Another class is over

Although, I am sad that this class is over as it means I will no longer be working with you guys, I am happy that it is because it means that I only have one more course to take before my student teaching begins! I've been in college for way too long now and cannot wait to get out of college and get into teaching.
I very much appreciated all of you comments on my blog, in class and your presentations. I must admit it seems much easier to listen to various speakers than just one, a lesson I would be wise to remember when I start to teach.
My final words to the class;
Do not be afraid of computers or technology in general. It may try your patience, but all it ever takes is a little time to gain some experience and with time it does becomes easier to learn how to use new technologies.

Final Paper

The only real challenge left for us is the final paper, these two weeks flew by. I am sorry to say that tommorow is the last time that we will all be getting together because I really enjoyed learning and conversating with you all. I hope I did not speak too much or too often as that geeky side of me does tend to come out when discussing technology.

Finished presenting today, Get ready to present tommorow!

Well after today I feel confident about my knowledge and understanding of blogs (just messing with you Anne and Angelo). I was particularly disturbed by the lack of freedom of speech available to bloggers and fear that we will continually be limited in our freedom of speech as our ability to reach more people increases. Ironic, don't you think? The message I get from this interpretation of freedom of speech is that it is great, as long as you cant reach enough people to make a difference. In a democracy, power goes to the people... right?

On a more uplifting side of life, now that we have looked at various emerging technologies I look forward to seeing how you would use them in your classrooms to improve education. When I first looked at this assignment on the first day of class I was worried that this would be a big project since my experience making lesson plans is still quite limited. But considering that I am practically done with it already from having class time to work on it (thank you Professor) I am happy we have it as an assignment.

1/2 of The Emerging technology presentations

I found all of the presentations done so far to be useful and look forward to listening to the rest of the presentations. A special well done job to Cindy for having shown us exactly how powerful and moving digital storytelling can be. She clearly went above and beyond simple telling us about digital storytelling by sharing her own personal stories with us.

On a different note I found this interesting article about how alot of corporate publications on the internet are down, but advertising on blog like sites is up. I see this as good news as we are straying away from Big media (During a project last semester I learned that only six corporations controll all of the media in the United States. So straying away from this limited number of sources is a good thing in my book!) Any thoughts on this?
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/07/16/redherring-print-blogs-tech-media-cx_bc_0716techmedia.html

Emerging teachnologies presentation

I am actually looking forward to making this presentation because I plan on doing it on a topic that is important to me, which is Closed source Vs Open source programs. My greatest diffculty I think will be not tell let my own opinions infinge on the introduction of these topics because I am heavily polarized on this issue. Im sure you will quickly be able to tell which side I favor within the first couple of minutes of my presentation.

Today on Web Quests

Now that I have completed my web quest I can see how useful and fun they can be. I hope to make a whole host of these (after I get comfortable with teaching) and converting some of my lessons into web quest that students could do on their own as supplementary work or as make up work if a student is absent one day. As some of my other classmates stated a bigger problem than making them is how easily it is to get wrapped up in making one and spending endless hours on effects, pictures and other adjustments. I very much enjoyed watching our classmates’ web quests as it helped me to come up with some ideas for mine.

Today in Emerging Technologies Class

Today I learned quite a bit of useful powerpoint tips. I have made many powerpoint presentations in the past, but they lacked a certain visual appeal because I was unaware of how to use the various colors and effects. So I greatly apreciated our powerpoint lesson. Now we are to develop a webquest, which is think is a great tool to supplement in class work or to slimply help students learn how to use the internet/computer. Although, I am happy to receive this assignment as it allows us to use some of those new powerpoint tips during our webquest creation, it is for me the most challenging assignment for me yet. But, as the professor stated today in class "We love a good challenge".

Antidepressants are US

This article got to me so I figured why not post it on my new blog to see what others think.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/07/09/antidepressants/index.html

I have no doubt that there are millions of Americans who benefit from antidepressants, but 118 million? The most disturbing part for me was that there are psychiatrists who think that this is a great thing and that more people should seek out this sort of seemingly permanent drug treatment.

Sure these drugs are being prescribed, but is there a point in any of these "treatments" where the psychiatrist says "Okay I think it is time to take you off of this medicine". As is typical in almost all other treatment plans. Has anyone had such an experience without just being switched to a different type of antidepressant?

My First Blog Entry

Here is something that I recently learned and found interesting. What do you say about it?

Manual cars are more fuel efficient than cars with an automatic transmission. This book states that a manual transmission can be 20% more fuel efficient than its automatic counterpart.

http://books.google.com/books?id=kE9wMh6DjlMC&pg=PA69&ots=YGGPRFqI4x&dq=fuel+economy+of+manual+transmissions&sig=FMZsKcvXb9tekE4g0D7FMfJmmbs#PPA67,M1

Sure they require more attention to drive, but think of the savings. What do you think:
Are manual cars worth the trouble/savings?