Hello Everyone, I just wanted to say that I had a wonderful time in class with you and having Dr. Rivera as a teacher has been really great. She gave us a wonderful opportunity to learn this new technology and it has given me confidence to carry on with my studies. Take good care and I wish you all the best.

Jay

Thank you everyone and Happy Holidays

It was nice working with everyone this semester. I wish you all good luck in your future endeavors. I'm sure that I speak for all of us when I say ED638 with Dr. Rivera was so much fun, interesting, and challenging at the same time. Taking this class has given me confidence to tackle on other types of technological projects with a renewed vision. I would like to wish everyone: Dr. Rivera, Kate, Cef, Jay, and Greg a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you all around.

image source: http://www.intelligencesummit.org/images/MerryChris...

Happy Holidays

It's been a pleasure working with all of you this semester, I truly enjoyed myself. Thank you for all your help and support Dr. Rivera...I'll look for you on Facebook. I think we should all join Facebook (hint hint--Ceferino!)

Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Make This A Safe Holiday Season

Hope you all have a great holiday season. It was quite a semester and I think we will look back at this course and be thankful that we had the opportunity to learn as much as we did. Thanks to all, especially Dr. Rivera who made this class most enjoyable. See you all around campus.

FINAL FAREWELL

Hi everyone! I couldn't stay away from blogging one last time. I just wanted to thank everyone for a wonderful semester. I wish everyone success in their future endeavors. Happy Holidays:)

Top of the World

Great job yesterday Cef and Kate! I am glad that you two went first last night. I have a clearer picture of how my livetext needs to look like. This whole semester was a blast! I am so glad that I took this course with you all. Hopefully we can all maintain our momentum when it comes to exploring new and interesting types of internet tools, software, and hardware.

Before class started, I felt that there was just a mountain of information to learn. Now I feel that we just reached the top; Greg and I are almost there. We all made it with the proper training and guidance from Dr. Rivera. Thank you Dr. Rivera! It is definitely a pleasure to be a part of your class. See you all tomorrow.

Thumbs Up!

This has truly been an outstanding course for me. I learned a tremendous amount and now feel that I am much more willing and able to tackle new challenges involving new technology. One can never know it all when it comes to keeping up with the daily advances in digital technology and internet resources, but at least I have made huge strides this semester. Thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support. Job well done!

Hi Guys!

I'm so sorry about my mad dash in and out this evening; I promise you my undivided attention Thursday evening. It has really been a pleasure getting to know you all this semester. It is evident that you are all very dedicated teachers. I wish you all a very happy, safe and healthy holiday season...and Happy Birthday Dr. Rivera!

Kate

WE DID IT!

Tonight's last session was so rewarding! I have to say goodbye a class early, but my thoughts are with all of you on the last day. I am so relieved that the class is over. I was overwhelmed with the course syllabus, but I am so ecstatic that I stuck it out. Everything was very useful. I embrace what I have learned in the class and will surely use them in my classroom.

I didn't like my final quote so I'll leave all of you with this one that my guidance counselor posted at my lounge. "The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm." Joyce Carey

Take Care and I will see all of you in the near future!

Happy Holidays

How was Thanksgiving? I hope everyone had their fill of turkey, ham, mash potatoes, and all that other good food. Everyone did an excellent job all semester. I am so surprised that our class is almost done with, I really enjoyed working with you all. See you all tomorrow.

Image source: www.cartoonstock.com

Hello to all my classmates and Dr. Rivera. I wish to tell you all that you did a wonderful job on our presentation this past class. Job well done guys.
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Don't eat too much, Xmas is around the corner.

Jay

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear ED638 Students,

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the holiday with your family, and be sure to give them thanks for supporting you in your academic endeavors. Good luck with completing your final course requirements!

Best regards,
Dr. Rivera

Everybody did a wonderful job on their presentations! Thank you to everyone for putting up with me on mine. The third time is a charm! I'm going to work on my Live Text as soon as I am done with my Diagnostic Case Study for ED643. I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! Take Care!

I enjoyed everyone's presentations this evening, it was a fun and enjoyable class. I learned a lot from everyone, and got some great lesson ideas for the future. I hope everyone has an easy time uploading to Live Text; we are on the final stretch now! Happy Thanksgiving!

We are almost done. The lesson plans and Google Earth tours were very interesting and show some of the diversity of this fascinating internet tool.

I located a Google Earth manual that is well written. I showed me exactly how to develop a Google Earth tour and save it without a glitch. Access it at the following link if interested: http://ed638blog4greg.blogspot.com/

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Technology Tools

Dear All,

Please see my Technology Website showcasing tools I've personally found useful -

http://jaytechnology.blogspot.com/

-Jay

Congratulations!

Congratulations, everyone! You did an excellent job! I'm sure the audience left with resourceful information to enhance their ESL instruction! Enjoy the memorable picture I've uploaded with our keynote speaker, Dr. Kate Reynolds!

Best regards,

Dr. Rivera

Almost There

I think we are almost at the top, just a few more yards. Excellent job this past Friday! I'm glad that we got to be a part of the Language Arts Conference. Great team effort! See you all tomorrow.

I am now on the right track and it took the good Dr. to put me there. So guys I am sorry that I am a little slow but I will get there believe me. You guys are great and I really can not say enough about you and the presentation that you put on the other night. Thank you also for the helpful information that you have gave to me. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

My classmates were great during their presentation and I did learn alot. Dr. Rivera you were right about my posting and I am going to wait until class to let you see and show me how to place my writings from one area to another. But yes I did do what you asked me to do in my writings.

A round of applause to everyone!

I would just like to say a job well done to everyone for their hard work in the conference. Let's continue our momentum and get the rest of our assignments done as the semester is coming to an end. See everyone on Thursday!

Victory is Ours!

Well guys...we did it! I think our presentation was a success even with the few Internet glitches we had which is to be expected when relying on the Net. I think everyone presented their websites very very well...a good job by all! I actually can't believe the conference is over; it seemed so far away at the beginning of the semester. Before you know it, we'll be presenting our Live Text portfolios and heading off to enjoy the holiday season. I'll email the presentation tonight or tomorrow!

See you all in class!
Kate

I know that we will all do an excellent job tomorrow and if we don't then we can all laugh about our experience one day. I wasn't looking forward to tonight's dry run, but it wasn't that bad at all. I know that I can talk fast and can ramble on and on. In many ways I am more anxious in getting this presentation done so I can concentrate on my other assignments. Take Care!

I think tonight's rehearsal went very well. We all have a great idea of what we will say and everyone seemed well versed in their presentations. I will double check the links again tomorrow, hopefully we will not have any glitches. I'm looking forward to it being 8pm Friday night; I really do not like standing up in front of people. Still, I think everyone who attends our presentation will go home and check out the websites for themselves.

Kate

Well, we are down to the last 24 hours... I will be happy when we are done with this presentation. We all worked hard and I hope that we do a respectable job. I will try to rehearse more and shorten some of my presentation.

Thanks to all of you for working together and producing this slide show and presentation. Although it may not be as engaging as watching a suspense thriller, we did come up with some useful technology tools and top-rated websites.

I am glad that we had the chance for a practice run tonight. I think everyone did a great job and I can not wait to get this over and done with. Hopefully I don't have nightmares about tomorrow's presentation tonight. I'm really looking forward to our Geocities presentations. Just love those virtual field trips. See you all tomorrow.



image source: www.presentationhelper.co.uk/humour.htm

Boy does time fly, we will be presenting next Friday. Our practice run in class was very good, it definitely showed me what parts of my presentation need work. Maybe during our presentation on Friday we can give each other signals in case we go over the time limit. We definitely have a good product, it's just a matter of presenting it informatively.

Once again, I would like to thank Kate for putting all of our slides together. Great job!

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/p/power_point.asp

Image source:

Dress rehearsal for the dress rehearsal

We had a productive meeting tonight. We put the finishing touches on the power point and made a practice run. We hit the 45 minute time slot well, and we all now have a good idea of where we need to make improvements to fine tune our part of the presentation. I know by next week we will all feel more comfortable in what we want to say and what we want to highlight at each of the websites.

See everyone next week,
Kate

dry runthrough....

We had a dry run on our presentation tonight. All of us went to the sites that we will present on and tried to talk 4-5 minutes per site. We learned a lot about some of the problems that we may encounter. I also realized that I need to make notecards and start practicing so that I do not become disoriented and sound disorganized when I present.

It was a good practice session though. Next Thursday should see major improvements for the final rehearsal and we should be ready to go on Friday.... hopefully.

We did our dry run tonight at the computer lab. Kudos to Kate for working hard on our powerpoint presentation. I think we all did fine. I am going to practice more on my part.

On Google Earth, I decided to do an Ocean Unit and develop lesson plans that revolve around my three sites which are the Cushing Zoo, Underwater World and Fish Eye which are all on Guam. Have a great weekend everyone!

Halloween theme....

I learned a lot about Google Earth tonight. It really does have all kinds of features to explore. I am still a little bit stumped about the Great Wall of China though. I tried to find it again, but to no avail. I will try again to get to the bottom of this glitch when I have more time.

I have been thinking about a lesson plan. My initial thought is to have students plan a three week road trip in the United States with the goal of visiting three National Parks. They will have to develop a budget for the trip and use the Google Earth features to locate the National Parks and to find hotels and restaurants in the area, as well as other points of interest. They will also have to calculate the driving mileage and estimate to total cost of the trip for their family.... just an idea for now.

Hope you have a Happy Halloween.....

Tonight's session was a lot of fun! I think I am going to create a lesson plan on crop circles for our Google Earth project. I never knew there were so many tools available with Google Earth, I cannot wait to show my kids!

Paul I received your slides, I will add them to the power point and email it to everyone this weekend.

See you all next week for our first run through!

Happy Halloween, don't eat too much candy!

Kate

Inservice for Google Earth

Hello everyone! That was a great session for GoogleEarth...Thanks Dr.Rivera! You brought all of us all over the world without spending a dime. This is definitely a great way to bring students around the world. Once my class has internet capability I'm going to bring them around the world. I've traveled to a few places and I still get a kick out of Google Earth, can you imagine how our students will react once they see the Earth in relation to where they live; the possibilities are endless, unless they want to see the Great Wall of China. I look forward to everyones lesson plans incorporating Google Earth. Have a great weekend and Happy Halloween!

Google Earth Revisited

What's up everyone! Great session tonight as usual as I learned many new things. Thank you to Kate who started putting our power point presentation together for our Language Arts Conference. I am confident that we will be ready by our dry run on November 13th.

We revisited Google Earth. I learned how to placemark sites and then we took a fieldtrip of the sites that each of us chose during classtime. Some of the sites that my classmates were wanting to see I haven't heard about. Google Earth is so amazing and also I finally found my house! Yay!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN to everyone and have a great weekend!

Google Earth

Google Earth is such an interesting way to explore the world. Just observing Cef navigate Google Earth has peaked my interest. I look forward to exploring what Google Earth has to offer.

Tonight we all discussed how many slides we would use and the format of each slide. We definitely will keep it simple and hopefully have the internet access during our presentation.

image source: www.neolaia.gr/images/google-earth-logo.jpg

Google Google Everywhere!

We had a productive night tonight. Per Greg's suggestion, we set up a document feed at Google Docs so we can communicate with each other about our progress on the conference. We decided on the number of slides for the power point and I offered to put the power point together before our class next week.

We then explored Google Earth for a bit. Like Cef said, my son Jack had to show us how to use the controls. He got a kick out of that. My kids are usually who I turn to for power point questions and anything technical. This class is making me a bit more savvy in the pc world, but I'll bet they still know more than I do.

Making progress....

Tonight we made progress on our Language Arts Conference presentation. We agreed to develop three or four slides for each technology site and e-mail them to Kate. We must then work on practicing how to navigate through the website for 8 or 9 minutes as we talk about its benefits and features. We are going to be dependent on a computer that has fast access to the internet for our presentation. Hopefully things will work out as we are planning...

Quote by Orison Sweet Marden

"Many a one has succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat, he would never have known any great victory."

Orison Sweet Marden

Basically this quote is saying that failure will make you stronger because it is the journey towards your goal which teaches you many things; which is knowledge. It is through the repeated journeys that your confidence will grow. Confidence in life will only lead you to be successful.

Google Earth

We just got done with our meeting. We decided to email our slides to Kate so she could put together. We are going to do 2 to 3 slides for each internet tool. Then Jack, Kate's son taught me how to explore Google Earth. I got so close in finding my house. I got confused after I hit Latte Heights. I will explore more this evening. It was a productive night. Great Job everyone!

Motivational quote....

"Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."

Conrad Hilton

Nothing happens without action. We have the power and ability to make decisions that will affect how we live and what we will become. Stagnation will almost guarantee a life of regrets. Although I may never be wealthy, I will make an effort to continually learn and achieve goals. That is why I continue to take classes at the university. This particular course has really opened up my eyes to the power of the internet and digital technology.

Better late than never

I thought that we had to moodle for Thursday, but I just found out in ED643 that we had to blog. WHOOPS! Thanks a lot Kate. Well, I thought that Thursday night was very productive for all of us. I enjoyed everyone's presentation on their internet tools. Well done to everyone as usual for hitting benchmark.

Here are the two quotes that Dr. Rivera sent us that I liked.

"Failure is success if we learn from it." Malcolm Forbes

From my interpretation, we learn from our mistakes and from that it will only make us stronger individuals.

"Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit." Conrad Hilton

In order to achieve your goals, you must be persistent and hardworking at everything that you do. There will be bumps in the road and you may fail many times, but you should never give up. Obviously Conrad Hilton never gave up as he owns so many hotels and became a zillionaire. Paris Hilton is one lucky lady!

Quoted Quotables

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."
B.C. Forbes

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

The quotations in the email were all very profound and inspiring and also all said by men (not that there's anything wrong with that :) ). Being the only female student in the class though, I felt compelled to add an inspirational quote from a woman:

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou

To me this says: You must be brave enough to take chances and not fear failure for sometimes success is the result of failure.

Internet Tools

Tonight's class was informative and productive. I enjoyed seeing the other reviews and sites; I took many notes on movies to rent and websites to explore. I think our presentation will be one of the more informative ones at the conference. Many teachers are trying to keep up with new technology and it can get overwhelming. Our presentation will provide a nice selection of useful tools and resources.

Have a good weekend everyone,

Kate

Helpful Hint....

I tried to give step-by-step instructions for capturing an image and placing it into a slide. Go to my technology blog and try it out to see if the directions are understandable and if they get the job done....

http://ed638blog4greg.blogspot.com/

My Internet Tools Review

Please check out my reviews of Teachertube, Flock, and Geocities. Just click on the link to get to my Technology Blog. Thanks! Here is a pic I took four years ago, hopefully it will help all of us to relax a bit because we still have a lot of work ahead. Hope you like it. If my link is not visible just go to http://sekinetechnology.blogspot.com/

Help from my Friends

Things do move fast on the web for an old man like my self but using blog I like that I can talk with people. I have made new comments and posted them. There are some many ways that a person can create and share. This has so much to offer and our class goal seems to be focus and see the various internet tools that we can use. We can even build our own website which is something I did not know how to do until now.

I finally finished my reviews. Check out my blog at this site: http://ed638blog4greg.blogspot.com/.

My Technology Blog

Hi everyone! I just got done with my technology blog despite having a 102 degree fever. Blogging is so much fun regardless if I'm sick. You can view my blog at http://ceftechnology.blogspot.com/

I hope everyone is well and in great health. See you all soon!

Internet Tools Review

I am finally done writing my reviews on Tripod, Google Docs and Learn Out Loud. You can read them here: http://katetechnoblog.blogspot.com/

Like I said in the moodle forum. Having us research technology then use technology to report on our findings was a great way to enhance our knowledge of the Internet. I think the presentation we create for the conference will be very informative and helpful to all educators.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Kate

Good Class Session....

Hello Everyone,

I guess I need to start putting up images to keep pace with the rest of you all....

I enjoy whenever we meet in person. Part of my reasons for taking classes at uog has to do with socializing and meeting different (and intelligent) people. So I do miss the weekly interaction with all of you. However, this is a class on internet technology and I realize that the best way to become technologically proficient is to spend hours and hours and hours on the computer learning different programs, systems, tools, etc.

I thought all of your on-line classroom activities and quizzes were good. Classcentral.com has great potential. Too bad GPSS (particularly Southern HS) does not have the facilities and resources to utilize the internet potential in the classroom(s). I know it will take a lot more time and effort to really get a good grasp of how to actually utilize an online classroom to its full potential.

I also liked viewing the internet tools that were selected for review. In particular, I liked iGoogle and TeacherTube. I think I will investigate them further and start using them on a regular basis.

I hope everybody is keeping our upcoming project in the forefront of thoughts. I am not very proficient at PowerPoint. Hopefully we can all learn how to link slides to websites (instantaneously) and incorporate audio and video into slides. I think we have some good tools to share with the audience and we need to prepare well for this....

Thursday Night

Everyone's Class Central Projects were excellent. I learned a lot with each presentation and how to improve my own in the future. Thanks to everyone for the kind words. Also, what I really enjoyed about last night's class was the internet tools that everyone presented. I really like face to face contact with everyone. It makes the class more worthwhile and enjoyable. I know that our Language Arts Conference presentation will be awesome! See everyone in the next class meeting.

October 2 class

I had a lot of fun in class last night. Everyone's ClassCentral projects were great and most impressive! I think any student would not only enjoy but really benefit from all the lessons that were created.

I appreciate all the supportive comments from you guys, it helped ease my doubts about the lessons I chose.

I'm looking forward to working together on our presentation for the Language Arts Conference. Based on the first review of our internet tools, I think we will be able to come up with a very informative presentation that the audience will appreciate and hopefully feel compelled to choose and use some in their classrooms.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Kate

I am Back Guys

I am back Guys and it looks like I will be with you come Thursday for class. I still have a few things to work out but I am fine and I feel better than I did.

Teacher Tube Rocks!

Hey, everyone! I've been surfing my internet tools. I think I haven't surfed the net enough compared to the three of you. I was watching Mr. Duey rap fractions. Even though it took a while to watch because the video stopped every so often. It was very cool, indeed! Can you imagine the possibilities? I can just picture Kate rapping abc's to kindergarteners. What a sight see. On google.com/ig, I liked the word, joke and quote of the day. Very Cool! I'm going to keep on surfing. See you guys next week!

delicious.....

I have been spending this Tuesday evening in Dr. Cyrus class working on my tech blog. I spent the entire time investigating the delicious.com site which is a very good social bookmarking site. I was not aware of bookmarking sites in general, and "social" bookmarking sites in particular... needless to say, I am learning quite a bit.

In this day and age it is imperative to take measures to try to keep up with technology. In my case, I am starting to have diminished capacity for remembering things and so I have to learn ways to organize and manage my various websites, e-mail accounts, financial accounts, etc. I think this bookmarking website will help me organize the various websites that I use on a day-to-day basis.

Back to work now.....

Internet Tools

This is the pic I posted on my Geocities class website. Geocities offers so many things, it's pretty much up to the user how focused they want their aim. Of course our class aim is to see how various internet tools can help us in the classroom. Geocities has a section solely for web page development and it's quite easy to use. I chose the topic of web building for school and it just explained step by step what to do. The page itself had a portion where your picture would be uploaded. Around the picture were various text boxes that can be moved and resized to your liking. In each text box it gives you examples of what you probably should put in. It's pretty much up to the designer on how they want everything arranged. I'm still fiddling with this site but I'll keep you all posted.

Technology Review

This morning I began surfing through LearnOutLoud.com. An offshoot of that website is Teach Out Loud that allows you to "spread your knowledge to the world using audio and video". I took the guided tour at Learn Out Loud and started laughing when the guide said "Hello my name is Cef"..hmmmmmmmm he doesn't sound like Cef? It looks like this site has anything a teacher would need or want for their classroom! They offer a kids catalog as well as a free stuff section. It's a library of educational tools!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Kate

Cool Site.....

I am in the computer lab this Saturday working on my tech sites. I have just stumbled on a really cool teacher technology site that has over fifteen specific programs that integrate technology into the classroom. I have been going one by one through these "tools" and quite impressed... I will leave it as a surprise until we share our results with the class.

Internet Tools

There are so many internet tools out there. I guess that I am so oblivious of things that are on the internet. I got to go explore many of the sites. I am amazed at teachertube, slideshare and learnoutloud. Wow! The things that you learn through the internet. I guess the sky's the limit! I'm getting a computer for my classroom today which was donated by DoDEA and can be hooked up to the internet. I am so excited on what I can teach my students. This class made me realize that anything is possible!