Adventure in Social Bookmarking- Diigo

I have used Social Bookmarking sites before to get traffic to our school website. I have used Reddit, Digg, Delicious (formerly del.icio.us),StumbleUpon websites to get our school website's content seen and shared. I think it is great way to generate engagement with community. These websites are like bookmarks or favorites, public, online, sharable and accessible from anywhere. I never used Social Bookmarking sites for my personal use. This week's task allow me to understand that it is beneficial to use it even for personal use. Instead of bookmarking websites that

I like on computer browser, it is easy to store on Diigo or other social bookmarking sites, and it is easy to access my bookmarks anywhere from any platform like desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones. I especially like tagging feature of social bookmarking sites, so I can easily categorize my bookmarks, and search through bookmarks to quickly find desired information.

Diigo is a great tool provides premium features to teachers for free. I requested my account for education upgrade, and still waiting for approval. With Diigo education features, I can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks. Diigo pre-set privacy settings for students, so students will communicate only with teacher and classmates. In education version, Diigo only show education-related ads to student accounts. Diigo also allows me to collaborate with other teachers. For our ETEC class group, we've used Diigo to bookmark resources we found related to educational technology.

Oncemy account is upgraded to Education version, I will post more reflections about Diigo.

Aggregating Pages Adventure

This week my task was to play and explore a tool that I've never heard, but used alternative version named "iGoogle"(retired on November 2013) before. I was asked to make a Protopage or Netvibes aggregation pages...

This week's adventure was interesting. I really like it. I played with Protopage and Netvibes, and I choose to use Protopage for aggregation. Protopage is user friendly tool, that help you organize your information with widgets. Protopage supports dragging and resizing the widgets. Unfortunately Netvibe doesn't support this. Netvibe seemed less flexible to me.

I believe it will be beneficial for me using these tools to communicate with parents, share my ideas, share useful resources with my students.

Youtube Adventure 1

This week our tasks were to setup a Youtube account and activate our channel. And also we searched Youtube for videos and setup playlists for each category listed below;

• Videos on using Twitter and Twitter tools
• Videos on using Wiki’ specifically Wikispaces
• Videos that speak to the use of web 2.0 tools for learning
• Videos related to one area that you currently teach or might teach when you do get to the classroom.
• Play list of your choice

Youtube is a great Web 2.0 tool. My adventure with Youtube has been going for many years. I still remember its old simple grayish design. This week for our assignment, I searched different videos on Youtube. Then I created playlist for each category above. It was interesting and I enjoyed it. I learned some cool Twitter tips and tricks, I learned how to perform advanced search on Twitter. I learned how to create wiki pages, and how can it be used in the classroom. 

I usually look at Youtube for basic maintenance, like fixing the car, fixing network problems in the school, learning foreign language, learning a new programming language, looking at good Robot designs of other teams around the world for Robotics, how-to videos like how to make homemade yogurt, cheese etc :)

As a result, I see great potential in Youtube, and I have to find ways to incorporate it more in my classes. Youtube is a great way to extend my and my students' digital footprints on the internet world. I will play and explore it more, and integrate it in my curriculum, like uploading some videos created by my students. 

Twitter Adventure Continued

I go ahead and downloaded Hootsuite app to my iPhone this week.  I am still playing with it. It is great app to manage my twitter account along my facebook and linkedin accounts. It is easy to navigate, and they have a nice customizable dashboard.

This week I read and sent some tweets to #etec527 group. It is easy way to share ideas and communicate with our classmates. Other than that, I read tweets from #txeduchat. Dr. Bigenho provided a great website link which listed all the educational hash tags. The link is http://www.cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html I read some tweets from #edutech, #edtech and #technology groups.

I will keep exploring more on twitter.

Twitter Adventure

To be honest, I've been waiting long time for this adventure. I was too lazy to explore Twitter by myself. Thanks Dr. Bigenho & classmates for this privilege. I really enjoyed learning more about Twitter. It is a great tool if you have a complaint about a company, or anything, you can contact them right away, and they really care. It is an effective way to directly contact community leaders, professionals, educators around the world. You even get breaking news from Twitter before TVs, news agencies. As playing with it more, I become more comfortable.


I really liked Hootsuite. I set my account up in less than one minute. I like its dashboard, I can see everything like home feeds, mentions, scheduled tweets etc. ( customizable) in one place without a single click. It also allows me to add/manage my Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn accounts. Now its time to explore more about this wonderful suite and TweetDeck.

Week 2: Rubric Discussion

Technology Evaluation and Rubric

There are many different models and theories on how to evaluate technology for use in education. Please find two articles about evaluating technology that are related to your field or subject matter/grade level. Post the links to the articles and a brief summary of each article. In your summary, please include your impressions of the article including how practical you feel the models or theories presented are for a practitioner in your field.

Additionally, you must reply to at least two of your classmates' posts. Your replies must be more substantive than simple agreement or disagreement with the post. I want to encourage active discussion and respectful debate on this topic.

Article 1: Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom

http://www.thethinkingstick.com/evaluating-technology-use-in-the-classroom/

In this article author focused on some steps administrators may use to evaluate the use of technology in a classroom environment. The author improves Marc Prensky's four typical process of technology adoption in the classroom. Marc Prensky's typical steps are Dabbling with technology, Doing Old things in Old Ways. Doing Old things in New Ways, Doing New things in New Ways.

Jeff Utecht turns these stages of technology adoption into questions that an evaluator could use during the evaluation process. The questions he added are Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?, Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?, Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?, Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

Jeff Utecht provides a great checklist of what to do when evaluating the use of technology in classroom, also he gives us an opportunity to closely follow this checklish on our classes to improve learning with effective use of technology. I believe my teaching will be more meaningful and productive if I ask this questions to myself frequently.

Article 2: Assessing Classroom Technology Integration

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech243.shtml

In this article, the author focuses on how to assess technology integration in classrooms. Many school districts have a technology integration policy, but many of them do not have policy that explain the meaning of appropriate technology. Author asks questions to a group of teachers and administrators about what kind of activities, lesson, resources, and so on should an admins, parent, students expect to see in a classroom which technology is being appropriately integrated. And then author generated a list of their response for better technology integration.

I really liked the responses, especially with examples ones. Using a random technology tool is not enough for effective technology integration, but it should be used because the tool enhances the learning and existing curriculum. Eleanor Doan put it so well:”Good tools do not make a good teacher, but a good teacher makes good use of tools.”

Week 2: Reading/Video Reflections

Readings
A Conceptual Framework for Using and Evaluating Web-Based Learning Resources in School Education Here is another link for the article above:
 http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol9/JITEv9p053-079Hadjerrouit743.pdf 
Videos
Web 2.0 Tool Evaluation Criteria

My Video Reflection

The video was short but very fun and informative. It talks about important ideas when choosing a web 2.0 resource for classroom. Choosing a web resource is fun but challenging. There are some important steps need to be taken when choosing a web resource/tool. As far as I understand, after following these steps when evaluation the resource, at the end it increases students motivation, and enhance learning. 

1. Critical Thinking: Students must to be able to analyze, synthesis, and evaluate information, just accessing the information is not enough.
2. Easy to use: Students need to be able to use the tool easily, with minimal help from teacher. Directions, instructions shouldn't be complex.
3. Generalizable: The tool must be used with all subject levels, and easily adaptable with different ages and competency levels.
4. Learner Controlled: Giving students opportunity to have the tool in hand allows them to control their own learning. Letting your students to choose the tool they like to use to achieve the goal.
5. A Finished Product: A finished product is important, it represents that students are learning.
6. Appropriate Content: Teachers need to make sure that content and advertisements on the tool must be appropriate for their students.

I just added this video to my favorites, I think the video well explained the steps needed to evaluate a web tool/resource for effective technology integration.

My Reading Reflection

I really enjoyed reading this Mr. Hadjerrouit's article this week. I was introduced TPACK model last semester in Intro to Ed Tech class. To be honest, thanks to this article, I feel like I finally understand the TPACK model now. I believe most of the schools are slow adapting technologies into the curriculum. As author mentioned in the article, most of the web resources are still designed, developed by software experts rather than teachers, educators, and learners. So that they mainly focus on technical details, and according to author this doesn't really measure its educational quality. Many researchers believe that the tool must also meet the learners' need. I think it is important for developers to get feedback from teachers, learners, and re-design, and re-develop tool to meet learners' need.
According to some researchers, a correct integration requires that teachers consider technology, content, and pedagogy in complex relationships. Teachers must have knowledge of the pedagogy that is applicable to the specific content, have knowledge of how technology can support pedagogical goals, and have knowledge of how the subject matter is transformed by the application of the technology. Teachers' technical knowledge is not just enough. 
The framework was detailed, and very informative. I like how he categorized his framework for an effective evaluations of the WBLRs. Case studies and findings were very interesting to read.
I never thought designing and evaluating a web resource was very challenging like this.