Cruisin’ the College Scene

Today has been a frustrating day. We are undergoing changes at the college – we merged with Northwestern Technical College and now we are known as Georgia Northwestern Tech (GNTC).  With changes of any kind there are details that must be addressed.  Trying to get the student ID cards made has been the most challenging.  However, I’m no quitter – so I’ll keep plugging along.

What can I say!  This course has been the most useful course I have taken in a long time.  I have experienced the highs and lows of learning using technology. I feel I have a better understanding of the frustration that many of the students at GNTC (Georgia Northwestern Technical College) feel as they come back to take courses to re-train for different jobs.

I was very frustrated when trying to “embed” a slideshow, but thanks to Judy and Paul, I was able to succeed.  When I embedded a video, it came much easier.  In fact, I considered dropping the course.  However, as I had stated on the first voice thread, I am no quitter – so I persevered.  Just think of what I would have missed – finding out about Google Docs, Del.icio.us, and Pageflakes (my favorites)!!!

I plan on using my blog and reading Cindy’s, as well as others, as I continue to learn about all this “techie stuff”.  Who knows what I may get into.

My neice in Oklahoma invited me to join Facebook.  I was hesitant of doing that before now, but since I’ve learned the significance of social networking, I’m going to try it.

One site I found about FLOSS (Free/libre/open source software) I plan on sharing with her.  She works with ESOL students.

I spent almost an hour on Classroom 2.0 and Ning in Education.  It is definitely addictive.  There are so many ideas out there to use in a classroom.  Why didn’t someone come up with this when I was teaching!!

I also visited Ning and found a dicussion for college teachers entitled:It’s not the detination, it’s the journey by David Donnica. This is something I plan to look into further.

An article I read, We need our Earth, from my readings in Google reader was interesting.  It discussed how a tech integrator in Essex Junction got  students involved with Google Earth to explore their world.  The article included a link to a scavenger hunt using Google Earth.

This, again, would be a useful article for teachers to read.  The instructor of the ECE classes would appreciate hearing of this.  She has told me that the other items I have sent her way were useful so she passed them on to a couple of students.

Since I am a librarian instead of an instructor, reading articles and passing the information on to other instructors makes their jobs easier.  They are always looking for new ideas.  Our curriculum is different from the regular school settings because it is more related to business and job enhancement.

If anyone knows of a good source of articles related to business, economics, word processing, firefighting, or law enforcement, I would appreciate knowing about them.  This would enhance my relating articles to the instructors at Georgia Northwestern Technical College (formerly known as Coosa Valley Tech).

“Pageflakes” was a new term to me, but i really enjoyed playing around with it.  I have stated creating my own flake and plan on adding to it.  I am interested in finding other ways I can utilize it at school, such as use the calculator, add titles of items newly acquired, or add memos to the calendar.

The information I have learned taking this course is phenomenal, and I am more excited about exploring all of the skills further.

I created a second request form after I had played around in the Google Docs further. The more I play around with it the more I think of things I can tink of where this will be very useful to me. I LOVE IT!

When I explored further and found the Google Docs Template Directory , I was delighted because it contained many templates that I could use both professionally and personally. Of the 436 templates, there were calendars, course syllabus, book report templates, and budget items.  And the beauty of all this is that you can share it with as many people as you need to. This is an item that teachers can use FREE. Where was this knowledge when I was teaching.

I enjoyed doing this exercise.  There are so maaannnny things you can view on YouTube.  I looked at several news and entertainment sites. And I was intested and surprised that there were ones on crocheting (which I do a lot of).

Then when I went to TeacherTube – WOW!  I found a site on a book talk about “aprons” and writing poetry.  It was entitled Apron Memories.  It started me thinking about the various things a teacher could bring to class to help students become creative writers.  When I was in high school, my English teacher brought a record (classical) and played it while we wrote a short story. She would pick up the record needle and place it on a different piece of music.  We had to continue our story and make sense of it all.
Here is the video entitled “Apron Memories”:

PODCASTING

I have taken the one-day workshop on Podcasting, so I was a little familiar with this skill.  However, I have learned more of how to use it as well as some sites to go to for help.  This technique is probably something I want use a lot of just simply because I don’t have classes that come in on a regular basis.

I did, however, find an interesting one, Education Podcast Network, that I could recommend to the ECE instructor.  I downloaded it to my Google Reader.  I also looked at MPR: Grammar Grater and Literary History & Criticism Podcasts.  These may be useful sites to recommend to the English instructors.

One item that sounded interesting to me was Storycast.  I want to delve into this one further.

I feel that this is one of the most relevant sites we have visited so far.  Being a librarian myself, I can see all kinds of useful activities that can be related to this website.

1) The classroom teacher can have the student share what they have found.

2) The classmates can suggest reading lists by adding the names of books to their blogs.

3) A librarian can share cataloging information with other librarians.

4) Students and teachers can share a particular book through the booktalk section. (a more modern way of doing book reports)

These are only a few of the ideas that came to my mind.  It would be a way of making book reading more interesting and involve those students who like doing things on the computer.

Personally, I would use it to see the reviews of books I’m interested in reading.

I found this activity fun and enlightening.  There are numerous websites that teachers could use to teach all sorts of lessons.  Below are just a few which I am going to tell Bea about for her classes.

My bookmarks can be found on http://delicious.com/sams3

http://www.factmonster.com/

http://www.50states.com/

http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/index.html

http://abcteach.com/

http://professorgarfield.com/pgf_home.html

http://www.stateanimals.com/

http://www.vocabulary.com/