Reflection on Socail Learning

Where to begin, Social and learning were never words that I thought of in the same sentence. As I addressed in my presentation earlier this evening this is the first time I have seen a professor get excited when students helped each other with assignments. Sarah, Dani and I spent a lot of time on ECMP 355 and I may have helped with some technical stuff. They helped me with motivation and just being there so I would get it done. It became kind of a joke when me and Sarah would get together and we would have these grand plans about how much we would accomplish, then we would spend 4hrs more than anticipated an only get half the work done. As I type this reflection down to the wire as always I think about how far I have come in this class. I now know how to integrate these pieces of technology that I use and enjoy into my class room in a full on educational way not a peripheral way. I would like to send a big shout out to Dean and Alec who have made this course an amazing experience and they have always been there to help, they also are always looking for feedback on the course which is really nice seems they are always making changes to the course.

FINAL PROJECT

This is our final project sorry about the sound quality, hope you enjoy a little window in to where me and Dani grew up: Lovely North Batttleford

Check this out u though chimps were like humans check these monkeys out

England

A Story About England

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We found out after we put this together that One True Media did not support audio voice over, so please enjoy my tasteful text slides

MY GOOGLE MAP

View Larger Map

Mastrcard Vid

Inner Beauty

iSell Myself

Tech Task #7

For tech task #7 I watched Alec Couros's "Open, Social, Connected: Reflections of an Open Graduate Course Experience" which is very entertaining. The concept of using free tool and shared knowledge are themes that are visited throughout the presentaion. One thing that I have taken from this presentation is the use of free tools, such as Twitter, Skype, Delicious, and Google tools.

We will not be Defeated

Tech tasks may allude us but Sarah and I have come together to try and save our averages and catchup on tech tasks. There were only a few minor setbacks such as a power outage and a very dark stairwell. But we have Subway determination, and red wine, and the reward of watching a movie. So as the hours pass please excuse my slurred typing as the wine is taking effect. I'm sure our podcast will be amusing.

FEAR

In today's society there is an attitude that fear is a weakness. I disagree with this idea. My view of fear is that it is a safety feature that comes standard on all humans, some of us have found ways to bypass it though. Here is and example of my views on fear.

One day me and a friend were driving to look at an apartment in Regina and she happened to be complaining about my driving and brought up how I had hesitated at the last left turn. The reason I had hesitated was because I couldn't see and the fear that there was a car coming. She said to me "You can be afraid when you are driving, you just have to go" I replied with "Being afraid keeps me alive, fear keeps me alive"

This is not a new phenomenon thought fear being a good thing, Oprah has had Gavin de Becker author of "The Gift of Fear" on her show many times.

So next time you have fear remember what a tool it can be and use it, don't be trapped by it.

Posting on Mentorship Blogs

Every time I press the Post Comment button I get warm fuzzys inside. I have a moment of awe where I think about what I'm really doing I am mentoring kids I have never met, in places I have never been and how that would have been nearly impossible 10 years ago. Does anybody else have these moments too?

I'm Back

Hey so you may have noticed I have been gone for a bit from the online world. Things just seemed to get busy, and then I was without a computer until today. Do not fear I am back and after a lovely call to apple I have a brand new Mac Book Pro, which can I say is so hott. The new design is really sleek, if apple could get any sleeker. So I'm back online and a little behind I only have to read 90 blogs posts on my reader, and respond to countless emails, being away from the internet is not easy.

TED one of my favorite things

TED is really one of my favorite things, I found out about TED back in February of 2008 when somebody told me bout this great video they had watched about a brain scientist who had a stroke. When I moved to Regina and had the luxury of High Speed Internet, I decided to check out this TED thing. Well soon enough I was loosing hours on this thing, and I am still finding great videos, so when I saw the tech task I didn't say "what the hell is TED" I said "oh no I have so many favorite videos which one will I present on".

I decided on my original favorite video about the brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor and her Stroke of Insight which is also the title of her book that she has written about her stroke and her full 8 year recovery back to being a brain scientist.

I decided to watch Robin's recommendation Robert Lang folds way-new origami which was an extremely interesting look at origami and how once we found out the laws of origami through mathematical process we could really make just about anything.

I LOVE MY IGOOGLE

Here is a screen shot of my new best friend, my igoogle. I used to have so many tabs open, one for facebook, one for g mail, and those were just the standard ones. Now that I have also started using Remember the milk, twitter, and Google reader it is really helpful to have them all in one place. Now lets talk about some of the widgets I have added. I have my G mail, and my facebook, my reader, and also many news sites too. I added the how to of the day which I find more entertaining than educational, the how to's range from "How to Grind" to "How to Clean Ugg Boots". One of the widgets that I find disappointing is the del.icio.us one, it seems clunky in appearance, and I find the two buttons located beside the home key on my browser are much more effective, if I press the checked one I get the full version of my bookmarks, and if I hit the tag one I get the delicious bookmark window.

Google Apps for Education

Being a G mail lover for the past 2 years has opened me up to many other Google applications. I have used Google docs before with much success, its great for doing collaborative works. After Lisa Thumann's presentation on the Google apps for education I felt empowered. I have been in many situations where a school has limited resources or a less that reliable/up to date network. I still remember my grade 10 English teacher saying "Don't save your essays on these computers". Now I know I can walk in to a teaching post and no matter what system they have I will be able to give my student a reliable word processing tool, a monitored email account not to mention many other features of the Google apps for education.

My Experiences With Technology

When I think of my experiences with technology they fall into two categories.
1. My I don't get this phase, (AKA) the learning phase. This usually frustrates me and gives me reason to learn about it.
2. My I get it and I want to teach you about it because I think it would benefit you phase. This is where I teach everyone that I know that I think it could help about my new found tool.
I have a thirst for knowledge and am a life long learner, I also have a need to share knowledge. Even though I do not have a B. Ed. I view myself as an educator. I feel that I have a responsibility to share knowledge, and I am not intimidated sharing knowledge with others.
Now down to my experiences with technology, I have worked on computers for many years doing a variety of thing from typing essays to editing videos. I personally enjoy learning about new tools that make my life easier such tools include, Delicious, Twitter, g mail, Google reader ect.

My First Post

Hi blog buddies!
My name is Robbie and I am an Arts Education student at the University of Regina. I have started this blog for my ECMP 355 class, which also happens to have a large online component. On Thursday we had our first online class, using the tool Eluminate. This is an amazing tool that can revolutionize the education system. There is no longer any excuse to have televised classes using unreliable satellites and call in questions with a 3 second delay (my English 110 class is televised). I also enjoyed the fact that I could be in class from the comfort of my own home. I believe it takes a special type of teacher to be able to teach an online class, there is a huge release of control involved with it. Many classroom teachers have issues with this release of control, something I am sure to talk about in the future.