28 october 09

ok today i start my next class. edu655. another 6 weeks of quick learning, technology intensive class producing information.

7 October 09

OK on to class number 5 out of 10 towards finishing my masters. Sweet, each day i get closer to being done.

29 September 09

The Cowpokes pull out another one. They could be 3-0 if not for a last second field goal by the G-Men yet everyone is calling for their demise, seriously what are people watching? They are not that bad! I guess they are bored without TO to pick on in Dallas. Romo has always been overrated why are they just catching on now? Speaking of overrated what has happened to Jake Delhomme?

So Red Sux vs. Angels and Yankees vs. AL Central (Tigers or Twins, one will win that division at some point).

The NL is looking a little more exciting, no one is taking charge in that League at all.

Do you think it burns inside Tiger Woods to see Mickelson win a tournament that Tiger should have won?

NBA camps get underway today, this is another league that doesnt get interesting until the playoffs, bunch of whinny millionaires always talking about their individual stats. boring

29 September 09

Well another class is just about over and i have once again spent a lot of time working on different sites to develop ways to teach online or atleast punch up boring instruction with technology to gain student interest. Its amazing how much you can learn on the internet, if i had the internet when i was in school i would have done a lot better.

14 September 09

Articulate is a great teaching tool. Very easy to use and understand and provides a great deal of variety to teaching subjects, while hitting audio and visual learners.

11 September 09

Played with www.articulate.com and it is a fun program to work with. Not great hearing my own voice in a recording but i will manage. It is an easy tool to use and has a great many purposes with which to be used. But with all others it has its down sides, again it can be controlled somewhat in order for it to serve as an educational tool. Visual and audio learning for those type learning styles. Excellent really!

8 September 09

As I continue on in my pursuit of a MA in Teaching and Learning with Technology, I am once again trying new forms of instruction using the internet as a backdrop with several types of software packages. It would seem to be a place where there is overstimulation. There is so much out there that can be used as a teaching/training tool. Its hard to just settle into one you like as there just different options that can be used for different events, so how do you keep up with them all? Does the over abundance translate to overstimulation of the student? If we give them too much too fast will they be able to keep up or be interested? That seems to be the challenge.

10 August 09

OK well i have been updating and reading and really think that the technology of teaching is going to be very important. social networking on ning and facebook will be something kids will understand and enjoy working on. pbworks is a good place to develop a class but i wont be able to do a lot on it in my current job but look forward to atleast trying it out. Minds on Fire was interesting but the tech revolution is going to be very critical to the future of the educational industry.

6 August 09

So i have reviewed Facebook, Ning, and PBworks in a comparison to Blackboard and Moodle and dont like them as options. We have an assignment to make classes on those sites and so far it hasnt changed my mind, but i shall leave my mind open until i have completed the classes and see what comes of it. Its interesting to see the technology i use in this class as compared with the stuff i use in my everyday job for the Army and how much some of it syncs and some is actually behind. A lot of the stuff we do is more advanced than what we do here, so hopefully this is helping me learn.

30 July 09

Well yesterday I did my Facebook homework. But I have been on Facebook for awhile and never really realized how much is on Facebook. I certainly know how many people are on it. I have heard from people i havent seen in decades. Its a good social networking place but as far as educational tool it could be tough as there are a lot of distractors on that site. You really have to keep your students attention and focus if you use Facebook.

28 July 09

So i opened another account yesterday, this time its a Ning site. We keep opening all kinds of sites, I am losing track, next up is Facebook. I have a Facebook but dont like it. Too many people!! Not all technology is good. I still dont like cell phones, too many people can reach me all hours of the day and night and work has even given me one so i am at their beckon call. Not a big fan of that, of course i say that being a member of the US Army. Ok so its a little wrong. So to date i have opened: twitter, Ning, PBworks, a second blog, Facebook wow so many passwords to remember!!

26 July 09

So after reading the wikis for online collaboration im still not completely sure i understand wikis fully but, i can see why we are talking about them. It seems a little odd to me thought that to this point in my educational career every instructor i have had tells me to avoid wikipedia and wikis and now i am going to be using it completely. It seems really funny to have teachers say dont use it then i am going to learn how to use it and have my students do the same. But there are the reasons, like editing for anyone, it makes sense but you can still use it as a starting point. What i really liked is the way you can break down a wiki for certain types of learning. As i have been learning lots of students have different learning styles, so three seperate types of wikis can be used for seperate types of learning like the knowledge construction, critical thinking and contextual application. I think i will do an Event Plan that i got from the Contextual Application chapter for my wiki project. So much of what i do in the army is an event so planning is second nature and troops need to learn to plan and plan for everything under the sun. so we shall see how this goes.

First Learning BLog

This is my first learning blog. I have another blog for sports which is a lot of fun. I just say random stuff about sports and friends from all over read it call me and argue, its great. So hopefully with this blog i can do something simillar with educational stuff. We shall see.