TCU Educational Technology Blog

YouTube is awesome. It’s funny, entertaining, and educational. But, so many students have YouTube accounts and post videos of themselves. In many cases, other students will comment on these videos mean insults or teasing. This is what cyberbullying is.

As a future teacher, is it our responsilibity to prevent this from happening? What is a teacher to do?

The following video covers how Twitter is used in a large UTD lecture classroom…

http://youtu.be/6WPVWDkF7U8

How could twitter be used similarly and/or differently to suit a smaller secondary classroom?

Short question:

Should Students be allowed to use laptops/phones/tablet pc’s/ipads during lecture? Sure it may engage them in your lecture, but they may also be doing other things on them(and lets face it, they probably are…I am/was guilty of it)

-Preston Haynes

Facebook is a source that almost everyone uses. I’ve seen some of us in class checking our facebook. Should teachers use this form of technology to try to reinforce their lessons, or remind students of upcoming deadlines. A teacher could have a facebook page with just her class listed where she would not include her/his personal life. Do ya’ll think this would help or would kids feel like they are being babysat or spied on? Remeber it would be their choice to join the teacher’s facebook page and choose to use this form as technology.

I am posting this extra credit discussion for Katie Graves, since she was having difficulty getting it to post in the right place:

Many people go back and forth on whether or not teachers should allow cell phones in class. I am on the side that believes cell phones could be a benefit to the classroom. They are going to be with students all the time, why not use them in a positive manor? What to you think about using cell phones in class?

For extra credit, or in lieu of one of the other discussions on the blog, you may create your own technology-related discussion topic on this blog, to which your classmates may reply (also for extra credit or in lieu of another discussion).  For ideas about what to post about, you might want to check out the School Computing Wiki

1. Under Menu click “Log in“, then enter your username (which was sent to you via e-mail) and password (tcufrog in most cases).
2. In the Dashboard, click on the “Posts” button in upper left part of page. (If you are already logged in, click “Site Admin” in the column on the right to get to the dashboard.)
3. Click “Add New” (upper left part of page)
4. Enter a title and the text of your post in the boxes.
5. Click “Save Draft”  (on the right) to save as you go along.
6. Then click “Publish” (on the right) when you are done.
7. To go back to the blog, click “Visit Site” at the top of the page.

Well, we’ve had a chance to experience using a wiki and here you have a chance to use a blog. For this discission, I’d like to focus on podcasting. First watch this YouTube video about integrating podcasting into your classroom.

Next find an educational podcast of interest to you (see links below), listen to it, provide a link to it (or tell us how to find it), and provide a description of it. Was it effective? What did you like or dislike about it? How would it be beneficial to you or to your students?

Radio WillowWeb
Mathgrad Podcasts
Scientific American Podcasts
Speaking of History
More Education Podcasts from iTunes

Hint: Some of the podcasts play in iTunes, so it may be helpful to open up the iTunes software first before trying to listen to the podcast. The iTunes software is on the computers in the lab. If you don’t have iTunes on your home computer, you can get it here.

On the right hand side of this blog site, there is blogroll that includes links to a lists of educational blogs.  Choose one of the blogs you like from one of the lists, and then post a response to THIS blog with a link to that blog and a description of why you liked it or found it useful.