Tablet PC

In class we were instructed to search for a tablet PC we could possibly use for our teaching. I was quite surprised to see the price. I was able to find a 3.0 GHz processor with 3 GB ram with built in web cam, finger print security with all the tablet PC applications loaded on it for around $750 from HP.com. This is a great deal compared with other PCs in that price range.

I know next time I am in the market for a new labtop, I will definitely be getting one with the tablet capabilities. There are so many applications that help student learning not to.

RSS Wrap up

After two weeks of regular checkups I am ready to review my experiences. I will give you the pros on cons of my experience and share with you my ideas on how I would incorporate this a learning situation.

Pros:
1. Very easy to learn and use. If you have an active email account, you can literally have your aggregator up and running in minutes!
2. RSS will eventually save you time in your internet routine. I say eventually because it will take you time to set up your RSS station to it's optimal setting. I know when I first set mine up I added too many gadgets. At the time I added them I thought they would be very useful and I would check them. This ended up not being the case. It will take some time to explore all the RSS feeds, podcasts, and blogs and figure out which you will end up keeping.
3. The sky is the limit. There are very few websites out today that do not feature an RSS feed. The power of the feed is limitless once you have your base station.
4. Customizable. You can customize your igoogle to who you are. There are countless themes for layouts and you can even create your own!
5. On the go. You can log into your igoogle or reader from any computer with internet connection. It's not like an email client where you may have local folders saved on one computer and you're working on another and need to access those emails. With RSS, you can save it all online which means you can access it from anywhere.
6. Up to date with the new way of keeping in touch. Many businesses, organizations, newspapers have their own feeds. This is the way we communicate in the future. You are considered tech savy if you have your own rss station and know how to use it. You can interact with the author of the blogs you read very easily doing this.


Cons:
1. Can be very addictive. This may not happen to everyone, but for me I spent more time than I should at the beginning picking and choosing the layout of my RSS station. It added some time to my morning internet checking routine.
2. Information Overload. This too may not happen to everyone, but for me I was amazed and overwhelmed at the amount of information I was being sent daily. It is important to have a way to organize your RSS station so you don't run into this problem. Anyone with any helpful hints, hit me up!

RSS can be used in a learning environment in many ways. Like our own class, a teacher can keep track of all their assignments on a blog that the students can track using google reader. With all the RSS feeds available I am sure students could find some that pertain to the subject that they are taking. It would be very easy to find current events for your social studies class, podcasts or tutorials on how to create a webpage for your web design class, wood shop tip of the day for woodshop class, or as Paul already does in his P.E classes, have an inspirational quote of the day.

RSS III

I have been using my RSS station for almost two weeks now. When I last blogged about my experience I was thinking about reorganizing how I have my igoogle set up. I had too much information being thrown at me so I edited down some of the RSS feeds I had been subscribing to.

Before, my sports tabs had many more gagets, including several from ESPN. Not only did I have all sports headlines, I also had specialty headlines like MLB, NFL, college football to name a few. I cut out all of the specialty gagets and have only included the major headlines from ESPN, SI, and FoxNews. I also eliminated two different gagets that gave live score updates. Here is a screen of my new sports tab:

I noticed after doing this I was not spending as much on my sports tab, which is a good thing. I needed to focus more on my work!

I read in Dave Graw's blog that he is using RSS to track the financial crisis on wall street. I'll have to talk to him about it in class since I tend to doze off when reading about it.

I also read in Paul Elser's blog about a blog he is following called PE for Children. This gave me the idea to look for a similar type blog in my subject area but so far my seraches have brought up no results. Who knows, maybe after a little more practice I'll start up a Technology Education Blog! You never know.

My next entry I hope to review my experiences using RSS.

RSS Posting II

It's been a little over a week since I set up my RSS aggregator. In this short time I can definitely see why Steve Hargadon said in our class that RSS can be information overload and why Dr. Z told us he had many many podcasts on his computer that he has not listened to yet. There is so much information at your finger tips with RSS that it can be mind-boggling.

My usual morning before RSS would consist of anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes reading the headlines in the local news (waterloo courier), checking the sports scores (espn.com), reading my email, checking weather conditions (weatherchannel.com). I would sometimes also check local tv listings (tvguide.com) if there was a program I was intending to watch. I stopped my old habits when I set up my aggergator.

I tried to get into a routine in the morning where I would check my igoogle and google reader for any new material. I was able to add all the pages I listed above into my aggregator as well as many more (it is so easy to add "stuff" to your page) that I found interesting. I did not set a time limit on how long I looked at things in the morning, but I did time how long I ended up looking at links and whatnot from my igoogle/google reader. I averaged well over 30 minutes each day with my tops being over an hour and a half! Let's just say things around the office didn't get done during that time. There were several occasions where I would start reading the sports headlines, then move on to local news, only to come back to my page to see that the sports headlines had already been updated! I of course had to go read those then.

Before my next post I plan on trying to organize a little differently so I am not glued to my screen. I cannot afford to spend as much time on the RSS feeds as I have been so I will need to come up with a new plan. I will keep you all updated.

RSS Here I come! Part I

After listening and watching in class the power of the RSS feed, I thought I would give it a try and see what all the fuss is about. I chose google reader and igoogle as my own personal control station. In my google reader, I have subscribed to all of my classmates blogs, dr. Z reflects, EIT RWLD blog, 2 cents worth, weblog-ed, edublogs, coolcatteacher, engadget, and Steve Hargadon's blog. I grouped the different blogs into folders for easier access; my class-related blogs in one folder and the other blogs in another. I check the class related blogs daily while I check the others as I have time. I will continue to look at different blogs to see if I will want to subscribe to them. For right now I will not add any more.

My igoogle homepage is setup to have six tabs on it. They are: home, podcasts, free stuff, travel, sports, and technology. My homepage has been edited to include a theme and a few gadgets I found while exploring the site. Here is a screen shot of my home page:


The stage is now set for me to discover the power of RSS. Wish me luck!

SL Tour Part II

Here are the last two stops on my tour of SL:

1. Sci Lands

http://slurl.com/secondlife/SciLands/46/48/23

SciLands is Second Life's new Science and Technology Continent. The nice thing about this world is that not only are there resources for Science and Technology Teachers, they also do a nice job of orientation for newbies to SL like myself. They had signs up for basic movement, chat, and even had some freebies to give away! I love freebies!

2. NASA eEducation Island

NASA eEducation Island is the pioneer site for NASA Education in Second Life. As part of the SciLands, the island is dedicated to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education using NASA mission content and best education practices. This is a great resource for my middle school exploratory on designing a lunar growth chamber. Nasa has a lot to offer in this world if you are into space. The screen shot is of me sitting on top of a space ship. I must admit I spent quite a bit of time just playing with all the fun stuff they have lying around their world including huge monitors that play youtube videos.

Exploration in Second Life Part I

Well, over the past couple of days I have been searching within Second Life for worlds that I might use in my Technology Education classes. Although they have a search function within SL, I found it to be fairly hard to search for worlds that fit my criteria.

Here are some of the worlds I found and a screen shot of my avatar (Oldman Mavendorf, who is dressed as a sumo wrestler) in their world, with a slurl for you to check these places out for yourselves!
1. Institute of Physics.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rakshasa/162/27/28

Software for physics teaching, classroom area, displays and links to web pages where the software can be downloaded. I will use this as a resource for my electronics course that I team teach with our physics instructor. This has some great resources I have already begun to use!

2. Computer history Museum

http://slurl.com/secondlife/DotNetNuke/108/231/24

The Second Life Computer History Museum is a grass roots project to compile a history of computing, by those who were ‘there’ as history was being made and by professional educators who are early SL adopters. Their objective is to develop a Museum to showcase information about the history of Computers, Computing and Computer Science. I will use this in my middle school exploratory classes when we have our unit on Inventions and Innovations. The computer is an invention that most student identify with so it's great to have found this world on SL!

3. Dell Island

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dell%20Island%202/237/226/79

Go inside a computer to learn all the different parts! This was a fun time for me exploring inside of one of Dell's XPS model computers. This will be a great introduction to my students taking computer work study for me. They help preform basic computer maitenence and some come with little to no experience on the different components of a computer. This will give them a different approach to learn the parts of a computer. I was very impressed with Dell's SL world.

4. Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Library

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/58/204/33

The largest collection of resources for educators and trainers in SL. This is a world I will use myself when planning for lessons. In the short time I was in this world I was overwhelmed with all the resources and information made available here. While some of the information was tutorials on SL, there were also a good deal of general information that takes you to different videos, web sites, and even some search features. This is one I have made a landmark for. I know I will be visiting here again.

5. Institute of Physics II

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rakshasa/31/11/32

A small sandbox for the making of physically realistic objects. A playground of sorts. Allows users to work with objects in SL that use the same physics as the real world. I am still somewhat a newbie at creating things in SL, so this will be a great area for me to work on my skills. Although it is a small sandbox, there are great signs helping you along the way.

6. Discovery Education Network

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/92/114/22

Discovery Education Network. We had a nice guided tour of this place during Monday night with the class. There are lots of services that DEN offers including united streaming media.

The last two stops will be posted later on.