Education & Technology - My View

Despite having a twitter account, I only used it to monitor world & national news, my sports teams, entertainment news and local community news.   I opened twitter maybe one or twice during the week and occasionally retweeted when it was pertinent to our school district or something my husband would have an interest.   Lately, my husband and I have been trying to put down my device or close the computer to set an example for our sons.   We are on our devices all day, whether at work or school, so it is refreshing to be tech free and charging the devices.   While I understand the need and importance for tweeting and responding to chats, it is hard to change these newly developed habits.   I am trying to tweet during the day on my breaks.   The new educational twitter accounts I am following are enlightening and a few of my Geneva teacher friends have liked my retweets.   It has expanded my local network of friends which gives me hope for one day f...

This week an old school taught student is learning new school teaching techniques.  When I think of my education and my teachers, I remember the teacher at the front of the classroom lecturing to us and writing on the blackboard.  We did worksheets in class and as homework.  We read our textbooks and shared what we learned in class - hoping it was the correct answer.  There was no discussion between students exchanging ideas unless it was on a science project.  It was memorization and short term memory for testing.  Today I am learning and seeing, through my sons, new teaching techniques.  First, students today have some type of device whether a chromebook or tablet.  The students can instantly share homework and ideas related to their learning topic.  The notes from class are saved, which are from the students and the teacher.  The class is more interactive as the teacher can show different topic examples through the use of You Tube vid...

My job requires me to work on a computer all day.  I use the Microsoft Office suite on a daily basis reading and sending emails via Outlook, chatting with coworkers across the country on Lync, updating Excel spreadsheets to create various financial statements or data analysis, retrieving data from Access for the data analysis and composing management narratives explaining our financial position using Word.  My company uses various applications and programs to run our business or record our financial transactions.  We use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome as a platform for our various applications depending on what works best.  This is my bread and butter and I don't think twice about the technology I use everyday.  My husband, on the other hand, uses completely different programs such as CAD and other engineering software.  He is unfamiliar with the applications I use and will occasionally call me asking how to perform a certain task or calculation.  ...

Upon starting this class, I really did not have any perspective on how this class would work and what exact technology we would learn.  I was very surprised as to the amount of applications and ways technology could be used within education.   Initially we were introduced to VoiceThread, Google Blogs, Google Sites and Twitter.   I was familiar with only one of the four but anxious to see how this would all come together. First, we had to use VoiceThread which was daunting.   While I do use a webcam at work through the Zoom application, it was still different.   I am used to seeing myself via webcam but not accustomed to hearing my voice.   We had to introduce ourselves and note our use of technology by using the VoiceThread application.   It was easy to setup an account and listen to my classmates’ responses.   What I didn’t expect was how I kept stumbling over my words despite having some notes on what I wanted to say in my introduction! ...

Holy cow!  There is a lot to learn about technology in education.  Blogging and tweeting and portfolios - OH MY!

This is my 2nd Blog site!  I am starting to get the hang of this technology thing!