Week 4 ~ The UnCollege

I'm not sure how I feel about "The UnCollege". As stated on the website that professor Klein provided for us, "UnCollege connects a network of independent learners to mentors to support learning from real-world experiences and self-designed projects to complement traditional higher education". I think on-line learning is a great thing, and I personally love taking on-line classes. It saves on time, let's the learner participate and do assignments at times that are convenient for them (and let's not forget about gas money)! :) I am a very structured person though, and I'm very good about getting things done. I can see how on-line learning could be very tough for some people, and do be successful you have to be dedicated to it. I don't feel like the last 5.5 years that I've been in undergrad and graduate school has been a waste of time, I feel like I took something from every class that I took. Especially now a days, everything is so competitive, that you need college or some type of further education to get a good job. Granted, there are exceptions, and alot of people make a good living without college, but to me it is very important. It was funny to see that UnCollege was the topic of class last week, because I was just talking with some other teachers at my school about "UnSchooling". This is where parents homeschool thier children, but really aren't teaching them much. There is a family in my school district that have been homeschooling all eight of their children their whole lives, and the students are sooo far behind children in public school. They just decided a few weeks ago to send their children to school, and the child in first grade can hardly spell her name & does not know the ABC's! I don't have anything against homeschooling, but when stuff like this is going on, something needs to be done about it.It will be interesting to see what happens with "UnCollege".

Photobooth in the Classroom

In class last week, we used Photobooth on our Mac's. It was really fun and everyone seemed to enjoy using it. You can take pictures using the webcam & you can also create videos. There are several different interactive backgrounds and effects you can use to enhance your pictures. Students would LOVE this in school! They love using any type of technology, and especially when they can see themselves or take pictures of themselves. We could use photobooth to take pictures of students to use in the classroom, for example, signing up for lunch count, they could take a picture of themselves and I could use that picture as a magnet, that they can sign up for lunch every day. They can also record themselves reading on the webcam, which can help with fluency and they can hear how they are pronouncing and streching out words. We could also use the webcam to do plays in the classroom. They is so much we could do with Photobooth, and I think my students would really enjoy it!