Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
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12:00 am - Virtual Worlds and games
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I don't deny the value of educational games. Students are so enthusiastic. It does worry me how much students get hooked in computers. Sometimes it's like they forget the real world. There are people I know who are so immersed in the virtual world of the game. They have more connections with the game world then they do with the real world. There are entire communities online that play together. My brother and sister-in-law have a virtual war game that they play every day as soon as they come from work and far into the night. They have so many friends into it as well. They at least will socialize face to face with the real world. I know there are many people who rarely come out because they cannot relate to the real world and are happier with they virtual world. I think that at the same time we stress new technologies, we need to stress with children the importance of basic skills like interpersonal communication, physical exercise, etc.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
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11:49 pm - Simulation in an Elementary School
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There is an example of a simulation in elementary that I found: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/kids/kothari.html. This looks interesting and at the same time, fairly inexpensive. One fifth grade class pretended that they were going to space. They constructed the space shuttle, etc themselves and used cameras, computers, and the Internet for the project (equipment that most elementaries have). This is a great example of working with what you have. You do not always have to spend tons of money to teach effectively. The students learned a lot by working on this project. If you have time, check out the article.
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
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1:14 am - Crime Map
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Here is an example of a mapping mashup: http://www.chicagocrime.org/map/. This mashup is a map of crime committed in Chicago. This would be a great tool when searching for a place to live. Before committing a lot of money, you can find out if there is a lot of crime in the area. It is also a useful tool for schools to keep track of local sex offenders. It's a gruesome example, but it does have its uses.
On a happier note, enjoy your Thanksgiving Holiday if you are celebrating.
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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1:05 am - Cyber Bullying
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This is a definition of cyber bullying from the article Get the FAQs About Cyber Bullying (http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/ny/551).
The schoolyard bully has nothing on the cyber bully.
1) The cyber bully has a much wider audience, potentially the whole world. Through Web sites and the forwarding of email messages, the damage can be more far-reaching than most tweens and teens imagine or intend.
2) The victim of cyber bullying has less ability to escape the tormentor. Simply avoiding the bully doesn’t solve the problem when a cyber bully can continue to email, text message and post abusive comments.
3) The cyber bully can remain anonymous or impersonate others, thereby escaping punishment.
4) The cyber bully, by not being physically present to see or experience the reactions of the victim, remains alienated from the consequences of his actions.
5) Any slanderous information sent out into cyberspace is difficult, if not impossible, to completely expunge from the Internet.
It sounds so chilling. How can kids be so mean to each other? My daughter is currently at my sister's house, but I know when she comes back, we'll be having many long chats even if she considers me uncool. I would never want her to be in the position of feeling victimized. Some stuff I read said many women are victimized. Do we have like a kick sign on our heads or something that indicates to people that we deserve this type of treatment? Along with rape crisis centers, etc., I think time needs to be devoted to helping victims of online crimes.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, November 19th, 2006
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11:47 pm - % of schools connected to the Internet
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Do you see the figure from our reading this week (on the learning module page)? According to that table, about 3% of the schools were connected to the Internet in 1994. In 2004, there are about 98% of the schools connected to the Internet. I wonder what teachers/educators first thought when they saw the Internet. Did they think it was a radical, positive change or did they think it was too amorphous, distractive, and inaccurate to last? I wonder if they had discussions similar to the one we had this week about Google Jockeying? There must have been a certain amount of consternation when educators first saw it. It may not have been readily apparent how useful it could be. Teachers could have been thinking, what is the administration throwing at me now. What new thing do they expect me to learn now? (I'll have to take a survey of some of the older teachers in my school and see if they remember what their first reaction to the Internet was). The point I'm trying to make is that some of the technologies and ideas we are looking at in this class may not be as radical as we seem to think. It makes me wonder what education will be like 10 years from now. All I have to say to my district office is that as long as they give me enough training opportunities, I'm ready for any change.
Kalpana
(Good luck with all of your projects!)
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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1:27 pm - Creating your own Mapping Mashup
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I was thinking it would be so great to create your mashup. I did a search online and lo and behold, you can. The code and instructions are at : http://www.google.com/apis/maps/. To be honest, I haven't had time to try it out yet (maybe after we hand in our project 8 days from now). The possibilities are endless for creating curriculum based maps.
1) If you are working on endangered animals in class, you can place where the remaining endangered animals live on a map.
If you are learning about a particular country, you can place on the country map all of the sightseeing places to visit.
2) If you are learning about the American Revolutionary War, you can place all the battle scences on the map (one view to show what else was going on at the time, one to show how weather effected the battles, and one to show the key players).
3) You can also do a mash up of hurricanes. Follow the routes of all of the hurricanes for a particular season, what were the different hurricanes of the season, what category were they, what type of damage did they cause, and where were they the strongest.
4) You can do a mashup of Egyptian pyramids. Who built them, when were they discovered, who discovered them, where are they located, and when were they built? This type of mashup would give you a snapshot of Egyptian history.
5) You can do a mashup of birds and their migratory path. Where do they fly, when do they fly, what are the birds involved, and what temperatures are optimal for birds?
Many of these ideas include a lot of research. High school students can probably work on these projects. It would be an interesting way for them to conduct research and use technology (the same old technology wears thin for high school students.) I have to look into how hard it would be to create a mashup.
Can you guys think of some ideas for mapping mashup?
Kalpana
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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Monday, November 6th, 2006
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9:48 pm - November Elections Mash Up
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Here is an interesting and timely link that explains how a mash up can work during the elections (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061024-105056). Thanks to Mapping Mash Up, you can now go to a map and not only see the various congressional districts, but you can also see who is running in each district, info on them, and where to go vote. There seem to be so many great Mash Ups. The problem will now be how to access all of these timely mash ups. Hopefully once there are more Mash Ups, Google will have a Mash Ups search option like they now have a blog search option.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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6:56 pm - Validity of an Online Degree
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What I've wondered about is how prospective employers view an online degree. For instance, if there was one candidate who got an online degree in education and another candidate who got a degree on-site, all other things being relatively equal, who would get the job? Would the employer favor the on-site degree? Do we even have enough data to judge? There probably have not been too many graduates to get a fair sampling of what employers think about online degrees. It's something I've been curious about, especially in the education field where elementary jobs are so competitive. It is especially of interest since the Instructional Design Program is partly a distance program. Any thoughts?
Kalpana
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, November 5th, 2006
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9:59 am - Teaching Cyber Safety Article
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I thought the article was great. It shows why students need to be educated from an early age about cyber security and it gives ideas on how to do it. I especially liked the checklist that they provide. Each item on the checklist has an annotated website to help you teach the item. I have been trying to convince my principal that we need more cyber awareness. I'm going to present this article to her and to our tech committee and see if we can come up with a district plan.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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8:42 am - WeatherBonk
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For a great example of a Mapping Mash Up, go to http://beta.weatherbonk.com/. It is still in beta version but it is still a great site. This Mapping Mash Up takes weather information from many different sites and puts it in one site. You can see satelite images of the map and you can see the map with local street names. You can zoom in to see your town's information. Take a look. It's more interactive than weather.com.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
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8:19 pm - Builder Assignment
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Hello ladies,
Do any of you have thoughts on what you are going to be doing for this assignment? I'm not sure I have a handle yet on this assignment. I was wondering if I did a PowerPoint project with the students, it would qualify. The lessons would involve reviewing note taking skills, how to research, using an online encyclopedia, learning to find images on the Internet, importing images and sounds, learning how to use PowerPoint, and practicing their presentation skills. Each fifth grade student would be assigned a Latin American country as their topic for the PowerPoint Presentation. Latin America is part of their fifth grade social studies curriculum. Let me know what you think, and I would also be very happy to help you choose a topic.
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Monday, October 23rd, 2006
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8:52 pm - Mapping Mash Up
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Hi all,
I'm excited to move onto a new topic. My new topic is Mapping Mash Up. The term Mash Up comes from when dj's in hip hop music would play two songs together at the same time, kind of mashing them together. In technology, mashup is when a computer programmer or hacker takes features from different sources and puts them together to create a new application. The new application created is sophisticated enough that the end user cannot detect that the "mash up" occurred.
This new concept of mash up has become especially popular with mapping. A person can take a map from one source and information from another source and put the two together. Basically, it is overlaying the information onto the map.
"Already, hundreds of mashups overlay maps with everything from such practical information as gas station prices, hurricane movements, hot springs sites and crime statistics to the more entertaining if not frivolous, including photos of urinals, UFO sightings, New York movie locations, taco trucks in Seattle and Hot People by ZIP Code, a mashup of Google Maps and the HotorNot.com Web site." (http://news.com.com/Mapping+a+revolution+with+mashups/2009-1025_3-5944608.html).
For a clearer description of Mapping Mash Up, visit Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
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9:33 am - Book Share
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Book Share looks like a great resource. It has close to 30,000 books! I couldn't tell for sure how many of these books were actually for students since the site holds books for both adults and students. The Newberry award winners were posted. I looked at some books which were in the public domain and therefore did not require membership to open. The books are fairly easy to open and read. What I like about the site is that you can request books if you don't see what you want.
I do have one big question. In our school, we do not have any visually impaired and so I have not had any experience in this arena. How does reading the book on the computer different from actually reading the book? Is it because you can change the font size and colors if it is on the computer or is it because you can then have a software read you the book off of the computer? Just wanted to see if anyone has seen anyone use bookshare.org and how they used it.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
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2:31 am - Two Links for ELGG
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Here are two helpful web pages for ELGG.
1) Getting started with ELGG
http://elgg.org/getting_started.php
This link helps you get started with ELGG. On this page, you can find out information about how to modify your account settings, fill out your profile, try posting up an introductory blog post, search for others with similar interests, join a community, and customise your environment.
2) ELGG Features
http://elgg.org/features.php
This page lists some features that ELGG includes. Some of these features are:
Weblog
Social networking
File repository
Access control
Tagging
Customisation
XML-RPC
Community building
Wiki
Profile data
Syndication
podcasting
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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Monday, October 9th, 2006
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7:22 pm - ELGG.net
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ELGG.net runs on the latest version of ELGG. Take a look at www.ELGG.net. You can also take a look at Ben Werdmuller's weblog at http://elgg.net/bwerdmuller/weblog/133317.html. Just today they had an upgrade which has added some new features. One new feature is that you can add widgets to your dashboard. Okay I had to look that one up. I did not know what either a dashboard (outside of a car) was or a widget was. According to wikipedia, a widget sounds something like a shortcut. For instance, you can add a widget for Google Search. So, whenever you want to perform a google search, you can just press on the appropriate widget. The dashboard holds the widgets. Now in ELGG.net, you can add widgets to places like flickr which would make picture transfer easier. Check it out if you get a chance.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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3:48 pm - Downloading Music
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Most students are downloading music off the Internet in one form or another at home. As librarians, do you think it is part of our job to take some responsibility and talk to the students about what is a fair amount of downloading and at what point it becomes illegal since we are the copyright queens or should it be up to the parents? I have mixed feelings about this since it is occurring at home. What I tend to do is I kind of mention it when I talk to them about plagiarism for their assignments.
Kalpana
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, October 7th, 2006
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7:41 pm - What's your opinion on latptops?
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Beth, Maya, and Jia,
What are your opinions on laptops for students? I have to admit that I'm still unsure. I would have to see more evidence about just how useful and effective they are.
Off the top of my head, my biggest concerns about laptops for everyone would be:
1) The COST
2) Technical maintenance
3) Monitoring the security and social aspect
4) Making sure that teachers receive the professional development necessary to have effective laptop instruction.
5) One thing that has not come up in any debates is carpal tunnel syndrome. I know that my wrists feel funny sometimes because of how much I use the computer. This is so much worse on a laptop which is not ergonomical. How would a district deal with a student coming back and filing a lawsuit because the district gave him a laptop and as a result, he or she got carpal tunnel. People have sued over more petty things.
6) Loss and damage
7) Depending on the area, students getting attacked for their laptops (there are cases where people have been knifed for their cell phones.
8) I liked the one concern of the english teacher that the way you write and edit on a laptop is different from the way you do it on a piece of paper. This can effect the way you score on tests where you have to write essays that are not word processed.
I could probably go on, but I guess that's enough negativity (plus we are going out to dinner- yeah!). I'm not opposed to laptops by any means. I just think that I would have to do a lot of investigation before I committed that much money to laptops. I would love a decent computer lab in my school!
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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7:37 pm - Curverider and ELGG
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For more information on ELGG, you can go to http://curverider.co.uk/?cat=1. Curverider is the company that is releasing ELGG. Curverider is headed by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller. This web site has some projects that are currently using ELGG such as The Internet is People.
Kalpana
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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Saturday, September 30th, 2006
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2:49 pm - Tagging Video
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I really liked the way Shawn Morton explained tagging. He did a great job. I've struggled in the past with how to explain what a subject/keyword search is to students and how important it is to come up with the right search term in order to find the information that you need. I think that from now on, I will explain to students about how to do searching by explaining it the way Shawn Morton did. Basically, what he did was to take one concept (a picture from Florida) and then write all of the different words to describe it (Florida, sailing, and 2005). This type of lesson might help students with keyword searching on the Internet, in a database, or on the library online catalog.
Also, I liked the concept of tagging. I hope it will make people aware of the importance of keywords and how they help us find the information that we need.
Kalpana
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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1:31 pm - ELGG Spaces
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They are going to be releasing ELGG Spaces soon. This is suppossed to allow you to use ELGG technology without having to installing anything or having to have a server. With ELGG spaces, you can communicate through a series of blogs, podcasts, etc. For instance, if you want to have students create blogs that are connected, you could do it here. It might be useful as part of a homework assignment for example, to have students to read a chapter from their textbook and then have a discussion blog about it. You could check the security so that only certain people can have access to the blog to protect the safety of the students from outside posting. You could probably have the school administration unblock the site so that the filter would not block it.
They have an ELGG 0.2 version to download but the product description says that it currently has many bugs (so I did not want to install it on my computer). Also, according to reviews, ELGG is currently in its infancy and not yet fully developed. I would probably either wait till ELGG is further developed or wait till ELGG Spaces comes out. I signed up to get email notification for when ELGG Spaces will be released.
Kalpana
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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