Tech Task #7: Mobiles for Learning

Through Liz’ Live Session, she gave many awesome ideas for using mobile devices in the classroom. These ideas ranged from poll apps to gauge student understanding and comprehension, reminder programs, recording programs to transfer audio clips from a cellphone directly to a website, and so on. These all seem very useful in the classroom, but also very daunting to master and use successfully. When given the task to reflect on future teaching opportunities and using this technology in the classroom, I decided to reflect on internship and figure out where my teaching style would benefit the most from using cellphones in the classroom.

I decided that Celly would help get rid of many of the problems I faced during internship. I often had students complaining that they forgot about an assignment, or missed a class and didn’t know about homework, and other regular excuses. This site will not remedy excuses all together, but would help get rid of some of the obvious ones. Celly is a site which sets up a 2-way messaging (alternative to Remind 101’s one-way messaging which also has its uses). This site hides your number as well as the students’ and parents’ numbers. You can text them reminders and concerns and allows for the recipient to respond, if you want to make that an option. I would take advantage of Celly by being able to remind students and parents about everything going on in the classroom. This combined with a contract on the first day (which would be taken home and signed by the student and their parent) would set up an easy way off communication between the student, teacher, and parent.

I feel that Celly is a good place to start because it is fairly straight forward, yet very useful. As I move through my teaching career, mastering Celly would open up doors for me to try other cellphone-related apps to help the class flow more smoothly. Since BYOD (bring your own device) is blowing up in Saskatchewan schools right now, this would be a great way to integrate this into my classroom. I can’t wait to try Celly in my next classroom!

Tech Task #6: Storytelling/Storymaking: Second Story

This second story is from DS 106, it is this assignment. Enjoy!

 

Monologue of a pair of scissors:

 

Life has been quite dull lately. I have been around the house and family for some time. I have been to elementary school, high school and even university. I’ve been around, you could say. Through all the use though, my arms aren’t as sharp as they used to be. This troubles me. Luckily, I can still make it through a piece of paper, which has been my main use for quite some time. I’ve seen many of my kind go through this house and disappear without warning – some have even broken and been discarded into the trash. As a new school year comes up, hopefully I make the cut yet again and stick around long enough to get through another year. I like it hear, I’m comfortable. With all this technology, how long will they need me for? I’m not used as much lately – this also worries me. I long to feel my masters grasp and have him put me to work. Its a rough life being a pair of scissors, and hopefully instead of throwing me away, I’ll get sharpened instead of replaced.

 

Scissors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

Tech Task #6: Storytelling/Storymaking: First Story

Here is my Five Card Flicker.

I found this quit difficult to do and actually took quite a few tries until I was relatively satisfied!

Tech Task #5: Part Two: All About Me

Thanks to an online course I am taking, I had the opportunity to Google myself… it was my first time, I swear. What I found was that there are a lot of Shane Markhams out there! The only result that came up which actually pertained to my was my Twitter account. This came as no surprise to me as I had put some heavy security measures in place for my Facebook account, and I can’t think of anything else I would have found! Upon making my search a little bit more personalized by adding Saskatoon to the search, I found that a few more things came up, such as my name on a roster for an ultimate tournament and even my WordPress blog! Still, nothing I should be ashamed about so that was good. I would be fine with a future employee seeing everything that came up. I would like to see maybe some more results in relation to my education career as that would hopefully impress and future employees who may take the time to Google me.

My Results…

Tech Task #4: Be a Better Blogger

After watching a session about how to be a better blogger, I realized that I had a lot of content on my blog that many people may not understand – how ignorant! I decided to create a hyperlink in every blog to help my readers comprehend and understand what I am talking about. Hopefully they help clarify some of the topics I was talking about. So, in the future if you are doing a blog, put in some hyperlinks! They are handy and educational.

Tech Task #2: Part Two: Holy Google!

Google’s trademark logo.

The apps I have been missing out on while having my gmail account has just blinde-sided me thanks to my ECMP 355 course!

I’m going to delve a little bit deeper into My Drive – the place which stores all of your created documents and what-not on Google. I was consistently worried about my aging laptop about backing it . With a simple download of the Google Drive for your PC (or mac, I’m assuming this works) the program syncs your computer files with my drive and your gmail account! This causes you to have access to your files anywhere as well as not having to worry about your computer breaking down. This is a sigh of relief for me and now I don’t have to spend any extra money on an external hard drive (even though at some point I probably will).

An example of an external hard drive.

This also takes away students’ ability to forget homework as you can get them to upload their assignments to drive and they can access them from anywhere! So give this a try and explore the many other apps Google has to offer in order to help you out!

 

Tech Task #2: Part One: My first Google Form!

My first shot at it… hope this works!

Tech Task #1: Who are you?

Who am I? I’m a student who is ready to be finished!

 

My name is Shane Markham (that’s me on the right). That picture is of my girlfriend Natasha and I up at Candle Lake last year after we were both lucky enough to catch a couple pickerel and enjoy a fresh fish breakfast! I was born in Saskatoon Saskatchewan in 1990 where I grew up in the Lakeview area. I lived there my entire life until I decided to go to Regina to pursue my career as a teacher at the U of R. That was four years ago. I grew up playing hockey, lacrosse, football, and a little bit of soccer. It wasn’t until university where I started one of my favourite things in life: Ultimate (Frisbee).

Catching a disc at the 2012 CUCs!

I started playing Ultimate about two years ago. Since starting, I have had the pleasure of playing a variety of levels from a simple pick-up game in the park to competing at a national level last summer at the Canadian Ultimate Championships in Victoria, BC last year. The team was called the Bunny Thugs… an obvious play on words from the Bunny Hug term we use here in Saskatchewan. We placed 8th out of 16 teams which was our goal and we are planning on going back this year! The tournament is to be held in Vancouver this year. I have done many tournaments and even won intramural leagues at the U of R. Along with Ultimate, I have started Stand-up Paddleboarding.

SUPing at Candle!

This is a shot of Natasha and I doubling on my new board I bought last summer. Stand-up Paddleboarding (SUPing) is like surfing but the type we can do here is a flat water variety and is similar to canoeing or kayaking. I’ve gotten into these sports thanks to an alternative sports store which I’ve worked at for the past 5 summers. Sadly, this summer will be the first in a long time I will not be working there. It comes as a sort of bitter-sweet as I enjoyed working there, yet needed to expand my horizons and experiences. Right after high school I had the chance to go to Australia with a couple of good friends. We were there for roughly two and a half months and did many exciting things such as skydiving, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, wine tours, and saw many exciting sights. I was going to add a photo, but sadly I cannot find them on my computer at the moment.

This is my fourth year of education and this, along with one other, summer course are the last two I need before I can convocate in the fall. Needless to say, I cannot wait. Most of my classmates were able to finish at the end of last semester so I’m ready to be finished! I’m excited for what this course has to offer and can’t wait to move through it and hopefully learn something exciting things about integrating technology into the classroom.