6-C-2 Skype
I love Skype! I first started using Skype when my youngest daughter went to college. It was so good to see her face and hear from her roommates and see her dorm room from far away. It gives a mom a little piece of mind!

Last night I Skyped with Amy from our class. Amy and I are in the same Wiki group and have communicated lots through e-mail and messages, but it was nice to actually see and hear her last night. It was great hearing her little dogs barking. Hearing about her terrible/horrible broken foot kind of week firsthand was so much better than reading about it. Amy got to meet my daughter, Allison. And, after all of that, we even talked about our wiki project and how to make it better.

In the future, I would like to use Skype in my classroom to have guest speakers. With small class sizes, it is hard getting speakers. If those people could be in their own offices, they could "show us around", let us see their office technology, and give us tips on their jobs. By using this technology, I think my students will gain a better knowledge of the "real world" of office administration.

OK, well, I hope this works. I created a great podcast on Audacity, so I'm going to try to link to it on my OneDrive. Crossing my fingers......
Click here to hear my podcast.
Here is a picture of the Grammar Girl Podcast I found on iTunes.

5-A-1 Flickr Possibilities

Isn't this a great picture I found at Flickr? It shows the the evolution of technology. The left side is the old technology and the right is the new. I thought it would be a very good topic starter for my OAT 121 Intro to Office Support Class.

I am going to use it to show my what people thought was technology in the past and what has become what we call "legacy" technology today.

I think I might try the annotation feature to add some notes to each of the sections or maybe links to my blog with more information. Then I will have the students create a similar photo of what was new technology in their lives and post it on their blog with a comment on how fast technology is changing our lives.

Here is a great web site I found" http://www.imagecodr.org/get.php. This site will help you cite your Flickr images--just copy and paste the URL in and it will give you the rest!

Image Citation:
CC. (2006, November, 25). ilovebutter, Technology Then and Now. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from: www.flickr.com/photos/jdickert. 

Hi CIS 164 Internet Essentials Summer 2014 Class!

Great job on your blogs! Here is a link to everyone in the class. Check our your classmate's blogs.

Aaron Beccue - http://asb0520.blogspot.com/

Derek Burgess - http://webinnovationsbyderek.blogspot.com

Tristan Carr - http://wowthatssad.blogspot.com/2014/06/grief.html

Nicholas Edelen - http://nicholas11.blogspot.com/

Greg Fort - http://greyjay53.blogspot.com/2014/06/first-blog.html

Sandra Keel - http://www.skeel3d.blogspot.com/

Ashley Kelley - http://ashleynichole1104.blogspot.com/

Nacole Koch - http://phototalk7.blogspot.com/

Matthey Maki - http://adventrueofshadowmatt.blogspot.com/

Glenn Miller - http://1970stickerbush.blogspot.com/

Sarah Niemaczek - http://backhandshot9.blogspot.com/2014/06/cichlids.html

Valerie Stoner - http://valeriestoner10.blogspot.com/

Gaynelle Tudor - http://workschoolandmore.blogspot.com/

Jim Wilson - http://jimwilson1973.blogspot.com

Activity 4-D-1
Wikis in Your Classroom

While surfing through the education wiki sites, I found a great wiki by “Bud the Teacher”. It has some wonderful resources on it including sample acceptable use policies, resources for teaching blogging and wikis, and a collection of audio resources. You can see it here: 

Bud the Teacher Blog

I liked creating the wiki as a group project. I guess the most challenging part of it was not getting there until late in the week. My partners did a great job of setting it up. I was able to go in and add my topics and graphics and format it.

From the group project I learned that this is a very valuable collaboration tool. I will try to use this technology in my classes to get students working together on projects. They always complain that their group cannot get together outside of class—with this they can work remotely.

My opinion of Wikipedia has not changed this week. I have my students do a fairly large project on Wikipedia. Here is our link on Wikipedia: Southwestern Illinois College. I have them look at our school’s Wikipedia page to find:

• what date it was started
• who started it
• when it was last edited
• what changes they would make
• what errors does it contain, if any

I haven’t had any resistance to using wikis. Since I am at the college level, my students enjoy this activity. 

Electronic Textbooks Anyone?

Today I started my face-to-face PLS class on Student Engagement and Standards Based Learning. As you know, one of the best parts of PLS classes is networking with fellow teachers. The Middle-School Math teacher from Nashville, Illinois, who sat next to me today told me how they got rid of all of their textbooks and will issue each student a laptop with e-books instead. They are saving so much money on textbooks that it will pay for the laptops.

Now I love my Kindle and would never trade back for reading real books, but I am wondering about the feasibility of e-textbooks. Here are some questions that maybe you could answer:

• Does your school use e-books, if yes for what percentage of classes?
• Do you think the students will want to print out pages and use up our paper and toner?
• How will we know if they are working on our class or looking at Facebook?
• Will this work for all subjects? What about teaching Math without a text?

I would love to require my students to all buy the same Windows tablets at the beginning of their program. My Dean is not a big fan of the e-Textbook idea.

Here is an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune that discusses the Pros and Cons of digital textbooks. Pros and Cons of Digital Textbooks

Another article I liked was from the Chronicle of Higher Education. This article talks about colleges forcing students to switch to digital texts. The End of the Textbook As We Know It

I will be interested to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Wow! Another great resource for us this week. I had never used Diigo. In my Intro to Office Support lecture class, I talk about many web pages. Until this point, I would stop talking and make them wait until I typed in the web address. This is going to be great.

In my Diigo site, I created a List for OAT 121 Chapter 1. In that list, I have all of the bookmarks that I will use when talking about Chapter 1. This is going to be so much faster!

My colleague, Tina Dierkes and I are the only two on campus who teach this class. I would like to collaborate with her so we can both add bookmarks for the chapters as we prepare.

I added the Google Chrome extension for Diigo. This made it really easy for me to click the icon and save my links.

Google has been doing a lot lately with signing in. If I am signed in to Google on my phone, tablet, or laptop, all of my links and history show up no matter what device I was researching on. This has saved me lots of time as I work on this class in many places. Bookmarking is becoming more customizable.

My OAT 121 Chapter 1 discusses Technology and Your Career. I have already added the following bookmarks to my Diigo List for this chapter:

• Our textbook web site
• The Virtual choir site
• A Youtube video on Data Mining
• An interactive body site
• the Modern Museum of Art

I look forward to continuing to add bookmarks. I will add the Diigo extension on all of my devices!