Digital Citizenship Takeaways

I think for me the biggest take away from Tuesday night's class was the information on copyright. It's amazing to think about how little I knew about copyright issues.  I'm certain that copyrights are violated many thousands of times a day.  It is very easy to grab images off the web and use them.  It's really too easy, but that is the world in which we live.  This makes me wonder about the integrity of some undergraduates these days.  They are probably ignorant of the issues just as I was and probably still are to some degree.

Critical Thinking

Since I'm not a teacher this is a challenging entry for my blog.  As far as implementing critical thinking goes, I thinks its an essential part of what educators need to be doing in their classrooms.  Developing these skills will help students solve real problems.  Unfortunately, with the demands of standards, testing, and government initiatives it is sometimes a drill and kill method.  The great teachers of the world easily accomplish getting students engaged in critical thinking but I believe its a challenge for them as well.

If I think about the problems that I've encountered and had to solve in my job or in my personal life, I've never been told to do it with out a resource.  I think part of critical thinking is being able to equip the students with knowledge to be able find the solution.  Learning how to use resources.  For example, I wanted to learn how to play a particular song on the mandolin.  I have books, videos, and recordings to use as a resource, but I have also learned countless tips from the Internet. 

Using Cool Tools

First, let me say that its been a crazy week at work because of a new email server that we have set up.  Our old server and software was old.  The software was about 8 years old and while it gave us a great service it just wasn't cutting it anymore.  So we opted to upgrade and have been busy touching every machine in the district to get it working correctly.  Its been a long week!

For me the cool tool that I use the most is Mindomo.  Its a great mind mapping program and it can be shared with other people over the web.  If I was teaching, I would most likely be using xtimeline.com, this is a great way to build time lines for class projects.

I've found several cool tools that are just fun to play around with like Wordle.  Building word clouds and just goofing off on the web.  

My Ponderings...

Here is a quick little entry contemplating my ponderings for the week.  So far everything is on track for implementation of my project.  I have to admit its been a challenge to find the time to work with a teacher and her class during the work week and be able to handle my own job responsibilities.  The first part of the week has been fall break so next week we (teacher and myself) should start with some preliminary implementation of the project.

I'm anxious about the final outcome of this project but I have a lot confidence in the students and the teacher that I'm working with on this project.

Enhancing Creativity

As I think about my project and what I might change to enhance creativity, I've started to wonder if I have chosen an appropriate project.  I'm still awaiting the feedback on my Pre Plan and that might give me a little more insight about that.  At any rate, I must move ever forward to fulfill the promise that I made to my client.  

Although, I do think the final body of work produced by the students will lend itself to the students' own creativity.  Creating a movie has a lot of potential for the students to be creative and to tell the story form their own perspective.  Also, its all about bugs.  I hoping that should help the students be creative as well.

Based on my client's timeline I will need to start implementation within the next couple of weeks in order to capture the entire lesson activity.