Technology in my life

My technology enters my life the moment I wake up.  My blackberry is my alarm clock, which (of course) only goes off on weekdays.  I immediately check my email, Facebook, and text messages (waiting for me on my blackberry).  I have satellite TV to look at the news, traffic, and weather for the day because I (by choice) live in the boondocks.  Of course I didn't need to see the weather on TV because I already saw that on my blackberry as well.  When I get to the truck and start it my blackberry (which is also my mp3 player) connects to my truck through its "sync" system.  Through voice commands I can play music, call someone, request a vehicle health report, etc.  Not to mention if there is an accident the truck will call 911 for me.  (Skipping the work day and the trip home)  I do some school work on my laptop.  If I don't want to sit in the den, but still want to watch a Blu-ray disc, I connect my laptop (which doubles as a Blu-ray player) to the flat screen in the bedroom.  We have a virtual recording studio in the basement where I have a digital piano/ synthesizer, as well as an electronic drum set, and other digital musical devices.  When I get bored I will join one of my sons on the X-box or PS3.  We don't use our Wii that often anymore.  That's about it for me, except I skipped the parts of the day where I use the most technology. ;)  I don't see the demands the technology has on my life because I know how to not answer the phone or email.  Technology has organized me so that One or two devices do for me things that I either spent more time doing, or didn't get to at all.  It obviously have integrated much technology into my everyday life.  I didn't see it as something to fight as much as to embrace the benefits that it offered to me.  If I had to give it up.... I'm OK with that too, because I do see the simpler past as a better time.  I often think I would have preferred to live many years ago.  If I had to or could eliminate one piece of technology from modern life, I would eliminate cars.  But that's a different post for a different subject.

Social Networking and Education

I wanted a while back to use Facebook in my classroom.  I had an idea to create a closed group (by invitation only) where students within my chemistry classes could interact to discuss homework, classwork, study questions, etc.  I had the idea that students (when off campus) could (when they saw something related to class) could upload pictures of what they saw for homework points.  (It is difficult to relate my class to everyday life.... usually.)  It (the idea) was shot down because big brother (Fairfax County Schools) was not in control.  I found this odd because my school's FCA, guidance department, and other organizations have Facebook groups.  Fairfax County Schools has a group for  parents and students to join.  Why it couldn't be used for chemistry is beyond me.  Concerns would be student confidentiality and student - teacher interaction.  An AP and IT monitor could balance the student - teacher interaction issue, and Facebook groups can be made private.  I don't see the problem.

Online Collaboration

I think that online collaboration is a powerful tool that education and industry alike should be using more of.  I also believe we are just scratching the surface of the potential of these tools.  As technology increases synchronous collaboration will be used more and more.  I personally believe that Skype is a good start, but eventually the potential is there to conduct more and more kinds of meetings/ collaboration online.  Synchronous meetings could eventually (one day) replace classrooms having a huge environmental and economic effect on society.  Imagine someone rolling out of bed, throwing on a hat and logging on to math, English or chemistry class.  There would be no bus maintenance or fuel consumption, and employees could work from home using less oil still.  This is potentially the answer to the energy/ environmental crisis.  Not using 1000 gallons of oil to ship a car from japan in the name of not using fossil fuels.  (Yes it takes roughly 100 gallons of oil to ship every foreign made car here…. Buy domestic cars, trucks, and motorcycles.)  Asynchronous collaboration has purpose as well, but I do not believe that it has the potential that synchronous collaboration does.

Websites

First of all let me say that I thought I did this on Monday.  It's been one of those semesters!  When it comes to websites I have a couple that I use often, but often I reinvent the wheel.  The first being http://www.biblegateway.com/ .  It has several translations, an effective search tool and it is easy to use.  I use a chemistry website http://www.chemteam.info/ChemTeamIndex.html for questions to create practice work, and I steal animations from the government here http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/Animation/frglab.html.  Other than that I usually google what I am looking for because the seems to always be new information out there somewhere and I try to stay as current as possible.

Presentation

When it comes to me to learning something, presentation is everything.  I am sorry to say that I am over half way through my masters and I can actually recall very little of what I had learned in my earlier classes. The reason why is that the material was presented through a method where you read and write about what you read.  I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from an excellent institution of higher learning and other than two literature classes I did not read the text in any class I took.  I worked problems in the end of the chapters, but I gained no knowledge from the pages of instruction in my overpriced text books.  I am extremely auditory when it comes to learning.  If I don't hear it then it doesn't stick.  The one class that I will call an exception is the 638 class where Skype classes were held and I was able to hear what Dr. Holder was saying to us.  I can read and enjoy reading the right books.  But I do not learn anything when I read and Liberty classes are (for the most part) R&R all the way.  I find it interesting that we are told as educators to teach to multiple learning styles, but even in this technology (internet) based program the classes are still paper and pencil classes.  Maybe one day higher education will catch up to what they are teaching teachers to do....... Maybe