Scratch

The scratch game that I found that deals with the content area that I hope to teach can be found here. I really like how they used letter recognition, keyboard skills and beggining sounds to illustrate the concept of phonemes. I would like to do something similiar concentrating on the vowels.

Henry Jenkins - Convergence Technology

Cultural convergence "describes an emerging pattern of relations bringing together entertainment, advertising, brands, and consumers in creative and often surprising ways. These new relations are underpinned by three key concepts: transmedia entertainment, participatory culture, and experiential marketing." It combines the old way with the new more technological way. Jenkins describes what is going on with the technology has its definite benefits, but it is not without risk. The implications in education are endless. Convergence technology allows all to access information that could only be found in a library before. It is important to note that there are definite benefits to this culture in education, but it is not without risk. It is important that the teacher is aware of the benefits and risks when using these tools in a classroom. For instance, in a classroom today most schools ban the use of youtube, social networking sites, cell phones, ipods, etc. All of these tools could be beneficial to use inside the classroom, but most schools ban them. For instance, ipods would be extremely useful in secondary education in viewing and submitting podcasts. I believe the problem with this new culture is that it is second nature for most of our students to use this technology, but is foreign to most of our educators and administrators. I believe it is important for us all to keep learning to keep up with the latest technology. It is important for us to learn the benefits and risks associated with these tools, so that we can use them to our advantage to truly create a classroom with endless possibilities.

Validation of web sites

The website that I chose to validate was Dog Island Free Forever. I initially chose this site because of the .com in the url. The domain told me from the beginning that someone was trying to sell me something. After further inspection, my initial hypothesis was correct. They are indeed trying to sell you something and they are selling bs. It is not exactly clear on the home page who the author is but, upon further examination the president of the group is listed on another page. I attempted to use easywhois to locate additional information on some of the people listed within the site. For example if you are interested in further information about the site it fields the email to the address of SuniCopey@TheDogIsland.com. When using the easywhois tool to validate it stated that "The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is currently set to expire". The same information was found when looking up dogs@TheDogIsland.com which should have given me more information on the director of imports.
The information on this site sounds bogus from the beginning. Even before my search for information to prove that it was bogus, I knew. The whole premises of their site makes me question their legitimacy. Anyone who asks you to send your dog away with the chance that you will never see it - unless of course you are very rich - is clearly full of bull. However, if you are not very rich and still find yourself questioning whether or not to send your dog away to the island after reading this ridiculous proposal they WILL SELL you an empathy training leash.....that you connect to the collar of the dog and then you can connect your collar to the other end and then you---too can find out what it feels like to have your chain YANKED.....but, I am going to bet that you will feel like this after visiting this site without ever having to put on the leash.

The results are in......(Graphing tool)

Survey

Social Bookmarking

What a fabulous method of organization! I have found my second bookmark and I chose a site called 4teachers. I found that this site will be particularly useful in my classroom in the future and with the job I have working with the after school program. This site provides you with several useful tools to use with your class and for your class. Links are provided for a rubric maker, classroom architect (where you can digitally create or recreate your classroom -for example seating charts), a site that you can assign and manage student research projects and much more! Check it out!