Mrs. Snyder’s Blog

I have not blogged for a while but class has been constantly on my mind.  First, because I have been working on my final group project.  Second, because I have been trying to use stuff I learned in class in my everyday life.  And finally, because my life decided to imitate a heated class discussion.  My name is Lynette Snyder and my son had a secret My Space account!  Everything we (his father and I) would be mortified to be associated with was on there!  It was a rebellion nightmare!  If it hadn’t been for our class discussion my husband never would have looked our son up.  I was too scared to do the honors.  The class discussion and a private meeting with Pat has helped us deal with it.  After a punishment period we will all work together to have our son use the internet in a more responsible manner.  Pat directed me to a Frontline news report on Growing Up Online we are viewing together.  Thank goodness this won’t happen to everyone.  We have 4 kids and right now I believe at least 2 would never go behind our backs like that.  But there is a ton of peer pressure surrounding having a My Space page and displaying outrageous things on it.  Using My Space responsibly could lead to being more responsible in other areas of life.  And if enough parents monitor their kids activities on My Space, maybe the site’s content will naturally become more PG-13.  In any event, our son won’t be running for political office anytime soon!

Lynette

The other group went first and had a very good presentation.  We evaluated their project and then it was our turn.  My group did better than I had feared.   The main comment voiced in class was our un-cohesiveness.  We did not collaborate well and it showed.  The comments led Mary Grace to announce her frustrations with Pat and the class.  She was very hurt by things that were said and done throughout our time together.  These things bothered her so she just wanted to be done with the class and explained that is why she had a hard time working together.  It was a very uncomfortable exchange filled with some misconceptions.  Thank God we went out to lunch afterwards, I would have been very sad to have such a great class end so negatively.  Like I have been saying throughout this class, unlike most college classes which are so specialized, I have learned so much more than technology applications these past two weeks.  My undergraduate major was in sociology and our class proved to be a rich case study in group dynamics.  I hope I get to use everything I have learned.  Since I did not get the Maryland teaching job I am very nervous about my future in education.  I would appreciate it if you were praying for me, please don’t stop yet!  Delaware fills positions so late there is still hope.  In the meantime I have a group to bond with.

Lynette

I did not write this on the actual day 9 because I was very upset about how my group’s final project was going and very concerned about what to put in print on the internet forever for anyone to see.  Now that feelings have been aired and I have had time to process instead of react I am ready to reveal my thoughts.  Pat was nice enough to give us an entire class to work on our projects with her there for any assistance we might need.  My group did not want to fully take advantage of this opportunity.  I say this because they wanted to leave the class with the instructor and discuss and work on our project privately.  I believed this was a huge mistake.  Our group, in general, is older and not as adept at the technology we have learned as the other group.  I believed we needed Pat as a reference the most.  Even when it came to the non-technology parts of the project there were little questions our group was unsure about what the instructor was looking for in regards to grading our work.  I tried to say I thought it was more beneficial to stay with our class but I kept getting shot down for reasons like; we don’t want the others to hear us and the computers in the computer lounge are easier than the laptops because they have mice.  I felt sick with frustration and did not know the best way to handle things without upsetting or insulting the rest of my group.  At one point two of us went back to class, but the group project was not coming together with half the group one place and half the group somewhere else.  So in the end we all ended up in the computer lab.  Pat did all she could to help us including coming and looking for us at one point while we were outside.  She stayed for a bit and discussed some things with us before going back to class and the other group.  At the end of the day I was very defeated and scared about our presentation the next day.  I tried to take comfort in the fact that we would have 2 weeks to fix things after tomorrow.

Lynette

Today was mainly book report day.  We participated in live blogs for the Everything is Miscellaneous and The World is Flat.  Before you experience live blogging it sounded silly to do if you are all in the same room.  But, it proved to be a very liberating, equalizing, inspiring, and a good documenting tool.  I loved it and plan on using it.  Coveritlive.com and Gotomeeting.com are good places to have accounts for setting these up.  I had to leave early because a water pipe broke at home and I had to rush home and get someone to fix things before my home was doomed.  So now I need to go read the class blog and catch up.

Lynette

Karen and I got to give the first book presentation just like we wanted.  We worked hard on a slide show we shared in Google Docs and we had a google jockey’s results projected on a screen.  It was pointed out by our leader that we were directing the google jockey a little too much.  The google jockey should have some freedom to scan the web for sites that go with what the presenter is talking about.  Then we had more company!  Coincidentally, our guests demoed the kindle and secondlife.com which perfectly aligned with our Rainbows End presentation.  Yeah!  Then we worked on our Class Projects.  My group has a lot to do because this got pushed aside while we were reading and preparing the book presentations.  So I am going to wrap up here and get to work.  But before I go a question for anyone reading my blog to ponder:  Is there such a thing as too much technology?

Lynette

I was the class blogger for this day.  So for my complete description of class link to the course blog.  In short I really had a lot of fun during this class.  We had a bunch of visitors and got to demo the Wii.  We even learned funny tech tools like how to make pictures talk.  But once I got home it was back to the grindstone prepairing for my book presentation.  Good times.

Lynette

One week has flown by.  I can not fully express how delighted I am to have taken this course.  I have not only learned a lot about useful technology tools, I am also emboldened and challenged to explore and keep on top of future offerings.  BUT FIRST I need to master, or at least become more comfortable with, everything I’ve been introduced to this past week!  Today we started out discussing microblogs like twitter.  Twitter is not only more compact, you are restricted to 120 characters, it is more social.  Speaking of social, Pat expressed that it is probably a good idea for us to have a My Space page or at least be familiar with the most popular social technological phenomenon among our students.  Mary Grace expressed concern about its content, especially for her son.  Pat suggested facebook may be a good alternative.  Facebook is graphically more reserved which sets the tone for more conservative communications in general.  We were also introduced to www.bubbl.us and www.Eyespot.com.  The rest of the class time we worked on our book presentations and class projects.

On a more personal note; I left a little early so that I could make a job interview in a timely manner.  The interview went really well.  I left an hour and a half later thinking this is my dream job and I need to pray I am one of the chosen candidates.  I should find out in a week or two.  I will keep you posted.  Thank you to everyone for all your kind words of encouragement.  Have a great weekend!

Lynette

I do not want any more new accounts!  I am looking forward to taking some time to fully comprehend the wonderful technology tools we have been bombarded with since day 1.  I believe our class project will give us the chance to exercise our new technology muscles.  We broke up into two groups of 4.  One group basing their project on Cinco De Mayo and the other on Going Green.  I am part of the latter.  But before our project work started we had a much needed time of answering class questions and solidifying shaky concepts.  I am much clearer on tags and links now.  Speaking of links, let me go find some for my project.

Lynette

Today was different than the last couple.  We mainly focused on the rubric for the class project.  But never fear we were still amazed and slightly overwhelmed by technology.  We had a podcast crash course.  We visited www.Gcast.com where I recorded a lame podcast for the class to suffer through repeatedly using my cell phone and Pat’s Gcast account!  For homework I listened to this podcast that you all might find interesting.  I also found this article in The Journal on classroom technology also tagged below that I suggest you all read.  Hopefully I have tagged and linked the podcast and article properly since this was the other technology skill our class learned today.  Time will tell.

Lynette

I am pleased and challenged to be learning so much useful information that will allow me to educate my future students in a more fun and up to date way.  I expected to become familiar with technology I was unaware of and/or unskilled with.  But today we had a lively and thought provoking discussion concerning how we manage assignments to inspire higher level thinking and individuality, not just producing similar end products.  That was surprising.  I even learned a new word that can be used to refer to things non-electronic as well as electronic technology, meme.  However, I am still perfecting using it in a sentence!  Getting back to computers, we were introduced to a couple more Google application (Google Reader and Gmail).  We also started exploring Diigo.com.  But the main task for today was creating the rubric for the final project, this led to the aforementioned discussion.  Our rubric should be finalized tomorrow, but first I have to go do my part of the rubric homework.

Lynette