Extra Credit for Lynda.com

Lynda.com is a pretty useful website. I looked around a bit and found a few things of note. The videos that I saw were very clear and well-produced. I looked at some tutorials for Photoshop, iPad, and MS Word, and the information I found was expansive. However, I did get a kick out of the iPad tutorial. I would think that if a person were tech-savvy enough to know about this website and know how to use it, that person would also be able to figure out how to use a relatively user-friendly iPad without the help of the online tutorial. Nevertheless, I'll likely find myself back in that section of the website, just to make sure I did not miss anything.

It also seems to be a sort of in-between service, as far as the content goes. Hundreds of authors are listed, so I would suppose that they are not all official Lynda.com employees. However, not just anyone can upload a video tutorial and post it, which adds some measure of validity to the content.

The website contained information on many more pieces of software than I have ever heard of. My experience with software certainly is not a standard of breadth. But with so many obscure-sounding types of software, I'm confident the site has information on all the most broadly-used software would be included. So if I ever had a question about how to use a certain piece of software, I would likely find what I'm looking for at this website.

P.S.-I also looked up how to share an Adobe Captivate file. The videos that describe how to do it add up to less than 20 minutes. Darn it. I could've saved a lot of time if I had just looked it up in Lynda.com. Oh well.

Final Reflection

Valuable things I learned This blog post comes from my iPad. For some reason, I am not able to enter text into the "compose" tab of the new post window. But, I am able to type into the "edit HTML" tab. I wanted to make the first few words be italicized, and because of what I learned in this class, I know how to make the words "valuable things I learned" italicized using HTML rather than having Blogger do it automatically for me.

Another important thing I learned is how easy it can be to steal my information and that I should be careful use secure websites and up-to-date Internet browsers to keep my information secure. I hadn't thought about updating my browser, but it is pretty important. A few weeks ago, I had my browser open for a few days because I was working on a website that I couldn't leave. (No, I was not downloading the entire Disney movie library, or anything else, for that matter.) After about a day, Chrome told me that it had some security updates to install on my browser and that Chrome had to close it in order to effect those updates. I knew that I was at risk in this cat and mouse game between Chrome and hackers, and that I needed to be on Chrome's side in order to stay safe. So I hurried and finished what I was working on and closed the browser to that the updates would protect me.

Some Useful Technologies As I speak more and more with educators, I hear from them that the effeective use of technology is the single most dynamic and important skill to have as a teacher. People in general, especially young people, are drawn to technology and as I use it in the classroom, I will be able to connect with my students that much easier and keep them more engaged. Besides the aura of being tech-savvy, technology adds a dimension of learning and realization of new concepts that were not otherwise available.

For example, have you ever looked at the Glen Canyon or the Aswan Dam using Google Earth? Zoom in really far and you can see how big the dam is compared to the cars driving on top of it. But zoom out further and further, and compare the size of the dam with the reservoir that it is holding back. Before long, the dam all but disappears and you only see a mass of blue. That tiny piece of concrete is plugging up a river, making a huge, man-made ocean! That kind of scale and perspective would not be available without technology.

Khan Academy

Instructional Videos in Social Sciences

While instructional videos will hopefully change math and science teaching and learning for the better, the Social Sciences have been utilizing such videos much longer. There is no Linear Algebra channel or Integral Differentiation channel on cable. Khan Academy is a perfect forum for such specialized topics. But the Social Sciences just isn't as specialized. We have the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel. We have CNBC and C-SPAN to study economics and politics.

The problem that Social Science teachers have is that we have too much video to pull from. This makes many teachers overly reliant on videos to do the teaching rather than the teacher doing the teaching, or even better, guiding the students as they teach themselves.

How does students' access to technology change my role as a teacher?

When someone had a question before the technology revolution, he or she would first ask a teacher or someone else in a posistion of authority. Now, when students have questions, they can easily find answers with a quick Google search or look it up on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, what they find on the internet is not always accurate. I don't always have accurate information, but I will tell the student that I am not completely right. Moreover, I know where to get the correct information. If the student has a question, I want to know what it is and help him or her find the right answers. I hope that the student trusts me enough to bring questions and answers to me to verify and process it rather than simply trust what he or she finds online.