PROVERBS 4:25-27

Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, & Students Statewide (ACCESS)

Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide (ACCESS) is a distance learning program available to all Alabama public high school students. This gives students the opportunity to earn college credits while in high school. Also, it provides Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE) remediation modules for high school students who need it. This is a network between college instructors and students through web-based college courses.

ACCESS provides tools to assist students in their on-line experience. Their goal is to give students college credits prior to entering college. This site allows students to connect with the AHSGE, advanced placement (AP) tests, web-based courses, and interactive videoconferencing (IVC) courses. Also, it contains resources that include an Alabama Virtual Library, so students won't have to leave home to look for information. Also, this library and Wickipedia's matching information can be combined together to fulfill reference requirements for papers.

ACCESS will be a good program to introduce to the students. This gives high school students a head start in college. Students can shorten their stay in college and reduce the cost of a college education. As a future English teacher, I can assist some high school students in taking available distance learning English courses prior to attending college. Also, I can obtain modules for students who have not passed the English portion of their AHSGE and assist them with any difficulties they may be having.

Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX)

Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) provides tools to assist teachers with their lesson plans. It provides web links for a specific grade, subject, and topic being taught in the classroom. Teachers have to be creative and be able to reach out to a very diverse group of students. One has to consider poverty as an issue that hinders students from accessing needed materials for the learning process and try to accommodate their needs in the classroom.

ALEX provides a variety of resources that will be useful in the classroom. There are lesson plans available for the teacher's use to coincide with the lesson plans they are preparing. There is a place where an individual teacher can develop their own personal workshop. Also, there are web sites teachers can use to get additional information.

This program will be useful for assisting teachers in the classroom. Creativity is a part of a teacher's classroom instructions. As a teacher, I may have ideas and strategies to present in my classroom. I can get additional help from ALEX. There may be a few struggling students that requires something extra. I may be able to derive new ways to present instructions to my class.

Kaia's Adventures

These videos discussed how a child can learn from the web and easily get exploited to the entire world. In Kaia's case, it started out as a connection to keep in touch with love ones. It never intended on getting so much publicity. She can't read yet, but she is learning from other students through the internet. I think this encourages Kaia to want to learn more.

The implications in these videos are there are dangers in exposing young kids to the world on networking. Kaia's father recognized these dangers. Her father watched the videos with her. Also, he realized how vulnerable the experience made her. It started out as a way of sharing her photos with family, but it ended up being viewed world wide. This can be a good way of young children learning, but it should be done under strict supervision. You would never know the person they are networking with on the web. This story started out about a book The Last Child in the Woods. Without strict supervision, your child can be lost in the woods of networking.

New Media Literacy Project

The New Media Literacy Project (NML) is concerned with teaching skills to prepare students for the upcoming digital age. These skills will be needed to function in the future. Also, new technologies are becoming a part of our culture. So, as future teachers and students, we should be preparing to grasp our newly developing culture.

I read the article "As Classrooms Go Digital, Textbooks May Become History." There is the possibility that as the classroom becomes more technical, textbooks will be on a decline. Some students already have laptops. It is tentative that students will be given iPods and digital textbooks with their textbooks loaded on it. Not purchasing textbooks would the the schools big money. Although it has its benefits, textbook publishers would lose a lot of money. One has to consider low income families may not have internet accessibility available at all times. This problem can lead to a digital divide, which means a wide gap between the rich and the poor.

New Media Literacy Policies by the NML Staff

New media literacy skills are the things you need to know in order to teach in today's classrooms. It is more like a thought process and a teacher has to be able to interpret new information from the web correctly before including it in the classroom instruction. These skills will create more reliable information presented in the classroom.

I think these are effective skill needed in today's society. Today, perception and deception is a part of everyday life. One needs to be aware of these skills as a part of survival. Judgement and negotiation are the most important of these skills. One has to be able to use sound judgement and make the right choices. Also, negotiations help to reinforce and support that those choices are right.

I am beginning to improve my judgement and negotiation skills, because they are weak right now. I had done very little work on the web before 2009, but I am learning and willing to continue learning new things. As I continue in my education, I should gradually accumulate the other skills over a period of time.

Why Teach the Networked Student?

I thought developing a personal learning network (PLN) is a good idea. This is a place where one can collaborate and get help on topics from others. This is a place where a person's opinion is counted, but it cannot be reliable without reinforcement. Also, other peers can be included in this network. PLN broadens a student's learning. Including professionals can give a student other sources, ideas, or directions to look into.

Again, one has to keep in mind that people include their opinions and their posts are based on their own knowledge. Similar to Wickipedia, this can be unreliable if used without caution. For instance, if one uses a bit of information, it should be reinforced by another source in the network. This allows the information used to be more accurate and reliable.

There is a couple of reasons a networked student needs a teacher. In the previous paragraph, I discussed the unreliability of a PLN if the information is interpreted incorrectly. The networked student needs the guidance while building their networks. The students have to be taught how to ask for help and be able to pick out factual information from the network. Also, a tech literate teacher should assist the student in creating an organized scavenger hunt. The student should be encouraged to maintain their PLN throughout their education. It will be beneficial in reinforcing their knowledge of a topic and collaborating with others.

As a high school English teacher, I see many benefits of a PLN. Education is becoming increasingly technical and there is a possibility of a decline in students' reading habits. Creativity is encouraged to enlighten a student's learning in the classroom. My network will allow me to collaborate with other teachers across the globe for creative ideas to use in the classroom. Currently, I am not prepared to teach a networked student, but I am in a continuous learning process.

Richard Miller: This is How We Dream

I watched Richard Miller: This is How We Dream, Parts 1 and 2. These movies were very influential in encouraging me to prepare to use multimedia in my lesson plans. Sometimes, pictures and videos enhance the students' comprehension of the classroom material. This allows students to visualize the subject-at-hand along with hearing, listening, and reading a topic.

I will be teaching a high school English class. English is a subject that does not change very much and it has some aspects of history included. There may be new literature added, but all of the old literature stays the same. Today's students may find literature to be foreign and strange material. They can get a better understanding of the topic with the enhancement of multimedia in the classroom.

The students can learn from their peers as well. In this class, we used multimedia to create pod- casts and presentations. I would like to see my future students create presentations of a literature stories for the class. I could assign a topic for each student to be presented throughout the school year. If the students know beforehand what their topic is, this will give everyone ample time to create their projects. The students who are more tech literate can collaborate with the ones that don't know that much about multimedia technology. Also, students may use information and ideas available on iTunes to assist in their presentations. Originality has to be an important component of the project.

The Use of iPods in the Classroom

Programs have started using iPods in the classroom to aid bilingual students and science teachers. Also, iPods makes school more interesting for some students. One teacher found a useful way of incorporating it into the classroom instruction. She downloaded songs on the students' iPods, left some words out, and this forced the students to fill in the blanks. This is an expensive tool to have, but it is the job of educators to be able to reach out to all students.

Also, I read about Duke University sees a growth in iPod use in the classroom. The growth of iPod use has proven beneficial in the classroom at Duke University. The university has provided all students enrolled in DDI (Duke Digital Initiative) course a video or photo iPod depending on their course requirements. After students adapted to iPods, it became beneficial in the enhancement of classroom materials, lectures, or assignments.

iTunesU Can Be a Useful Tool For Teachers and Students

I think iTunes University can be useful to me as a teacher and student. There is a wide variety of materials and subjects available at no cost to the web. The material here can be used to support and reinforce classroom materials.

Currently, I am going to college to become an English teacher. As a teacher, I think iTunesU can be a support to classroom materials. Sometimes, a student may need an outside source to better understand what is being taught in the class. This is useful and an inexpensive way to reinforce classroom instructions.

As a student, technology had drastically changed since I was in school and iTunesU can supply me with beneficial information. I looked under the literature link and found several useful books. There was some features useful for writing skills, literary analysis, and other topics. These features are beneficial to me as a student, because I have forgotten or am new to many things that are taught in the classroom today.

Dr. Alice Christie's Site

I viewed Dr. Alice Christie's website. I took a tour of the Instructional Media Center (IMC). There, I looked at many useful ways to find assistance in the classroom instruction. IMC has a staff that maintains this blog. Also, you could check out library books there.

I think this site will be an added support in my classroom instruction. I plan on being a high school English teacher. I looked under Charles Dickens' London. There is information available here to assist students with research papers. There will be times when students have reading assignments. They can get the assistance needed here. This will allow me to give individual time to students who have less accessibility to the internet.