Submitted First Draft

Well, the first draft is submitted. Boy am I nervous. I am not a good writer and it has been years since I had to write a paper. It will be interesting to receive my feedback from Dr. Z.

Will let you know how it goes................

My paper

Well, I have about 5.5 pages typed of my research paper on mobile devices. I am really struggling to write the challenges part of my paper. I got through the application part great - in fact probably going to go back and add some more. Little research has been done on this topic which makes it hard.....

The paper is due Thursday and I have the Challenges and the conclusion yet to write. I will then have to write the abstract. Wish me luck...not sure how this will turn out.

2 weeks to go and where to start.......

Well, I have two weeks before my first draft is due. I am really struggling to start my paper. I think that once I get started I will be fine but where do I start?? Any suggestions?

My goal is to start tommorrow and get at least one page done and then I can go from there. Will let you know if I meet my goal :o)

Outlining

Tonight we learned about using Inspiration to create our outline. I think this will work great. Dr. Zeitz has an example up for us to follow. Outlining will help to organize my thoughts. Right now, my thought are pretty scattered and it will be good to start actually putting things down on computer :o)

I have found about 12-13 references from journal articles. I have also done some looking on Marc Prensky's website.

Tools for Citing :o)

Tonight in class we learned two different tools that will help us when citing our sources for our research papers. First we learned the Cite While You Write (CWYW) which is a feature in Office 2007 (WIN) and Office 2008 (MAC). I think this tool will be very helpful for me because I am out of practice in my writing. Secondly, Chris showed us Zotero. Zotero will help while I am searching for resources. Another great technology tool!

Mobiles in the Classroom

My topic will be looking at Using Mobile Devices in the Classroom. 
Specifically I will be covering 

1. the capabilities of mobile devices in the classroom, 
   
2. challenges of using mobile devices in the classroom, and 
   
3. the capacity that mobile devices have.
   

Now the researching begins.

Topic....

Well, I am going to do my research paper on Mobiles in the High School Classroom (cellphones, smartphones). I just got off of Skype with Dr. Zeitz and I need to do some reading and researching to figure out my research questions. So I will post those as I figure them out. It pointed me to the 2009 Horizon Report which will be of great help. More to post later.........

Cellphones in Education

I went out looking today on the Internet using UNI's Rod Library and found some good articles that deal with using cellphones in education. So many teachers are so against these that I would like to shed light on the positive uses of these tools. One citation that I found which I cannot find the article is "Students Turn Their Cellphones On for Classroom Lessons". This article was published in Education Week, January 7, 2009 and is not available yet through UNI's Rod Library. I am going to continue to look for this article maybe using Google Scholar. I think another research question could possibly be

1. Do our students understand cellphone etiquette? Not sure on the wording but I think it would be important to teach this to our kids.

I did a little searching about social networking in the classroom. I also found some good articles dealing with this.

Topic #3

Another topic I thought I could do some research on is Web Safety/Literacy. I am really interested in Web Literacy as I believe that our students do not know how to use the Internet effectively. I also am interested in how to effectively teach our students Online Safety. I still would like to do a paper that I could use as a part of my final paper.

Will have to post more later as I am not quite sure how I am going to tackle this......

Topic #1 & #2

One topic I am thinking about is Using Handheld Devices in Education. I was thinking that with this topic I could cover the use of Cellphones. When I start my final paper I thought that I could incorporate iPods/MP3 players and then I am not sure on the third item maybe palm (PDAs). 

Title: Effective Cellphone Use in High School Education

Research Questions: 

1. How can cellphones be used in the high school classroom?
   
2. What are the advantages of using cellphones in  the classroom?
   
3. What are the disadvantages of using cellphones in the classroom?
   

Title: Social Networking in the High School Classroom

Research Questions:

1. How can social networking safely be incorporated into the high school classroom?
2. What are the advantages of social networking for high school students?
3. What are the disadvantages of social networking for high school students?

Not sure about using advantages & disadvantages?? Ideas??

Topic

Not sure what I am going to use for a topic yet. I have looked at my classmate's ideas and probably will go with one of mine as a lot of them repeat. I have to meet with Dr. Z. on Wednesday at 4:00 via Skype so I will need a topic by then. More to post later.