Powerful Technology

I have been checking out blogs quite a bit lately. Since I don't get the paper here at home, and knowing the press here in the United States tends to be only one source of news I have made it a point to get my news via blogs. I think it is interesting that I can do this, and the fact that I can do it anywhere is nice too. I also frequently check a blog from a gentleman that has some of the same interests as I do about technology and education. He maintains blog with podcasts, which he creates on his drive home. Today while waiting for a class to start I quickly checked out his most recent post. He mentioned in the post digital streaming, Instantly I became intrigued. At work we have been working on creating our own streaming project and I had to pass along some general knowledge that I found while doing a little research on my own.

I am personally a huge proponent of using streaming in the classroom. It offers so many different options to students and teachers. One thing that I do feel strongly about is that companies are taking advantage of schools by selling them streaming. Schools whether they realize it or not already have all the basic infrastructures to create their own library of digital media. They have the technology available, the librarians who are experts in cataloging, curriculum experts, and usually the technology staff that can put the wheels in motion. The one thing they lack at this point is the ability to purchase media. How powerful could it be if schools worked together to achieve this. They can eliminate the middle man completely.

Streaming in the context of education can lead to a lot of positive outcomes. To often when a video is put into the VCR some students have probably already seen the movie, even if they haven't seen it in the context that the teacher hopes to create. These students may simply tune out since he has already seen this movie. Other students while watching the movie may not be able to hear what is being said. These students instead of moving to where they can hear the movie, or ask to have the volume turned up, simply doodle on their notebook. Then there is the possibility that you have a student who is engaged until they miss something and if they were watching it alone they would rewind the movie. Would the teacher be able to do this? Most of us probably wouldn't since that means that 20 or so other students would be interrupted. Streaming allows for a paradigm shift in the way that movies are viewed. Instead of simply using streaming to show the movie to the whole class now teachers could create individualized media experiences. They could either have students choose from a preselected list of movies or they could allow the students to search the catalog themselves, after some guidance on how to do this of course.

Technologies such as streaming media and other media delivered using Internet can be a powerful tool. Also within the context of the Internet students can become creators of media. More on that in the next post!

Please feel free to comment on these posts. I know that I don't post a lot, but one goal I have for this coming school year is to make at least one post a month.

ITS Meeting

We had our last Instructional Technology Specialist meeting of the year. It always amazes me how much is out there on the Internet, as well as all of the tools that are available. We shared a few different concepts and ideas at the meeting that my co-worker and I thought would be of interest. We started out by showing the group the concept of Podcasts and one example that related to our audience. I think that it is kind of funny that something that is promoted by a VJ from MTV could be used by teachers in the classroom. We also shared the governments FREE resource for educators. This site has a ton of information from over 30 different government organizations. This is a great site for finding resources for WebQuests, web based activities, or learning extensions for students. There were also a lot of different activities that were interactive explorations or simulations of concepts. The best part of course is that is free and available on the web. We also showed a web site that has teacher created lessons available from the Madison Oneida BOCES here in New York. The site is similar to the area that we are creating that would allow teachers to see what is being done in our local 10 component districts in relation to the use of technology.

Weather Underground was also something that was shown. This site allows students to explore different weather concepts and see real live data. Of course there are the mandatory pop ups and adds on the site, but there is also a lot of interesting information on the site that a Earth science teacher might be able to use in their classroom. The entire site is devoted to the weather. It is really neat, even to a social studies guy like me!

The last two things that were of some interest were Adobe's Classroom in a Book publications. Adobe actually allows educators to download free copies of these materials for use in the class. Of course you have to agree to an end users agreement so that you aren't making millions of these copies. Someone from the group also shared the Voice Over IP program called Skype which is a free. This is also of interest to me since the company that has created this is the same people that created Kazzaa, the Peer to Peer file sharing application. Now with a lot of phone companies and ISPs opening up to this technology it will be interesting to see where it goes, especially as cell phones with this capability start to emerge.

This was a great meeting in my book we really had a nice time sharing information like this with the rest of our group, and hopefully we can make this a staple of these meetings.

Another Day

I have to say that I was pretty surprised yesterday while I was looking around for information on Podcasting that there was as much on this within education as there was with a lot of other uses. I always wonder where and why technology is integrated in the classroom?

Sometimes it seems that though the technology is out there and is being used the difficulty with using and implementing it into the classroom is really two-fold, where does it fit? As well as is are educators willing to try it? I don't think educators are really afraid of using technology, but rather all of the mandates that are out there for what needs to be done in the classroom makes one more thing the straw that slows down the camel.

There are so many free and well design applications that have been released under GPL, as well as the major software companies that I wonder if there is anyone out there really looking at how they are used and if that is even possible? Anyways just a few more thoughts, not much else for right now. Perhaps latter on I will share some of the stuff that I think should and can be done to create relevant learning opportunities for teachers to use technology. (Yeah I think that should be the focus of this blog:)