Falling out of the sky in a Helicopter

         I wanted to do a short discussion on an extra-curricular resource that I subscribe to, it is a YouTube channel called SmarterEveryDay. I have been following the channel for some time, and enjoy its content due to its relevance to current science and technology topics (and sometimes their impact on older topics), and its delivery of information. for the same reasons that I like watching TV shows such as Good Eats (FoodNetwork) and Mythbusters (DiscoveryChannel), and not just for the explosions, but for the visual representation of data, and poignant analogies to aid the viewer in grasping key concepts when the raw formulas and equations are, well... raw.  This weeks particular episode of SmarterEveryDay deals with professional exchange as well, and even involves Twitter, which I wrote about last week. Even better, the astounding amount of professionalism from both parties, involves none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson, who I genuinely think is just an all around awesome guy.

        Ahem, back to the topic. I wanted to point this out as a glowing example of showing responsibility in online interactions, through multiple platforms, which culminates in producing a product that is entertaining, informative, and enjoyable. I hope that more people will see and learn from the videos on SmarterEveryDay. as always the video is included below as well as links to the main channel.

Helicopter Falling

SmarterEveryDay 

Google Classroom:

        This weeks First post will focus on an article on educatorstechnology.com, the article is about educational technology and mobile learning, and articulates five important things teachers should be able to do using Google classroom. It is a short how to guide, but is concise and to the point in regards to how to set up a google classroom and fill it with materials to distribute and collect. to quickly summarize, the 5 important abilities are: creating new classes, create a resource page, create and modify assignments, grade and return assignments, and post announcements. this seems to be everything needed to run the basics of a classroom and serves as a good introduction/tutorial supplement to using Google Classroom.

Now for some opinions. I find that I really like that tools such as google classroom exist, as well as many of the other web 2.0 based resources for classroom management. However many of the schools I have worked with do have their own proprietary software or web services that teachers are encouraged or mandated to use. This can be problematic when some students teachers opt to use the school based sites and others use some other service, so that students with multiple teachers may have to visit many different resources to get their assignments and stay current in their classes. I know as a college student there are services like Blackboard or, for CSUSM cougar courses, but even I have had professors who do not use cougar courses so I have needed to check multiple sites for assignments and announcements.

services like Google classrooms do provide a solution 'if' the entire school agrees to adopt the service for all their classrooms; this can reduce costs of having to buy and maintain a proprietary system for classroom management, but does come with risks of not having as much control over content and security. Cloud based classroom management software has a whole other sector of clientele outside of public and private educational institutes, community sports leagues can use this to manage participation, and not just sports teams but any local business that functions in a classroom like structure, from gymnastics and martial arts, to dance studios, trade schools, and even private individuals offering their services as tutors can use Google classroom to increase their effectiveness and organize materials/students and distribute information. Below are links to the various resources discussed above.

5 Tasks Every Teacher Should be Able to do on Google Classroom

Google Classroom

BlackBoard

CougarCources

Creating and managing a PLN

Over the last two months I have created and used a PLN or Personal Learning Network. I accessed PLN through an RSS feed service called feedly, this gives me quick and organized access to to various blogs and news sources in one easy to access location. Furthermore I began to follow some educational Twitter feeds, and explore some Ning groups. The important bit of my PLN is the ease of access. I can read articles, watch videos, and follow links on my smartphone or tablet, and while on my home, office, or school computer. To start, I followed some national education and technology news sources such as NPR Ed., KPBS, and TED talks on education. I also found some smaller content creators and YouTube channels focusing on education, and using technology in education. I want to talk about my experiences in each of these three areas of my PLN; RSS feed, Twitter, and Ning.

For my RSS feeds I subscribed to a variety of education and educational technology blogs and news feeds. While I probably did not check my feedly as often as I could have, I used many of the interesting articles I found for blog posts over the last few months. I would often see articles in my email, or in passing but due to most of my schedule I found myself only skimming one or two articles a week. I noticed that some of the blogs I subscribed to were not much more than short blurbs about apps and were about as useful as a link to an App Store. It's important to vet the subscribed items in an RSS feed or else it can quickly get cluttered with useless repeat blurbs that are not any better than advertisements. On that note many of the news sites are also cluttered with ads and links that it can be difficult to find the article or information and often I found myself navigated away from what I wanted to read. However, accessing the articles on a mobile device I could use reader mode which removed the unnecessary clutter.

On Twitter, I followed many of the same blogs such as TED-Ed, KPBS News, and Smarter every day. As well as ED week, Kahn academy and MindShift, I would get Twitter notifications when they posted new articles or videos or if they were included in discussion topics. I stayed away from discussions, I found that  I either didn't have anything to say, or I was much more interested in the postings/videos/articles. I feel like Twitter could be a powerful tool for a teacher that can make sure their class is subscribed and then share assignments, links, videos and information to students, but that would require a different access than I had for this PLN. Through Twitter I found the group ”we are teachers” a Twitter feed dedicated to providing ideas inspiration and information for teachers. Through browsing their posts I feel like it would be a great resource to keep handy.

Finally on Ning groups, I just browsed around, I did not join any but looking through the groups suggested in class. I found that once I am in a position to use and access that type of information sharing on a daily basis, I would easily find a multitude of uses for sharing and collaborating with other educational professionals. Most importantly the way the Ning groups are set up with a fee does mean that the clutter of advertisements that I struggled with from the news sites did not exist.

reflecting on the overall experience of building a PLN, I found that while I may not have used it too much currently I definitely see my use growing as my work Habits shift over the coming years. finally, since I have already begun building my network, it will be there for me as my uses fore it grow.