Week 7 - Podcasts

Never did I see myself creating my own podcast, but I did create an account and thought it was quite easy. Before diving into this lesson, I have heard of podcasts but never have I done research on exactly what the benefits are of a podcast. I listen to a lot of talk radio to and from work suggesting I listen to podcast (non-educational) and after searching for an educational podcast, I found a podcast the revolves around bullying. This is intended for educators more than students because it assists them in identifying who may be a bully or who may be a victim of bullying within their classrooms. This podcast explains how much bullying has an effect on children and I really enjoyed listening because I can understand where it comes from. Not only does it talk about the physical bullying, but even more so the effects it has on the psychological aspect of a child outside of the classroom through internet bullying also known as cyber-bullying. This podcast explains where bullying comes from and how it can be avoided within the classroom. Bullying is often very aggressive and carried out multiple times against a victim or a small group. The podcast gives profiles of both the bully and the victim of the bully which I found very useful. I started to connect these profiles to people I used to go to school with and they fit perfectly. Many teachers may have been one or the other, so they know about bullying and hopefully they stop it from happening, but this podcast is a very good educational tool for teachers to look deeper into their students lives and figure out if they can help. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.

Coaching Life Through Basketball

The thing I am most passionate about is being a leader of young men and women through a sport I adore, basketball. Although I am posting here to fulfill the assignment requirements, I hope to someday soon create a detailed website of my journey and linking videos and photos that I feel have been useful during my coaching career both on and off the court. The most important part of my coaching experience has been to teach life lessons through basketball, which I will emphasize through the video I posted and photos I share below.

John Wooden

This photo is of Coach John Wooden, former UCLA men's basketball coach who is known by many as a successful basketball coach. To me and others that have knowledge of his life and lessons he taught using basketball, I think of him as a positive role model to the highest of levels and one of the greatest leaders of men through the sport he loved dearly, basketball. For some excellent quotes, you can click here, you will not be disappointed.

Jimmy Valvano

Another excellent leader through the sport they loved is Coach Jim Valvano. He is known for what I consider the best speech of all time at the ESPY's a few months before cancer took his life. I still tear up when I hear it to this day. You can view this below.

College Basketball Hall of Fame

One place I have been wanting to visit is the National College Basketball Hall of Fame and College Basketball Experience. After talking with my wife, we are thinking about making a trip to Kansas City this summer to catch a Tigers game and visit the Hall of Fame. For some reason I have been working on this google map for the last hour and a half and it's not working for me. Below is a map and I am also attaching a link since neither will work.

College Basketball Hall of Fame Location

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Week 5 Reflection

What an amazing experiment it would be for teachers and students to be given laptops, curriculum manuals/materials, etc. Even if the equipment was below average, it couldn’t be any worse than learning what could be. In higher education, so much of what we use revolves around advanced technology. If the leaders were resistant of the equipment and the cost was high, it would be a very difficult transition. In order to have a successful transition from not having these materials to suddenly having these materials, proper training should be given to the teachers not only on how to use this equipment, but how to teach others about using it. Methods and instructions should be clarified prior to putting a lesson plan together on how to best use the technology.

I can see this project imploding for the simple fact that some teachers age difference, seniority, and simply not wanting to learn more about the technology they have been given. Many tenured educators at least that I know have a set way of teaching, many of which use limited technology if any at all. This experiment would be a difficult sell to those that are set in their ways and have no wiggle room. They feel their way of teaching has been successful over the years and they don’t need the assistance of technology nor are they interested in learning the pros of what technology can bring to the classroom and to their lesson plans.

In addition to the educators lack of wanting to learn about the technology and resisting the benefits, what back-up costs would this technology have? Would there be additional positions filled by technology specialists if it were to break down? That is another concern that must come up from this scenario/question. Technology is very expensive but unfortunately, backing up technology with constant support if needed can be even more expensive. To employ an individual as the lead IT person could cost more than the technology itself in most cases, it just depends on what credentials would be required to work within the school system. There are many pros and cons to this situation and I firmly believe the cons outweigh the positives that would come about implementing this system. I am all for technology, but it seems like this overhaul of technology would be too overwhelming for everybody to carry out effectively.

After reading this project, I started to think about an effective plan that could be carried out over time to ensure it would work. I strongly believe if this project was spread across a 3-5 year span, implementing one piece of technology at a time, it could be successful and not as overwhelming for the educators and students. Below is a plan I put together that I feel could be helpful for everyone involved to successfully carry out a 3-5 year plan.

Year 1

-Meeting to discuss goals of technological implementation within school system

-Identify target dates

-Hire IT staff to assist with implementation and training

-Train staff on stage one technology

-Implement stage one of four stages of technology

Year 2

-Follow up meeting to discuss goals and pros/cons of technology implementation within school system for year 1

-Additional meeting to discuss changes for stage 2 implementation and training

-Hire additional staff if needed

-Train staff on stage two technology

-Implement stage two of four stages of technology

Year 3-5 (Repeat year 2 with modifications)

Clearly there would be some revisions and more detail put into this plan to implement this technology, but I believe the best way to carry out implementing a lot of technology would be to set forth goals and carry out those in organized time increments.

As part of this assignment, we were asked to add photos using flickr or photobucket and this font want dark, therefore it blended into the background before. It's now white and you can view my photos on flickr by going clicking HERE.

Social Bookmarking and Reflection

After reading the Reiser and Dempsey Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, it is amazing how far technology has come over the last century. This field can go as far back as the 1920’s. Thinking about the 1920’s is so much different than it actually was. Things were thought about back then, but nobody could utilize their thoughts because the resources were not available. When you think about a definition for the aspects mentioned by Reiser and Dempsey (analysis, design, performance, development, implementation, evaluation, and management), it really consists of the workflow for Instructional Technology. There are so many pieces to Instructional Technology that its difficult to pin-point what the most important piece of the puzzle is because, like most machines, all areas need to perform for the highest quality possible. This chapter laid out the most important part of using technology in the classroom, facilitating learning. This will not only assist students, but teachers as well because it’s going to bring on new ideas and increase creativity in the classroom. Ultimately, this article encourages educators to improve learning through technology not only in the classroom, but increased knowledge of the technology for students outside of the classroom.

Working with instructional designers on a daily basis and watching some of the things they use for their work is remarkable. There are so many widgets and new technology coming out over the last few years its amazing they are able to keep up with what is being used and what is “old.” Technology that was relevant in the mid-1990’s are hardly used today because they have been replaced with bigger and better technology. For example, we used to rent a video or game at the local Blockbuster, we now can order the same movie from the comfort of our own homes. Technology is a great tool, but personally I feel it has allowed many to become extremely lazy and so reliant on technology that our interpersonal communication is suffering. As for the classroom, we used to have grade books, paper tests, and group projects. We now have Microsoft Excel, computer programs, and blogs/instant messenger to communicate through non-verbal interaction. Although I feel technology is an amazing tool, my hope is educators do not rely so heavily on technology that it takes communication with one another out of the classroom.

Although I like to think of myself as an above average technology user, I was blown away by social bookmarking. I have bookmarks on my computer both at work and on my personal laptop, but I never really thought about sharing my bookmarks with others. The first thing I did when this assignment popped up was I went straight to Delicious and started adding all my WMU bookmarks I use for work. All in all, I started to put together a plan for people in the workplace to use social bookmarking as a tool for our positions. As a student services coordinator for WMU, I thought if myself and the regional site coordinators shared bookmarks between one another, we could share documents we use to assist students. In addition to sharing with other coordinators, we could also share with students. Often students want to contact me later in the evening when I am no longer in the office. If they went to a site such as delicious and accessed my bookmarks, they could simply type in something such as “Tuition for Online Courses” and simply pull up that link. I believe this would be an excellent tool and it’s something I have started to put together in a presentation to my co-workers.

As for the education side of social bookmarking, I believe it would be an excellent tool for teachers. If a math teacher wanted to learn the best practices on how to teach 2^nd graders math, they could share their thoughts and ideas through social bookmarking. Once you build a solid network, all you would have to do is go and type of keywords. I did this for my passion, basketball. I started adding different sets and plays to my personal bookmarking page. I ended up with a number of different plays and philosophies from coaches throughout the country. Too often I find an idea I really like and I forget to bookmark it, now I can do that by adding a tag and searching for that tag at a later date on delicious. I like how you can create stacks and use those to designate specific topics all in one area.