3 Articles on Video Production

http://kidsvid.altec.org/nav_pages/teaching.html

This website is really great. It actually has lesson plans on there about how to teach kids how to use video production as a tool. This site has links to tips they have in which they further explain how to teach kids the video production process.

http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/activities/multimedia/video.asp

This website is a lesson plan on  the subject of video production for kids. I liked this site because the lesson plan is very detailed. I throughly enjoy when something is in depth and clear cut for me to understand so this lesson plan would be the one that i would choose to use. It gives a new little activity for each technique used in video production. I think that is cool because kids will need to know how to do each step separately so that they can be safe with the equipment. 

 http://www.teachertube.com/

I think this website is awesome. It is just like YouTube but for teachers and students. You could post videos, documents, pictures, or audio to the website and the best part about it is that a parent or teacher does not have to worry about the children stumbling onto a video or picture that is in any way graphic. I think, since the website is restrictive like that, this website would be a good resource to use in the classroom for students. If a teacher had the students make a video, this website would be a good one for them to post the video on. 

Evalutech

I loved this website. I thought this site was so helpful and will be helpful in the future when I sit down to figure out what to include in my teaching plans. There was all sorts of resources for math, language arts, social studies, and science enrichment. I liked the fact that each site that was recommended had a little summary added next to the link so the reader could figure out if that website would be worth it for them to visit. Also the fact that someone has done all of the digging and searching for you and all of the best websites are up on this page for a teacher to look through is amazing. I liked the search that they included on the site. That engine would be very useful if you needed to find a review for a certain subject. The search engine had a bunch of different criteria that you could choose from when searching, such as: keywords, subject, format, grade levels, and teachers name. Since there are so many options to narrow the search down to, you can get pretty specific when finding a review.  I noticed that SREB stands for "Southern Regional Education Board." I wonder if the information is specific solely to the Southern Regional Education Board or if there is another place for information specific to the Western states. The SREB looks like it belongs around the area of Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and east a ways. I wonder if there is something like this but for the west coast states and if it would be any different than this website. 

Copyright Laws

I know for a fact that the copyright law is broken all the time, and most of the time when people are unaware that they are breaking a law. Music, pictures, quotes, etc. are all used without correct permission all the time. This law will definitely affect my classroom teaching. I know that I will come across something amazing that I will want to use in my classroom, but I might not necessarily get to use it because of copyright laws. Worksheets will all have to be made by me, from a website that allows copies, or they will have to be from a book that allows copies made from it. Hopefully I will not run into a situation like that too often where I can't use an educational tool because it is copyrighted. I feel like when I was growing up, my teachers that I had were not worried about this at all. I'm not sure if the laws were less strict at the time or if it was something else, but I can remember getting many worksheets with direct text from books from my teachers. As far as software goes, I think there are enough grants out there and free legal downloadable software available to get me by in that department. I am not worried about not having software for my students to use. I liked how, on one of the articles about copyrights, they gave an example of a request for usage to the copyright holder. I think that will come in handy for me and for my student's use. 

Wikis

I thought editing wikis was super cool. I kind of felt smart after I posted it :) even though it wasn't anything very profound. I think because there is such a wealth of knowledge that can be found in wikis, because I had something to add to that wealth made me feel special. hehe. I can see how it would get unreliable. If anyone could put information online like that, it is not a very trustworthy source. I could have written something totally bogus and it would still be on the wiki that I posted on. I made sure to add a link to the information that I added and it was all relevant. I thought it was interesting when I went to post on Wikipedia, because I didn't have an account, they notified me that if I chose to post information without an account, then my IP address would be given out to anyone who wanted to know where that specific information I put down was. I didn't really know what an IP address was but I assumed that it gave a location to where my computer is at the time. I thought this was kind of strange. It scared me a little bit. I wouldn't really want everyone to know where I am at a certain time during the day. I kind of figured that the government could do such a thing at looking up someone's IP address, but not any random person. It seems like an invasion of privacy a little bit. So I made an account so that nobody can look me up. I am glad that joining Wikipedia was free. It made it even cooler to be on there editing things. 

Bridging the Digital Divide

I found this article to be a bit redundant of things we have talked about in class and maybe in another article we have read. In response to the location of the computers, I don't necessarily agree that a computer lab is not a good spot to place computers. I grew up with a computer lab in my school and it was in what we called "the Pod." About 6 or 7 classrooms surrounded the Pod so each classroom shared all of the computers in their specific Pod. The teachers would have to reserve time slots when their students were allowed to used the computers but when no class was using them, any student was allowed to use them freely. Swain and Pearson say that computer labs, "reinforce the idea that computers are simply “extra” or “special” instead of an integral part of the learning process." The way that we set up our lab made it feel like it was part of every class so it really was part of our learning process. Another point in the article that I didn't quite understand the benefit of was  when the authors were saying that it benefits the students when the computers that are in the classroom are located close to each other so that the students can share ideas. For me, this would just be a distraction. Also, if there are only 3 to 5 computers in the classroom, the children who are unable to use the computers would be extremely distracted. I think that I like the idea of a computer lab. It seems more economic for the school and also less distracting for the students. 

Web Pages

I think that using websites in the classroom setting is a great idea. It is incorporating technology into the childs' learning process and theses days, children appreciate technology more than ever. By creating a class website, a teacher is able to update parents that wouldn't normally come into the classroom to ask, on what is happening in their son or daughters class on a day to day basis. It's cool because you can link to other websites the teacher might think the parents should see or a teacher could post worksheets just in case a student was not there one day and missed an assignment. Now with access to computers and the internet children wont have any more excuses for not getting school work done if they stay home sick. I am sure I will make a class website once I become a teacher. I see nothing but positives from this. 

As for the reading, I wish that my teachers in high school and in college would have done this for me! I think by writing comments on the paper in Word itself is so much easier than hand writing comments, that I can't even read half of the time anyways! By doing this we would be saving paper and also saving time. I think it is a great idea and I really want more teachers to start doing this. I think I would have been a much better writer if I were to be able to send my paper over the internet to, anybody around the world for that matter, and they were to be able to send a response  back with comments in the paper. I would have written much better papers if I were to have had access to a resource like that. 

Websites

I found these site: Dr. Mike's Math Games

I thought this site was pretty cool because it gave a whole bunch of math games for kids. I think math is very important for children to learn. I do think that America is putting too much pressure on its kids to learn math and therefore teachers are resorting to teaching math in a boring way just to get through it. But I think if children were taught math in a fun and engaging way then they would understand it better and it wouldn't be a subject that so many children dread. By making math into a game, kids will be more apt to do problems, and they might not even realize they are doing math!

Teachers.net

This web site was really cool because it is run by teachers. You can look up teachers lesson plans, communicate with other teachers through chat-boards or chat-rooms, and learn how to teach for different learning styles. There is all sorts of information on this site for teachers and the coolest part is that it is from other teachers! Direct from the source. 

Laura Candler's Teacher Resources

This site is cool because all of the resources on this teachers website are all free. She created this website in order to help other teachers succeed in the classroom with their students and she felt like she had some resources for teachers to use and she was right! There are some great ideas and links on her page.