I was an intense volleyball player throughout high school, and since I can't play anymore my blogging will be about Volleyball and its ups and downs(if it has any).
Every team needs a leader at some point in the game. To be this you must be the best of the best and handle the "heat" that your team encounters. There are 3 types of leaders out there, the first one being a tactical leader, another to be a physical leader and last but not least a emotional leader. A team can go very far with a strong leader. But if you are not one of the leaders, that's okay because too many leaders can cause conflict, and you do not want that on a team. It is just as good to be a follower or a role model, all teams need these at some point to be winners.
This is a photo of what an emotional leader would look like. They pump up the team when needed.
Back when I played volleyball in high school I think that I was all 3 leaders at some point of my time. When we really needed to get pumped and energized, I was always the one making us laugh and loosen up. This is the funnest part of being a leader, to make the team happy. I was constantly a physical leader, as I was always on the court doing my best and working hard. I was rarely off the court so from this I have become a very hard working person not only on the court, but as life in general. I have learned a lot about teamwork, working beyond abilities, patience and understanding of myself as a whole from playing this sport for about 5 years. Thanks to all my coaches and teammates, I have become who I am today, a good person, by learning what it takes to be successful.
We have been studying the new web 2.0 for the last three weeks, and I have learned a lot about the new read and write web. Not only can we read the web now but we can also edit it. This is the new generation of the web/internet. With this we no longer have to look through books, but can share our thoughts with the entire world over a computer. No more hunting through books, but now we can just enter it online and it will pop up with all the information that we need.
We are now in a cyber world called a “Society of Authorship”. Where everyone around can be the author, and write what they have to say. They can also edit someone else’s webpage whenever they like. This would be a great tool for the teacher to bring into the classroom. Before you can teach this to your class, you must learn and understand it. You must teach your students about privacy and knowing how much they can put on the internet about themselves, for example photos, personal information, address and full name. Ways that you can protect your students is that you can assign them student numbers, only going by their first name, and making sure that you have parents permission is one of the biggest necessities that you must obtain. Ways that we can use this new web 2.0 is looking up information on twitter, flickr, blogger and much, much more as the time goes on the students will engage in more internet activities. Personally I would use youtube, as there are a lot of different videos that you can use, from learning the ABC’s to learning about global warming. Also another great site to look up as a teacher is twitter, here you can “follow” as many people as you want, and you can get information in seconds, literally. You can ask anything and people from all over are nice enough to help you out with your searches, which makes learning more fun I think. One tool that would be very useful is the weblog. You are an instant author and can publish and edit your work; you can also edit other peoples work.
There are three main focuses to a weblog, the first are links, this is very important as it connects your writing to the outside world. You can take so much information from so many sites that have ideas on what you are studying. You are not “barricaded” to your classroom anymore with the links that the internet provides. This teaches your students and yourself about connective writing, which they now call the new genre of writing. This teaches us to write clearly and logically, as we are writing for a wide variety of an audience. We no longer write to write, but we write to connect to the world.
The second is pictures; this can just decorate your weblog and shows a little of your personality, and shows a little more interest to your readers. The last would be videos, since there are a lot of educational videos out there, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to allow this for your class to use. This allows them to learn more from outside the classroom walls. This is considered a constructivist tool that allows all this to happen.
With being in the north, it is hard to see what other people have opinions about, and with this new web 2.0, it makes it easier for us to see what others have to teach. Another great aspect of using a weblog is that parents and the students themselves can see their progress throughout the year. They can use this to maintain their critical thinking skills, instead of what we did back then with only passive reading.
Another great way I would use this in my classroom in the future would be to have a class weblog, where I can post all the dates for the quizzes, due dates and homework. Students will no longer have excuses that nothing is done and handed in. Also the parents can connect with the class and see what is being taught, and what needs to be done at home to make their children successful. This can also take you to online museums, science centers and virtual tours of the world that we live in. This can teach us about reflective journal writing, I am sure that all will need to see personal progress for the future. With all this said, I would recommend that all teachers use a weblog in their classrooms because it has so many different benefits.
A new way of writing on the web is through a wiki. This is a site where you can edit information by not only yourself, but others around the world. This kind of work allows you to learn collaborative skills, negotiating skills and interpersonal skills as you work with others to edit the website of your choice. You are not the only editor now, but you work along side others to make it the best for your audience. The great thing about this is that teachers from many different cities are coming together to make an online textbook for everyone to use. An example of a wiki is the ever popular site known as wikipedia. This is a free online encyclopedia that many people use for information they need to find. This site has the potential to collect the sum of all human knowledge at your fingertips. It is a Collaborative constructional tool of knowledge and truth. The site is constantly updated not only by experts but “average joes” as well. It is a great site to use and I would definitely use it in my classroom as a resource. I have been using it as one of my main research tools and I find it to be accurate and trustworthy. Some people may think otherwise, but it is a big help as I don’t need to search so many different sites and “waste” my time looking through each one. More great ways to do your research is through Really Simple Syndication (RSS). This is a constant flow of information you get through a feed that you subscribe to. To use this to your full advantage you must get an aggregator. This gathers all the information that you want, and from here you can organize the feeds into folders specified to that subject. It gives you the opportunity to maintain your organizational skills. It also helps you to enhance your critical reading skills, by scanning the important facts and only reading what needs to be read. I would and will use it in my own classroom as it helped me so much with what I needed to learn about my blogger account about volleyball. It sent me all the information that I needed and I didn’t need to look site by site, but look through the feeds and pick what I wanted. This is an easy way to look up information, but also a way to enhance a lot of skills needed today in our ever changing world.
A new social network that was developed to speed up the possibilities of finding your answers is called Twitter. This site allows you to interact with people all over the world, no matter who they are, and get the information that you desire. This is a type of blogging, but faster, as you can only “tweet” up to 140 characters, so they call this microblogging. This is a social network at your fingertips. It is great because it is constantly updated, usually on a daily basis and never left in the dust. This is a great way to do your collaborative constructional thinking, as you get links to blogs, resources and you can share ideas daily. You can connect to the outside world with organizations or people. You can also talk with each other about what to put onto the site that people need the information for. It is not done by only professors anymore, but all mankind can contribute to this site. It is called “folksonomy” rather than taxonomy because of what people can contribute to any site that they want. I think that I will be using this from now on as I can get information from anybody, any site at anytime. It is the latest up to date news and it will be very good to have as a future teacher to know how to use all this to my advantage.
With the website called Flickr, you can see photos and videos from all over the world. People upload personal and work related photos constantly to this site. This allows anyone to share what they have captured throughout life. I have done this with some of my family photos, which I am happy to share as I am very proud of who I am and where I come from. I get to share with the world who makes me smile daily and who I love unconditionally. Also with this you can use what is called “geotagging” and you can pinpoint exactly where the photo was taken. From this we can learn about geography in a fun way. In a way this builds and atlas of photos. Say if you want to find pictures on The Great Wall of China, just type it in the search area and it will show many different pictures that so many people have taken and you can see what they have captured in a simple picture. To use this in a classroom would be beneficial in so many ways. For one, the kids here in the north do not get to see the different parts of the world and with this; it is open to whatever they want to see. Also they are learning geography without it. So this is a fun way to learn about the world that we live in. All teachers need to use this to get a vast variety of images that will help in the class.
Podcasting is an A-synchronous online amateur radio for all to publish online. This is a new genre of getting your message out there for all to see. With this you create and contribute ideas for a larger audience to see, and from this you learn to be clearer about what you are saying so that you don’t sound silly over the internet. You also practice your communication skills and your listening skills while casting your audio content. As a teacher, there is a wide variety of how to use this in your classroom. One way that it can be used is in the language field, you can record yourself for your students and they can have it constantly feeding it back to them to help understand and learn the new language that they are studying. Another great way to use this is to narrate your work. For instance you can record what you have learned in science class and can always listen to it whenever you need to. This can be useful for every single class possible.
“Living and Learning With New Media” is the title of a study done at 2 Universities done in California, with the information leading up to the Social Networks around the world. There are 2 main ways to stay connected to the world, first is friendship-based ways where you interact with your friends and family over the internet. You can constantly see updates and daily activities through many social sites one being the most popular Facebook. This site is home to about 240 million people, with more being added daily. The other would be interest-based, where you can connect with other people about your interests and see what information they have on the passion that you share. All this opens more opportunities for learning and researching for school and personal use. Over the internet people may “come” together to get the best ideas on how to share with the rest of the world what they find out about certain things. This would be considered to be self-directed and peer-based learning, which is the new generation of learning. It allows you to go beyond expectations of what you may or may not know. There is no more “winner take all” learning, but it is now a cooperative learning, which makes it easier on everyone. I would call this “digital citizenship” as people are there to help one another more than ever before. We all have become teachers and learners by using this social network without knowing what we have contributed to society. With this said we are all “networked learners” in some way. If used in the classroom to the best advantage, it can post new ways of learning in the 21st century. I for one will use this in my classroom when I become a teacher, knowing that there are endless possibilities out there for help and searchable sites. With seeing so many young people on Facebook, I am sure that it will engage them more to learn and be enthusiastic about it. Just make sure that they know the limits of information given out and the safety precautions of being open to world we live in. Also to inform the parents about what is being used in the classroom and how they can help and support their children. This social network to me has been one of the greatest inventions of mankind.
The web 2.0 is defined by 2 unstoppable trends; first that there is more than 1 trillion pages published over the internet with more being added daily. This makes it the most comprehensive source of information in history. The second would be more creation of content is more collaborative now more than ever before. The web 2.0 allows for the people around the world to come together to help put the correct content of information to the site. The web allows for the walls of the classroom to expand across oceans, different races, genders and generations. This demands a more complex definition of literacy. From this we must learn to be more active consumers rather than passively accepting it as legitimate. We all have become editors, publishers and readers to the web. To take full advantage of all this new technology, we must be very literate in publishing, and also learn how to manage and store all the information that is desired. All this new stuff that is being learned over this, changes our school curriculum in so many ways. For one, there are way more teachers that can help you over the internet and they all have a different but similar answer. You can connect to so many people that sometimes it can unbelievable at some points. Other ways that are students voices are more “heard” now over the net, rather than only constantly reading and handing in papers to get marked than thrown away once handed back to the kids. They can also archive their work to always look back on it whenever they needed to. This teaches the students to look for their answers in the right place. Their eyes and ears become more attentive and see only the main focus of the writing, which in a teacher’s eyes is one of the successful meanings of a teacher. Students can now publish work by a video, an audio, music or photos. This shows that we need to redefine what is being taught in school and what we need to learn on our own. The web 2.0 has and will forever change the way that we teach and learn as a society.
This is just a photo that I wanted to use to show that I can understand and know how to use the Flickr site.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kongping/516108706/
check out this picture of a women bumping a ball, and look how the ball is so deformed. The balls are not blown right up as it needs some room so it doesnt hurt as much and the players can control the ball better. The look on her face just shows how she is very intensely into the game and wants to be at the top of her game. by the looks of this photo she is already there and wants to compete at her best.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/varadi/4042004577/
just look at the faces of these women. they are so into their game trying to beat the others with their great power and height. I am about 5'5 and I could barely just get my hands over the top of the net, but I was always there trying my best like all the other athletes around the world. reaching for the ball is one of the best qualities that you can achieve in this sport. You need to be able to "jump" to any spot on the court and even off the court.
This sport has so many players, but I dont think that it is "out there" enough like hockey or basketball for example. There are alot of great players out there in our little world. I think that they need to air it more often.
Kids don't see this enough on T.V and this is a no contact sport, like football, hockey and boxing all have hitting and somewhat violence, whereas volleyball pretty much have nothing. This shows that it is a respectful sport to play and watch for people of all ages. I have no trouble letting my kids watch volleyball, as they are excited anyway as they know I used to play once upon a time!
You should get a load of this!! I was reading how the university of Washington's coach does his work (http://www.gohuskies.com/genrel/101310aaa.html). As I was reading I was like WOW..this man is amazing at what he does for his volleyball team. He has turned a team that never used to win into an all american team. who has won national and international titles. They are currently ranked 7th in the world, amazing from the bottom just 10 years ago, considering all the teams in the world.
Another site I looked at was at http://www.gohuskies.com/blog/volleyball/, this goes to show that no matter what place you are, you can always climb to the top or drop to the bottom as it shows here. It all depends on how you and your team does I guess. http://www.volleyball.ca/content/julien-bouchers-world-championship-blog-4 is another site where you can see what it takes to beat the best of the best. Canada beating Siberia was a great feeling for the team. Siberia is ranked 4th and Canada is at like 24th I think. With reading this, it shows again momentum and focus are one of the tools in success for this sport.
Volleyball is unpredictable as it goes to show in these sites I looked at.
I was just reading on the women's volleyball upset in the super series in Winnipeg (http://www.volleyball.ca/content/canadians-upset-cuba-final-match-super-series) and it goes to show that even when your down by a lot you can come back to win. The Canadian team is ranked 24th in the world and they beat Cuba that are ranked 6th in the world. This would have been an interesting game to watch.
On the other hand I was reading on beach volleyball too and it sounds like it was intense and fun.
(http://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=13556). I think that beach volleyball is harder than indoor volleyball as you only play with one other person whereas indoor there are 6 of you and not a whole lot of court to cover. Whether in/outdoor this sport is fun to participate in and I would love to play again.
This game was close like the game that we played against team Greenland to go to the semi-finals. Heartbreaking but it taught us a lot about what a team needs to be successful and win a championship. The games were close like the mens one I was just reading on. Volleyball is a highly intense sport and you need a lot of patience and teamwork to bring this to a high level of competition. It is not just about bumping a ball to each other, but to block, hit, set, serve and work as a team to be "on top" of the game. I love to watch volleyball at its best, they are very passionate and focused, which to me is very appealing as I loved to play throughout high school. i would have loved to play at international level, but it is hard to do that living in the north and not getting the opportunity to do so. So with that I am very happy to just watch and cheer on my favorite teams.
