Black Board Collaborate

    Frustration again. Yes and another lesson learned. I was having problems with Louis accessing my room, I was sending him the address for the moderator instead of inviting him as a participate. So I went back, invited him as a participant and everything worked out great. It's the little things in life.
     I enjoyed all the tools; but, the one I especially liked was the "follow me" box, by clicking on the box students will be able to follow the moderator to any site they are on. This is where you can show any videos. How cool is that, no more DVDs. As you know, teachers need to keep students involved with class activities and it's very easy to see if students are involved during a regular class; but for a online class not so much. By having many small group activities and assigning them into groups will help alleviate this problem. I also found under "tools" you can invite participates instead of copying the URL and emailing the address from your email account. It helps eliminate some steps from the process.
     As a learn more and more there are some questions that need to be answered: like what applications does West Allis-West Milwaukee plan on using for their online classes? How is the online Health class going to be set-up: hybrid and all online? Time will tell and I hope the questions get answered before the online health class is offered.

Online Conferencing Angela Maier "The Sandbox Manifesto"

           What a powerful tool to show all people. This video changed my outlook. I wasn’t feeling good about education and how it's evolving. This gave me a different outlook and renewed my believe that I can make a difference.

Angela looked at playing in a sandbox through the eyes of children. Playing on purpose is very healthy for the mind, heart and the soul. Through playing it gives you the power to discover new things to learn. Playing will bring joy, happiness and excitement back to work. Here are the 10 things Angela learned. 1. Sharing is caring- The people who share, care and give more of your hearts will find success. 2. Messy is good- There is beauty and freedom from getting messy. 3. Imagination is your greatest asset- If a person dreams big, bold and is brave enough: anything and everything is possible. 4. Sand is for filling buckets- Never throw sand at someone because it not only hurts them; but, it wastes all your playtime. 5. Hugs help and smiles matter- In the sandbox love is the killer app. Be KIND! 6. Take it to the community- Problems will always arise, when they do turn towards your community for help. The community is the web. Ask for help when you need it. It’s OK! 7. Strangers are future friends- When you first meet someone they are a stranger. As you get to know them and they may become your friend. 8.Be Remarkable- Do what you love, do it well and have the courage to do it the way you want. 9. Here you are the master of your universe- The limitations a person has are the ones they place on themselves “To win, you need only to defeat your doubt.” 10. Play is Work- If you honor the tools, rules and most of all one another there’s nothing you can’t do. And Finally, YOU MATTER! There are endless possibilities when you know that you matter. Let all your students know that they matter and I firmly believe they will be willing to succeed.

As I stated before, this presentation is awesome and I will show it to all my classes. It gave me renewed hope and energy. It was very creative because it brought me back to my childhood and it was remarkable how children playing can change how you view the world.

Think about where you can use this tool, classrooms and at staff in-services. You can have open discussions. Put the people into groups and brainstorm of what was the meaning of the “The Sandbox Manifesto” and how it had influence them to change.

Online Storages

As I look at both Dropbox and Evernote, they both have great qualities. My plans are to use Dropbox because it has Cloud HQ which allows users to synchronize google docs with files in dropbox and they can edit these documents while in the browser. Since our district is going to use the cloud next year, this will make my life teaching a little easier. Another great feature a user can access any files or documents that they deleted up to 30 days after. Think about all the documents a teacher deletes because they think they don't need it, now we don't have to worry about it. Dropbox does have free apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch; whereas evernote has apps for more phones: Blackberry, Iphone, Android, Ipod touch, Palm Pre and Windows mobile. So if you use your phone for searching, google docs and blogging than evernote online storage will work for you. Evernote does have OCR addon which helps users search for files by typing in keywords and it will search images according to the text it contains. It also can read hand written text as long it is written legibly. WIth dropbox, I could put all my power points, studyguides on google docs, give my students links to all the information and they, the students, will be able to access the information at anytime.

Social Bookmarking

It is so confusing when looking at all the different social bookmarking sites. It is mindbloggling and time consuming trying to figure out all the ins and outs of each site. It could be very useful in health when discussing all the different topics, I would bookmark each site related to each topic and have the students blog on what what they researched. For example, when talking about the 5 components of health I would have sites for each component bookmarked. Have the students blog in groups and then individually. Also, have the students follow other individuals on one of the social bookmarks of their choosing.

Drug Unit

The use of technology is a very exciting opportunity for myself and my students in my health class. During the drug unit, the students research one drug and give a 5 minute presentation to the class using a power point  and the rest of the class take notes on each of the 10 drugs presented. My hope for this blog is to give the students an open forum where I can post some current questions related to drugs. This will allow them to discuss with their classmates current trends in society with drug use.

Current statistics show that Meth is becoming the most widely used drug. Look through this website and reflect on the drastic effects on health.  http://www.anti-meth.org/photos2.html

My first online class.

This is a whole world. I am very excited about this opportunity.