This week's content was appropriately titled, since I did indeed encounter some challenges. Although I had fun experimenting with xtranormal.com, my first attempts erased. The site seemed to be very wonky on that day, so I walked away and returned a few days later to find that it worked perfectly. So despite the initial frustration, I think that xtranormal.com is a very cool vehicle for presenting information, especially in terms of conversation or argument. It seems that students could really have fun with the sound effects, motions, etc. as well as conveying great information relevant to a classroom topic.
The Horizon Report was great. I'm not sure if other students were completely in the know, but as with many other aspects of this class, the Horizon Report and the New Media Consortium were completely unknown to me. I had heard of Educause previously, but overall, this was all new information. What a wonderful place to glean new information, new direction and new resources. I especially appreciated all the links they included to groups working in various areas that they discussed. The newest research and the emergent technologies seem absolutely essential to a teacher not only using educational technology in the classroom, but also attempting to justify changing the way this classroom works within an established educational system. I addressed exactly this in my xtranormal.com video. Although it may seem a bit exaggerated in order to convey some of the frustrations I have experienced in my attempts to use educational technology with inquiry-based learning in the classroom, this conversation accurately reflects some of the resistance I've encountered and expect to encounter as I shift paradigms in order to use educational technology in the high school mathematics classroom.
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