Virtual Classrooms

This week's blog assignment I was actually familiar with. Every student at FGCU or at any college or university should be familiar with virtual classrooms. I use one right now, almost every day. A virtual classroom is a private online space that teachers can use to support student learning. Virtual classrooms are accessible via the Internet twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Just like being in a face-to-face classroom, virtual classrooms are just as busy.
FGCU created what is called ANGEL. I use ANGEL for 3 of my classes right now. Two of the classes are not online classes but we use ANGEL to turn in papers and to look up class agendas. Those two classes also post grades on every assignment too. The other class that I use ANGEL for is an online class. Which all of us are really familiar with, and why we write these blogs every week. Online classes are virtual classrooms. I would rather not take online classes but it is a very simple task.
Virtual classrooms contain class activities and class organization. The activities can be either a group or individual effort. The activities are discussions, live chats with students, parents, and guest. Students can do quizzes, surveys, check their homework assignments, and even do scavenger hunts. The class organization that virtual classrooms provide is information for parents and students, a calender, unit overviews, student grade book, and student homepages.
Virtual classrooms are not listed on the learning place. They are listed for only the staff and students at the school that you work at. Virtual classrooms are not quality assured by the learning place.
The content and design of a virtual classroom is chosen at local level and must be checked for copyright issues at local level to ensure that all materials are clear of infringement.
Some teachers use the blackboard virtual classroom program. It requires no web authoring skill at all. These classrooms are created easily through the control are of the blackboard templates. It is available outside school hours. All students need to access the blackboard is a user name and a password. It is a great way for a teacher is they are absent to leave work for students to do. It is even great if a student is absent or on vacation to keep in touch with the class and missed assignments. There is also a drop box that students can turn their papers into instead of handing them in paper form to the teacher.
I think that virtual classrooms is a great way to keep kids connected in the classroom. Not only is it a great way for a teacher to get information out it is a great way for students in a classroom to collaborate. I wonder how young of an age teachers are using this technique. I think virtual classrooms are great for high school and college but not so much for the younger age levels.

education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/onlinelearning/virtual-classroom.html - 17k -

Streaming Video

Like most of the time, I did not know what exactly this week's topic was. I thought that video streaming was sending some sort of videos through the Internet for other people to view. The actual definition of a streaming video is "a sequence of "moving images" that are sent in compressed over the Internet and displayed by the viewer as they arrive." My guess of what video streaming was wasn't that far fetched from the actual meaning. Streaming video is just like streaming media but only with sound. The best things about streaming video or streaming media, is that the Web user does not have to wait to download a large file before seeing the video or hearing the sound. Usually it takes forever to download a video or sound but with streaming the download is instant. The media that is being sent goes in a continuous stream and is played as it arrives. All computers are compatible to do so but the user must simply get a player. A player is a special program that uncompressed and sends video data to the display and audio data to speakers. A player can be either an integral part of a browser or downloaded from the software maker's Web site. Most every web site that I have visited that has streaming media and or videos they have a player that the user can download. Streaming video is usually sent from prerecorded video files, but it can also be distributed as part of a live broadcast. i got confused on how a prerecorded video gets to be on a live broadcast. I always thought "live" was at the same exact minute that people were broadcasting. In a live broadcast there is a video signal that is converted into a compressed digital signal and transmitted from a special Web server that is able to do multi cast, sending the same file to multiple users at the same time. That is exactly what video streaming is. The term is easily used and understood. I have used video streaming frequently while surfing the web.
This technique can most definently be applied to education. Teachers can use streaming video to do class presentations and to use in their lectures. I know in my college classes I have had professors use streaming video during their power points and/or lectures. My human systems professor would use it to show real life human situations. I'm not to sure how I would use streaming video teaching younger elementary kids, but it could be helpful.

http://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid186_gci213055,00.html

Podcasting

When I first saw what the topic for this week's assignment was I was not to sure what Podcasting was. I knew it had to do something along the lines of broadcasting. When I found a website that fit perfect for this topic I realized what podcasting was. Podcasting is a way to post and distribute electronic media files online. It is an easy way to get engaging multimedia content out to a dispersed group of peole. People can listen to the podcast whenever and wherever they want. Podcasting is easy to make and easy to access. Podcasting can be posts such as radio broadcasting, episodes of a television series, entries in a personal journal, etc. You might think that podcasting sounds expensive but it is not at all. There is amateur and professional podcasts too, so you do not have to be a genius at podcasting to cast something. You can download everything from news to food, politics to education, or personal journals to sports. When you download something it does it automatically, there is no waiting around time. You can listen to podcasts with a desktop computer, laptop computer, MP3 players, palm and windows mobile handheld, and even cell phones. How is this week's topic of podcasting rel event to education? Podcasting addresses different learning styles, it is highly mobile, and it delivers content just in time. Some examples are as follows, a teacher can use their cell phone to create a podcast with daily homework assignments and other classroom information.Parents can download information as well so they can keep up with their child's homework assignments. The school board can podcast their meetings and other events to increase community involvement. A class can take a virtual field trip somewhere, which is called a sound seeing tour podcast.
All you need to have to get started to create your pod cast is a microphone, recording and editing software, music clip library (optional), and a way to publish it when you're all done.
http://www.k12handhelds.com/podcasting.php

Web based multimedia/animation

This week the article I read is linked to:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/7220/19459/00899152.pdf

The article is titled Interactive Web based animations for teaching and learning. It is written by M. Syrakow, J. Berdux, and H. Szczerbicka. The authors are professors at the Institute of Computer Design & Fault Tolerance at Karlsruhe University in Orlando. The article starts off by saying that web based studies are now a rquirement in order to remain a competitive player in the aducational market. Meaning that teachers are competing to better their type of curriculm way of teaching by using web based studies. The univeristy is giving lectures on web based learning material for students to gain knowledge about multimedia and animation. Seeing that it is being a competitive source of learning the university thought it would be to there advantage to give some pointers on how to do it. The authors focused on animations and simulations. The students in the lectures use the animations and simulations mainly for individual experiments. The lectures seem to be effective so far and have increased knowledge of the students in the lectures.

The article also gives some deadlines for building interactive web based animations. There are two general guidelines for building interactive Web based animations. The first animation visualizes the search processes of direct global and local optimization strategies. In the second animation an artificial ecosystem is stimulated autonomous agents to perform a number of different actions to survive.

Animations are executed within the web browsers and they are available anywhere around the world at any time and no installing is required.

Digital Imagery

The article I read this week comes from http://thejournal.com/articles/17145_2

The article is titled Increasing Visual Literacy Skills With Digital Imagery
By:Dr. Lance Wilhelm from Arizona State University- West Campus

Before reading the article I kind of knew what digital imagery is. I mean I have a digital camera and I love it. I use for just about everything! I had no idea that using digital cameras was becoming so popular in curriculm. It does sound like a fresh new idea for a teaching strategy. Society relies to higher degrees on images and visual communication strategies. Therefor this strategy of communication should be taught to children as well. For students to be more marketable in modern society they must aquire these digital skills. This type of curriculm captures children's interest and is more easily understandable. It helps the students focus on higher levels of processing and problem solving. Students gain visual literacy by using digital cameras.

The college of education at Arizona State Univeristy- West Campus students use what they call a "camera cart." The program enrolls three hundred students a semester. The very first semester the students were introduced to these carts they ALL used them. From the year 2003-2004 the camera cart was used fifty times by sixteen different teachers in the Arizona State Univerity area. A course that the education program requires all students to take is called C'E 313, Educational Technology in K-12 Curriculm. The course is in effective integration of technology in the classroom.

One teacher gave examples on how she uses the digital camera in her classroom. On the first day of every class she takes a picture of each student, then writes down their contact information, then puts it on word document, prints it out, and puts it into a binder. She said that it is so easy to do and it makes her life so much more organized. She also will take pictures of the whiteboard when a student puts important notes on it.

Students love field trips. What a great way to capture the experience of one with a digital camera. I know that when I was in elementary school I used to take a little wind up camera so I could take pictures. But, I could never look at the pictures right a way or even edit them. For my Bio of South West Florida class and my Colloquium class I take my digital camera on all the field trips.

I think that I would use this type of technological curriculm in my classroom, especially to organize myself.

Storyboarding

The topic for this week was another one I was not to keen on. I had never heard of storyboarding before. I could only relate the word to story telling, so I figured it had something to do with makin a story with technology somehow. The article I choose for this week's topic was found in a section of a website called Using & Teaching Educational Technology. The title of the article is "Digital Storytelling: A Pratical Classroom Management Strategy," published August 3, 2006. It is written by Mechelle M. De Craene who is a teacher.
Digital storytelling is when an individual or group of people craft a movie from start to finish. Storyboarding can be used in the classroom for students to enhace their creativity and writing skills. There are three phases that are in involved when making a digital story. Phase one is pre-production, phase two is production, and phase three is post production. Mechelle only talks about phase one, pre-production, in the article. She says this phase is the gearea for teachers. Pre-production is the cornerstone of building a digital story. It is the first stage of producing a video when idea sharing takes place and responsibilites are assigned to the students. The first phase is also where sketches and text seem to animatedly evolve. Children at this phase are excited and love to throw in their ideas for the story making. The students usualy get really hyped up and crowd around the teacher, this can be quite a fiasco for the teacher.
Using this type of curriculm in a classroom is great for classroom management and success in digital storytelling. It can also be suggested as language arts curriculm. So students are having fun while leaning.
I think that storyboarding is great to use in a classroom. It is a different way for students to engage with each other. It seems like a fun activity for both the students and teacher. When the story board is done the students have accomplished a movie. I can definently see students getting escited about this type of learning, claiming that they have made a movie and all.

Wikis

I first read what our weekly discussion was about I had no idea what Wikis was. The only thing that I could relate it to was Wikipedia just because I think wiki is a wierd word. I discovered through an article what exactly Wikis is, how it came about, and how it is used for online education. The article was written by Naomi Augar, Ruth Raitman, and Wanlei Zhou who are professors at the School of Information Technology. The school is in Victoria, Australia. Anyway, these people go on to explain that Wikis is a fully editable websites. Anyone can visit, read, re-organize and updat the structure and content of a Wiki as they see necessary. The only thing a web user needs to get involved with a wiki is a web browser. Wikis is a collarboration in an online environment and is also used for online education. Wiki projects illustrate how elearning practitioners can and are moving beyond their comfort zone by using Wikis to enhance the process of teaching and learning online. An example of an "open-editing" online environment is Wikipedia, a encyclopedia that has been updated and edited by many different web users. Another program called Computer Supported Callaborative Learning (CSCL) is a development of collaboration by meand of technology to augment education and research. CSCL says that students use Wikis to create a set of documents that reflect the shared knowledge of the learning group they are in. The article further goes on to tell how exactly a wiki page is set up and how it actually works. When comparing Wikis there are alike and unique features with tons of information. The rest of the article is about the e-learning at Deakin University which works with the School of Information Technology. The university offers dual mode delivery of higher education degrees to students. The school promotes online learning and it is fascilitated by WebCT Vista. THe WebCT Vista includes bulletin boards and synchronous chat rooms to engage with the online learning.

How does this article and Wikis relate to learning and education. Well, like the article said Wikis is a collabaration in an online environment. So that alone sums up that Wikis can be used for online education. Just like our class is online education. We use blogger.com to communicate, but we could use Wikis to communicate and even make chatrooms with bulletin boards. I can say that I never realized that Wikipedia was edited all the time. I guess if I wanted to change something on a Wikipedia site I could. Like for example what the definition of the word "chat room" means. So does that mean that if anyone can edit Wikis that Wikipedia does not really contain true detailed information? Who can say that Wikipedia contains only assumptions? I think that further research should be done on Wikis. I mean I know what Wikis are and how they work now, but are they truly being helpful for learning strategies?

http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html

Blogging

For this weeks weekly discussion the topic was blogging. I found an article on a website called northeast. The title of the article is Like it or Not: Blogging is Public Speaking and it was written by Mark Hayward. This site is particularly for people to post articles about blogging. People submit their articles and just one is chosen to be the article of the week. The article I read was this weeks top pick. The article basically talks about how the art of public speaking is compatible to blogging on the Internet. Both skills require you to make immediate connection with the audience. In both you choose how to present yourself which lets the people reading it view your tone, image, and brand. Speaking and blogging make a person put their selves out there in large masses. Public speaking and blogging are both acquired skills. They also require a person to be able to effectively communicate a message they are trying to make. The other part of the article talks about how a person can improve their blogging by doing public speaking. To take blogging to the next level, a person can improve their skill by talking in front of a group of people. When a person conquers their fear of public speaking they can improve their blogging. There is an event people can partake in called Toast Masters' Meetings. It is where people gather to work on their presentations and talents together. This event helps people speak in public better then that person can blog better. Mark Hayward gives some tips to help people start on their way to blogging. First start with a title and go from there. Use visuals to enhance the presentation. Get someone to provide constructive criticism. Never apologize. Make points to support your main topic. Provide information of value and seek input from the audience. He ends the article by stating that there will always be negative people, and to just focus on the positive every time all the time.
This article does relate to teaching and learning. Blogging is a technique that needs learning involved to understand how to do it correctly. A person has to be taught how to make their blogging better with different strategies, one being public speaking. We as a class are using blogging as part of our required assignments. I did not know what blogging really was and I am not to sure if I am doing it correctly yet. I have taken the public speaking class at our school and hopefully by already doing that it will help me express my thoughts my coherently. Blogging could be used in classrooms starting in high grades, helping kids become familiar with the Internet and to help kids express themselves in a different way rather than verbally.
I think this article gives many great tips and feedback about the skill of blogging. There were many tips to help me with my blogging. I think this article would be an advantage to anyone who is a beginner in this skill. I think speaking in front of people is a very hard aspect to overcome, but once you have done it it comes to you like another language. Just like with blogging, once you are familiar with it, it is a piece of cake.
I also think that further investigations about relating public speaking as a helper to blogging would be great. Maybe some statistics of people that have had experience speaking in front of audiences and people who have not. Comparing those statistics to the workmanship of their blogging.


http://northxeast.com/blogging/like-it-or-not-blogging-is-public-speaking/#more-197

Virtual Field Trips

I got my article from the New York Times online. It is called Traveling the World, Without So Much as a Hall Pass. It was written and published by Julius Charkes on March 27, 2oo7. The article is mainly about one school, White Plains Middle School, that has adopted the new trend of virtual field trips. This way students can travel around the world without actually having to leave the classroom and spend the money on traveling. The students have seen the Amazon Reef in Brazil, have talked face to face with Sri Lanka, chatted with NASA officials, and accompanied scuba divers along the Great Barrier Reefs of Australia. Unlike normal field trips virtual field trips do not require permission slips or fundraisers. Teachers think that this a great invention, they say that the students have no limits and can go anywhere. There is some required equipment to intend these field trip, such as interactive videoconferencing, camera projector, special hardware, and the internet. This equipment can run anywhere from $4,000 to $30,000. That is a lot of money just for a field trip right? Well the schools do get state aid to help pay for such pricey tools. The schools do have to pay a "content provider" for access to museums and such things. About $50 to several hundred per trip, just as much as a normal field trip would cost. Nationwide there are about 23,000 public schools that use the virtual field trip technique, that's about 1 in 4 schools. The principal of the school states that , "Students begin to have an understanding of themselves not just as citizens of White Plains, but of the world as well.” Other schools staff have claimed that they are worried that these virtual trips will take over live trips. Some staff argue that the virtual trips submerge kids to culture and the world and that it is expands global learning.
This relates to teaching and learning because students are seeing and participating in events other than their own that they are used to seeing and being in. I think this helps students to understand the world from a different view point. Diversity is everywhere. Being opted to other states in our country and to other countries children are learning that there is diversity and to welcome it. I think that virtual field trips are awesome and I wish that I had that opportunity when I was in grade school. Although I enjoyed the field trips I went on when I was younger. I thing that schools should do both kinds of trips. Kids do need to be outside and be involved and get to know the community and environment they live in. I think that more schools should write articles on their experience traveling virtually with their students. This might influence other schools to adopt this new way of learning outside the classroom.