My EDM Assignments are now complete!

My EDM Assignments are now complete!

TO my fellow classmates:

I really enoyed having a class with you guys. It was a great group. Everyone had such a great pesonality which made it alot easier to come to class. The personality's were all great. I hope school goes well for everyone. Hopefully we may a another education class together in the future!

Once again Good Luck!
See Ya!
Melanie Garron

My Final Post :(

This is the last post in my EDM 310 class. I am kind sad in a way. I have enjoyed this class for the most part. I feel like I have learned not only to utilize many tools on the computer but many things about educational in general. Mr. Wakeman is a great teacher and really knows his stuff.

When I found out that we were going to be blogging in this class I was a little scared because I had no prior knowledge of it. It has turned out to be a new and great experience. Each week when we were to do a new post I actually got excited because the topics were not boring at all. I always feel like I had learned something new and something that I could do or use in my “future” classroom.

My favorite part about the class was the when we were asked to make a podcast. I got into a group with Quinton and Tiffany. I really enjoyed working with them. We had a lot of fun laughing at Quinton  but we still learned a lot about blogging. Doing the podcast made me really realize how much I would like the use blogging in my classroom one day. One thing I wish we would have spent a Little more time on was ITunes. I know we did a lot of work with them but, I am still very unfamiliar with the situation.

I really enjoyed the class and all of the work that we did. It is an essential course for all education majors. Like I said before Mr. Wakeman is a great teacher and I learned a lot from him. I am going to miss him

I Tunes University!

I tunes University can also be known as “I tunes U”. This is a new educational program from the Apple I tunes store that gives teachers and students constant access to information no matter where they are. This program and more technology have made it possible for students to no longer just have to learn from their desk. Many faculty are commenting that they are beginning to take part in I tunes U because it is a fast and easy way to provide a lesson to their students not only swiftly but digitally.

If you haven’t noticed walking around campus almost every student is carrying a cell phone and most also have an iPod or mp3 player. Today’s young adults know more about technology than most. It is not uncommon for a student to gather information right off of their phone. This makes it easier for teachers to get students to use these hand held objects as their newest learning tool. I tunes U allows students to download the lectures straight to their I pod, I touch or I phone. This is a convenient way for the student to learn at their on pace anytime and anywhere. The best part about it is that is free!

Many Universities such as Stanford, Arizona State and New Jersey are all taking part in I tunes U. These universities can all make their on accounts for their school so that people outside will not be able to access the lectures. An Apple i.d. can be added or changed at anytime by the University. There is also a part of the program called External I Tunes U. This allows anyone who ha access to I Tunes to be able to download the lecture to gain knowledge for their personal benefit. Apple monitors all downloads.




In my opinion I think that this is a great idea. Teachers have finally found a way to stay connected with their students by using something they know the most about. I as a student would love this idea. I like the fact that the student has the privilege of learning at their own pace. I am one of those students that has to review things a few things so that I can get a better understanding. If this sort of thing is available when I become a teacher I will take full advantage of using this as a learning tool for my students. I feel that it will be very convenient for the both of us.

Teaching with I pods!!

Can an I pod be used effectively during instruction? This is a question that our EDM 310 teacher wanted us to think about this week. I personally do not own an I pod so my understanding of the device is very little. I needed to do a little research on the topic before getting started answering the questions.

An I pod is a digital audio player that is designed to store and play audio files that are encoded by Mp3. Depending on what kind of I pod you purchase depends on how much can be stored on it. I read that some I pods can store up to 10,000 song! Wow! How can something so small hold that much information? Many people use their I pod for listening o music, but the world is starting to realize that they can be used for much more.

I pods are now being transformed into educational tools. Apple how now created "I Tunes U" that makes many lectures and materials available online. This is not only useful to the instructor but, also to the students. The students are using the I pods as study tools because they are able to fast forward or rewind to parts of the lecture that may have been unclear. This program has become so popular that I tunes has offered it to all colleges. In grades K-12 I pods are being used a lot but mostly in foreign languages. This is because they function in digital voice.



Many students at Duke University began to use the I pod about three years ago as a way to absorb their course content. This was the first school to provide each student with a 20 gigabyte I pod. The students also have many compliments on them such as, size, power, convenience; they fit right into armbands and jean pockets. The students feel that this new tool has really helped them take charge of their way of learning. Although Duke was the first University to use I pods the idea is catching on rather quickly everywhere else. I personally think this is a great idea. I do not have an I pod but I am sure if there was a learning initiative involved I would be encouraged to purchase one.

All About Dr. Alice Christie

In my EDM 310 class this week we were asked to explore the website about Dr. Alice Christie. Mr. Wakeman wanted us to write our response to the page after doing so. I was unaware of who this woman was. I was eager to explore the site because I love learning about new people.

Dr. Alice Christie has been an educator for over forty years. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Technology and Language Literacy from Arizona State University in 1955. She served in the College of Teacher Education and Leadership at Arizona State University from 1955 until her retirement. She just recently retired. Before teaching at the University she taught for 25 years in K-12 schools.

Christie feels as though she has learned much from her years as an educator. She does National and International Workshops where she speaks on how technology can enhance teaching and learning. In her research she has tried to investigate several different topics involving technology. She looked at gender differences in the uses of technology, scaffolding teachers as they integrate technology in their classrooms, and the use of electronic portfolios for assessment.



She had many interesting topics on her website but the one I chose to talk about in my post was a workshop Christie did called Virtual Field Trips. It just sounded like something fun. Many school budgets are holding the children back from going on field trips. Dr. Alice Christie speaks of a great alternative to this called Virtual field trips which are appropriate for any grade level. VTF is also very convenient and inexpensive. The children use the right technology such as videos, headphones and audio segments to interact in these field trips. The students are able to explore the rainforest and be an astronaut without ever leaving the classroom. In my opinion I think this is great alternative to a filed trip. Christie had some great things to say about technology and I was very glad I had the chance to read and learn about her.

Wikipedia....Reliable yes or no??

I will admit that I am a guilty user of Wikipedia. Almost every professor I have had made it clear to our class that we are not to use Wiki as a source for any paper done. This was almost impossible for me to do. It is so easy for me to just go to Wiki when I am unsure about a word or needed to know a definition. Wiki seemed to include anything I ever needed to know.

I never really saw the real harm in using Wiki so when given this assignment in my EDM 310 class to find out about the reliability of it, I decided to learn a little more about this encyclopedia Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. The name is a portmanteau of the Hawaiian word for quick, “wiki“, and “encyclopedia”. The encyclopedia is updated in over 100 languages, including constructed languages such as Esperanto. The English version of Wikipedia contains over one and a half million articles. Wikipedia was founded as an extension of the expert-written Nupedia project. However, the idea of a publicly-written collaborative encyclopedia was rejected by Nupedia's advisory board, and the project was managed independently by several top Nupedia contributors. Despite this, Wikipedia soon eclipsed Nupedia in terms of content and traffic. Within two years the Nupedia project was abandoned, and all its content was incorporated into Wikipedia. Much of today's Wikipedia staff are former Nupedia staff. The fact that anybody with an internet connection can edit its contents, has made Wikipedia become viewed as an unreliable source of information. The encyclopedia allows anybody to edit its pages, even anonymously. To address this issue, and to ensure quality, accurate content, all submissions and edits are moderated and regulated by a staff of regular volunteer.

We were asked to review some blogs about wikipedia that can be found on the npr website. All of these blogs contained information concerning the reliability of Wikipedia. A grad student named Virgil Griffith wanted to create a web tool that made it possible for those who had been editing Wiki could be identified. The way this is made possible is that anytime a computer is used to edit or add to the encyclopedia a number is virtually scanned from the computer. Many big businesses have been accused of doctoring these edits to better themselves. An example of this is; someone at Dow chemical purged a whole section about agent orange and its harmfulness and made the whole thing disappear. Another example is that someone from Diebold deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold. This article was critical of the company’s machines. This to me proves Griffiths idea about the scanner a very good idea.

During some of my Wiki research I came across a fact that in 2005 the scientific publication Nature performed a comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, the leading print encyclopedia. It found that while the amount of errors per article in Wikipedia and Britannica were the same, the severity of errors in Wikipedia were worse. Encyclopedia Britannica suffered mostly from fact omission, whereas Wikipedia suffered from inaccurate information. This research made me have a whole new realization on Wiki. In the future I may not use this source as much and if I do I will be sure to double back and check it with something more reliable.

Randy Pausch: Last Lecture

Last week for my EDM 310 class we were asked to do an assignment where we listened to podcasts done by students from last semester’s class. One of the podcasts that I chose was on the last lecture done by Randy Pausch. When I heard the students talking about him he sounded like a fascinating man. Automatically I knew that I was intrigued by his techniques and would love to learn from him. This week we were asked to listen to his last lecture which excited me because since hearing bits and pieces about him I had really wanted to see what his last lecture was really all bout.

Before watching the video I did a little research on Pausch to try and learn more about exactly who was delivering this lecture and listen to his story. Randy Pausch was known as being an extraordinary professor who touched the lives of many students not only through his words but his efforts to help them become all he knew they could be. He worked at four Universities in his time: Brown University, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon and MIT. In September of 2006 he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. He had 10 tumors on his liver. Only 20% of victims of Pancreatic Cancer are able to have surgery to try and remove the tumors. Pausch was lucky enough to fall in that 20% range. He had surgery in late September. He was in rehab for months trying to get well. He was a strong man and hung on for a long while. Some days were better than others but eventually the cancer won and Randy Pausch past away in July of 2008. I really should not say the cancer won because really it didn’t. Pausch lived his life to the fullest until the end.

After learning so much about this amazing man I could not wait to listen to his last lecture. I was sure he would have something grand to say. At the start of the lecture Randy Pausch asked the question, “If you had to deliver one lecture before you died what would it be?” Well Pausch was about to deliver his last lecture so he would answer that question for himself. He starts by introducing himself and telling about his cancer. He states “We cannot change the cards that we are dealt just how we play the hand.” First he introduces the topics he wont talk about and number one is family because he says he is too weak to not cry. He then introduces the topics in which he will talk about. They are as follows: His childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, lessons learned and how we can achieve our dreams and enable others to do so. He begins by stating his childhood dreams such as being in zero gravity, playing in the NFL and being a Disney Imagineer. Pausch states that children should all have specific dreams, for instance instead of dreaming to be an astronaut he dreamed to be in zero gravity. He touched on each briefly. In some way or another Pausch achieved all his childhood dreams. He eventually got to ride in the vomit commit with his students where he experienced zero gravity. He did not play in the NFL but, football is something Pausch said changed his life. He spoke of one of his coaches named Jim Graham. Graham was a mentor for Randy. One thing he taught Randy was that you could learn how to play football even without a football because it is all about the fundamentals. This can be used in many aspects of life. Randy was taught never to give up and all about the head fake. If your wondering what the head fake is, it is a simple theory of Pauschs that we teach our children when they are young to learn indirectly. Another childhood dream of Randy’s was to become Captain Kirk. Well the closet he got was meeting him. This goes in the same sense with another childhood dream of becoming a Disney Imagineer. He tried several times and they did not want him. He decided that brick walls are in everyone’s way, not to stop us but to show us we can achieve anything. Randy learned that some brick walls more made of flesh. He forced his way into being connected to Disney. He became good friends with Jon Snoody and spent 80 hours working with the imagineers. He soon became part of the Aladdin VR project that was a big success.

He moves on by stating that he is so glad to be a professor. He first saw that he could enable the dreams of others when he met a student named Tommy Burnette. Tommy wanted to be apart of all the Star Wars movies. He worked very closely with Randy who put faith in him and he soon worked on all three movies as an undergrad student. Pausch soon made a class at Carnegie Melon called Building Virtual Worlds. Only 50 students were drawn to take this class. It became a big hit which is why they started ETC, which stands for Entertainment Technical Center. This is a 2 year program in which you could earn your professional degree. One thing worked on during this time was Alice. Alice is virtual software that is a novel way to teach kids how to make computer games. He stresses that the best way to teach someone something is to have them think they are learning something else. Pausch claims that Alice is his professional legacy. My favorite quote used by Pausch was to talk about Alice. He says, “I like Moses get to see the promise land but I won’t get to set foot in it, but that’s okay because I can see it and the vision is clear.”

Pausch starts talking about lessons learned. He thanks his parents for giving him such a special childhood. He says that others such as mentors, students and colleagues have a huge part of our lives. He feels as if he learned as much from his students as they learned from him. One last thing he says is we have ways to get people to help us. First believe in karma, tell the truth, apologize when you screw up and focus on others. He ends the lecture by letting everyone know that this talk was not for the audience but instead for his kids.

Wow! This man is amazing! I admire him just from a video. Pausch was a true educator. He believed in his students and took them places. I feel as if everyone could learn a little something from Randy Pausch because I know I did. Before I end my post I would like to point out one more fascinating thing about Pausch. He had a quote for everything. I would like to end by repeating a few of those in memory of Randy Pausch. “Don’t complain, just work harder!” “When people give you feedback, cherish and use it!” “When you do right good things will have a way of happening.” “When it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, simply ignore all they say and only pay attention to the things they do.” “Loyalty is a two way street!” “When you have held the most precious thing in the world in your hands its tough to hand it over, but hand it over to better hands than yours.” “Get someone to be self reflective!” “If you wait long enough people will surprise and impress you and when you are angry with them you have not given them enough time.” “Be good at something it makes you valuable!” People will show you their good side, because no one is all evil!” “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted!” This is just one way to show you how intellectual Randy Pausch.