My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete

I really enjoyed this class! I have made some really good friends in this class. Thank you guys I have really enjoyed everything!

Week 16

I have learned so much in this class. I feel like I am so much more computer literate now. The project that I enjoyed the most was the trifold. I would love to use this when I get in a classroom and for other projects also. My brocure really came out nice and my brother in law actually printed a bunch of them and then kept them for himself. I also really enjoyed learning hoe\w to use a blog. I think it is a great idea to have a class blog. At first I thought it would be too complex for elementary school children to do it until I researched and saw many classrooms using it all over the world. The website was really difficult for me. Getting my pictures right and doing the alt tags really took a long time for me to do. The videos helped me out a lot though. If it were not for them I would not have been able to pass this class. One thing that we did that I think will be the most useful for me outside the classroom is the payout table. I know I will continue to use this because I have already used it on my house I bought and the new car I bought. Dr. Strange was right when he said those equations are great to take in when you are making a large purchase because I used it when I was buying my car and found $499 that they were not telling me about. In all I really enjoyed this class. I am really glad I chose to take Dr. Strange because he teaches all projects that can be used in everyday life.

Week 14

This weeks blog assignment is about some of the shady entries and amendments on wikipedia. I was completely unaware that anyone with a computer can edit, amend or change the sound of an entry. "Wired" magazine described Wikepedia as 100 times the information of an encyclopedia with about 90 percent the accuracy. The whole premise that this online database is founded upon is that it is a comprehensive collaboration of several different sources coming together to make for on very informative source. This same premise makes it very easily susceptible to people rearranging the words or deleting items to make themselves sound better.
Virgil Griffith a graduate student of Cal Tech is making it harder on these major companies making changes by either forcing them to sign their amendments or making them look very suspicious when the sign anonymous and it traces back to them. I think his system Wikipedia Scanner will make wikepedia better by trying to make people write good information. I still think wikipedia is a good source of information, but i think that you should double check some of the information for accuracy.

week 13

This weeks blog assignment was very "eye opening". Stanford's psychology department's research shows that students have two mindsets toward learning, a fixed and a growth mindset. The fixed mindset is very troubling to me, I really hate the thought that students can actually get it in their head that the only have so much intelligence and thats all they have to work with. I will do every thing in my power to instill the growth mindset in every student I teach.

I will teach my students that they can learn an infinite amount of information if they are open to it. I will show them their mind is like a muscle, the more you use it the more powerful it becomes. I really am glad I was exposed to this information so that I can pass it along to other teachers and teacher propects.

week 12

This weeks blog assignment really showed me how committed that apple is to making iTunes U common place in the classroom. There is an immense amount of media files available at no charge. The videos are of very high quality similar to those shown on "The Discovery Channel". I think they can and will be very useful in the classroom.
I watched the video entitled, "A Night in a Coral Reef". It was very colorful and exciting to me. I really enjoyed watching the reef change drastically from day to night. The different creatures who inhabit the reef change from day to night also which I found very interesting. This video was very well filmed and narrated I really don't know where a teacher can find a better source for classroom instructional videos.
When I become a teacher I will definitely use these videos in my classroom. It is wonderful to have free resources like this. I sincerely think that Apple is headed in the right direction with this resource. Keep up the good work Apple.