Week 6 September 30-Emerging Technology Presentations Part 2

I just wanted say that again all the Presentations were great and learned about all the different emerging technologies.

Blogging

The presentation on blogging would be very helpful and great idea or concept to use to me when I become a computer professor at a community college or university level and I am teaching basic computer skills. When I get to the unit on Internet basics part of the class, I would incorporate about blogging. One of the ways I can show how blogging can be helpful in a computer class is I would have everyone sign up for on a blog site. I would make it a group blog for our class. Then, I would have them post their thoughts on today’s class. This would a great way for me as the professor to get in tune with how my teaching style is helping them learn about the Internet. I could also give quick and easy updates to what is happening in the class by them going to our group blog and reading what we did for that day. Another time saver about blogs is if they have any questions about assignments or projects coming up in the future. I could communicate through the blog with the whole class at once about projects, assignments, and tests and quizzes coming. It makes my job much easier to flow more smoothly through the course.

Screencasting

The topic that was presented was very interesting to me. If I was teaching, a basic Windows computer class at a community college level, I could apply this concept to the class, and some of the students were sick or doing the class online, I could screencast my screen so they can follow along even from home. This makes this idea much easier especially people that have to travel far to get to my class. They could watch me lecture about computers and I could achieve them so that people who missed something could go back and review what was covered that day. I could also collect and it would provide feedback on how effective was my lecture. It is also a very good tutorial application. The draw back is that usually these videos are two minutes or under so some of the concepts of computers, I really could not do in two minutes. It would have to take a longer for example to explain the parts of a PC computer. I could use screencast software for the students in the class to get a hands-on approach to working and using their computers.

Social Bookmarking (Del.icio.us)

Another topic that was presented and concept I could use in my computer class, is looking at social bookmarking. I would have them create an account on Delicious so that the students can put their resources in one place where they can find them. I could have them do an assignment like for example, find some bookmarking websites that explain the history of PC computers. They also can share them with each other in the class or to anybody they want. I think when it comes to basic computer learning I could have the students look at websites, bookmark them to Delicious, and share them with the class. This gets the students thinking about how a computer functions as a great resource for sharing websites. This shows the students the concept in technology in sharing resources with the whole class. It would make the students become like researchers and find sources that they find interesting and can come back to it later.

HTML 5

The presentation topic of HTML 5, which is webpage language, would really be helpful to me if I was going to teach a beginning course on how to make a basic webpage in Dreamweaver or just a how to do a basic webpage in HTML format for the PC. I would have to explain to the class about HTML 4 (due to the fact HTML 5 will not be out for a while). It is a very hard concept to master with the different types of language they use but would try to make it as basic as possible. I would have to give them a tutorial on how HTML language works and why it is important when you are creating your own webpage. It will be also very helpful for the students to see the mistakes that happen when you are writing in HTML format. As I said even for me it is such a hard concept, idea to master but I think with the right tools, and multimedia (like the Presi that was used) it could go very well. The technology is there it is just getting the concept to the students that will be a bit of a challenge.