Facebook and MySpace and Wikis, oh my!

Tonight I watched two videos online from commoncraft about using social networking sites (such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter) and wikis. I really enjoyed watching these videos (Social Networking in Plain English and Wikis in Plain English) because they provided a short introduction to the overall benefits of using social networking sites and wikis.

Social Networking Sites
A lot of teachers are against using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and/or Twitter. However, I think that these sites can be a tremendous asset to the classroom if used properly. For example, Twitter could be used to send out tweets to students about homework assignments, study tips, or general classroom reminders. There seems to be more of a shift in high school away from MySpace towards Facebook, but both social networking sites have great potential. I have a professional account on Facebook that I use to communicate with former and current students, parents, and my own family. Through Facebook, I am part of the Robert Noyce Scholars group, which is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation that seeks to encourage talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and professionals to become K-12 mathematics and science teacher through an open forum and collaborative efforts using this social networking site. You could even create a group on Facebook for each class that you teach to send out reminders, host on-line study sessions, and use the blogging features of Facebook.

Wikis
I never actually knew what a wiki was until this week. I didn't even put together the "wiki" in Wikipedia! But Wikipedia is a great example of a wiki, an interlinked site shared and edited by multiple users. We created a secondary science wiki for science teachers in secondary education in TPTE 486 using PBworks and really started using it today. I've never used a wiki before and I like the concept, but dislike that anyone can edit anything on the wiki. What happens if I had the correct information (or I liked the way the formatting looked) and someone else in the wiki disagreed? I could see this going back and forth with changes, almost a struggle for power. We did add annotated links to the websites we evaluated today (see my earlier post), and will continue to update our wiki throughout the rest of this summer session. It is funny though because we have a wiki for secondary science, yet in our section all three of us are looking up three different topics (chemistry, physics, and forensic science). They are all inter-related, yet completely different curricula.

Final Thoughts?
I can definitely see myself continuing to use the latest social networking site in my teaching - if students are using it all the time, why not communicate on their level? It was very easy to create a Facebook account when I originally made one. I didn't actually create the wiki, but it was very easy to join it once the secondary science wiki was created. I can't imagine it would be that hard to make one myself on PBworks. I'd really like to start using Twitter, but right now I don't know a lot of students that are tweeting or would want to read my tweets about science class.

I'm not sure that I'll really use wikis outside of TPTE 486 in a classroom setting due to time constraints to actually teach the kids HOW to use a wiki, but I may or may not use it in my personal life. That one is more up in the air for me than the social networking sites. Besides, Rome wasn't built in a day, so I probably won't start using ALL of the different forms of technology at once!

The GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY of WEBSITES

Today in class we had to find a website and evaluate it based on various aspects of a good site based on the research in the literature. I decided to look for a great forensic science site because this fall will be the first semester I am teaching this course (and the first semester that it will be offered at Karns and also for science credit in Knox County)!



The website that I visited was Forensic Science: Let Evidence Reveal the Truth. I think this is a really great website for an introduction to forensic science. I may even use this in the fall to have my students get started at the beginning of the semester. It was created by students as part of the 2004 Oracle ThinkQuest competition. Although it hasn't been updated since the competition, the information is still accurate and the references are tremendous. There are even fun interactive games to get away from all of the reading/text. This would be a perfect "sub day" type of plan if you could come up with questions for students to find ahead of time.

As I'm sure you may have seen while surfing the net, there are different aspects to having a good website, such as author credibility, user friendliness, aesthetically pleasing appearance, updated information, and more. Hopefully I can find a few more good websites dealing with forensic science during this class that I can use in the fall! It was very easy to follow the rubric for this assignment and answer all of the questions for the evaluation. This was useful because I could modify the evaluation criteria a little bit to have students evaluate websites that they are using for various projects in class.

"Pay Attention"!

We watched a video outside of class this week called "Pay Attention". Not only is it the perfect title for teachers (can't you just hear a teacher telling his/her student to 'Pay attention!'?), but it's a great motivational video to get teachers interested in WHY we should use technology in the classroom.

I actually think that I'd seen this video before this class (possibly at one of our monthly Technology Training sessions at school?), but it was great to watch it again. Our students are using technology every day - why should we not do the same in the classroom? It will help ENGAGE and ENHANCE learning! I've never heard anyone say "No, we shouldn't do this because the students would be engaged", have you?

If you haven't seen this video, you should check it out:


I wouldn't use this video in the classroom because it is more geared towards teachers. It would be great to show everyone on an in-service day or at a faculty meeting to motivate others to start using technology in the classroom. It was easy to access at home and would also be easily accessible at school because it is a TeacherTube video. Overall, it was good motivation to keep up with all the latest technology!

The Wonderful World of iGoogle!

VS.

Last week, we set up our iGoogle accounts. I already had a Gmail account, but I had no idea about iGoogle! I'm not quite sure how, but I'd never even heard of it.

iGoogle is neat because you can not only access your e-mail, but you can add all sorts of neat gadgets like a calculator, the weather, a clock, comics, news, YouTube, Facebook, recipes, and more. The possibilities are endless.

I've set up my iGoogle page with a forensic science theme at the top because I am teaching a new forensic science course in the fall. I also included Science Daily, one of my favorite websites that shows brief highlights of interesting scientific research and some comics for a smile at the start and end of my day. I really like that I can not only access my e-mail, but also have access to an array of things that I like to check out on a daily or weekly basis.

Here's a screen shot of my iGoogle homepage.



I thought that it was extremely easy to set up my iGoogle. Since I already had a Gmail account, I just had to change the URL address I was going to. I would definitely recommend that my students check out and use iGoogle because I think it's a better way to check your e-mail while checking out some of your favorite websites all at the same time. I don't really see myself using this in the classroom per say because I'm not sure what I would use it for. However, creating the iGoogle also allows for using blogger, creating a website, sharing files on Google docs, and many more.

I Don't Ever Want to be "That Teacher"

Welcome to my technology blog! As part of my Theories and Practice in Teacher Education (TPTE) 486 course that I am taking this summer (June 2010), we are creating a blog to follow our journey through technology. I hope to learn some new things to use in the classroom (since I am currently teaching and working on my alternative/transitional license), and am looking forward to a fun class! I also hope that I never become a teacher that is not willing to learn the latest updates in technology like in the comic below :)