even accessed the internet before I went to college (we got Windows on our school computers my junior year of highschool), and I didn't get my own computer until I went to grad school. Now, I can hardly imagine what I did without them...
Of course, computers are becoming more and more common in school, and it will be interesting to see how this changes education. We'll talk about how this might or might not impact learning this semester.
Since everyone is writing a blog, I thought I would too. I'll probably make some comments on your blog entries, and talk about various random items related to class and technology in education. I won't post anything critical to class here, so its up to you if you want to read or not. But, you might find some things interesting.
First, I have to say that I enjoyed reading everyone's first blog entry, and I now have a much better idea as to where everyone stands in their technical knowledge. For some, many of the 'technical' things we will learn will be review. For others, it might be brand new. There seems to be a wide variety of skills, but I hope that everyone will learn a lot from this course, regardless of entering skill level. And please feel free to make suggestions.
Alot of people mentioned that they were interested in learning how to integrate technology into teaching. This is definitely something we will discuss in class. Several people also mentioned PowerPoint. We'll work on both making effective presentations and learn how to create an interactive program (i.e., a game, practice activity, etc.) using PowerPoint. Excel was also a program a lot of people said they didn't know much about. In this class, we'll learn how to enter data, make some calculations, and create charts. Feel free to preview the assignments in the course website.
I'll also work on posting some resources, interesting/informative websites, etc. to the class website throughout the course.
On a separate note, I enjoyed reading that several of you had computer courses in highschool (and even gradeschool). It's hard for me to even believe this (and it shows that I'm older than I might look), but I had never even accessed the internet before I went to college (we got Windows on our school computers my junior year of highschool), and I didn't get my own computer until I went to grad school. Now, I can hardly imagine what I did without them...
Of course, computers are becoming more and more common in school, and it will be interesting to see how this changes education. We'll talk about how this might or might not impact learning this semester.
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