Thing 21: Youtube

I did it! I finally used Youtube! I was hesitant at first because my little nieces and sisters are always on youtube watching foreign films from South Korea or watching taped concerts of the hottest music stars and I felt that it wasn't educational enough for me. My colleague Steve Powers told me that he showed "shift happens" via youtube and I felt better-I remember thinking perhaps it has more than concerts and foreign films-

We were studying the war of 1812 which eventually lead to the Indian Removal Act. I looked for a video clip of the "Trail of Tears" and it was great! This clip showed how the Cherokee nation was moved west with a wonderful music score. I have posted the video clip from youtube on my blog-

I did talk to Linda and I like what Linda had to say... "the Internet is so big with so much stuff, remember it's your job to teach students how to find the educational purpose of the internet."
So, I guess instead of fearing the internet I can teach the educational purpose of it!

Thing #10: More on the discussion of plagerism...

I was taught by teachers before the Internet invasion and I often live in fear of plagiarism in high school and college as well. Here were some comments made about plagiarism in my class:

-but I'm not really copying it, I'm just copying and pasting information
-I think it's stupid to punish people for plagiarising
-you're not learning if you plagiarize
-what's the big deal, everyone does it?
-it's about respecting the work of others, if you plagiarize you're not respecting them
-I think my teachers are just uptight about this business of plagiarizing

We had quite a lively discusion and I felt defeated by the end of the day because I don't think they left feeling that they understood the issue of plagiarizing. What mattered to my students was that they follow my directions and cite their sources to get points of course-

Thing #14 ROR

On early release day, our PLC group met and decided that we would teach students how to use Reliable Online Resources. Linda has set up a wonderful web page: www.comosr.spps.org/ror with a plethora of ROR sites. I developed a research project for my US History class only using ROR sites. This was our second day in the lab and I can't count how many times I had to ask my students to stay away from Google.com- I explained that we will use Google.com for a different lesson as we explore how to "smart search" Google. It's amazing how addicted our students are to Google.com.

Linda taught me that some sites like ABC-CLIO will teach students how to cite their sources with a click of a button, other sites are more difficult. I think I need to do more work in my classes with citing sources. We had a great discussion in my class about plagiarism and the impact it has on education. I'll share more later...

Thing #4

I read Lauren's email about public libraries and I agree that it's one of the most fascinating places in my life. We have a brand new county library in Forest Lake and I love physically being there as well as accessing their online resources. I was thankful to learn about ELM and other resources from public libraries.

I wonder if we can have access to other university libraries, like the U or Hamline? I know when my husband was doing his graduate work, he never left our home but was able to access all the academic periodicals and journals- I know a few years ago a colleague at Humboldt told me that we were able to access academic, peer reviewed journals through a purchased SPPS database, but I'm not sure if we can still access the database.

Thing #3

I must have copied and pasted about 18 of my colleagues' blog on to my favorite bloglines. I made a mistake and set my profile up to receive additional blogs- OHHH what a headache it was to delete all the unnecessary blogs! This is the beauty and the pain of technology. Now I have only the ILP blogs and I'm finding that I don't like too much information.

I followed the directions of copying and pasting additional blogs from the Metromilli site. I know that we received an email about how to do it in a much more simple way, but as I imported subscriptions I noticed that my colleagues had two blogs on my blogline. I had to go and delete the additional blogs. I'm thankful for the learning experience.

This is a great technology tool but somehow I need to manage more effectively the information coming through my bloglines.

Thing #2

lThis is my first time setting up a blog page. I have set up a web page in the past but I have long forgotten how to do so. I had fun creating this blog page. I'm sure as I learn more about blogs I can have students set up blog pages for class discussions. I did learn to add a picture to my blog.

I'm finding that it's fun changing templates and colors that I think I finally found a template that I like and have customized it in my own way . I remember this was the same problem I had when I was setting up my web page...maybe I'm enjoying this too much!