Podcasting, A Reinforcing Educational Tool

                   Podcasting is and will continue to change the future of education. Weather related school closures such as snow days will be a thing of the past. Instead of losing that valuable school day, you can stream the class online. This will be particularly useful in areas up north where students have to stay late into the summer because of many snow related school closures. Also, if a student is sick for a few days, you can still get the student involved, as if they were in class. Podcasting can really change the future of education, it just needs to be done correctly. Students and teachers should be able to communicate with each other, as well as the students amongst themselves. In a subject area such as music podcasting can be used as a constructive practice tool. Students can play for each other and critique one another. They could also play together, and I the teacher can watch and give comments and other constructive feedback. With all this practice and constructive feedback the band will surely sound phenomenal. This type of experience can be duplicated in all subject areas and fortunately is not too complicated for the teacher to set up. It's even easier for the students to use and I feel that they will enjoy using this very versatile and educational tool. 
                   Some concerns that people have about podcasting is that if a student is streaming a podcast and has a question can they "raise" their hand and ask that question. And more importantly is that student likely to go out of their way to type a message in time and send it to the teacher before they continue on. For podcasting to be effective there needs to be a "raise hand" button where the teacher can see on their screen and just like in a classroom setting ask them what's their question through a one on one video chat. If the question proves to be a useful one it can be streamed to the rest of the class. When the teacher is in a one on one chat there could be a screen with notes and other helpful items. Podcasting can be extremely useful it just needs to be done correctly.          
                  Podcasting linked up with video chat, instant messaging , and social media is a good way to harvest what the students are interested in and really integrate it into our curriculum creatively and effectively. It's extremely efficient, and more and more schools are using it on a regular basis. Because of podcasting and other technologies that go along with it, many parents are turning to online schooling for their children. We will continue to see this trend grow and quite possibly one day much of our public schooling that takes place in the classroom will be transferred to the computer screen. 

Technology Autobiography

                   By far the number one most influential communications technology in my world is my laptop. With my laptop I have the world at my fingertips. I literally have access to endless information, no matter what it is, it can probably be found on the internet. I have a question, internet. I need to double check a spelling, internet. I need to fix something on my car/atv/phone/computer, internet. Instructional video's on just about anything really comes in handy when you're a "fix it yourself" kind of guy like myself. Video games? Yes please. Even though i'm all the way over here at school in nj, i'm still hanging out w/ my childhood friends who live in NY through both video games where we communicate via headset, and video chat. My laptop is small and sleek allowing me to bring it anywhere I go. School, work, vacation, no matter where i'm going there will most likely be wi-fi allowing me to connect to the world. I very rarely watch television on my tv these days. Because of hulu and other websites I can watch anything I want to and its on my schedule. Its also in most cases completely free meaning the days of watching scheduled programing is over. Theres one more thing, and considering my major it's the most important one to me, music. On my computer I'd say I have a respectable amount of music. But, quite frankly I don't need to have much music on my computer, and I don't need to spend money to listen to whatever music I want. With the amazing ability to share music with others through spotify and other softwares, I can find just about any piece of music. Also, writing, creating, and recording music has never been so easy. On my laptop I have a program called Finale which allows me to clearly, and legibly write out music. Being a musician one of the things that really grinds my gears is when I show up to a gig and i'm handed a piece of paper that has illegible handwritten music on it that sometimes represents what it's really suppose to look like. It's very frustrating guessing at what i'm suppose to be playing and it's just unnecessary. Unnecessary because Finale and other music writing programs are so easy to use and so much easier for the performer to understand and read.
              There are some negative aspects that come with computers. For one they tend to be expensive and not everyone can afford them. Especially because they seem to break often or get outdated rather quickly. Another con of computers is that it doesn't particularly help us become better spellers off the computer. With spellcheck if something is spelt incorrectly I just click on the word and it gives me the right spelling which might seem helpful. But what happens is that you just click the word without really looking at it and why it was spelt wrong. Also, your not writing out the word correctly so your brains not really correcting it for the next time you have to spell it.
              The second most influential technology is my smartphone. Just like my laptop, it always keeps me connected to the world. I can be up at my parents lake house on top of a mountain fishing on the lake and still have access to just about anything. Even possibly more with it's amazing GPS capability, it's amazing HD camera, HD video camera, and the ability to do video chat, regular calling, text, email, banking, basically anything. But, it too has it's negatives. Many people become what seems to be "addicted" to their phones. This is especially dangerous when people are so attached they need to use it while operating vehicles. I think its safe to say that the cellphone is quite possibly the most dangerous of all the communications technologies.
             The third most influential communications technology in my life is social media, particularly facebook. Although this technology is connected to both my other two technologies it's influenced my life so much that it needed to be listed as one. Just like most people I have a facebook which I use regularly every day. It allows me to stay in touch with old classmates, colleagues, and most importantly family. Plus it's free advertisement for yourself, and whatever interests you. Much like the other technologies it is very addicting. In the video it seemed like the cellphone was the number one pick over the other communications technologies. This is probably because it is so convenient with all those different technologies packed into one little compact device.