Have you gotten nervous about using technology?

So tomorrow is my first day teaching for my Practicum Class. Yes, my first day! Today I had to make so many alterations and adjustments to my lesson plan, which has me feeling a bit nervous now to teach! I'll be analyzing 7th graders' ability to identify and use verbs in media and their own writing! The first thing I thought, as finishing up our video presentation, was: how applicable is this! Students utilizing media types in the classroom!!!

For this specific assignment I decided to limit the amount of media they interact with - not that they wouldn't enjoy it or learn more, but mostly because I want their studies focused. Through having this focus on verbs in film (in particular "The Little Mermaid") students will be able to see how media and the word choice affects the feel of the movie. Then they will apply what they learned to their own writing.

Now, I know when I said "The Little Mermaid", half of you freaked out! Watch out for copyright laws!!!! Don't worry, I am aware and abiding by those regulations :)

Anyhow, as I approached this idea of using a movie as an integral aspect of learning I began to wonder how much effective this would be for students and decided to do a Google search. I didn't really get anything answered or discover some new and phenomenal insight...BUT I though you all might find this site entertaining! It's a website that has letters from parents with their concerns regarding specific media content in the classroom and the responses of justification they have received. I thought it was interesting and fun - go ahead, take a look!

Copyrights and Education...

Throughout my educational experiences, both as a student and teacher, I have noticed that some people respect copyright laws while others seek ways to cut corners...minimize their workload. Personally, I can identify with that. I never felt the need to really site sources because who would really look up my references other than a teacher! (Don't worry - I did site them all.) Anyhow, I found it interesting to approach this scenario of copyright within the educational setting from a teacher's perspective.

On the teacher tube website I found a couple of examples of media used within an educational setting that I would like to now briefly analyze. "Abbot and Costello Maths Problem" is a video clip that I can see being used in a math class to effectively teach students the what-not-to-dos in math. It would be very entertaining for students to watch and grasp their interest in learning more about math and the different ways to manipulate numbers; however, the clip is 3 minutes and 6 seconds - going over the allotted time permitted. This being said, I think that fair law should cover the rights of using the clip because it couldn't really be cut any shorter and its use would do much more good educationally than harm by going over 6 seconds.

The second media deals with the use of audio. I found the song "It's Not My Time" by 3 Doors Down. According to copyright regulations we're not supposed to use more than 30 seconds of a song, but this one has almost 5 minutes - aka the whole thing! I wasn't able to determine whether or not this was legally permissable for the website or not. Assumably, I could say that a teacher would only play 30 seconds, even if they have access to the whole song.

All-in-all copyright limitations and boundaries are sooooo tidious but necessary! It's important to have these guidelines, but sometimes I feel somewhat overly contrained when it conflicts with the best type of presentation of material to help better the educational experience for my students.

Google Reader and PLNs

Wow - I am NOT a technologically savvy person! I think this assignment took me way too long to finish...or it just seemed long. Anyhow, I chose to subscribe to the specific sites listed in my Google Reader because I felt they were most relevant to this course. The blogs are those from my fellow blog members...obviously insightful. Diigo was added for the same reasons. And then I added Clif's Notes because that's a useful tool for an english teacher. You never know when you'll need to pull up some information or questions on short notice about a specific topic. I chose for my social link to use Twitter because it is the most commonly used social link of professors I have had here at BYU. They all say they've found the site useful. I suppose that's about it!

Technology . . . and the things I hope it accomplishes

Hmmm....my technology background. Well, that's a short story. I don't have much background in technology. Usually if I become interested in using something I either try and work through the confusion of understanding it myself or I will ask someone that already knows how to use the specific technological tool. Granted, if I do the first most of the time I will become frustrated and just give up! That being said, I am expecting this class to be very informative.

I do want technology to become an integral part of my classroom. Understanding that the students I will be teaching are growing up in a world where technology is at the heart of everything, I recognize the importance of me knowing how to use it and then implementing that knowledge within a classroom setting. I am hoping that this class will better enable me to use wiki, blogs, moodle, and other technological tools so that I might be able to use them in my future classroom. By the end of the course I expect to be familiar with the different tools out there and proficient enough to use them well within a classroom setting...other than that, I don't have any other set goals - except to have a fun semester :)