Personal Technology Plan

Learning Styles

When viewing the LDPride website and reading the Occasional Paper, Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, I have developed an understanding for the different types of learning styles. I have reflected on these and thought back to when I was in high school and college to determine which learning experiences I remember the most and what teaching strategies were present for these experiences. According to the website mentioned, I believe that I am first and foremost a visual learner. I liked sitting in the front of the class, taking notes, and doing problems that had a picture or diagram to go with it. Even better would be to do something hands-on with manipulatives, computers, or experiments, which would also bring up the fact that I consider myself also somewhat of a kinesthetic learner. Although I enjoy learning through doing, I do not usually get restless when sitting or distracted easily. According to Table 6 in the Occasional Paper mentioned, I believe I was a dependent, participant, and competitive learner in high school because I was more of a math inclined and logical person. I liked learning the steps from notes and doing practice problems to learn the material. However, when I attended college, I felt my learning style shift more toward independent, collaborative, and participant, which I think most professors strive for their classroom environment. I have never been a reading, writing, open-ended discussing type of learner and verbal learning was a struggle for me.

As one can see, I have had experiences with different types of learning throughout my life and have even matured in my ability to learn in ways I had not been able to in the past. I think the same is true for my students. Many of them have the capability to learn in more than one way and have more than one learning style. With this in mind, hopefully I can reach each student by mixing up my teaching strategies frequently to embrace as many learning styles as possible in a given unit of instruction. As the Occasional Paper explained, “faculty should begin by being self-reflective about their pedagogical goals and strengths in teaching.” I will continue to do what works, learn about different teaching strategies, try them out gradually, and reflect on these experiences. My hope is to expand many of my students learning capabilities, just as it was for me in my transition from high school learning to college learning.

Creative Commons

Photo Attribution:

Original Image: "Venice Canals"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55089313@N02/5109372528/

By:  Lindsay Sanders

Released under Attribution Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Photo Attribution:


Original Image: "Happy Pi Day (to the 69th digit)!"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/3355106480/
By:  Mykl Roventine


Released under Attribution Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Images can make all the difference in your lessons. To visual learners, as discussed in the reading Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, pictures, charts, images, clipart, etc. are engaging in lessons. These students will have a visual image to draw back on when remembering a concept taught in my class. I try to add clipart to my powerpoint notes and to accompany word problems in hopes that students will recollect the problem solving process for a particular question on future assessments. What I will be sure to do in the future is give photo attribution and search for my photos on Flickr or Creative Commons websites.

Group 1 SIG Proposal

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=11xDugF-wbDbHQjLeI2RHj8LyStj7FdinEnAGrAf38Fo

Atomic Learning Internet Security Tutorials

Computer Clean Up and Speed Up

There are several programs available to computer users that will clean up disk space on your hard drive. These programs feature ways to delete unwanted programs you have downloaded, duplicate programs, demo programs, older versions of programs, old files, and temporary files. There were a few new processes of computer clean up that I learned about while viewing the tutorials at Atomic Learning. One thing is called compression of old files. This feature allows you to minimize the amount of space these files take up but does not delete them from your computer. You can access this through “Disk Cleanup” in the system tools folder through accessories. I also learned about something I didn’t know existed, a way to clean up your computer by using an application from the internet called “Windows CleanUp!” It even makes a toilet flushing noise when you use this program. When you clean up space on your computer, this will allow your system to run more smoothly and at a faster rate.

Firewalls

This was an extensive section of information that I did not have much prior knowledge on. I have always known that you need firewall protection on your computer to protect it from viruses, but did not understand that there were different types of firewall, what exactly firewall does (or doesn’t do) for your computer, or the different free firewall programs available for users to install. One thing that I learned that I want to share with you is that it will be beneficial for you to have both a hardware and software firewall system on your computer because they each do different things to protect your computer from dangers of being connected to the internet. The hardware is usually part of your internet router and can hide your computer from hackers, but will not stop you from receiving/spreading viruses, spam, pop-ups, and spyware. This is when the software firewall comes into play. It will notify you when these threats occur on your computer and gives you the ability to protect your computer from them. What surprised me is that there are (at least) two free firewall programs that you can download that will protect your computer’s vulnerability from internet threats. These programs are Zone Alarm and Shields Up. Also, if you have a PC, you should have a Windows firewall program already on your computer that you can use to set your firewall settings at a high level of protection.

File Backup Options

These were the tutorials that caught my attention the most for this assignment and were the most beneficial to me personally. If you read my previous blog posting, you noticed my hard drive crashed and my old computer basically won’t turn on anymore. I was in the market for a new computer before this happened, but had I known about file backup, I might have been able to recover the files I had on my old computer and held out on buying a new one for a little longer. According to the Atomic Learning tutorials, there are many file backup options in existence. Some charge a fee for using their services (like Genie Backup Manager), some are free (like Karen’s Replicator and Folder Share), and there is also one on your computer in the system tools folder of accessories. Some of these back up your documents to an external hard drive (like a usb flash drive, big usb hard drive, laptop size hard drive, blank CDs), which you must purchase separately. For my work documents, I back up my files on our network periodically as well as on a usb flash drive. I also have some of my older documents from my old computer on this flash drive. With other backup programs, you can simply back up your files online, which I was excited to learn about. I will be looking into using one of the programs the tutorial recommended; media max, yahoo, gmail, 4shared, allmydata.

Wireless

This last tutorial I viewed discussed wireless connection for computers. I found this tutorial a little outdated, yet it provided me with some information that I felt increased my awareness of internet security. Of course, when you want to have a wireless internet connection in your house, you will need cable internet and a wireless router. Also, if you have an older desktop or laptop without wireless built in, you will need a wireless usb adapter. The prices are pretty similar now to what the tutorial claimed routers, such as Linksys and Netgear, were (about $60-$150), depending if they come with firewall built in. The important information discussed in the tutorial about configuring and securing your wireless connection is something I will make sure I do every time I move. I will also share this information with friends who also use wireless internet. It is very important to change your SSID name to something you will remember, but does not identify you. Also, the security option is essential to remaining protected from outsiders. You will want to choose the WPA-PSK protected access and create a good password. This way, you can prevent just anyone from accessing your internet for free and possibly damaging your network. I was surprised to learn that some people are known to drive around looking for unsecure wireless connections in neighborhoods and connecting to them from their cars. When living in an apartment complex it is especially important to keep your wireless network secure from outsiders, since you have so many neighbors close enough to have that access.

RSS Feed

After having my computer crash, I finally got my new laptop! I am able to update you on my latest obsession of my CEP 810 course... RSS! Let me tell you what an RSS is. It is an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication" and is basically a personal website that contains your favorite blogs and updates to your favorite websites. It is a quick way to see new items of interest online without wasting time looking through all of your favorite websites for updates, when many won't have any. In the past 6 months or so, I have noticed a little orange RSS button on many websites and I have had no clue what that button was for. Now I know and I enjoyed my time collecting feeds from my favorite sites to put on my RSS reader, Netvibes. Below are some images (created using Jing) of my various feeds including educational blogs and websites, world news, sports updates, and entertainment highlights.

In my educational tab above, I included the four required feeds: Technology and Learning, NPR Topics: Education, Weblogg-ed, and Literacy Education Updates. These sites are continuously updating posts and articles on average once or twice a week. NPR tends to have news articles about the politics of education, Tech and Learning displays new technology products that are available, Weblogg-ed is a blog discussing technology in education, and the Literacy Education blog for English language arts teachers. Of these, the NPR feed was of most interest to me because I learned of many interesting current issues in the teaching world, including bullying, grading systems, and the controversy over educational reform. I plan to continue to view this feed and many others mentioned to help better inform myself on the profession of teaching and learn of new free technology features that I am able to use in my classroom.

I also added my own feeds, shown above, as I explored websites with RSS capabilities. These include the EduTech Today Newsletter, Sudoku puzzles, the weather, a calculator, my teacher calendar from Brookwood High School, Wild About Math, ISTE Connects (this also had a blog about tips for new teacher bloggers!), Media Infusion, Rhyme Rhyme Results (songs about math), and Teacher Tube. One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. As you can see below, I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts, he updates about once a week, and I plan on trying out some of the new resources and free technology I've discovered! (I mentioned some of these on our MACUL discussion post.) I am already using Google Docs, when working on lessons from home, instead of emailing the documents. I have also looked into GeoGebra for my notes and assessments. To continue this in my CEP class, I will look into Google Sketchup and CamStudio for my SIG project.

One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts and try out some of the new resources I've discovered!

Being a concerned citizen, I continuously check up on the local, national, and world news via the internet. It was nice being able to contain all my favorite sites on my Netvibes page, such as 11Alive (Atlanta TV news), AJC (Atlanta newspaper), Click on Detroit (to keep up news in my hometown area), CNN, E! Online (celebrity news), Food Network (daily recipes), 955 the beat (Atlanta radio station), and Delta and Airtran news.

I also am a sports fan and enjoyed seeing all the highlights from ESPN and BigTen football games, including MSU! I coach golf at my high school, so the PGA feed keeps me up to date on who is wining the Ryder Cup and the mini golf game keeps me entertained.