The Most Important Interview Point

The one point that my tech person pointed out as an up and coming trend in educational technology is the future use of the cloud.  I had honestly not thought about cloud use in education, however with the ever widening use of computers it only makes sense.  Not only will students be able to store date so there is access from everywhere, but teachers will be able to create storage on the cloud that students can access to provide resources that are accessible regardless of the student's location.

Progressive, Captive, and Stifled

e-books

I love e-books, and I believe that paper text books should be a thing of the past.  I am not a fan of text books to start with, and the textbook industry is as much as a rip off as the oil industry.  With e-books we don't have to use paper.  There are no chemicals involved in printing, and they don't have wear and tear issues.  They weigh nothing so they don't cause back strain problems by overloading back packs.  I don't even accept written papers.  All digital.  They are searchable, and when writing papers  students can copy and paste that all important quote.  Paper books should become antiques.  I know some people get that warm fuzzy feeling from having the book in their hand, but that last time I checked there's nothing warm and fuzzy about our (mostly poorly written) text books anyways.

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.