Leap Pad

• Leap Pad is a semi-new invention which is made up of a main system that reads from Leap Pad books in order to help students with their reading and word pronunciation. In order for the Leap Pad to work, you have to purchase special books that correspond with the Leap Pad machine to help the students read and follow along. They are usually fun and relate to a popular cultural aspects such as movies, tv shows, music, etc.
  
• The Leap Pad assists with the open ended content exploration. Open ended meaning that there really is not a main goal with Leap Pad. The purpose of it is to help kids with their problems with reading. It provides kids the ability to interact with the reading and learn how to sound out words correctly. It also gives them a fun way of doing so by playing along with their favorite characters at the time.
  
• Not only are the Leap Pad learning machines fun and exciting, they are also educational and very practical. The ability to help students read and sound out words correctly usually only comes from a human being. Now, with the Leap Pad machines, they are able to provide the help without an actual human being right next to them. It gives the students a feeling of independence and the feeling of being more "grown up". The fun level that kids get out of using the machine also puts forth more effort to make the children want to learn and read more. I think the Leap Pad is a great invention and very helpful to students learning to read-- but also fun for all ages.
  

"Going Global" Podcast Summary

I recently watched a podcast, "Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education" from K12 Online Conference website. In this podcast, living overseas and learning techniques from other places is observed and highly looked upon. The author of the podcast describes her experiences with learning overseas, mostly in Asia. The Podcast begins by breaking up the presentation in the three different categories of 1. Culture Shock, 2. Convergence, and 3. Future of Education.

The first one they talked about is Culture Shock. The author begins by explaining how everyone experiences culture shock when first moving overseas and trying to adapt to the new culture. The author really finds cultural adaptations to be helpful when trying to expand on technology in one place, and trying to bring it to another place. It brings different cultures together to interact. She speaks to ideas of "mobility", "customization", "adaptability", "always on", "collaboration", "quickly", "emergence", and "blending" in asian cultures that she has experienced, and how these ideas relate to their cultural education, and how these words should resemble our western American education.

The second topic the author talks about is convergence. The main idea of this is that successful people will be the ones who will be able to adapt to changing situations. Ways of doing this is growing up in other country and being "immersed" in other societies. The podcast continues to interview children who grew up in other countries and how they feel about "convergence".

The third and final topic that the author talks about is the future of education. She begins by talking about a personal learning network. Which is a group of people who your collaborate with on a daily basis. This is not only in person, but also online in other places. To make a successful personal learning network, the author says, "connect yourself, to connect your class". The six different things that the author provides to help a teacher who wants to build a personal learning network would be to read RSS feeds, create and join a social network, start a blog and develop your personal profile, create personal levels off your blog, go to online conferences, and finally try twitter. These things will help you improve your personal learning network, which will in the end help your future students create a personal learning network.

If you would like to watch this podcast or find out more information on it, follow this link:

Del.icio.us

-- Some may think that iGoogle and Delicious are the same thing. Well, you are wrong. Delicious is a website where you are able to easily bookmark anything from the internet you might find. A simple way of describing what Delicious actually is, is by saying that it's your own personalized portable bookmark for the internet.

-- There are many things that you can do with Delicious and technology. Delicious is a place where you can store all of your personal bookmarks from any website you might come across. The nice thing about Delicious is that any computer you go to, you will be able to find all the websites you have booked marked and be able to access them from any computer. This allows you to access your favorite websites from anywhere in the world as long as you have a computer and internet. Also, you are able to "tag" your websites. This means that Delicious automatically organizes your pages so you will be able to find them easily when you start to accumulate a bunch of bookmarks.

-- Teachers have found this website very nice for both themselves and for their classroom. Teachers like this for their classroom because they are able to share the websites they have found with their students. I remember one of my teachers using Delicious in high school. She would make us go to a certain link in her delicious and read the articles she found on a topic we were studying. Students are able to access information from a teacher without having to print out a reading or activity to do.

-- Here is a demo for Del.icio.us.

iGoogle

-- iGoogle is a personalized page where you can subscribe to blogs that you enjoy and or visit regularly. It also allows you to add applications for games, news, celebrity gossip, and anything else you can find searching through it's thousands of "gadgets".
-- The great thing about iGoogle, is that you have the ability to find any kind of "gadget" and have that in one spot online. There are endless possibilities for technology and being able to put them to use. You can also find blogs that will assist you with any kind of technology you might want to advance in.
-- You can find any kind of blog that can relate to the type of education that you teach. The beauty of having an iGoogle page is that you are able to keep all your blogs that you find in one place. When you find things that you like and can use for your classroom and curriculum, you will be able to keep it in one place and keep it organized so you can find it for later use.
-- Here is a demo for iGoogle.

WebQuest

-- A WebQuest is an internet based quest for information on a certain topic. People all over the world make these WebQuests for both private and public use for help with a certain subject. WebQuests are very easy to make and can be used for any topic in any subject.

-- You can use all sorts of Technology for WebQuests. There are many different websites that allow you to make your own. For example, Zunal.com is a site where you can sign up for free and make your own WebQuest on whatever you want. It gives you steps to complete so in the end you have websites to follow, pictures to look at, and questions to answer-- A complete WebQuest. It gives you a choice to publish your WebQuest for others to use.

-- The purpose of a WebQuest is to become more efficient and effective in a subject. It makes a topic more effective because it gives you extra information on a topic, as well as insight that others could have used this WebQuest to help their students become more knowledgeable on a subject. It makes students more efficient because it gives them access to technological uses online while learning more about their subject.