Implication for Education

       What is the implication for education? In other words, what the current education requires for? Since the purpose of setting up an effective education system is to benefit our students, what should be down that in favor of students? No matter what the curriculums, standards, and evaluation are, teachers should at the very least to motivate students in order to catch up with those requirements. Thus, looking for motivation becomes significantly important.

 Taken digital media as the first important step, many people more or less know something about digital media, including students. They usually obsess in video game that requires some background knowledge, such as media literacy, and special vocabulary. As the article indicates, “Digital media hold out the potential to hone the skill necessary for success in our globalized world. They can enhance the learning of traditional point literacy and ‘situation understanding’ in the content areas (Welcome to Our Virtual World, p 49). Thus, teachers may engage students as the way video games motivate them. It doesn’t mean teaching video games as lesson plans, but to apply more interesting teaching strategies look like video games. For example, my middle school English teacher usually taught us English vocabulary by English movies (English is my second language). Watching movies in a class is as fun as play video games. In this case, we remember many words the movie includes. Otherwise, we have to learn by rote. As a result, it is important to think about ways to teach students specially. Just like the way video games motivate students, having fun with technology should be emphasized on teaching.

Another implication of education is application of technology to teach. According to Social Media and Young Adults, there is increasing number of teens and young adults are using technique ways to communicate with others. Therefore, as teachers, application of technology to teaching is essential since teens and young adults are parts of students that teachers should teach. For example, Blogs, Facebook, and Myspace become popular among students; teachers may try to teach students how to use those media to study. On one hand, students can get all useful information from Internet. On the other hand, student can improve from comments that friends or teachers give. Those media ways that current education system needs, because our students need. In a word, both digital media and social media are ways that are all required in current education system.

A lesson from SMART Exchange

    It really took me quite a while to have SMART Notebook installed in my computer. Surprisingly, thousands of lesson plans could be found in SMART Exchange (http://exchange.smarttech.com/), and all lessons I have seen are very well written. I wish I could have more and more time so as to explore those incredible lessons.

    One 2nd grade lesson which impressed me the most is named "Germ" developed by Kim Casali. The lesson is created to give students general introduction about germs, and students should be able to invent solutions that will keep our communities germ free. This lesson interacts with students a lot, which makes learning interesting. In addition, the learning methods are very well diversified. For example, students can learn from images, matching games, animations, and other tools.

    Smart Notebook is really a great learning software, which I will definitely spend more and more time to explore. Just like Alan November said, "Until you see it really work well, you don't know how great it can be!"

Open Teacher - A Great Application from OpenSource

     From sourceforge.net, I downloaded Open Teacher. It is an opensource application that helps you learning a foreign language vocabulary. Just enter some words in your native and foreign language, and OpenTeacher tests you!
     When I opened this little application, I saw a nice interface which requiring me to set up the tests. Then I entered the "Title" of the test, "Question Language", and "Answer Language". The next step is to write what you want to learn about. Of course, a foreign language! Input whatever vocabularies you want to learn. Using a "=" to connect the two languages so that to set up a test later on. The left side is the Question Language and the right side is the Answer Language. For example, if I want to learn Apple in Chinese, I would input " Apple=苹果". Then, after setting up a number of vocabularies, I would be able to study them, or we can say test them. Click on the icon "Teach Me", Open Teacher would give you some study choices like question order, which allows you to translate from Question Language to Answer Language, or reverse order. You can also set up some study hints, which makes learning easier. The most important thing is that you can save the test when ever you want, and continue it the next time you open this application.
     It's been a few days since I used this software, and I think it is a very useful tool for students who want to study a foreign language in a special way. Further, I hope the soft ware could have its build-in tests so that students who don't want to set up tests by themselves can use it.

LMS and PLE

original article:(http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/2010/03/lms-vs-ple.html)
 

Technology changes learning environment gradually, and different kinds of learning environment come out. LMS (learning management system) and PLE (personal learning environment) are two kinds of learning environment that focus on different needs. PLE draws attention to personal needs, continuance, and diversity. However, LMS focuses on static system, short term, and centralization. When I got in touch with those two ideas, I connected them to the traditional classroom and blogs. Both of them are learning environment that have different effects on studying.

LMS is a static system which tries to fit everyone’s different needs. It is a strategy of control. Thus, LMS ignores the personal needs that are not included in the system. On the contrary, PLE pays attention to personal needs in a personal environment. The feature of PLE is more like a studying environment with blogs, so comments or Internet resources can be taken as different needs. However, traditional classroom is a static environment, isn’t it? All comments can only come from at most 35 students rather than a wide internet environment. In this case, there is no doubt that PLE is much effective than LMS in teaching field.

Additionally, continuance is an important feature of PLE, but LMS focuses on temporariness. Like Mohamed says: “In a PLE learning is fluid. It continues after the end of a particular course.”  (http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/2010/03/lms-vs-ple.html). For example, once students utilize blogs in studying, they can communicate whenever they want. But classroom education is finished once the bell rings, which seems like a LMS learning environment. In comparison, PLE emphasizes on life long studying.

The last difference about LMS and PLE is centralization that LMS focuses on. The control and static feature of LMS may lead to centralization, because it is a system. And as a system, it has boundaries or standards so that it more or less limits the useful resources. Nonetheless, PLE contains diverse knowledge that fits different needs. To illustrate, blog is a sample of PLE. Students can search information from Internet to full fill their needs, but in classroom, the information can only come from students who present there.

technology changes lerning environment

While we are learning, we all need an environment which functions properly so that we can learn effectively. When technology is applied in learning, what will the environment look like? It seems that this kind of environment is full of novel ideas. It stresses on the application rather than acceptance. Blog states the importance of learning experience, and the experience should evoke questions and conversation. Moreover, it should be responsible, and far-reaching ( http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=2294).

Using technology in classroom significantly changes our traditional learning environment. And it changes the way we communicate, and it focus on further study.

In traditional learning environment, no matter in a classroom or at a conference meeting, we talk or listen to each other in order to communicate. Furthermore, we may take notes in order to track what we have studied. However, since tech-infused in learning, the learning environment becomes effective. We start to utilize other skills, such as PowerPoint applies in a presentation, blogs tracks for studying, and blackboard resources for a class discussion. All those skills we apply in the learning environment show us a novel way of communicating. In some cases, we learn quickly based on those skills. Also, we may face some questions during studying those skills. After communicating with others who wish to be our learning partners, the question may be solved, or sooner or later new software appears to go through the question.

Additionally, the tech-infused environment provides a further study. It is not only focuses on the current knowledge, but also supports a deeper think. Take blog as an example, we can enrich the blog once we get some new ideas, or we can comment on others’ blog in the hope of searching a further studies. Our study environment has been networked based on wide resources. The more technology we use, the more convenient the environment provides us in learning.

wikis in education

Instead of looking for a blog which talks about wikis in education, I found an interview which shows me the big idea of wikis in education. Unlike blog which focus on sharing and communicating, wiki lays stress on one project and all the work should emphasize on the one idea. Thus, Wiki is useful for both teachers and students, because it is can help teachers to develop curriculum, syllabus, and students’ assignments. Additionally, students’ group works benefit a lot from wiki.

      When comparing with the traditional conference, e-mail brings us more convenient ways to discuss school’s work, but we are overwhelmed by tons of e-mails sometimes. Fortunately, we import wiki in studying. Teachers are supposed to develop curriculum or syllabus on one platform. Which, in fact, speed the process of editing any curriculum. Furthermore, the current content can be reviewed in the future. Like the article indicates, “we were able to pass on the materials to the next set of teachers the following year, so that instead of reinventing the wheel.” (http://www.futurechanges.org/2008/04/10/interview-the-state-of-wikis-in-education).

For the students who work on groups, wiki helps efficiently organize the group work. The ways that wiki helps group work concentrate on group management, previously review, and tracking strategy. Group management means the wiki requires the group members work on the whole project coordinately. The management skill such as wiki “pulls” can operate the project dependently. Therefore, it is not necessary for student to e-mail each other which is considered to be wasteful of time. Also, the wiki offers previous review that comes from different resources in the project, so teachers can comment all the time rather than on the final one. Our blackboard resource is an example of “comment on final one”. Once we post on the blackboard articles, it is supposed to be the final one which misses the process. The last part of wiki’s merit is about the tracking feature. This reminds me the RRS feed which also has tracking feature. The difference is the wiki can track the sources that others have already used. As a result, they may turn to other resources that may help, which is important for a group to have a perfectible project.  

good reads changes us

Jeff Utecht shows us a great web site for tracking blogs in his article “Tracking Independent Reading in High School.” It is much more important for teachers to track what their students do about their homework. The idea of “one stop shop” changes our complicated tracking process. Jeff strongly recommends “good reads” which I would like to use in the future. Good reads works well for widely connection, time saver and, stable feature.

      Once students apply good reads as their main site, it is become convenient to search articles that they think may helpful. Using Good reads look for resources for readers in a short time during an independent reading. Thus, students don’t have to spend much time on browse books from library, or they have to log in many different websites look for their essential parts. Due to the widely connection of good reads, not only students can operate their blogs in one site, but also they can communicate with others at the same time. This somehow increases their studying initiative, because they have diversity resources which they may be interested in any of them.

      Furthermore, teachers also benefit from the good reads because they can track students reading on one site. Additionally, teachers can give students comments, solve their problems, and get suggestions from other teachers. In this case, the good reads saves a lot of time that teachers may use to tracking students reading process, because they don’t have to log in students’ blogs one by one. Therefore, they have much time to research the technical parts of the website. For example, I set up my blog reader this week, and I try to looking for other features it may have using my extra time rather than just subscribing my classmates. Otherwise, I have to go my classmates’ blog and see if they update their blogs. I can control them by blog reader which saves me lots of time.

      The last merit I am concerned is the stable feature of good reads. We all realize that any web site would have risk. Either hacker or virus may destroy the system. Once it happens, we may lose important data. That’s why we improve our systems gradually in order to make the system stable. Attribute to good reads, we may not lose our post on blogs even though the website doesn’t work anymore. Not only posting but also tracking is available while the site out of control. Furthermore, we can move everything to another site so that we may continue the rest of the job.