Screen Toaster

ScreenToaster was a very great piece of software that has a great deal of possibilites. 

• The website for screentoaster is here . 
• The great thing about this site is that it's incredibly easy to use and doesn't require any type of download. 
• You can simply go to the site and click record. 
  
• The one thing that i found about the site was that if you're running a 64 bit OS it doesn't work. 
• My computer has that type of OS and it wouldn't work but when i tried it on our desktop computer at home that runs Windows vista 32 it worked just fine. 
• Here is the video we made using screentoaster. 
• An example of something that can be done is shown in the video.
• Another example could be using this software to make up video lesson plans so that they can be viewed by a substitute teacher. 

New Tech Standards & Requirements

The first thing about the new tech standards that I would like to address is the Digital Citizenship piece. 

• If we are truly supposed to teach students how to be responsible on a computer during their day at school then we can't possible block everything and anything that might be viewed as harmful. 
  
• We have discussed many times in class about the lack of ability for students to be able to get on the Internet at school and search for a topic without running into a thousand roadblocks view the district firewalls. For example: the high school i work at is having a constant problem with students finding out the filter password. The problem is that they can't locate the information they need in order to do the work that is required so the teacher needs to give the password to the student in order to find that information. This leads to all of the students knowing the password and then the district having to change it. 
• This is a great example of how if the teachers were truely teaching Digital Citizenship, this wouldn't be the large problem that it is being made out to be. 

With regards to the creativity piece of the technology:

• Students aren't given very much free reign at school because of the constant fear that something "bad" might happen. 
• We are currently living in a situation where the people in charge are NOT very tech savy and because they don't understand all the benefits and uses of technology they would rather it not be used at all, or at least to it's greatest potential. 
• Sharing notes and information could be done very easily in this new world of Google docs and other similar programs but most teachers view this as cheating and are not willing to let that type of thing happen. (Could also be discussed under collaboration and communication)
• The current system isn't very well set up to be creative because of the firewalls and filters. 
  
• A student cannot look up a single picture on the Internet at school because of the above mentioned filters and firewalls. 

I think the piece of technology that is truly being missed is the piece about Collaboration and communication.

• Currently in schools, students CANNOT use any type of IM's system or software that works in a similar way.
• As i discussed in an earlier post the use of web cams and software like SKYPE a teacher would be able to greatly widen the view of the students to other information that could be readily available given the right circumstances.
• Teachers could collaborate across the nation and the world involving technology like that and the benefit for the students would be the best possible information about their subjects instead of something dated out of a textbook. 
• Imagine a guest speaker coming into the classroom where you teach but he's doing it from South Africa. How amazing would his point of view be if that were the area of the world that you were focusing on in your classroom. 
  
• Student interest for subjects would be through the roof if all the possible uses for technology were used to their ultimate abilities.