Oh the joys...

A little while ago, my peer Jackie Neufeld posted on her blog about some difficulty she had been having with technology. Feel free to read her post for some background information: "Mail Merge Murder"

I didn't think much of Jackie's post until last night. I am an advocate for technology and you will often hear me saying how no matter how much of a hassle technology is, if it works, it can be extremely helpful/effective. Something happened last night; however, that may have put a slight bit of pessimism in my view.

I was working along on school work, and after I had finished a couple reflections, I went to download a program to work on something else. Little did I know that when I downloaded said program, my computer would not only get spyware (which I'm sure it
gets often, despite my best efforts), but it proceeded to falter and tell me it was infected. Luckily I know how to wipe my computer and start from scratch. I can't even imagine the frustration that someone who didn't have these technical abilities would face.

So, my question is two fold. Firstly, how effective is technology? If we constantly have to have a plan B, doesn't that defeat the purpose of how convenient this technology is supposed to be? I know I got just as frustrated as my students when I was working in my internship and something would go wrong with the computers. It's hard for me to see them become discouraged to use these devices that are designed to eliminate some of these frustrations.

Also, going back again to my technical literacy posts, is this why we need to teach children technology skills, so they can trouble shoot situations like like that they can encounter every day? I'm not bragging at all, but very few of my friends/family/peers would have been able to successfully reprogram their operating system. They would have been lost!

Wow, complicated post, but I'd love to hear what you think on either of my two points :)

"As "Time" Goes Bye Bye"

Back at the very beginning of the semester, we had a class discussion about "amateurs" on the web being able to do the things that credible professionals have been doing for years. On the Colbert Report last night, Stephan talked about bloggers taking the place of print journalists.

Here is the video:

What do you think? As a society are we getting our news, music, etc from less credible sources? I think this just means that we have to teach kids to critically evaluate these sources that are so readily available to them.

Goldmine...

Well, if everyone remembers, I lamented last week about the focus we are placing on children "having" to learn technological literacy skills. I wanted to find the scope and sequence for what children need to learn at each grade level in terms of technological literacy and was quite disappointed when I did not find this information on Sask. Learning (at least I didn't see it). As I was researching various school divisions I happened up this document on the Saskatoon Catholic website

Technological Literacy Scope and Sequence

Wow! I can say I was impressed to say the least. Looking at the document, it's not much, but it's better than the nothing I seemed to find on the Sask. Learning website. I also noticed that my experiences in internship do not exactly match up with this 3 years out of date document. My kids in Grade 1 could work with pictures and use a mouse without instruction. So do we need to set the bar even HIGHER in terms of the technological objectives we want to meet because students are coming with such a rich background now? What about the kids who don't get that background because they don't have a computer at home? This is all really interesting to me and something I would like to investigate further!

Free software..

I have to admit, Tuesday's class was really interesting for many reasons. Firstly, I had no idea that there was a free ware version of Office available for download. If anyone has not seen "Open Office", check it out at this link:

Open Office

Also, I was excited to learn a couple new tricks on Word and Excel. For anyone who is interested in the "Mail Merge" feature that Word has to offer, here is a great tutorial that was given to out class

Mail Merge Tutorial

I will definitely be using this feature when applying for jobs in the near future!

All in all it was a great class and I learned more than I thought I could about Word!

Technological "skills"

Hello all,

Well, I just got out of my EDFN class tonight and our discussion brought me back to the discussion we had on the very first day of ECMP. We talked in class tonight about being "abeled" and "disabled" and I was wondering if this could be viewed in the context of technology and various technological skills we are now "expected" to have. Technological literacy has become a mandated part of the curriculum because it has become so integrated into our society that if we lack some of these skills, we are not even viewed as "normal". I don't necessarily think this is right, but I also believe it giving my students the skills they need to survive in the world today. I may not agree that the society should expect them to be able to make a PowerPoint presentation, but there is not much I can do to change this expectation.

I have to admit, I went looking for the curriculum that tells us what children should learn in terms of technological literacy at each grade, but I came up empty handed. Is there not such a document? Was I imagining things? I wanted to point anyone reading this in that direction but I guess not....anyway, what does everyone think?

I swear I don't blog this often....

I'm honestly not this interested in blogging usually, but I found this picture after looking through the "Secret" postcards Alec showed us in class today and I really really though it was interesting














So, after reading the words on this picture.."every day I am asked to be a magician in a world where magic doesn't exist", what does everyone think? Is this true? Are there certain parts of education that are a "lost cause" and we should stop trying to be miracle workers? Anyone who knows me knows that this is not how I think; I am a class half-full type of girl. I was just wondering if anyone felt like arguing the other side. Am I too much of an optimist to believe that we can at least make some shred of difference in every child's life that we touch? What do you think?

Connected...

Today we spent some time in class creating blogs and becoming really comfortable with RSS and other subscription features found on the 'net. As I now have a bloglines account and am able to get instant updates when anyone in this class blogs, it made me think about how connected people have become on the web these days. It's no longer good enough to say "sorry, I could not get a hold of you, I wasn't at home". We expect people to have cell phones with Text Messaging so there is never a time of the day in which we cannot reach them. As a teacher, this is good and concerning in a lot of ways. Firstly, parents can be seamlessly integrated with our classrooms in many ways. They can have a clear understanding of what is happening in our classrooms and there will be no more "well Mom, we didn't learn anything in school today". It also allows for parents to look at our practices closely and question some assignments/activities, etc, but if they are questioning something, perhaps we should be looking a bit closer anyway.

Welcome!

Hello! This is my first post on my new blog, pretty exciting stuff! I am creating this blog for an ECMP class and I am really looking forward to keeping this blog updated with information on not only what is happening in this class, but also what is happening in the remainder of my last semester in University. Talk to you soon, ciao!!

- Jenn