Monday, December 5, 2011

My Flat Classroom Expierence

   What were your biggest challenges?  My Flat Classroom experience was rather poor, I felt that I was the only one in my group working on the wiki, which was almost the case. The help I did get, I felt like was slowing me down, it was very incorrect in grammar and overall content. I had done the whole project by myself, and then once they extended the due date, a member decided to help out, but her contribution's had to be majorly edited which ended up not being worth the time. I felt that this is what most projects also had to go through considering not one group will be able to share the work perfectly. I also thought that the time zone difference was a challenge for us considering we couldn't instantly get a hold of each other like most people can today.

   What did you enjoy most about this project? I like creating our flat-classroom ning, that part for me was my favorite. However I also liked looking up pictures and reading about futuristic gadgets, that part interested me.

   What changes would I like to see made? I feel that collaboration was very poor I wish that there was a way to strengthen that, but there will always be people like that in the world. I felt that the wiki project was a little too long if it could be shortened that would be better, I also felt that we didn't need all of those workdays for the video project, and it could have been easily done in just two block days. But overall I felt like I learned a lot about The Changing Shape of Information and future technology and I felt that this projected should be continued on throughout the years.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Keynote Blog Response:

1. I think that keynote is called big little classroom because even though they might not have all their resources in one area they can collaborate with others to surpass any other school. They could have other teachers teaching different areas of a subject while all staying in the same room using video chat, which made their small class seem big by using Eluminate.

2.  The teachers used Eluminate to collaborate with each other and they could get a sense of what classes are like in different areas around the world. They used it to connect with students their own age all around the world.

3.  She tried to incorporate modern technology into her classroom even if her school was in a not so modern area.

4. I still don't understand what would happen if their was a language barrier between the groups, and most countries do things differently than America so it would be learning a different way to do something that could be helpful, or harmful.

5. It is imperative that a group does this or else they will all be doing their own thing on a project which could be disastrous. Its very important to have collaboration or else they will not end up with one central idea.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The World is Flat.

        Throughout this video I learned a lot. There were many concepts expressed in Thomas Freedman's speech, but the one I found the most interesting is that America won't always be number one. He talked about how that more countries are getting better educated and specialized in more than one subjects. He created an iron rule for business which was whatever can be done will be done. So he is pushing american engineers and others to reach for their full potential, so that America can stay on top as number one. Individual imagination will be the key to success for whichever country becomes number one.

         Freedman talks about how whoever finds the first clean safe energy source will be the next number one in this world. He stresses the importance of creativity and how America isn't in fact ahead of everyone and countries are catching up. He talks about how Americans should be studying more topics because "The New York Times needs engineers" and people who can think outside of the box are needed everywhere because imagination is the key to success for each country and if you don't think of it someone else will. That is why students are studying more than one subject and getting backgrounds in different subjects. They encourage students now to go study more than one subject that interests them to better suit them to any work environment.

          I have lots of questions for the how the flat classroom project will work. I wonder which countries will the students be from and how well they will speak English. I wonder how the time zone barrier will work between us. I have some concerns with what they might think about America and whether or not they will be biased against us at first. But after getting to know them I would want to know if they still think the same about America.    

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

OneNote

     OneNote is a new Microsoft program that is was created to change how people take notes. It offers everything that Microsoft Word has and more. There are many features to One note that make it superior to all other note taking software. Such as it automatically cites everything for you making it impossible to plagiarize. OneNote also works with old documents of any kind and can rearrange or re-create them and put them up there. One of the best things about this program is how you never need to save. It automatically saves every second, so if your computer ever crashes you won't need to stress out about saving your notes.

     The point of OneNote was mostly for students but this program can make anyones life easier especially students. This program exceeds all over note taking programs because of all of its tools and extras that help one take notes. OneNote's main competitor is EverNote which is the a free online software that has less features than OneNote but they try to grab the main concept. OneNote offers a lot of things that microsoft office doesn't have. It offers all of the things office has, and much more such as the auto citing feature, which automatically cites all of your media grabbed from the web.
     There are so many options that a person could use for OneNote. For instance OneNote could be used in math to take pictures of the book and then be able to write in the book on screen to explain the math problem. Or a biology teacher could take a picture of an organism and then label it on screen via OneNote. OneNote could be used for so many different things and truly is the future of note taking and Microsoft.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

My four favorite websites

1. http://twitter.com/
 Better than facebook, lets people talk about whatever through twitter.
2. http://soundcloud.com/
 Lets anyone listen to music, and download it legally.
3. http://hotnewhiphop.com/ 
 Music posted on here is either brand new or going to be released, its a good place to find brand new music.
4. http://hulu.com/
 Lets anyone watch tv online, and is legal and free.