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Two Podcasts Blog
First Podcast
In regard to the first conversation with Alan November Podcast video, my opinion is as follows:
The current education system needs improvement and this can be done with the help of the applications of Information and Technology in teaching. Students should be taught in a very innovative manner at the elementary level. This helps create interest in students towards learning. In fact, while teaching, even the use of multimedia helps student’s understanding and retention. It enhances creative thinking amongst students. Students need to be prepared to succeed in a global economy by using Information and Technology in education. They will also learn how to handle massive amounts of information in creative applications.

Twenty years ago 30% of all college educated people in the world lived in the US, but today that’s well below 20%, and falling. For developing skills in Engineering and technology fields, students need to be successful and knowledgeable at global level. We need to explore and understand world class standards and make students learn and understand them as well. For all these, there should be a global world class communication and this can be done with the help of Skype software.

Audio channels can be used for reviewing and learning, as well. If we continue to ignore this risk then our children will suffer. They need to solve tougher problems. There should be a continuous empowerment of students so that they can develop their overall personality. Students need to strengthen their content memorization, application of concepts, creativity innovativeness and impactive to meet the global competition. We need to adopt the system of teaching that develops the skills of invention in students. Multimedia usage can be a stimulator that must be used with multimedia for communication and to further new approaches to teaching and learning to get the best out of the technology.

Second Podcast
In regard to the second video presentation at the TED Conference by Lawrence Lessig, my opinion is as follows: Talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in the US. In earlier days we used to hear people singing songs quite often. Due to the mechanization, individuals are losing creativity. We will not have vocal chords, as these talking machines will take their place. The culture of the nation will be lost due to this.

In 1940 the majority of broadcasters shifted to Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) phenomena. Even though these broadcasters were large companies, the competition was tough for them to do business. Digital technology is the technology to revive these vocal chords. Amateur culture should be promoted as amateurs work for their satisfaction. Using digital technology people use contents of others and create something new for us. Extremism is growing between the law and the new technology. Amongst our children the growth of copyright abolitionism exists. The current generation rejects what the copyright is supposed to do. One needs to ask permission when using digital technology. Without permission, if sued by a person, he is a trespasser. In the digital world every single use of culture produces a copy, and so each usage needs permission. The courts in legislature need to be more active and influential. Privatization can be a solution as competition can lead to some sort of balance. The artistic creators embrace the ideas that their work may be available more freely.

Many business entities are building the digital culture to embrace this opportunity of enhancements, expressly to enable the movement and growth of free content that can grow on neutral platforms, so that more free content compete with less free content and the opportunity to develop the creativity of competition, can teach lessons to each other. We can’t kill the instinct the technology produces. In a democracy, we ought to be able to do the very best for children, if not for businesses.

Homework- My opinion regarding copyrightQuestion: I bought a music cd from Best Buy. Can I maker 10 copies of it for my friend?

The answer for this question would be No, music or video content belong to someone else who created it and it is due to copy right issue. Enclosed the copy right law: ” COPYRIGHT - The exclusive right to copy. The owner of a copyright has the right to exclude any other person from reproducing, preparing derivative works, distributing, performing, displaying, or using the work covered by copyright for a specific period of time. Copyrighted work can be a literary work, musical work, dramatic work, pantomime, choreographic work, pictorial work, graphic work, sculptural work, motion picture, audio visual work, sound recording, architectural work, mask works fixed in semiconductor chip products or a computer program” ” Copyright.” The ‘Lectric Law Library’s Legal Lexicon On Copyright, ‘Lectric Law Library, 1999. http://192.41.4.29/def/c132.htm (02 February 2000)

Homework-My thoughts regarding Online Conferences
These new online speeches for K12 Online 2007 Conference speakers in education filed are outstanding idea and worthwhile experience. It is very convenient and allows for time flexibility. This online conference attendance requires a computer with internet browser capability. It is something new and exciting for me because I can listen to these speeches in this conference at my own pace and select among several speakers. I chose to listen to some speakers that speak in American slang languages but some other speakers have different accents for that were difficult for me to follow.

I made my choices for speakers after listening to several speeches. My choices are as follows: First Strand: Classroom 2.0 Keynote, Clarence Fisher, Second Strand: New Tools “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools”, Liz Kolb, Third Strand: Obstacles to Opportunities “Me blog? No way!!!” by John Pearce and Fourth Strand: Professional Learning Networks “Building Online Communities for Youth” by Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan.

First Strand: Classroom 2.0 Keynote, Clarence Fisher, I was attracted to Clarence Fisher because he seems sincere in his vision for change among teachers, administrators, classrooms, and societies. He called for change to teach using new methods that have worked for him in the past, and in the present.

Clarence Fisher, as a knowledgeable teacher with new methods of technology got caught up with various research methods to redefine literacy that could fit the technology needs in the classrooms, to handle our advanced society. He seems to be down to earth and dedicated teacher in his community, where he lives and works. He wanted to make a new mark on education in order to handle the new trend of technological changes.
Clarence Fisher focused on the need to change curriculum in the classrooms to suit new changes in the technology field; he focused on our relationships to information which could be emphasized by exchanging information among our society and communities that would help with teaching. He also called on improving teaching methods that enhance collaboration in classrooms. Clarence Fisher’s speech indicated his dedication to easily achieve technology and learning in classrooms.

Second Strand: New Tools “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools” ,
Liz Kolb , I really liked Liz Kolb’s production regarding “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools” because it represents the new learning wave that could help many high school kids whom they are always carrying cellular telephones. The High school students could really benefit by using cellular telephone recording abilities for classroom podcasts feature. The students could use other suitable websites along with their cellular telephones for podcast recording options such as Gabcast http://gabcast.com/

I also noticed that Liz Kolb bio has several years experience as a social studies teacher for high school students, technology coordinator and integration specialist which it gave her this great idea of using available cheap technology devices such as cellular telephones, which are always carried by the students to be utilized in the classrooms as a alternative learning tools to encourage students, to concentrate on learning, and get some kind of motivation and productivity via their skills with using cellular telephones and its text messages.

Third Strand: Obstacles to Opportunities “Me blog? No way!!!” by the Australian elementary school teacher, John Pearce, whom he had posted this funny video that has started with a funny old man character, with a very low faded voice that was resistant to blogging things, talking animation and technology. John Pearce used Voki online software to present many supporting cartoon characters for his video.
John Pearce emphasized that traditional literacy way called for pencils and papers efforts for old fashioned learning methods but the new change needs different learning methods for literacy.
John Pearce stated that there are new literacy waves coming that involve participation and that are not through traditional ways, but through evolving ways to help literacy via computer media methods to enrich literacy, using audio and video. If the teachers fail to evolve with the literacy wave they will risk becoming teachers of literacy history instead of literacy of the future.

He also considered email as a slow method of communication. The communication of the future will be evolved literacy and teachers must be ready to be participants with new technological literacy ways.
According to John Pearce’s bio, he used blogs successfully and other web 2.0 tools with his students during classes.

Fourth Strand: Professional Learning Networks “Building Online Communities for Youth” by Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan. These four teachers created successful collaborative efforts among teachers using available technological software and hardware in their schools and other free internet tools to help their students share their collaborative outputs results via the internet and web blogs.

These teachers and their students learned to share their notes, thoughts and writings with each other and loved the ideas of finding other comments from other students who are not physically located at their schools. These students learned to interact together on line.

These successful four teachers helped their students to understand and learn more about global awareness through modern technological educational that involved blogs and web site building and hosting. The students performed online writing, inserted images with their stories documents. The students learned to organize their stories in Google web sites, and learned to use voice threads; they also used webcast and podcast to share their thoughts and learning expertise.
The students used collaboration partnerships between classrooms, new technological tools and communications such as Skype, Twitter, IM to stay connected with each others. I considered this fourth Strand: Professional Learning Networks “Building Online Communities for Youth” by Lee Baber, Paul Allison, Susan Ettenheim and Chris Sloan, to be a very successful and practical model to follow to teach students using the internet and other available technological Medias in the classrooms.

My thoughts regarding Web 2 Tools
The teachers, administrators and the curriculum educational support teams need to know more about Web 2 Tools and learn more about it and this should help be utilize it properly for technology educational classrooms. They also need to know that there are many useful resources and ideas associated with Web 2 Tools that can be utilized greatly for teaching, planning, learning, and creating innovation spirit, students’ activities and motivations among teachers as well as students. Web 2tool has been proved to improve professional learning and development for teachers who utilize technology in their classrooms.

Topic: Animal Fact / Animal Fable

 Subjects: Language Arts

Grade Level: 4^th Grade

Tasks: The Class will be divided into small groups of 3 students each.

Students will be working cooperatively as a group.

Students will: Read Animal Fact/ Animal Fable book by Seymour Simon.

Research three favorite animal facts/fable using information from the following Web site,

http://www.animalnetwork.com/animalnetwork/

Write about Animal Fact / Animal Fable on paper, and transfer those facts and Fables onto Inspiration software during lab time.

Use Venn diagram template inside Inspiration software to compare and contrast data, and include graphic illustrations to support the findings.

Objective: Compare/contrast fact from fiction.

Rubric for Animal Fact/ Animal Fable Project

Article Overview - Building Background Knowledge

The article that was assigned to me for reading and analysis was chapter 5 - Six Steps to Effective Vocabulary Instruction from Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement book by Robert .J. Marzano. This chapter discussed vocabulary instruction usage in various classrooms settings and level. The article outlined the six steps for successful instructions, and it provided many enhanced ideas to integrate vocabulary technology in the classrooms.

The article also encourages nonlinguistic description for words by using some graphic organizers in order to help students use these words to make it recognizable. It can be added that graphic organizers can be used in technology with using Inspiration software to build vocabulary webs for synonyms, antonyms, multiple meaning words, content vocabulary, or definitions of words. The article mentioned having all information about similar or different topics of words using Microsoft Power Point for the integration of vocabulary into these software programs. The article also encouraging creating examples for word vocabulary exercises based on student’s background knowledge with these new vocabulary words. These exercises must be designed according to student’s needs, interests, ages, and grades. The article highlighted the importance of creating team activities among students to help create productive collaborations using think, pair, share techniques which are mentioned in web site below that I found it to reinforce the ideas for team collaboration between students.http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/think/The article also encourage using vocabulary games in the classrooms to engage students in the learning process in order to enhance knowledge sharing and gain skill acquisition from their classmates.This article seems to support indirectly the Bloom’s Taxonomy practices. Bloom’s Taxonomy include: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used with technological vocabulary instructions methods.Knowledge can be used to ask the students to define words and find more terms about acronyms through below web siteshttp://www.britannica.com/ http:///www.acronymfinder.comComprehension can be used by students to use Microsoft application Excel sheet to sort words to make sure that they understand their meaning.Application can be used by students to create stories using various vocabulary words correctly and using Microsoft Word.Concept Analysis can be done by asking students to break words down into prefixes and roots at the following web site VOCABULARY Prefixes/Suffixes http://www.ops.org/reading/vocabsec.htmSynthesis concept can be preformed by encouraging students to perform some kid of vocabulary games at the following web site English Vocabulary Quizzes Using Images http://iteslj.org/v/ei/Evaluation process for students’ work output can be done indirectly without the mention of tests by encouraging students to create a comparison table between words using Microsoft Word. The teachers can also test student’s productivity and knowledge indirectly with vocabulary knowledge through question cues types or other non stressful assessments methods.

My core values and beliefs about instructional technology is that instructional technology reinforces newer methods of instructions in the traditional classroom, such as facilitating word processing and editing learning, providing visual cues and representations of concepts. This allowing for non-threatening practice and repetition of material. Instructional technology has various formats from researching to game formats, teaching new material in a self-paced and individualized manner, enhancing creativity, and curtailing time intensive tasks, and allowing for efficient and orderly data and product storage.

I have to admit that the blog thing is something new for me but it should be a new and great adventure to explore it.