Wednesday, March 11, 2009

WIkipedia to trust or not to trust

I think Wikipedia can be a trusted site for some information but not all. I think for something like a simple book report or the history of a person Wikipedia could be a very useful site. I would not trust Wikipedia with a big time project though. If I was using Wikipedia for a big project I would make sure I had other trusted sources backing it up. If I was assigning my students a project and they decided to use Wikipedia I would make sure to tell those students who are going to use Wikipedia to make sure they have another source.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch' last lecture started off with him telling the audience why it was going to be his last lecture, and it was because he has tumors in his liver. He didn't want to focus on his illness though and he didn't want anybody to fell sorry for him. He said you cannot help the cards you have been dealt but only play your hand. He then went to tell the audience the things he would not be talking about and the things he would be talking about.He had a great sense of humor throughout the video.

The first thing he talked about was his childhood dreams. He talked about brick walls and brick walls make us prove how bad we want something. T he brick walls are not there to keep us out but to make us show how bad we want something. He then went on to talk fundamentals and hard work and how important they are. I love a quote that he had in his PowerPoint and it goes "experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want".

Next he talked about enabling the childhood dreams of others. He went on the CMU and created a course where you made your own VR world. His mentor gave him some great advice when he thought his students had did really well, and that was to tell them they did good but he know they can do better. He said he would be doing the students a disservice if he was to set the bar.

I really enjoyed watching the videos and the quotes he put at the end of the video. He talked about the lesson he has learned thought life. One of them were even you give someone long enough they will show you the good in them. Another one was don't complain work harder his example was when Jackie Robinson played baseball it was put in his contract that he couldn't complain even when people spit on him.

Best of November 2007: Why Wireless?

The article I reviewed was why wireless it was the best of November 2007. In the article a school has just decided to get wireless set throughout the school so it would be available Monday through Friday. It was written by a teacher who writes for the school newsletter. She was asked to inform others why the school was adopting a wireless program, and that is exactly what she did. After reading the article I would have wanted wireless at my school if i didn't already have it.

At the beginning of the article she gave the obviously reasons why a high school should have a wireless network, but then throughout the rest of the article she gave you reasons that you may have never thought of. For instance to prepare them for the next generation, just because you didn't have it when you were in school doesn't mean your child doesn't need it now. She said students need the Internet because "student[s] must know what to do when they don’t know what to do" Overall this was a very good article that I enjoyed reading.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Peers Podcast

The first podcast i listened to was YouTube - For Education by Joel Graham, Noelle Shipman and Kimberly Kelly. I didn't know YouTube could be used for educational purposes I have only used it to watch music video. The problem with the podcast I think is you can tell that they read from paper. They had a lot of good points about using YouTube for educational purposes, but u can just tell it wasn't practice how it was going to be said. I think them just practicing would have made the podcast better.

The second podcast i listed to was Possibilities for using Facebook in a educational setting by Allison Midgette and Shaundretta Bethel. I think they should have had what they were going to say laid out or used index cards, because you could here them flipping the paper they were using. I think they should have practiced what they were going to say because the first girl who spoke used um and and a lot. The second girl who spoke you could also hear her keep flipping the paper she was using. They gave a lot of information about Facebook being useful and after listing I could see why they supported Facebook for educational purposes.