Twitter... again I'm sure everyone out there knows a bit about twitter. Like a variety of social media tools- it has become a part of so many people's lives.
Pros: Twitter is extremely popular! It's really easy to use and once you find interesting people/topics to find- you get exposed to a wide variety of opinions, fact, cat poems and rich people telling you how great it is to be rich. You get a little bit of everything. You can get very up to the minute information (like the presidential debates) and news. My friends will use it to promote their business and their social lives. It can be great for an educator looking for inspiration and ideas. Cons: Your extremely limited what you can tweet.. 140 characters max. This is the entire design of the software to limit characters, but with no photos, video or even a descriptive paragraph, it's hard to have much actual content. It's also hard for me to trust twitter as a source of news and legitimate content, when there are more posts about what people ate, where the coolest new nightclubs are, or Kim Kardashian's new purse. In addition, The posts I really want to read are easily buried by the sheer amount of posts being generated- so unless it becomes a serious part of your life- it's hard to stay up-to-date. I'm writing about twitter (again) because it's part of my grad school course (again). My thoughts on Twitter really haven't changed in the past year. I think like any tool it has some great uses. However, I am a bit of a luddite when it comes to digital social media. That's another rant for another day! Can an Old Dog learn new tricksAhh, I am an idea man. Very poor follow through- but a large amount of ideas regardless. Historically, I jot all of my ideas down on a notebook Sadly, I loose a large amount of my pieces of paper. So I really wanted to try the Google Keep program from our good friends at Google. It's a versatile tool, easy to use, simple and straightforward. Notes can be shared with friends (great for collaboration) . My favorite part of the tool is the voice recordings. It's practical and quick- and frankly when I was a kid we had 'yak bak' and it was amazing.
I admit, I still like drawing with pencil and paper. But for those times when I'm on the go with nothing but my cell phone- it absolutely beats my memory! By now I'm sure you have noticed our fancy new "Inspiration Station". This project was a collaborative project between myself and Mr. Hughes. Remember Mr. Hughes? He helped me design our classroom computer lab video and is in the same grad school program.
We were a pretty perfect team as Mr. Hughes is great at computer programming and I'm vaguely good at building things. So we teamed up to build the above Inspiration Station- He created the App for uploading, storing and playing the content and I made the frame. The tablet could be any android device- but I chose the amazon Fire tablet ($50!). In addition, I created my first Instructable! Check it out! Any additional questions- feel free to ask! Blogging. I have a mixed relationship with blogging If you are reading this, I've been exploring some new web 2.0 tools in an effort to be an even more amazing teacher and blogging is one of those tools.
Now obviously, if you've seen this blog before- you'll notice that I've been blogging for 3 years. But have I really been 'blogging'? My gut says that I'm not a blogger even though I am someone who blogs. Hmmm confusing. Well what is a 'blog' anyway? Blog: noun 1.A website containing a writer's or group of writers' own experiences,observations, opinions, etc., and often having mages and links toother websites. 2. A single entry or post on such a website: (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/blog) So I suppose that I am factually a blogger. Though I suppose I go about it in a pretty nonchalant way. I use this blog as more of a digital bulletin board. Weebly's built in blogging tool is extremely easy to update and to use . It enables photos and videos to be posted and posts can be easily edited. In my personal life- Mr. Curry and I did try to an adventure blog to show you school children the joys and pleasures of going outside. However, to keep updating our adventures was time intensive and we frankly just stopped updating it. I would imagine this is the fate of many blogs- starts out to be a great idea.... then slowly you loose the passion you initially had. It's amazing to me to think that the very tool that I use turns out to be a career choice. Isn't that just amazing about the internet though? Ultimately, I think blogging is a great tool for me professionally and one that I will continue to use in my classroom. Yet I can't see me trying to make another blog for my personal life |
Mr. Demchak's blogWelcome to my Blog. You will see information that pertains to the educational world in which I happily live.
I am a teacher for the next 30 years (unless beanie babies get valuable again...) but forever a student and my blog reflects this. Archives
March 2020
AuthorHello! My name is Michael Demchak and I'm a Technology Education teacher! And if you couldn't tell by the exclamation point... I love it. Categories |