Making up a class

In order to make up a class that I missed way back in September when my husband was on his R&R from Iraq, I'm writing this post. I reviewed the Elive session and these were the points of interest that hit me.

1. The passing thing was a silly way to get the class to share their week. It took 20 minutes of class time to do simple introductions and explain the rules. I don't know if it was worth it.

2. It was fun to see the images that people found to represent themselves. It is also interesting in twenty-twenty hindsight that you built on this activity later with grouping.

3. Learning about Elive text tools was something I already knew how to do from experimentation with other classes (my professors ended up with a curious student who just randomly played with buttons on accident :) ) I didn't know, however, about active links in the paragraph box verses the inactive link in the single line box.

4. It never fails to strike me just how broad a subject Digital Citizenship is. Even after this whole semester of contemplating the idea and talking about it, the subject is quite difficult to wrestle with! My Literacy and Language class had a debate over the role of technology in the classroom and these very same topics came up! I put in my two cents about NETS-T, of course, so that other educators could see that there really were guidelines, but technology changes everyday. We need to have a board policy to handle that change.

5. I thought the discussion regarding 'Comment wars' (saying things nicely) was kind of funny. I have been amazed at how chat boxes in Elive sessions have turned into comment war zones! I have left classes this semester really passionate about a topic and gone to Facebook to continue the argument before! We need to learn how to take those comment wars and make them into genuine discussions.

6. NCATE moment: fairness. This moment was rather odd. I grew up thinking that 'life ain't fair' to quote my mother. I suppose that one needs to strive to be fair in the professional world, but everyday I make a decision to cut someone short just a little bit of fair. I can't help it. I wonder why the examiners in UAA are looking for fairness if that is next to impossible?

Avatar Images

Something of interest came from the EduBlogger that I would like to note here: Avatar images! Because you don't necessarily want your students posting pictures of themselves online and with their public blogs, you can go to the sites that the EduBlogger lists and draw your own cartoon character or Avatar image. This can depict the student in place of their face or a piece of their personal life you would rather they not share until they are fully ready to become a responsible digital citizen. I put together one of my own, but I was required to sign up with the website and provide information I would rather just not fill out. So, my Avatar image remains unseen. But, this would be a great idea for students of all ages.

Distance Education and the Bush Alaska Scenario

Damon Hargraves of the Bering Straight School District came and spoke in our Ed Tech class last month on technology in the Bush of Alaska. What I discovered was disquieting and also very intriguing. First of all, as many of my classmates have noted, there is a lot of money for Bush schools that allows for them to purchase the equipment and technology necessary for their students' education plus more than the minimum! Urban schools don't have that type of funding (or at least we don't see it used for such things). The second thing I noted was that this sort of technology could not only link outlying villages, but it could also link the home schooled community to teachers and networks unlike anything ever seen! What the possibilities for open wiki pages and public pages and sites are beyond fathoming. I would really enjoy learning more about this technology so that 1) I can tap into the funding machine that sponsors these ventures, and 2) So that I can reach new students in fresh and exciting ways around the nation and even around the globe!