Review Blogging

So, I was looking at the different types of blogging and the review blog caught my eye this week. I would like to review my cell phone. When I first got the LG Voyager, I thought it was really cool. My last phone had been a Motorola Razor and This was definitely an update. I new that I had wanted a phone that had the touch screen and that flipped open to the keyboard for texting. The LG Voyager fit the bill.
At first I did not have any trouble with it. Then it started calling people while it was in my back pocket, so the lock on the screen was unlocking on it's own. Every once in awhile it would also just shut off for no reason because I sat and barely hit the power button. It also doesn't always like to unlock for me when I want it to, so at least there is the button on the side that you can use instead of the touch screen.
I do like the fact that I can open the phone and type text messages much easier with all of the letter and symbols right there. Since I usually use my phone for texting this is a big plus for me.
So, all-in-all I might not buy this phone again if given the choice, but I would buy a phone that has the full keyboard again.

New Type of Blogging, the Repost

Today I found how to repost blogging, or using something that someone has blogged about before. I really liked reading about Jamie's Blog this week when she talked about The 21st Century School House. So, if you click on the links you can see what her post is all about. I also found that the repost is very similar to "retweeting" in Twitter.

I found this fascinating quote today:

TwitterTwitter in Plain English - Good introIntroduction to Twitter (Technical Description)Dr. Z, Emerging Instructional Technologies Fall '09, Sep 2009

You should read the whole article.

This is my take on the repost or the reblog. Have a great day!

Global Opportunities Available to Learners

Technology has brought the everyday person to new locations throughout the world. With many universities offering online courses, a student could be enrolled at a school in Florida, but travel to Austria during the semester to visit with in-laws. My brother did just that, he went to Austria for almost 4 months while still keeping up with his classes online. I even got to "meet" several of my sister-in-laws family with webcams and the internet. I completed my student teaching in Australia a few years back and through those connections started pen pals with a middle school in Fort Dodge, IA and the 7th grade students I was working with in Australia. Now, with the advances of technology, we could even have the students "meet" online through programs likes Skype. Now that would have saved me a lot of money in airfare if I would have been able to "travel" places through the internet back then. Although, I would never replace actually traveling to Australia with just going there through the internet.
So, while we can talk to people face-to-computer screen from almost anywhere in the world and we can see how the cultures differ from place to place. If it was a perfect world, I would like to actually see the place or person in person.

Social Networking in My Life

I joined MySpace a few years ago when it was popular, but never really checked it much. I was very resistant to trying Facebook, and now I know why. When I was done teaching, I finally joined and I am now addicted to it. I like to log on and see what is happening in my friends and families lives. It is a way that I keep updated on what is going on in the lives of those that I don't get to see or talk to very often. I even like to take the little quizzes like about how I might die; when I am 97 and by heatstroke at football practice. I like to play the games and do the trivia sites to see if I know more useless knowledge than my friends.
Steph mentioned that she has not gotten into it very much in her blog, http://stephsschoolblog-steph.blogspot.com/2009/09/social-networking-in-education.html. I can say, I almost wish I hadn't started, because now I am on there way more than I need to be. I couldn't really find any other blogs outside of our class, but I will look and see if I can find any to post later.
Gotta go, have to check to see how my Mafia is doing...

Role of Blogging in Education

This being my first blog I had never thought about blogging as something that could be used in education before. After reading the post by Vicki Davis for our class I had different ideas about how it could be used and I thought back to how I could have used it in my high school math classes as a tool. In some of my education classes we have discussed the importance of journaling in the math classes to see how the students thought about a problem and how they would go about solving it. I could see using a blog in a high school class to do this journaling. It would give me, as the teacher, a way to see how the students were understanding the material, and it would also give the students a way to use technology to do something that might not be so fun. I think that it could also be a way for students to feel less intimidated about asking a question about the subject matter.