Wiki!

I just made my first Wiki at wikispace.com. I’ve just barely started it, but I plan to check it out at school to see if it is blocked before I go too far with the development.

I’m beginning to wonder what the differences are between a wiki and a blog. I think I read that’s coming up on the course syllabus. Will be good to know.

Reflection for 10/4

Week 1:

I was surprised to find out at our first class that the course would be focusing on Universal Design and not Understanding By Design. The phrasing is similar – so, I assume somewhere along the way, I accidentally added a “B” to my notion of this course.

I was also surprised to discover that UD and UBD are really not all that far apart. It seems like the philosophy of UD fits the theory of UBD. One of the aims of UBD is to allow all learners to access and understand their educational experiences, and UD is the ability of individuals to meet those needs through technology. I guess it is a good fit. I am hoping to learn in this course how to best fuse these two acronyms. Maybe UBDUD?

Another thought from the first class: I am really excited to learn about available new technologies that I can use with my students. As I mentioned in my previous post, my kids love computers! I would love to find ways to integrate technology into lessons and have my students involved and attentive. I would also like to find ways to better teach my materials through the use of technology. I have tried Web Quests with some success and other models of technologically-based lessons. I would like to be able to be current in my social studies materials (the web seems like the most affordable and easiest way to do this). I would also like to be more savvy in instructional technologies that may assist students with special needs.

I am anxious to start this class and really excited about the chance to work with my colleagues to develop a unit that will be applicable, interesting, standards-based, and differentiated. I love taking courses with the teachers at my grade level. It gives us a reason to rethink what we teach and how we teach it. It also gives us time to collaborate and really come up with some lessons that will ‘wow’ the kids and bring about the desired learning.

Looking forward to next week….

Bloggin’ 101

Hello!

Ok, so this is how you blog.

I guess I’ll start my first blog and my first reflection by saying that the process of finding a blog site (that was not blocked by the school server) and the initial development of the blog space was not all that hard to do. It really is much like setting up a web page or a photo gallery. It also seems that posting to the blog is really easy, too. Hopefully, it will be smooth sailing from here on out. (Addition: I did spent quite a bit of time figuring out sidebars after I wrote this message.

Janet asked me why I decided to do my reflections on a blog. It was a good question. I could just as easily word process my thoughts and print them out. I guess my motivation for creating this blog comes from three places. 1. I have a desire to learn about this whole “blogmania” as it is very popular in both the educational and popular culture realms. 2. My wedding photographer has a really awesome blog, and I have been spending a lot of time lurking on her site. After viewing the ease at which she communicates with her clients, other photographers, and friends, I decided that I may want to create a blog for my own use. 3. Also, I’ve been just amazed at the speed at which my students are able to learn and use technology. I am also amazed by how attentive they are when they are using the web or even word processing in my social studies and language arts classes. Based on that, I have been thinking about creating a blog to post a discussion of classroom topics. This opportunity to blog for class seemed like a reasonable way to learn about the technology and find uses for it in my professional and personal life.

So, I guess I will give this a go and see what works and what glitches arise. So far, so good!