Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Learning Styles
Everyone learns differently. I don't think that any person has only one particular way they learn; rather, they learn by a combination of different styles. I believe that I learn by both visual and auditory means. I enjoy a good presentation, and can recall what things look like and where they were placed during a presentation. I also enjoy listening to people talk and share experiences during a good lecture. These examples would suggest that I'm both a visual learner as well as an auditory learner. However, I was/am an athlete, and I learned a lot during basketball or volleyball or softball by practicing things over and over again; by doing! I guess that also makes me a kinesthetic learner as well. Can I be all three? Are some more present than others?
I feel that I was taught and exposed to all different types of strategies while I was growing up, which makes me more apt to learn information in varying styles. I feel that students, while they may be predisposed toward one type of learning, can still learn by the other types if they are exposed to them at a young age. I guess there is a reason youth is called "the formative years". I firmly believe that although we may have predispositions, we can be shaped by our experiences. That's probably the scientist in me coming out; wanting to debate 'nature vs. nurture.'
Many students haven't been exposed to all ways of learning, and it is extremely hard to accommodate all learning styles in one lesson. However, I believe that being a good teacher means taking information and presenting it in a variety of ways to try to include all kinds of learners. For example, perhaps there can be a lecture, a hands-on activity, and a demonstration which could possibly reach all learners. Who knows, maybe it'll even help students who are predisposed to one learning style begin to make connections of a topic in another learning style?
I feel that I was taught and exposed to all different types of strategies while I was growing up, which makes me more apt to learn information in varying styles. I feel that students, while they may be predisposed toward one type of learning, can still learn by the other types if they are exposed to them at a young age. I guess there is a reason youth is called "the formative years". I firmly believe that although we may have predispositions, we can be shaped by our experiences. That's probably the scientist in me coming out; wanting to debate 'nature vs. nurture.'
Many students haven't been exposed to all ways of learning, and it is extremely hard to accommodate all learning styles in one lesson. However, I believe that being a good teacher means taking information and presenting it in a variety of ways to try to include all kinds of learners. For example, perhaps there can be a lecture, a hands-on activity, and a demonstration which could possibly reach all learners. Who knows, maybe it'll even help students who are predisposed to one learning style begin to make connections of a topic in another learning style?
Creative Commons Lab
Human beings are creating new things everyday. Innovation is one of the things that drives our society, and humanity should encourage the expression of new works. Copyright is important because new designs, products, and original ideas should have some sort of protection. It was originally designed to help creativity blossom in society and protect products created by the human mind. Copyright covers some very basic rights of the creator. These rights include being compensated for original work. The creator should be able to control the work and how it is used, reproduced, distributed, performed, or displayed. If the creator chooses to sell the work, then it is his or her choice.
Fair use is a sort of exception to copyright. It is used in education for granting use to copyrighted materials. Educators can use materials to supplement other information, such as textbooks, under fair use. Fair use protects educators by allowing them to use copyrighted material; however, there are limits to fair use. Educators cannot claim fair use when copyrighted material is used in place of textbooks, workbooks, etc. It seems that if the use is limited to parts of work, and non-profit, then fair use is in effect.
In order to deal with copyright issues, there are many things that can be done. First and foremost, information needs to be distributed to teachers to show them what is legal under fair use and what falls into copyright infringement. Copyright benefits the creators of original works, so teachers should also be aware of using copyright to help students or themselves with works that they have created. I found it interesting that one suggestion for dealing with copyright issues was to conduct audits of photocopying. It's a great idea, but it seems like most schools wouldn't take the time to complete this. I liked the suggestion of maintaining the school budget to make sure that needed materials were purchased legally. Unfortunately, most educators know that schools are not always fiscally responsible. Then, of course, there was the suggestion of modeling legal and ethical behavior in the school. I try to do so, and I think the most educators do as well.
This lab was very informative to me. I knew a little bit about copyright laws, but I always thought education was totally immune to them! Now I realize that fair use enables educators to use some portions of original work, but not all of them. I thought the videos about copyright would be very beneficial to show in classrooms. I liked some of the suggestions for helping to regulate copyright material in schools, but unfortunately, with the economy the way it is and the way schools are cutting back, I don't see anyone's sole job as watching what teachers bring into their classrooms.
Below I have a photo that would be very pertinent to my class because we are studying hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic solutions, so I could use this in a presentation or on my class website in order to show students what they should be looking for under a microscope.
Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Red Onion Cells in a salt solution"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tessawatson/6106595838/
By: tjmwatson
Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Poas Volcano"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68975111@N07/6271634829/
By: jheintz20 (me!)
Released under an Attribution-Noncommerical-Share-Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Fair use is a sort of exception to copyright. It is used in education for granting use to copyrighted materials. Educators can use materials to supplement other information, such as textbooks, under fair use. Fair use protects educators by allowing them to use copyrighted material; however, there are limits to fair use. Educators cannot claim fair use when copyrighted material is used in place of textbooks, workbooks, etc. It seems that if the use is limited to parts of work, and non-profit, then fair use is in effect.
In order to deal with copyright issues, there are many things that can be done. First and foremost, information needs to be distributed to teachers to show them what is legal under fair use and what falls into copyright infringement. Copyright benefits the creators of original works, so teachers should also be aware of using copyright to help students or themselves with works that they have created. I found it interesting that one suggestion for dealing with copyright issues was to conduct audits of photocopying. It's a great idea, but it seems like most schools wouldn't take the time to complete this. I liked the suggestion of maintaining the school budget to make sure that needed materials were purchased legally. Unfortunately, most educators know that schools are not always fiscally responsible. Then, of course, there was the suggestion of modeling legal and ethical behavior in the school. I try to do so, and I think the most educators do as well.
This lab was very informative to me. I knew a little bit about copyright laws, but I always thought education was totally immune to them! Now I realize that fair use enables educators to use some portions of original work, but not all of them. I thought the videos about copyright would be very beneficial to show in classrooms. I liked some of the suggestions for helping to regulate copyright material in schools, but unfortunately, with the economy the way it is and the way schools are cutting back, I don't see anyone's sole job as watching what teachers bring into their classrooms.
Below I have a photo that would be very pertinent to my class because we are studying hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic solutions, so I could use this in a presentation or on my class website in order to show students what they should be looking for under a microscope.
 |
| Red Onion Cells in Salt Solution |
Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Red Onion Cells in a salt solution"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tessawatson/6106595838/
By: tjmwatson
Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
 |
| Poas Volcano |
Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Poas Volcano"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68975111@N07/6271634829/
By: jheintz20 (me!)
Released under an Attribution-Noncommerical-Share-Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
PC Maintenance and Security Lab
For the PC Maintenance and Security Lab, I chose three tutorials. The three I chose were "Explaining Typical Problems found on many PCs," "Defining Malware," and "Managing your web passwords with Roboform." I watched many of the tutorials to gain some other information as well.
I began right at the beginning of the tutorials with "Explaining typical problems found on many PCs." I have never owned a computer that was not made by Apple, so I figured I should start at the beginning when dealing with computers that run Windows. I run Windows on my Apple, so I thought it would be useful to know some of the problems that PCs may encounter. It was extremely simple and mostly common sense; clean up the computer and get rid of junk, use a free clean up utility, and update and patch everything as often as possible. I have a few friends who own PCs and I will definitely be sharing with them that there is FREE anti-virus software in order to keep the computer safe. I always thought anti-virus software had to be bought and sometimes it didn't work, so what was the point in spending money on it if it was going to be ineffective? I was surprised that "disorganization" was actually listed as one of the main problems of PCs! To think that it could actually be causing problems and not just using up space astonished me.
I learned that malware is a computer term that means malicious software. It makes sense now that I know what it means; anything that is harmful or bad for your computer. I was stunned to learn that viruses and Trojan horses can actually break your computer and are designed to do so. Whenever I think of someone having a virus on their computer, I just think it's a problem that could be solved pretty easily. I learned that if something malicious gets into a computer that the computer could be broken, just as I could break a light bulb if I dropped it. I had no idea it was so serious. I will definitely share with my friends who have PCs that they need to protect their computers from malware as much as possible.
Last, I watched the tutorial about using Roboform. I thought this was a brilliant program. Roboform allows a person to have one master password instead of remembering all the many passwords from different sites. How great would this be! I know I have many passwords that I need to remember, and I think Roboform would be a great way to do so. It also runs in Mozilla, which is great because most of the people I know use Mozilla instead of Internet Explorer. I will be telling everyone about Roboform because it sounds like something great to use. One thing that I found interesting about Roboform is that I can set it to log off automatically after a certain amount of time or inactivity. I think that would be beneficial to keeping all my passwords and information private.
I began right at the beginning of the tutorials with "Explaining typical problems found on many PCs." I have never owned a computer that was not made by Apple, so I figured I should start at the beginning when dealing with computers that run Windows. I run Windows on my Apple, so I thought it would be useful to know some of the problems that PCs may encounter. It was extremely simple and mostly common sense; clean up the computer and get rid of junk, use a free clean up utility, and update and patch everything as often as possible. I have a few friends who own PCs and I will definitely be sharing with them that there is FREE anti-virus software in order to keep the computer safe. I always thought anti-virus software had to be bought and sometimes it didn't work, so what was the point in spending money on it if it was going to be ineffective? I was surprised that "disorganization" was actually listed as one of the main problems of PCs! To think that it could actually be causing problems and not just using up space astonished me.
I learned that malware is a computer term that means malicious software. It makes sense now that I know what it means; anything that is harmful or bad for your computer. I was stunned to learn that viruses and Trojan horses can actually break your computer and are designed to do so. Whenever I think of someone having a virus on their computer, I just think it's a problem that could be solved pretty easily. I learned that if something malicious gets into a computer that the computer could be broken, just as I could break a light bulb if I dropped it. I had no idea it was so serious. I will definitely share with my friends who have PCs that they need to protect their computers from malware as much as possible.
Last, I watched the tutorial about using Roboform. I thought this was a brilliant program. Roboform allows a person to have one master password instead of remembering all the many passwords from different sites. How great would this be! I know I have many passwords that I need to remember, and I think Roboform would be a great way to do so. It also runs in Mozilla, which is great because most of the people I know use Mozilla instead of Internet Explorer. I will be telling everyone about Roboform because it sounds like something great to use. One thing that I found interesting about Roboform is that I can set it to log off automatically after a certain amount of time or inactivity. I think that would be beneficial to keeping all my passwords and information private.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Getting Things Done; argh!
In order to complete the Getting Things Done project, I used the "Stickies" on my laptop. I am a big fan of "To Do" lists; I like the satisfaction of crossing off or erasing completed tasks. Since I am still overwhelmed with the process of my move to Germany, I have many things that need to get done. It would be easy if I had arrived here before the school year started because I may have been able to get a few of these tasks done before the actual teaching and lesson planning began. Maybe I'd feel more in control of the situation, but that's life. As I glance at my list, I realize that none of the projects I want to complete with my classes using all the new Google apps is even on there! How terrible.
Going through this process for the first time was overwhelming...I know I used that word above, and it pertains to this process as well. Even as I'm typing this, more and more tasks are coming into my head that need to be completed in the next week or so. It's lending some stress to my brain right now. Organizing the list into what seemed like more manageable components helped a little bit until I got to the "Waiting for" section. Once I'd filled out that section, I become very stressed out again because those are the situations or tasks that I am unable to control until someone else does their job. I expect people to do their jobs, just like others expect me to do mine. Sometimes this means there are times I need to "let it go" and relax, and put my trust in others. I'm learning how to do that.
However, upon completion of the process, I realized there were a couple of tasks that I could get done immediately, so I completed them, but I still have many to get done. One of the major things I want to get done is developing a Google Calendar for my class website. Most of my students have access to the internet at home, and so do their parents, so I'd like to create this as a pathway to communication between home and school. It may eliminate unnecessary confusion as to what assignments are due when, and make both students and parents aware of important dates such as projects, quizzes, and tests.
I'm not sure that I'll continue this process. Like I said above, it made me worry more than feel organized. I'm going to try it a couple of other times; perhaps it will grow on me, and I'll begin to feel more confident with doing it this way. If, after the next couple of times, it hasn't gotten easier, I will return to having tasks and alerts set into my iCal to help me get everything done on time.
Going through this process for the first time was overwhelming...I know I used that word above, and it pertains to this process as well. Even as I'm typing this, more and more tasks are coming into my head that need to be completed in the next week or so. It's lending some stress to my brain right now. Organizing the list into what seemed like more manageable components helped a little bit until I got to the "Waiting for" section. Once I'd filled out that section, I become very stressed out again because those are the situations or tasks that I am unable to control until someone else does their job. I expect people to do their jobs, just like others expect me to do mine. Sometimes this means there are times I need to "let it go" and relax, and put my trust in others. I'm learning how to do that.
I'm not sure that I'll continue this process. Like I said above, it made me worry more than feel organized. I'm going to try it a couple of other times; perhaps it will grow on me, and I'll begin to feel more confident with doing it this way. If, after the next couple of times, it hasn't gotten easier, I will return to having tasks and alerts set into my iCal to help me get everything done on time.
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