Our video clip

As to video production, I think we should set up its structure before we went to shoot in order not to waste time. The planning step is somewhat important for me prior to starting any projects. I may sometime be the obsolete one who used to produce the documentary program which is spend much time in producing.

Your Thai friend

Dear Starla and Sarah,

I try to remember my password and finally I can get in. This semester is almost finished and I would like to tell both of you that I learn more about American learning strategy. Modern information technology has absolutely influenced every types of education. I have always believed in the constructivism learning theory in that friends are able to share their knowledge to each other to promote or scaffold learning environment. Thank you so much for being my best friends in my tough time. Not only your warm friendship but also the new knowledge that you try to transfer for me in everyway make me feel overwhelmed. Thank you.

No Space for MySpace

For my HTML class, I'm putting together a website that illustrates how MySpace can be useful in education. I've found some research from both sides of the argument, but I feel like I should have some "best practice" examples. I'm having a hard time finding anything. So, last week I decided that, if MySpace was such a great tool for social networking, I should use it to network with my colleagues. I posted a message on two forums, the audience of which totaled about 3,000 teachers. The first couple of days I got maybe five responses. To keep the discussion going, I added in positive feedback after each of the posts, even though four out of five were quite negative. I'm feeling a little down about it. I really though that I would get lots of interest in the topic. I mean, all of these teachers are on MySpace, haven't they even considered using it to contact their students? Apparently not. But my project will go on, even if it does just turn out to be a glorified landing page full of links to articles that may or may not support my theory.

Flash

I really enjoyed the lesson in using Flash. The next day I finally decided on a color scheme for my website for this class, so I went back to do the banner over to match....an hour and a half later I finally remembered the "distribute to layers" command to make the whole thing work. It's all part of the learning curve, I guess, but it's incredibly frustrating!

Blogging as an Educational Tool

I am glad that we are getting to try out blogging. As an educational tool, I think there are real possibilities for blogs. Research shows that students will put more effort into a writing assignment if it is going to be published where their peers can read it. My school is piloting a "reflection" component next year in which the students will spend 10-12 minutes a day reflecting on their learning for that day. I think it would be awesome to keep those reflections on a blog.

On the other hand, blogging has been used as a means of harassing other students in ways that hadn't even been thought of when I was in public school. Coupled with photographs taken in the gym locker room with cell phone cameras, blogs have been used to humiliate classmates to the point that they do not want to come back to school. How can we use legitimate blogs in schools and manage to block the less educational blogs? Should we block blogs at all? I don't have the answers, but I think the educational community will have to come to terms with this aspect of technology