Tecs 390 Podcasts

Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Episode Title: Ideas for Reinventing Education As School 2.0
Episode #: 123
Date: 2-07-07

Wesley Fryer talks about how schools need to add more projects to the curriculum, more hands on activities, digital story telling, etc… and get away form the written test assessment. What do kids really retain if they read form a book, take notes, then answer multiple choice questions? These same students should be asked these questions three months later. Do you think they really retain all that information? How much do they retain? The assessment should be given three months later. He feels that if students do more projects, apprenticeships with people that are passionate about their work or a subject, that the students will retain so much more for longer. I also liked his thought on people that have a hard time accepting change - have stopped learning? He thanked everyone at his conference in Oklahoma for being there because they have not stopped learning. I agree that we must always continue our educations. This is one of the things that excites me about the field of education, a person must continue to learn and educate themselves in order to stay in touch with younger generations and our world that is forever changing, plus all those things that you wished you have retained in your prior education. Educators have much to offer but they can also learn from their students.

The Tech Teacher Podcast
Episode Title: A safety Net for your School
Episode: # 32
Date: 2-04-07

This episode made me very thankful for Odus and Jack at the helpdesk over the last year and half. They helped me with technical problems in several different classrooms on campus. Also, how much we rely on technology as teachers is tremendous. Classes are so much more fun and interesting when you can pull real examples into the classroom, show buildings, and places, check out different companies, etc… Brad Niessen was promoting a web-based help desk application for managing the IT workload. There is an annual fee but allows unlimited users in a district or hospital or business to use the support. He suggested this program for colleges, business, and hospitals who do not have an in-house tech support. He also noted how much we rely on technology today and how the best plans can fall apart when there is a hiccup in the software or a mysterious crash.

RobinR@Review.com
The Princeton Review Vocabulary Minute
Bene
Episode: # 2, # 4
Date: 1-22-07

I wanted to listen to something totally different, so I did. I chose this sight for the fun and I really liked it. The vocabulary word today started with Bene - Benny is a good boy, he has a good name and he is unusually, he spells his name differently, Bene. Benny is never mean or cruel, and the song continues singing about words that start with bene and mentioning things that Bene does as the words definitions. Benefactor, Beneficiaries, and Benediction. It was Clever and upbeat - great sight for increasing vocabulary. This is sort of what I thought about for a podcast before I ever heard this one. After listening to several of these short vocab lessons - I noticed that each contains a short moral - and some contain more vocab words than others - often times I listen to them several times to catch the words I missed the first time. Abstemious verses gluttonous, Industrious verses lethargic, etc…