Professional Web Presence (Blog #10)

In today's society nearly everyone has a facebook, therefore nearly everyone has some type of online presence even if we do not notice it.  Simply googling "Laura Cook" yields a ton of unexpected results. For one, a facebook account shows up, along with other information about me on the web, like the fact that I am on the leadership team at the UF BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) which also gives my email. A connection to this blog also pops up. 

Making sure that we have a professional type of web presence is very important in being hired and making ourselves seem presentable in the real world. Here is a LINK to a website I created myself, making myself a professional web presence. In being hired this is such an important part of the process. 

This does not mean do not have a facebook, but it does mean be careful of what you have out there on the internet. Having a facebook account does not necessairily condemn you, but it is of vital importance to also have a professional web presence that tells prospective employers about what it is you do and what it is that you would like to do with your career. It also creates a sense of professionalism that is highly valued in employees. 

Distance Education (Blog #9)

Distance Education has been a growing trend in the educational world. Online education also known as distance education is growing in popularity as a way for people to go back to school and get their masters degree's and other degree's that they always said they would go back and get. Technological advances have made it relatively simple to go online and find degree programs that one is looking to earn. But it is not only in college degrees that online education is found. High school's also offer a multitude of online classes, and in Florida, Florida Virtual School allows students to take an entire curriculum online. 

As a future teacher, online education has a very big effect on me and what it would do for my future career. There is a complete possibility that at some point in my career I could teach a class that is completely online. But the most exciting possibility in my mind for online education is in the special education field. As a special education teacher a lot of the students' that I work with will have very serious disabilities and might not be able to actually make it classes. This is where distance education is an absolutely wonderful concept! If I have students that cannot not physically make it too classes having the opportunity to take real classes online would be absolutely ideal. 

Here is the link to Florida Virtual School, which is a program that enables students to take classes online, either to get ahead in classes and take extra classes that might not fit into their schedules or to take classes online because they are unable to physically attend classes. It is also the program that I as a future educator, most likely in Florida, am most likely to be involved in. 

Wordle (Blog #8)

Wordle is an application that let's you copy and paste text into a box and creates you a word cloud with the most common words in the text the largest and decreasingly common words in smaller sizes. Wordle is a free site enables you to create beautiful word clouds that relay information in such a positive light!

Wordle would be absolutely wonderful to use in my classroom as a teacher! Being able to give the students information based on how many times words are used in a text would really be able to show them what aspects are really important in the notes I give or the information that I send out. Wordle also makes the information much more significant and to be quite honest prettier. As a not only a teacher, but a special education teacher it would help my students learn the information but also let my students see the information in a format that is more aesthetically pleasing to them

and their learning styles. I could definitely see myself using Wordle in instances where we might read stories and then be trying to dissect the most important parts. Wordle would be wonderful in helping my students figure out what the most important aspects of the story were, because it puts the size of the words in numerical order, so students would have an easier time seeing the important parts!   

 

Above is a Wordle I created on an article I read on Autism. 

Cloud Computing ( Blog # 7)

Cloud computing is a concept that saves people a lot of time, space, and money. Cloud computing basically, is a way of putting servers in the air or the sky instead of putting them in actual servers. This saves large corporations a ton of money because they do not have to buy the servers and the space to accommodate such large servers. This is where cloud computing comes in. 

In a few simple words, cloud computing is web hosting without any other type of servers. For example, if you have a facebook account it is held on a "cloud" where you can access it from any computer and it is the same, nothing is saved to a specific computer. Cloud computing is more reliable because of the space and freedom that it allows for companies, seeing as it is not tied down to just one server. It also is more reliable because it is not dependent upon one company to provide the actual server. 

Here is a youtube video that explains what cloud computing is and how useful it is to companies. 

Cloud computing is also useful for teachers because it enables them to work from more than just one computer, meaning that they can save work on a computer at home, have it saved to a cloud and then also access it from school so that they can work from multiple places and even be out of the classroom and still relay lesson plans and information directly to the substitute. 

Open Source Software (Blog # 6)

Open Source Software is a type of software that is produced solely by collaborative effort. Instead of creating software and charging a ridiculously high amount for it along with withholding the program codes like large software corporations do, open source software is online and open for anyone to use and tweak for their own personal use. Because of the fact that anyone can tweak open source software no one really owns the rights to it, which makes it good for people on a budget. Having no price or very little price placed on such software enables people to have access to high quality software on a tight budget.

This type of high quality software at low or no cost is extremely advantageous for offices and especially schools in the current economy. Schools have faced budget cut after budget cut and no longer have the budget to provide teachers with such software but because of open source software teachers now have the ability to go online and get some of this open source software for free! Instead of having to dish out hundreds of their own dollars on software to large companies. 

Here is a YouTube Video that gives a wide range of free open source software available online! It also explains what some of them are and gives real people's opinion's on them and how well they work! 

Concept Mapping: Week 6

Click HERE to view the concept map that I made using Bubbl.us.

Bubbl.us is a concept mapping website that allows you to organize your thoughts and such in a map format. Making it a wonderful tool for teachers because it gives me organization but it is also wonderful to introduce to my students, especially when teaching them about diagrams and maps.

Blogger

In class we discussed the Google Blogger application. Google Blogger, or as it is known on the web blogger.com, is a useful way of getting information out to a lot of people very quickly. Anyone can sign up and create a blog through Gmail's blogger.com. From there you can post any type of information you want, whether it be a personal blog or a professional blog like we are doing for our EME 2040 class.

As an educator blogs would be an absolutely wonderful way of keeping parents up to date with the classroom activities. I could easily just post an update full of class information and parents could check the blog as often as they like to recall activities and dates that we are doing things.

Click Here to access the link to create your own blog at blogger.com!

Click Here to access the homepage of this blog!