Culture

Here is an animoto video I made about culture, enjoy :)


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Challenge Based Learning Reflection:

Overall, I think it was great we had the opportunity to learn about Challenge Based Learning in our Ed Tech Class. It was something I wasn't real familiar with and it was interesting to learn more about it. 


According to the apple website most of us in Ed Tech got our ideas for our own Prezi presentation off of, Challenge Based Learning is 
"Challenge Based Learning applies what is known about the emerging learning styles of high school students and leverages the powerful new technologies that provide new opportunities to learn to provide an authentic learning process that challenges students to make a difference."


It also states that this type of learning is 
"Challenge Based Learning is an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages students to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with other students, their teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to develop deeper knowledge of the subjects students are studying, accept and solve challenges, take action, share their experience, and enter into a global discussion about important issues."


Both of these quotes put into words essentially what we learned about Challenged Based Learning. Essentially you assign a challenge to your students, ours for our Ed Tech Presentation was how you can help the environment. We titled it "Say Hello to Hybrid Cars". Overall, I think our group had a lot of fun with the project, and I've even discovered that I really like using www.prezi.com and have already decided to use it for a group project in another one of my classes! :) 

Here is another resource so that you can hopefully implement this in your own classroom! :) 
http://www.apple.com/education/challenge-based-learning/

Podcast Reflection #12: Geocaching in Education - Driving Questions...

Geocaching in Education... at Burton, KS

First off - you may ask - what is Geochaching?
It is.... "The recreational activity of hunting for and finding a hidden object by means of GPS coordinates posted on a website" or in this case, GPS locations set by the teachers for their students to find the clues. 


Here's a snippet about Geocaches from Wikipedia...
"Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use aGlobal Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (tupperware or similar) or ammo boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek," sharing many aspects withbenchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, andwaymarking.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.^[1] After 10 years of activity there are almost 1.3 million active geocaches published on variouswebsites. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide." 

These teachers mentioned that in the school they observed at Burton, KS, the 3rd grade teacher did an activity with Geocaching that involved science and the 5th grade class did an activity that invovled explorers. It was mentioned that the 5th grade activity was especially cool because the students felt like they were explorers :) 


The teachers planned everything and figured out where they were going to hide the clues and took the GPS out, and made different routes for the students - using "easy GPS.com" free software
- I checked out this website and it does offer free GPS software that seems easy to use.

There is also a link on this website about Geocaching with GeoBuddy which sounds like it could apply to students.. or be used in the classroom. However, it does cost, unlike the other aspect of the website.

The teachers being interviewed mention that it's important that people know what a wavepoint is - apparently it's the destination you're heading to, where the clues were hidden for the students.

Ideas at where to start:
google using "GPS in education"
I found some cool ideas such as .....
-this article about it http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6463503.html, which in itself contains several links about geocaching...
-this is the official Geocaching website http://www.geocaching.com/
Here are some other neat websites:
http://www.terracaching.com/
http://www.navicache.com/
http://www.terraclues.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
http://roxannnys.pbworks.com/w/page/6883465/Using-GPS's-and-Geocaching-in-the-Classroom


Recommend it? and Why? using GPS
-it helps the learner that is kinesthetic in their opinions
-Benefits
More Ideas on how to use it in the classroom
Awesome blog about geocaching
Geocaching for kids


Overall, I found this an interesting topic as I didn't know much about it. I have friends that have told me briefly about Geocaching before, but I never really understood all it entailed and the fact that it can be used to engage students in their learning is awesome!
Also, there are a ton of websites out there about this topic, so just start googling away and you'll find several!

This blog also has a great review of using it... http://delightfullearning.blogspot.com/2009/09/educaching-review.html
and a resource called Educaching

Podcast Reflection #11: Learning in Hand, Tony Vincent, Episode #8: Ipods and managing manually

The podcast I listened to for this reflection is Learning in Hand by Tony Vincent, Episode #8: Managing your ipod/s manually

First off, I admit I own an Ipod, but i'm not great with using it for things other than music...
I also didn't realize one computer can update more than one ipod... This podcast talks about syncing 1 ipod with more than one computer, which as it turns out is also a tricky thing to do. For example, letting a student bring their ipod into your classroom to copy audio or video to the device from your classroom. Itunes will tell you that the student has already synced their ipod.... Erasing and syncing is one of the choices, but you should click cancel. If you manually manage music and videos - this is the secret to sharing an ipod among multiple computers and users. Itunes no longer synchronizes the ipod right when it is hooked up, you just have to drag and drop onto the ipod icon.

However, remember to click "eject" before disconnecting your ipod - as this is key.

So, when your ipod is hooked up to another computer it will not automatically sync.

However, remember that you cannot copy material from an ipod to itunes - apple doesn't want the ipod to be used to pirate music...

Podcasts work a little differently though -only podcasts from the first machine the computer has been hooked to will be synced to the ipods - it will remember the first subscriptions.
However if you want to change your podcasts you can check the subscriptions under the other machines.

Tips:
if you ever want to switch back to automatically syncing your ipod just uncheck "manually managing your ipod" in itunes
- To use an ipod with mac and windows, connect it to the windows computer first and format it to windows
- a mac can read a windows formatted ipod, but a windows program cannot read a mac formatted ipod
-However an ipod shuffle automatically works with both computer programs automatically...

If you find you ever need to copy information from an ipod (info, audio, video that currently resides on your ipod) you can use the free software called Floola.... it lets you copy those files to the desktop computer, used if the original copy of the music is on another computer or if the music has somehow gotten deleted on the computer and the ipod holds the sole copy.

Overall, I've learned quite a bit about how to sync my ipod effectively!


Here's my random bit for the day that has to do with "syncing"
True Story: As I helped my younger sister clean her room, I hooked up my ipod to her dock so we could listen to some tunes. I said here's some "*Nsync"  Her response - "Is that like when you sync your ipod?" I can't believe my little sister doesn't know who Nsync is, ohhh boy, it made me feel old ;)


And thus proves how times have changed. In the past the only "sync" we knew was Nsync and synchronized swimming - little did we know syncing ipods would be in our future :)