Week 4

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

UNESCO

     I'm here again to share with you new thing that I learned during this week. I have been feeling so exhausted this time because every day this semester becomes harder, but I have to continue without quitting. I'll try to do my best to get my goal.

     During this class we learned about a useful online tool called DIIGO. This site makes possible to highlight important parts of a webpage, to use sticky notes and to store relevant pages that could be helpful without loosing the URL. It is also used as a social network to share information and webpages about different topics. It is easy and free, so you can try to use this interesting site. I learned to use it because I opened my own diigo account, and I'm searching for pages to store into it. I could use those pages to do researches in a better way, and to exchange information with other diigo users, because they could help me with more pages and advice to do a good job.

     While we were learning about diigo, teacher Wilma asked us to join into a discussion forum. This forum contains a special website about UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and its labor through the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to expand educational network around the world, specially in places where is difficult to get access to those kind of sources. To get this goal, UNESCO is guiding teachers to be prepared on how to use ICT in a better way, and to share their knowledge with people through many member organizations in different countries that use the ICT. It is necessary to be a trained teacher, because this world needs at least 9 million teachers to reach the majority of places that do not get access to the ICT yet. Our society is changing constantly because the technological progress, and is important to know how to use it in order to be informed and have a better education than in the past. To make it possible, as teachers we have to be prepared and be able to use ICT, in this way we can teach effectively and interactively, we can offer new sources and materials to get our students' attention and be ready to face new challenges along the time.

     In conclusion, we have to face with new challenges as future teachers, and there are many tools available to develop our skills and be better teachers. Is important to make conscience about our society and all the technological advanced we have, because they will change faster than now. Those tools could help us to develop a better way to teach and learn, or could be the opposite if we don't know how to use them correctly.

     Well, that's all for this time, I'll be back next week to continue sharing more about this world, called Multimedia and Internet. I leave some pages where you can find more information about UNESCO and its labor with ICT.

                                                                                         See ya.
                                                                                            VeroElis.

UNESCO official site:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/teacher-education/

Videos about UNESCO and ICT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m7w3gcGFQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIMP_kILc_I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0pyle44P-I




  

Week 3

“Why, simpleton, do you mix your verses with mine? What have you to do, foolish man, with writings that convict you of theft? Why do you attempt to associate foxes with lions, and make owls pass for eagles? Though you had one of Ladas's legs, you would not be able, blockhead, to run with the other leg of wood.”

Marcus Valerius Martial Quotes

   Hey, here I am again to share with you what I have learned this week. How I've said, it is a new semester plenty of new challenges and useful things to know. Every week is harder that the last one, and now it was time to know about a crime that everyone have done without realize the seriousness of it. This crime is called PLAGIARISM.

   According with Dictionary.com: Plagiarism is "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author". Plagiarism also breaks the copyright laws, represents a rip-off and it turns you into a thief. Ideas and words from other people, such as professionals, scientists, writers, investigators and so on, could be a good source of information, and could help us when we need to do a research or any kind of homework. However, it doesn't mean we have to do a "copy-and-paste" job; we must have to interpret all the information we get and analyze it to express our own ideas.

   To understand about this easily, I recommend you to visit http://www.plagiarism.org/ , it is a complete web site that could help you about how to avoid plagiarism. http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/researchhelp/plagiarism.html is another web site with many examples of how to use paraphrases, quotes and citations in order to avoid plagiarism and give the credit to the original author. Those web sites helped me to learn about this topic, because I had to write a composition about it by analyzing and understanding every part in those sites.   

   In addition, into this topic, there is another interesting point, called citation. It is a way to avoid plagiarism. There are many forms to cite a source, but the most used around the world is the APA Style. This style was created by the American Psychological Association, and it is a set of rules that shows how to cite the original source (books, essays, web sites, multimedia sources and so on) in a right way by mentioning the author's name, year of publication, the name of the work and many important information to make easier the searching of the original source to confirm its reliability. If you want to know more about APA Style, there is the web: http://www.apastyle.org/, you can learn about it and how to use it to avoid plagiarism next time you do a research.

   This class, and all we can learn during it, was very important, because as many people, we have made bad things only by ignorance. We don't realize it is a crime, and we have cheated a lot in our homework only by doing copy and paste. Many countries have strong penalties to punish plagiarism. We must refuse living in ignorance and develop the critical thought and analysis skills in ourselves and in our students. As future teachers, we have the responsibility to transmit this knowledge and show with facts we are doing things differently. Every good thing could be learned since childhood, and our first students could be our own children.

   In conclusion, it's necessary to know first what is plagiarism, how serious could be this crime and how to avoid it. Think about it and put in practice everything you learn about this topic. Internet is a huge source of information, so, if you want to search by yourself, there are many pages that could help you to understand better this crime. I'm leaving other sites with videos and information about plagiarism. I hope they could be useful.

   "That's all folks". Jajaja I'm plagiarizing the Bugs Bunny's phrase, but for today it's all can I say. Next week I'll back to share more things with you.

                                                                                           See ya.

                                                                                              VeroElis

Videos about plagiarism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw6NxvwP41U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q0NlWcTq1Y&feature=related

How to use APA Style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2644z1Nf6Tc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX03qcDBPuU

   

Week 2

"The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite."

Thomas Sowell

     I'm here again to tell you about how much I learned this new week in Multimedia Classes. As I said last week, this is a new challenge for me; so it becomes harder every time. 

     This week, we learned about the virtual classroom in the university's web page. We had to register in this site to upload our homework, to start a discussion forum to exchange opinions and share knowledge; and to know what do we do to take advantage of this tool in an effective way. It was a little complicated, because I have some difficulties using technology, but I had to put attention to make those things well.

     We also had to start a discussion forum with our classmates. We had to put our opinions about the last topic: Evaluating Web Sites. This time, we could know more with the information from http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les1/pg1.html. It helped us to complete and complement the last information we had about the same topic. This page also has complementary exercises to prove if we can recognize reliable and unbiased pages by applying all its advises and clues. If you want to try, you must visit this page.

     Finally, we have to keep a virtual portfolio with the most important work we have made during this semester. Teacher Wilma explained us how to develop this to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings. This portfolio is going to help us to be more critical and analytical with everything we are doing, and to be better professionals and reflect this with our evidence.

     As an addition, there are some links to help you to understand better what a portfolio is, and how to use it with a real educational purpose.

     That's all from me now. I'll be waiting for your comments, let me know what do you think about. There will be new info next week.

                                                   
                                                                                  See ya.
                                                                                      VeroElis

http://www.pgcps.org/~elc/portfolio.html
http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/personal-development-planning/portfolios/one/
http://www.adprima.com/student_portfolios.htm
            

       

Week 1

    Hi, everybody. A new challenge have started for me this time and I want to do my best to don't have any problem and pass this better than before. I'm here to share with you some things about this new class, called "Multimedia and Internet Resources" in this new semester that we begun recently this week.

     The first class was interesting and comfortable, because we've already known the teacher, Miss Wilma Suarez, and we know also she is an expert in this academic field. We started to know how we are going to work with her and all the resources we are going to use. It sounds a little difficult, but I know it is going to be useful today, and in our future lives as teachers or whatever we're going to be.

     One of the dangers of the Internet is you can find many pages related to a topic or subject, but not all could help you with reliable information. This time, we receive information about "Evaluating Web Pages", because is important to know many aspects BEFORE to choose information from an unreliable web page. For researching in a better way and avoid using wrong information, you have to be careful and look for some clues, as:

• The URL and the domain: It could show you about who is the provider of that information and, if the page is controlled by an institution, to search if that exist or it's real information.
• The author's credibility: Many pages could contain uploaded information by people who had given their personal point of view, without enough academic or historical investigation. So, to search the author's data in a web page can help us to verify his or her credibility and accuracy in a topic.
• Quality: Links, dates and footnotes are really useful to know about the author's resources, and how often the author update his or her web page content. If links don't work, or there aren't new upload information, the web page could be suspicious.
• Others' opinion and contributions: Reliable web pages have unbiased information, and contain links related with others' point of view. Other authors or pages could contain information about the owner or the author of a web page, and also other authors could exchange information, collaborate to do some articles, or recommend others to use that web page.

      Those things are going to help us to be more observant, and to do better research. I think also all this information could help me to have better grades, and to be more reflective with thing I get from the web, because in my professional life, I need to have reliable information to share with students, and don't confuse them. 

     The Internet is a huge source of information, and the greatest way of communication and entertainment today, but free expression could confuse people and many people could say anything they want. It's important to identify and recognize if a web page could be useful or don't. Be careful and pay attention next time when you're searching information, because not all in the Internet is the truth.

     Well, I thinks that's all for today. I'll be back next week to share more about I'm learning this semester, and I have here an interesting video to help you more with this topic. I hope it could be helpful. 

                                                                                         See ya!
                                                                                         VeroElis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4nmiJLhB5c&feature=related