Excellent Tools for Organizing One's Professional/Personal Life

A wide array of excellent tools for organizing one's professional/personal life and work in a more effective way is available online. My “start page” is iGoogle, which is a personalized Google home/start page. Perhaps, students should also be encouraged to use a personal organizer such as iGoogle as their start page to help them create organized collections of useful and interesting information, improve teacher-to-student and student-to-student communication, and to add other organization tools which will help them achieve a higher and more effective level of productivity.

Students can use these personal organizers as a substitute for the school agenda by using the To Do list, calendars, and the countdown clocks for homework assignment/project deadlines and forthcoming events. While involved in research on, or the analysis of a novel, students can have immediate access to RSS feed information to gather data for their work (via Reader), can easily access tools such as dictionaries and thesauri, can effectively utilize concept maps and mind maps that visually represent related concepts and ideas, and use bookmarks; students may also add Wikipedia Search, Crossword of the Day, Match Up (a fun vocabulary development activity), Online English Grammar, Grammar Vocabulary Game, Hangman, A Joke a Day, Inspirational Quote, Word of the Day etc. In humanities, students can link to a calendar, read news headlines, study weather forecasts, access to Google Maps, Google Map Search and You Tube etc., all on one page.

In fact, students who find it difficult to stay organized because of information overload can use iGoogle to manage their personal learning and schoolwork environment by organizing their favorites on their home page; for example, students can create their own dashboard on their iGoogle home page consisting of their Gmail, a Google Calendar, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, and Google Docs and use each of these on a daily basis. In a nutshell, iGoogle is an easily modifiable home page which is highly adaptable for the students’ personal interests and scholastic needs.

Module 12: Blog Reflection - How will you continue to learn new ways of doing new things? What challenges do you predict for the 1:1 program?

I will continue to learn new ways of doing new things by continuing my professional development in information technology and literacy, namely, by exploring additional ways to use laptops to individualize instruction in order to meet the needs of all learners including the challenged learners and those that need challenging. Basically, I will explore ways in which laptops can support classrooms that are learner-centered and how laptops can help extend learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. One of my personal goals is to spend more time on gradually organizing my private online files. As I believe in life-long learning, I will keep abreast of new programs and online tools as they appear and select those that offer learners greater ownership of their learning and the knowledge they create, and those that encourage learner and teacher collaboration and communication at a global level. I hope to collaborate with colleagues around the world to exchange and gather ideas on how to deliver my curricula effectively using technology, and to share feedback about learning processes and teaching practices based on technology.
Challenges that might impede the smooth running of the 1:1 laptop program include:
• lack of internet connections at home
• lack of release time from teaching for teachers to collaborate in the development of activities that incorporate the use of technology
• the possibility of instant messaging and the sending of emails by the students during class
• student access to inappropriate online material during class. (It might be difficult to monitor all students’ activities on internet at all times.)
• laptop repair due to inappropriate handling
• general maintenance of laptops
• forgetting to bring the laptop
• forgetting to charge the laptop at home for use at school
• loss of completed assignments due to technical problems
• lack of time (block lessons) for in-depth projects using the laptop
• posture problems
• headaches and strained eyes due to overuse of the laptop
I believe that educators will simply have to expect and overcome all of the minor logistical challenges that might be encountered along the path of educational technology in the classroom, and continue with on-going professional development in order to provide the students with the transferable cognitive tools of technology that are necessary for learners to function efficiently and successfully in education in the twenty-first century. Technology empowers the learner, and both facilitates and accelerates learning, therefore, it is safe to maintain that laptops will become indispensable educational tools in education in the very near future.

Module 11: Blog Reflection – “The web is not just a source of information, but a birthplace of information.” Student Information Literacy skills

The two videos displaying the “sharing open data movement” for the spreading of incredibly detailed, explicit information around the world are mind-boggling. (See www.TED.com Tim Berners-Lee and Gary Flake) At the touch of a key, data can be reorganized allowing a user to find the particular, unique details s/he requires; this absolutely changes the way students can use information for their research and projects, because it goes beyond just searching and browsing. Because the students will be navigating the Web at a more sophisticated level, they need to develop their information literacy skills to encompass non-linear navigation, being able to discover patterns in the information they are analyzing in order to gain quality and meaningful information, accessing and reviewing data on a global level, and, exercising higher-order, reflective thinking skills and a superior level of responsibility.
In the future, learning will lean heavily on the student’s ability to find and recognize appropriate information online, in other words, the quality of the student’s research skills. This includes being able to choose, evaluate and use appropriate online tools to find the required information, applying this information to solve a problem or to complete a project, knowing how to use an online library and databases, how to choose appropriate internet sites, having the know-how to sift through the information obtained, categorizing this information and successfully utilizing this information for one’s own purposes.
All of the tools, concepts and skills mastered at the primary and secondary school level can be applied at the students’ workplace in the future.

Module 10: Blog Reflection – iGoogle as a possible start page; how to make student on-line self-organization more appealing

A wide array of excellent tools for organizing one's professional/personal life and work in a more effective way is available online. My “start page” is iGoogle, which is a personalized Google home/start page. Perhaps, students should also be encouraged to use a personal organizer such as iGoogle as their start page to help them create organized collections of useful and interesting information, improve teacher-to-student and student-to-student communication, and to add other organization tools which will help them achieve a higher and more effective level of productivity.

Students can use these personal organizers as a substitute for the school agenda by using the To Do list, calendars, and the countdown clocks for homework assignment/project deadlines and forthcoming events. While involved in research on, or the analysis of a novel, students can have immediate access to RSS feed information to gather data for their work (via Reader), can easily access tools such as dictionaries and thesauri, can effectively utilize concept maps and mind maps that visually represent related concepts and ideas, and use bookmarks; students may also add Wikipedia Search, Crossword of the Day, Match Up (a fun vocabulary development activity), Online English Grammar, Grammar Vocabulary Game, Hangman, A Joke a Day, Inspirational Quote, Word of the Day etc. In humanities, students can link to a calendar, read news headlines, study weather forecasts, access to Google Maps, Google Map Search and You Tube etc., all on one page.

In fact, students who find it difficult to stay organized because of information overload can use iGoogle to manage their personal learning and schoolwork environment by organizing their favorites on their home page; for example, students can create their own dashboard on their iGoogle home page consisting of their Gmail, a Google Calendar, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, and Google Docs and use each of these on a daily basis. In a nutshell, iGoogle is an easily modifiable home page which is highly adaptable for the students’ personal interests and scholastic needs.

Module 9: Google Earth & Maps - Some ways to use Google Maps or Google Earth to engage learning in the classroom.

Google Maps and Google Earth can be used for navigating global maps; for example, users can look up and study places anywhere in the world, switching between map, satellite, terrain, and StreetView modes as required. With MyMaps, students can create personalized maps, preview field trips, document journeys, and embed photos, videos and accompanying text.

Depending on what they are studying, students can take a virtual tour of all types of museums, places of interest such as the Colosseum, historical towns, capital cities (e.g., a tour of Rome when studying Roman history), various countries, and even share their summer and winter vacations with their peers within the four walls of the classroom. The Google Lit Trips site supplies lesson plans pairing books with Google "trips" that students can take while reading literature; similarly, they can simply trace the movements of a character in a novel from town to town, or map the journey of a historical character such as Alexander the Great. The Google Historical Voyages and Events site transports students into the world of explorers, historical voyages and events of countries throughout the World.

I shall witness the effects of technology-enhanced instruction on student learning as I utilize these tools in my classroom; namely, my sixth-grade humanities students will use the Weather and Storm Tracking Tools in Google Earth tools to study weather and even track storms/hurricanes, which is part of the humanities curriculum for grade six. The students will also prepare a travel project/presentation using Google Maps as their final project for this academic year; they will take us on a seven-day tour to at least seven different places in the world.

Both Google Maps and Google Earth offer high quality and engaging educational activities for students.

Module 8: Reading with Grade 1

This is a collage created inside Google Picasa that was sent directly to this blog. It shows grade six students reading to grade ones at the Lower School.

Module 7: Blog Reflection – Online mass-sharing (being immersed in the public domain)

As new and more advanced technologies are appearing in the classroom, more and more the students are becoming part of a global, self-educating, online community where they are involved in learning programs that encourage them to gain knowledge and master skills through mass-sharing.

Mass-sharing of information and skills through the Web is changing the very meaning of teaching, learning, and even schooling, itself; the roles of the learner and the teacher are changing, teaching and learning can occur outside the four walls of the classroom and beyond the time limitations of traditional class schedules, and, the focus is fast changing from teachers teaching to students learning.

By making education more achievable by more students, mass-sharing of information online will give access to improved, meaningful learning to students all around the world. Students need to be taught how to make the most effective use of the online tools available to them; web-based multimedia learning experiences for student learning communities, such as videoconferencing to learn and teach, on-line discussions with other students and course consultants/experts, sharing learning through online publishing tools, using a wiki as a collaborative tool to share class notes, web activities complete with images, sound, and video to present information, test knowledge and skills, submit assignments and communicate with students and faculty on a global level, all create a high quality learning experiences.

Computer hardware malfunction, inappropriate use of the computer, difficulty in accessing an Internet service provider, on-line traffic overload leading to low or no internet response, and security problems are obstacles that students need to learn to deal with in twenty-first century education.

Mass-sharing makes learning more dynamic, interactive and authentic, focuses on the social learning process, enables members of the learning community to access and share information resources speedily and easily, and motivates and empowers students. Students need to be encouraged to develop an interest for connecting with a global community and sharing with others as a means of learning and expanding their knowledge.

The power of mass-sharing cannot be under-estimated; collaborative, online learning community experiences more effectively augment acquisition of knowledge and skills than traditional or individual studies. In that light, it can be concluded that students need to be prepared/trained for a life of mass-sharing; they need to be aware of the implications of being immersed in the public domain. (See my Blog Reflection: Module 4)