Visualizing with Technology

We are currently in week 10 of the this semester and I can't believe that we are almost done with this semester. Like i have briefly mention in some of my post/blogs before, taking this class had help me increase my knowledge and understanding of technology then what i had before. This week topic as you can see by the title of the blog is Visualizing with Technology. I feel that this is an important thing to use when teaching, because it help those student who are more visual learner to see how thing work. I feel that using technology as a visual aid can be very helpful especially in math. As a math major, I don't think i would have made it this far with out having a visual representation as to how to solve a simple algebra problem. It made a lot easier when the teacher would go up to the board or show us a video on how thing or an equation work and what it use for in the real world to understand it. It also made it easier for me to remember it for the test.

There are a lot of impact in the learning process using technology to help visualize. It not also helps those student who are visual learners understand what is going in the class but helps those students who are hands on learned see where they want to get to as they are working through. The impact of this is great because we have students learning by using the technology and seeing it how it would play out. For example, a teacher can teach a student how a function of a graph looks like algebraic (with variables) but it not until the teacher explain how to graph it will the student understand what the graph is doing and how it look like. A good tool most teacher use is a graphing calculator. Student can learn a lot from a function of a graph by plug it in and looking at what the graph is doing

Poscasting

This week discussion is about Podcasting. I learned that Podcasting is essentially and recorded lecture, this is essentially in a form of an audio version. In today world this is a very useful tool. This can go great with classes such as online classes, where the teacher/professor would record themselves giving a lecture so the student can log on an hear the discussion. Podcasting can be a useful tool in the classroom. Such in college when the professor know that they will not be in class due to a meeting or something. They can easily record themselves giving the lecture and making available online for the student in that class to be able to listen it. Podcasting can also be useful in the elementary level, where the teacher can record themselves reading a book to the student.  The student can log on read along with the teacher without having her be there physically. 

Podcasting and Web 2.0 application have some similarity and differences. One similarity of course is that it uses technology. Podcasting is different from Web 2.0 because its normally some type of audio. While Web 2.0 is more like many tools that one can use to interact with one another. In Web 2.0 you have the wiki, social bookmarking , voice threat and many other more tools. One can say that Web 2.0 is more likely aimed for group and allow more interaction. While Poadcasting is more or aiming toward a group as well but there is little interaction in it. For example, in podcasting one can record themselves give a lecture over a certain topic, the only interaction that there will be is that the listener is just listening to the person who recorded the podcast. While in Web 2.0 one can write their ideas that they have and share it with one another and they can give some feedback by simply posting a comment or use a wiki, there are many tools that they can use to get feedback and interaction between one another. Those are some differences between Web 2.0 and Podcasting.

Though I don't like to admit it at time but i can say that i have listen to some podcasting in the past. It made it easier for me to stay connected and be caught up to what is going on. Although i do not have an iPod at the time to be able to listen to my favorite poscast that i use to listen I have recently found other ways to stay connected such as an app in my phone. thinking about buying myself an ipod thought to listen to music. I think using your ipod or MP3 in the classroom can be a good idea depending on the way one uses it. I remember when I was in high school our school would let us use our electronic devices such as ipod to listen to music and our phone in between classes. Our teacher would let us listen to music while we did our work. I think that this is a good ideas because student especially in todayy generation we tend to be more productive when there music around us. Though this may be a good idea i would draw the line. would not let student use there ipod when there a lesson going on. There are advantage and disadvantage when it comes to online communication. one disadvantage is that it if technology fails then so does the communtication. also communicating with oneather is not the same as talking to someone in person. so many problems can get started because of mis interpretation. An advantage of this that they are able to help out with those that are far away from each other such as military family. this is a good way for them to keep in touch with one another. 

Web 2.0 Tools

This week topic is over Web 2.0 Tools. Here I thought that I knew what Web 2.0 meant but it turn out to be completely different from what I thought. I learned many things from just watching the videos, and and reading some of the article that were provided for this week class. After doing so, my understanding of Web 2.0 is that can be use as a good tool with in the classroom. There are many applications that go in to Web 2.0 such as the wiki, social bookmarking, voice threat and many more. This tools can be using when sharing ideas with in a group, in other words this is a tool that would be useful when doing group work. This make it easy for groups that have a hard time meeting phicially on a day or place to put all their ideas together. In other words this is a new way of sharing an interacting with one another. 

Saying that I think that this tool can be useful in the classroom. It can be useful in the classroom because it allow student to interact with one another and it makes it easier for student to share their thoughts and look for information over a subject and allow them to share them with one another. Though I do have my doubt over this. This may be a good way to share with their friends and other, but what would stop student from looking or reading over information that may or may not be true. Also the wrong use of it such as cyberbulling. This places can be an easy target to do this. Though like i said in one of my blog post or comment to one of my classmate that we can help solve this by educating one another over this. Overall i think that this is a great tool espacially in the upper level classes such as college. A great example would be this class. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of us in the class with busy schedule that it would make it hard for all of us to be at one time. This online class allows us to interact with one antoher and share ideas in an easier way then ever before