Week 5: Podcasts

I am excited to be creating a Podcast tonight in class. I feel kind of like a huge dork saying this, but I'm realizing more and more how important it is for me to have these skills both for inside that classroom and outside of it. I recently stopped by the summer camp I work at and they were talking about creating podcasts with the campers this summer. These podcasts can then be accessed by the campers from home and they can share with their parents some of the happenings around camp. As they know that I am currently taking a class on technology (this one!), they have asked me to help with this activity or to just give them a basic tutorial of how to create a podcast. Podcasts are fun because they can be created by children at almost any age. For example, at camp they have talked about doing specific ones for specific age groups where the group can choose the topic for their podcast as it relates to what they're doing at camp. More and more the skills from this class are coming in handy!

In other news, while being quite excited about learning more about technology, I'm also a bit bitter towards it at the moment. My computer stopped working on Sunday and has not decided to start since. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that I have no money to buy a new computer, I am already in debt, and it looks like I'll have to take out a loan to purchase a new one. I knew I was going to have to buy a new laptop before I started my new job as my current one was not going to make the trip to Liberia, but I was hoping I'd be working for part of the summer beforehand so I'd have some money to put towards it. On this note, I believe that technology is not always what it is cracked up to be as it still fails sometimes. Also, technology can be quite expensive which just makes me realize that it really isn't accessible for everyone, further enhancing the inequalities among students.

Technoogy

I have not been thinking about technology in regards to teaching too much lately. I have been preoccupied with a job fair I attended in Cambridge, MA, Wednesday through Sunday. At this job fair, I accepted an offer to work at the American International School of Monrovia in Liberia. This school is just starting back up after twelve years of civil war in the country which ended around 2003. This year was it's first year reopened. Enrollment is still very small as the country has not yet been reopened to State Department workers and their dependents, but will be very soon. Thinking about a small, reopened school makes me think about technology in my classroom. I get the feeling that the school is still gaining new materials as it increases in size. It does have a small computer lab which I am very excited about and wireless internet is available if I bring my laptop to class. As a school which is still acquiring materials and is overseas, I realize that technology will be very important. I have a feeling I will be using many resources from the internet in my teaching as they are easily required and often inexpensive. As the school is in Liberia, I want to integrate technology so that my students can communicate with students from other countries. I realize that Skype, Podcasts, digital audio and video, and other things may come in very handy and add an interesting and exciting element to my classroom. I once was only semi-concerned with technology in my classroom, mainly wanting to make sure I could access it to enhance my teaching and to be sure that my students could keep current with it. Now, I realize that it opens many doors and there are incredible possibilities when using it. Technology is now an essential and exciting element to my classroom.

Week 2: Creating my lesson plan pages.

So I have realized in the process of attempting to create the beginnings of the Lesson Plan Project that I am definitely not very competent in using technology. I am easily confused as to how to create all of my pages on the web and link them together. I am also unsure of how to create organizers or different ways to present my work on the actual webpage. For example, the matrix it was necessary to create in order to complete this project. I feel like it is taking a very long time and there has to be an easier way. It is very multi-stepped and complicated. I feel like when we go over these things in class I understand what is going on, but as soon as I start to do it on my own at home I cannot remember how to do it or I patch something together that seems to work.

On a seperate note:
As we briefly talked about video games last class, it made me remember something I recently read in Outside magazine. It stated that research showed that those who played video games were less likely to be distracted during competitions by outside things. It was interesting because I've never been someone who has used videogames and I've never thought they were a good way to spend large amounts of time, but it seems they do have their benefits.