Google Site with LP

JoshThorp_Google_Site

The Big Picture

The big picture for the Oregon Technology Standards are creating students who are technologically literate and good digital citizens. The aim is to create students how are creative and who work collaboratively across the globe developing their awareness of the digital world. These students develop their critical thinking skills and effectively use technology as tools in problem solving. This creates a batch of lifelong learners.

Technology is a powerful tool in any classroom. In my classroom, I will use blogs to communicate with parents and families and to let students know of class assignments and opportunities. We will use skype to communicate with a class in a different part of the country or world to help develop the students' awareness of their country and world. Another way I will use technology is having students use powerpoint to make presentations.

The challenges to using technology can and do exist. Some school districts don't have fancy projectors or computers. Also, some students don't have home access to computers and I must be sensitive to families that might not have computers available to them. Another challenge might be assuming that all students are familiar with technology. I might be in a situation where the students would need to learn even the basics.

As we move forward in the digital age, technology becomes more and more important and I must make great effort to incorporate it as much as possible into my classroom!

INTASC

INTASC_Link

WEB 2.0!!

Web 2.0 is having the world at your fingertips. The ability to access files from anywhere in the world is amazing. I love being able to store documents, keep in touch with friends and family and make and create pojects online.

For instance: a couple days ago for a class, I needed to great a graph for a presentation. I googled "make a graph" and clicked on the first website and made a killer graph. It was awesome. Before, it would have been a time consuming thing to use a program that I probably didn't have or couldn't afford.

Facebook: say what you want about social networking sites, I absolutely love being able to keep track of friend all over the world and communicate quickly. If I have a question about homework, I post it on facebook and I have 12 SOE peer responses within minutes. When I first went to Brasil at the age of 5, it took weeks to get communication from the US. Now, it is seconds away.

I also love blogs. I'm pretty new to them, but my wife has kept a blog of our family for a while. Once again, there are pictures and video that are stored on the internet that my parent in Brasil, her parents in Seattle, and my brother in North Carolina can all access and comment on. I love the idea of a class blog that I can use to communicate with students and parents about what is going on in the class and what things are coming up.

Justin.tv

Justin.tv is a great website that allows you to broadcast yourself (or anything you want to stream through your computer). It is incredibly easy to use. All you need is a computer, a webcam, and a microphone (my laptop has a webcam and microphone built in). By going to justin.tv and signing up for an account, you can create your own internet channel. I find this incredibly useful for doing a live presentation. You could give a presentation from anywhere in the world. Justin.tv also gives you the ability to stream video files from your computer, so you could do a viewing of a video that you created. On your channel's page, you can set times for your broadcasts to let people know when to check back to watch you. You can also set up a chat function to allow people watching your channel to chat with each other and to allow you to chat with them as well. You could also have people text you a question that you answered live.

Watch live video from liabi's channel on Justin.tv

Charts, Graphs, Horror

After analyzing this data, it was interesting to see that the majority of the class scored above the average. Also, by analyzing the google spreadsheet, I realized that I have a lot to learn about spreadsheeting.




Google Spreadsheet Link

Scribblar and Dabbleboard!!!