Complaints about Technology

"Any teacher who can be replaced by technology can't be because students and administrators don't usually know how to use technology, and because technology is not dependable enough, yet" - Mark Johnson 12/18/2011

I have made a large number of movies and uploaded them to vimeo and to YouTube. ASometimes, I find an error in my upload and I go back to my Moviemaker file to edit the movie so that I can upload the corrected version. But, windows movie maker often looses some of the video files. then, I need to reload them. This does not always work. It happens often with movies that are highly edited with splits and that are longer than 10 minutes. I need to find a better movie making editor to download because I can't depend on Windows Movie Maker anymore. The problem might be with my bran new, shiny latest version of computer. I called for support to Dell and they said there are few techys available to fix my new version of windows, etc. I know, I should have bought a Mac, I suppose. Now, I need to experiment with a Mac to find out. Oh well, now I'll need another bedroom in my house too.

Last Class

To teach Ella, I would have a class WIKI and she would at least be co-manager. I would ask Ella to link games appropriate for each content area. Ella would be presentation coach and teach other students how to make presentations using a variety of presentation platforms that she would use and showcase as president of technology club. I will be faculty sponsor of the technology Club. Ella would prepare scripts for my television presentations, and cohost our TV production. Why not?

What did I learn during this semester? I learned that there are a lot of digtital tools that can be adapterd to engage students with content. these include presentation programs,movie making programs, cartoon making programs and web page programs like Google Sites, Wikispaces and pbworks. I learned that for the most part neither students nor teachers generally know how to use or adapt technology for use in their classroom teaching. I learned that I can figuire out how to usae most programs on my own hook, get help from the programs help desks and adapt programs to my own teaching style. I learned that I want to teach by distance education and by Internet. I also learned that I want to hit a lot of kids in schools, amd I would like to really wack them ahrd and fast like my cat does her kittens. I learned that the suystem is so broken that it wastes tax doillars to the max. I learned that I want judges to substitute teach. I learned that my classmates could really get into the work once they had the time and that was really cool. I learned how to use technology to wow people during an interview.

Exit Slip Games

I didn't realize there were so many educational games on the Internet. i ahve never played any myself except for the types that were were assigned to review in social studies classes where I substituted.

I haven't had the time to do much searching for games and maybe I will do more of this over Christmas.

IRLO Reflection:Scratch Scratch, Maybe.

I enjoyed learning Scratch from MIT.edu. I used the answer until correct function to develop the interactive part. This function might be great for mathematics or chemistry problems. But, I question it for ecology where correct answers are often more complex than single words and where multiple answers can be correct when given in any order. I think that multiple answer questions will frustrate students. I often found that I could not get the correct answer because I typed in the correct answer as a plural rather than a singular noun. Also, answers that included multiple nouns did not often work evewn when typed in correctly. I even found in one example that my correct answer had an extra space between words that caused incorrect answers everytime I thought I was correct. It was very hard to see the extra space. Another prtoblem is that long, multiple scripts using controllers often skipped questions,arts odd questions or sprites. But, this did not happen everytime. But, it did happen most of the time with the clam; not everytime.

The way I would use scratch in biology is to have students use it to demonstrate their learning. I would gelp them and we would interact whil;e learning both Scratch and academic content. I simply don't trust a lengthy scratch project to operate effectively in a biology classroom without significant support. I do think that students wouild like learning it and making presentations just as I did. So, in interactive F2F computer lab sessions, I think it will be outstanding. But used alone for independant use by students, I think it is standing out in the rain until mit.edu improves upon the way controllers connect, and the reliability and flexibility of the answer until correct operators/controllers. See the screencast of my project below.