IWB reflection

This assignment was a great way to get us to really use the IWB technology and become more familiar with it.  My first time around, I put in a good amount of time collecting resources but ended up making my first IWB as more of a powerpoint presentation.  The second time around, I put much more time into it.  I really found better resources and used that information to build more interactive pages to my lesson.  I tried to be creative in the way to get them to think about the Civil War but still make it somewhat fun.  I put a lot of time into this as I made a lot more pages than show up in my final IWB.  I created multiple interactive pages and then tried them out to see how they would flow in the lesson.  I finally decided which ones helped the best for the students and plugged them in.  I'm really proud of my state matching page and I'm happy that Professor Boyer was able to show me a new way to present the answers to pages without taking up space.  This will be beneficial for the future.  I would say I put in a great amount of time into this.  Not only did I re-do the IWB to make it more interactive, but I really sat down and thought of ways to make it better for the students.

I believe that this assignment was a great expierence for us as future teachers.  Like I said above, it really had us use all of the tools with SMART notebook and we were able to explore other resources for items that we could use in our lesson.  This assignment had me exploring the SMART exchange site a lot and that is a great resource to help with IWB lessons.  I now know through doing this lesson how benefitcial it is to engage the students into this type of lesson and I learned that it is pretty easy to make a lesson on here once I put my mind to it.  With the ease of making a lesson such as this, I feel like I could make these for almost any topic and that this would be a good and easy technology to have in the classroom.

Republicans Block U.S. Health Aid for 9/11 Workers

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/nyregion/10health.html?_r=1&ref=politics

The party that wants to preserve the American dream and protect us all won't even help those that helped others on 9/11.  What great people!

3 ways to intergrate technology in my classroom

When thinking of integrating technology into my classroom, I get bombarded with many ideas.  Do we use phones in the classroom for instant feedback and assessment?  Do we cut out discussion and send it to a discussion board online?  Those are just a few of the things that had gone through my head.  When I think about using technology in my classroom, I can think of many ideas but I have a few in mind that I think would fit just great in my 7th grade classroom, especially for social studies.  First of all, I want my social studies teaching to be very hands on.  Just like the actual senate, I was instant sharing of ideas.  With this, I want each student to be able to use a computer to write on communal board to share ideas anonymously and then we can bring the to the "floor" for discussion.  I could also use clickers or cellphones for this by allowing them to text answers or questions and use it instantly.  Secondly, I think it would be cool to have a camera in the classroom.  This would be so we could tape certain activities we do and I can upload them to a class blog or website.  With this, parents get to literally see what their children did in school that day and the students could even go back and watch it to see if they missed something or just to gain some extra knowledge.  With that, I would have a classroom discussion board for us to discuss topics outside of school and it would be a place where students could share ideas at any time.  I could post assignments, extra resources, and even reminders on the classroom page/site.  Lastly, I really want a IWB in the classroom.  I love the fact that we can make things so interactive and allow almost any subject to become "hands-on".  I would love to make all of my lessons more interactive and bring in as much technology as I could.  In addition to the classroom blog, I would encourage all of my students to create their own.  This way they can have their own space to share more of their own ideas and it could be a place to keep in touch with classmates and group members.  Of course I'd make room for some meaningful human discussion too.

PSA: Let's stop cyber bullying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og17TnitukQ

I thought this assignment was by far the most fun and coolest tool we've used yet.  With that, I think that making videos like this is important and can be used in the classroom.  Students could easily make these and you could make videos for any unit.  Back to how it went for us though.  Dave and I work very hard on this PSA and put a lot of time into it.  We wrote out a script with a storyboard only after we had used multiple sources to cross-check our statistics that we put in.  We set up a lot of lighting and did a lot of filming to get the right pieces.  After this, we sat down and edited the video many times.  We made a few other versions until we agreed that this was the cleanest and best video we had put together.  We were extremely specific on everything we did and really tried to go above-and-beyond on this assignment.  We took a good amount of time on our script and tossed around other ideas on how we could focus on bullying.  We decided to choose facebook as our primary source.  We did this because more than ever, students are getting facebooks at incredibly young ages.  Also, its extremely easy to use and you can find anyone on it.  We did it as a personal message because it really helped show just how far kids can go by using facebook.

Making this video was benefitial to me.  Not only was it a great way to get a message out there, but now I know how easy it really is to use this activity in a middle school classroom.  These videos could be made about almost anything and can be done relatively quickly.  It would be a nice change of pace during lessons and the videos can be quite powerful.  Our hope is that someone could end up finding this on youtube and actually use it in a presentation.  Overall, I now know that this is a realistic activity to be used in the classroom.

Exit Slip

Todays new learning was our discussion on how to use and how not to use technology in the classroom.  We discussed how there are obvious advantages to using technology in the classroom but it is the end-all be-all to the classroom.  We need to find the correct ways of using technology to its maximum potential, not just use it to use it.  We watched a video on a teacher that integrated many uses of technology in her classroom.  She discussed the multitude of advantages that she sees within her teaching and her students learning.

Chapter 9: Rethinking................

What does it mean?  This question is huge and may not ever be answered fully but as teachers, we can try our best to find what it means for our students.  Technology is always changing and affecting our daily lives.  Education sadly, is not always changing.  We teach newer topics and yes we try to introduce some new technologies, but we are yet to be setting our students up for THEIR future, not our pasts.  With this being said, we need to figure out what all the technology and the changing world means.  There is no right answer per say, but I can assure you that there seems to be more of a current "wrong" answer.  We need to introduce the appropriate technologies in our classrooms to allow our students to have it at their disposal and learn how to use the technology to better their education.  This does not mean stray away from traditional schooling.  I believe that you still need to have discussions to teach students the imporatance of face-to-face communication and I even can say that you need to lecture at times to make sure your students can hold their attention for a set period of time and retain information.  I say this because our college schooling is set up to lecture us and challenge us to listen and soak up information the best we can.  In saying that, we need to introduce multiple technologies and ideas in our classrooms to help our students learn how they learn best.  I believe in finding an appropriate balance in my classroom to help guide my students down their educational paths.  I want them to figure out how they learn best but teach them all forms of learning.

exit slip

In class, we had another discussion group present.  They did a great job of being knowledgable about their area and they did great with discussion.  One thing we learned from their presentation is the "jigsaw" model of discussion and grouping.  I thought this was a great idea since it mixes everyone up and really lets you hear everyone else's view or what they discussed.  Beyond that, we were introduced to communicating with SKYPE and we went over more SMARTboard tips and tricks.  This was very helpful since we have our IWB coming up and it made more sense of what I had to do on Friday at McDill (presented a weather SMARTboard lesson, it went great!).  We were also introduced to our SWOT assignment.  This seems like a very interesting assignment but poses to be a great learning tool.  For this, we will create a screencast of our review of a service or product.  I choose to do Twitter.  With this, I will examine it's strengths and weaknesses.

iRLO: Get to the space station captain!

Once it is all said and done, the iRLO project was a great experience.  I was extremely happy with how it turned out and was suprised as to how easy it actually was, once I got going.  On that note, I put in A LOT of effort into this project.  I had some trouble early on with constructing this project and had trouble using Scratch.  It took me about 2 hours of fooling around with Scratch to finally figure out what and how I could use the tools that it had to provide.  The help videos were big to me.  I'd like to add that even before I started using Scratch, I had made an outline or "script" for my iRLO and tried very hard to make sure that it would meet my choosen core concept.  With designing this, I have a great appreciation of the Scratch program and how powerful this tool can be in the classroom.  I find that this could be a huge activity to introduce into your classroom.  I could make multiples of these covering all types of subjects and allow students to use them for extra practice or to "play" with them if they had finished their school work early.  Using this program has made me realize how easy it is to use technology in your classroom and also, how amazing it is to allow students to learn while giving them instant feedback.

Exit Slip

Today we had our final discussion group which closed out the book.  We have a good discussion on our veiws of the future with technology and keeping education in mind.  After that, we did an activity which had us finding a list of resources and tools that we would use in our classroom.  It challenged our learning of how to find usable resources, while also having us find things meaningful that we can use in the classroom.  It showed us just how easy it if to find resources and tools for a lesson in such a small amount of time.  This also helps stress the importance of using these tools in our classroom and making our students aware of them.

Exit Slip

Today, we discussed improvements we could make to our annotated bibliographies and ways to improve our screencasts.  I feel like my SWOT analysis was well done so I feel that I should have zero problems with it.  If so, I will surely correct them.  We discussed how the IWB is the next project due which reminded me to post it in the dropbox as soon as possible.  We talked about chapter 10 today and we were able to leave early and have a "catch of air" day to relax and work on things that will be due soon.

Podcast

article link:
Goldman to lend $25 million for charter schools

I would say from an effort standpoint that Jim and I put in a lot of time and effort into our podcast.  We read our article through mulitple times and looked up extra information to back-up or discussion and to help define things that the listener may not know (defined charter schools).  We put in a lot of time writing our script and practiced it many times before we even thought of recording it.  Also, we tried some different music and sound effects for our podcast before we finally agreed on a final copy and structure.  We put in a lot of time and were pleased with our finished product.  Making  this podcast was a good experience on how to work together with a new tool and how to communicate what we needed help with.  I would like to create more of these someday for a classroom because once we got going, it wasn't too hard and it will be easy excessable for students and parents.  The podcast is an important tool and you can use it to cover many things such as keeping parents in the loop of whats going on in the classroom or to even post extra information or lecture notes to students to listen to at home for extra help.  Like I said above, this project was tough at times but once we got the ball rolling, it was really simple.

Exit Slip

Todays class seemed extremely long for me.  This was probably because of a massive headache and still some anger from the elections on the 2nd, but we won't get into that on here.  Back to what we did in class though.  We had another discussion group that gave us a great deal of conversation on our approaches to the digital world and how we can use it to better our assessments and change the design of curriculum.  The ideas we shared on how they go hand in hand was very interesting and the article we read on Professor Boyer's Twitter account help put our discussion more in perspective.  The idea of that charter school where the enironment seems very free and inviting is a good thing to look at.  Why isn't that possible on a large scale?  Why aren't there more of these schools?  I thought it was a great way to focus in on student's strengths but still challenging them and helping them to their full potential.  We also discussed some extra tips on how to use scratch.  We discussed better ways to give instruction on how to use it and to allow more time for the learner to read what is going on on the screen.  After this, we discussed the YES TEST for our annotated bibliography.  This was a good thing to discuss because I know for myself, my wiki bibliography was terrible.  This YES TEST is a good way for me to go back and fix this up to make it look more professional and more appealing.  This really helps me get back on the right path to do my technology inquiry wiki.  This project has kind of fallen off with many other things being due sooner.

S.W.O.T.: Twitter

http://www.screencast.com/users/tjone871/folders/Default/media/52b89cd4-4a06-4daa-8f78-8bdf2e44dcc5

For this assignment, I spent a good deal of time researching my topic and putting together my script.  I also made my own Twitter account so I could become familiar with what I was talking about.  I did a few days of reading on  Twitter and put together a well outlined script.  I practiced it many times to get my timing down and too make sure I was as fluent as I could be.  I thought this was a good project and I was happy that I actually read into and expeirenced Twitter before I did anythign with it.  I truly did get to understand how to use it and what it was all about.  I thought the screencast was a good idea and a unique tool to try.  I think this would be a great tool to use to make tutorials for students and show them how to use other tools at their disposal.  Once again, this would be a great tool to use in a classroom and it was very beneficial to learn how to use it.

Ch. 8: Rethinking.............

With all of the advancements in technology, we need to find a way to monitor and "cope" with them.  How can we use these tools to our full potential?  What is their full poetential?  These questions will always have different answers but we can find a happy medium for what we are currently doing.  The idea of using computers for better standardized testing is a cool idea.  It would be great to focus in on all students strengths when testing them as a whole, especially when it could be for state and federal funding or determining their success.  It would be great to specialize the testing to what suits the student best and really challenge them on their skill sets.  Also, the curriculum can be more focused on what the student really enjoys learning about which would also increase their participation in class.  With an array of curriculums, each student could share their area of "specialty" and share this with the class.  The classroom can become an area for all units of studying and can even spark interests for other students.  This would also spark extra learning outside of the classroom.  A big problem is still the "divide" of technology services provided for students.  It is true that some students may not have the same oppurtunities outside of school to continue their learning but, with the standardized testing, they could test high enough to receive funding for more computers.  I like the idea of focusing on a students interests and what they want to be, but you cannot do that all the time in the classroom.  I think I would hold a unit or have a once a week day to work on something related to your interests and aspirations but I feel like you still have to follow a curriculum that is almost the same for every student.  It's not possible to focus on every strength of the student but let them find their strengths and in higher education (college prep-college classes) and then focus your learning on it.  Students of all ages constantly change what they want to learn and what they want to be.  It isn't fair or possible to always change your approach year in and year out with every single student. 

Ch. 7: Rethinking

It is true that there are large differences in education and oppurtunity from school to school.  It is also true that this is even more prevelant in the technology aspect.  We see the arguement based on the gap in technology from school to school.  If we do not have a level playing field, how can everyone be on the same page or pace?  Surely, we want and agree that education should be equal for everyone and that every student should have the same oppurtunities.  The reality is that this just is not true.  We have a "digital divide" and we must fix this.  Our problem is that money just cannot be distriputed equally because most elites do not want to do this.  If we can figure this out, we know that learning will surely become more engaging for our modern students.  They are used to seeing computer screens all the time and always using some type of device be it a cellphone or an MP3 player.  With new technology, we are seeing new modes of learning.  Learning outside of the school has increased greatly and students can "specialize" in any subject they'd like on their own or even be homeschooled.  One huge benefit to me is the fact that we can customize learning to the student with computers.  We can give them all the support they need and allow them to get hints or work at a slower or faster pace.  We can adapt to each and every student.  The idea to me of using computers to tailor the learning to each student is great.  We can challenge everyone in a way that works for that student.  Also, they have the ability to learn even more outside of school which could open up many outlets for projects and special topics.  I would love to encourage learning outside of the classroom and give my students any advantage they can get.  Even with this "digital divide", we can use every tool at our disposal to expand our students oppurtunities.  Also, we can look for grants to improve our schools to lessen this divide.

Chapter 10: Blogs.......

I thought this was a great way to end the book and leave us thinking again, but using what we've read and learned.  In the end, this just continues to back up my thoughts on embracing technology in the classroom and, even if you don't want it, you almost have to have it.  The world is rapidly changing and so is education.  The last 2 sections of this book did a great job of wrapping everything up and putting the ball in our court.  I found it amazing throughout all of this to have learned just how rapidly technology is transforming education.  The idea of a new way of being literate is almost weird to me but it is true.  We need to be editors of the web, be publishers of the content, and most importantly, we need to share it with everyone.  Learning is worldwide and we now have, more than ever, more ways of sharing what we know with the world.  I especially liked the focus on the big shifts of literacy and education at the end.  The content is more open than ever and students can learn anything they want outside of school; all they have to do is go online and find a resource.  With this, learning has become an every mintue thing, or as the book put it, "24/7".  This is a benefit for teachers also.  We can share ideas with other teachers and even use their ideas.  We can find alternative resources to use in the classroom.  Audiences have also expanded.  Students can now share their works and ideas with other students and have an expanding universe.  Their work is truly never "finished" because others can look at it and critique it, give ideas to the publisher.  We are able to share our ideas with the whole work and the whole world can use our ideas.  The epilogue is a great way to show a modern classroom and not only the tools you can use, but how to use them and how beneficial they can be.  This all just seems to back up my ideas of using technology as much as I can.  It backs up the idea of simplicity but also, why all of this is so important.  We need to set our students up for their future and by doing that, we must use everything we can that they might encounter.  We have to face the fact that a book just doesn't cut it if a student wants to learn a fact instantly or share something with a large audience.  I honestly don't think I'll do anything differently as a teacher.  I would like to have a classroom just like Tom McCale.

Ch. 6; Rethinking............

In this chapter, we were exposed to the 3 eras of education.  For me, this seemed to go hand-in-hand with chapter 4 that included the main reasons that we have a universal schooling sytstem.  This chapter was pretty dry but very helpful.  As we know, technology is becoming a bigger part in our schooling everyday.  With this, it seems like we lose a human touch but at the same time, the whole idea of schooling is changing.  No longer are parents the teachers, we teach to "learn how to learn", we set students up with what they need to know in the future, our culture effects what we teach and how we teach, people of all ages can continue to attend school, and we can attend school almost everywhere at any time.  This seems to be a lot to handle and take in, but this is what is happening to "schooling".  As we see today, we are shifting more towards parents holding the responsibility of their child's learning.  This is because we are moving towards making the learning "individualized" and teaching what they want to learn.  If a child want's to learn something that just isn't covered at the moment in school, they can do distance learning or even teach themselves with all the resources they now have.  We also see now that teens tend to stray from what is taught in schools to learn what they specifically want to learn.  If someone wants to know more about a trade such as carpentary, they will go out and learn on their own and almost ditch the school curriculum.  Beyond that, we don't have enough time to even teach young adults what they may need to know later on in life.  This is because everything is moving so fast.  With this in mind, I will have to do things differently as a teacher.  I will have to find out what they really need to know.  To do this, I may have to talk to someone in my district and find out what is truly important and what should be focused on.  With that, I will try to incorporate ways to keep their attention on what is going on in school and use tools that they will need to know how to use.  All of this just makes the push for more technology in the classroom even greater.  We need technology to stay up to date with what is going on and to accurately teach our students what they really need to know.

Ch. 9, Blogs..........

In this chapter, social networks were discussed.  When I think of social networks, I instantly think of Facebook and pretty much nothing else.  For me and for almost every other college student, Facebook is primarly used to talk to friends, post whats on your mind, and pretty much "stalk" anyone and everyone while learning more about them.  In the chapter though, social networks were discussed including Facebook and Ming.  I will discuss Facebook primarly since that is the hottest and most relevant one right now.  With Facebook, teachers and schools run into many problems.  Students may be sharing too much with everyone and it eliminates any area of privacy.  Also, this tool opens up avenues for bullying and too much "gossip".  Truly, Facebook is used in a non-school and social role.  Yet, students use it in school to stay away from school.  This is a large problem in schools and it is mostly prohibited in most schools.  But what if we could use Facebook to our advantage?  I like the idea of creating a private Facebook "site" or page for your classroom.  As discussed, almost all students have an account and what is a better way to get them better in-tune with school than to take over their main social outlet?  With this, you can probe their thinking outside of class, keep them involved in what is going on in school, and you can even lead discussions online.  A great advantage of this is that kids that usually are shy, can becoem out-spoken and open us on an online discussion.  This allows the sharing of ideas with everyone and really helps focus them back onto school instead of "who friended me".  I love the idea of using their main social outlet as a schooling device.  I look to teach 7th grade and I for sure will make a page for my classroom.  This way, I can post discussion topics, challenge their thinking outside of school, and keep them up to date on what is going on or whats due (they can't tell you they didn't know since all they do is sit on Facebook!).  I will use Facebook for sure.  Also, I will never befriend a student because that is extremely wrong.

Ch. 8: Blogs, Wikis........

I really liked reading this chapter because it was on a technology that I've been curious about for a while and that would be podcasting.  It was interesting to learn about how it started and mostly, how easy it is to do.  I never really realized it was that easy to construct a podcast.  With this, it is even easier to see now that you can easily use it in your classroom.  In earlier posts, I discussed using this as a way to keep parents caught up on what their kids are doing in class but with it's simplicity, I can have students use it to share their ideas with each other and even other children from all over the country.  I feel like you could make this into a great assesment tool or even an ongoing project.  In a middle school classroom, you could assign students to lead a podcast every week for the class or even start a partnership with another school and have "dueling podcasts" on a picked topic.  Along with this, I was interested in the video publishing section of the reading.  When I was in school, we did some of this but it was mainly just making videos and sharing them.  Now, kids are able to make videos with very little effort and can publish it to the whole world.  For some schools, this is a problem as it was discussed in the book.  Even if you do not have students produce their own videos for class, I liked the tools that were given for teachers to use in the classroom to show safe videos (teachertube).  If we could find a way for students to use the video tools they have, that would be great.  As for screencasting, I was a bit lost by it even after watching the video.  I understand the point of putting narration to photos, but it seemed like a slideshow.  Overall though, these are all great tools that can and should be used in classrooms.  For my classroom, I would love to use podcasts for my students and have them use them also.  I want my students to use all the tools at their disposal but use them safely.  With doing this, they still will be learning but they will be using the tools that they will see in their future.

Exit Slip

At the start of class we were introduced to the iPad that Mr. Boyer had recently purchased.  The iPad looked to be really cool and that it could do quite a bit.  It seemed like a pretty good tool and that it seemed to be versatile.  After that, we had our chapter 5 discussion leaders.  We broke into groups and discussed an area in the book and evaluated it with pros and cons (we had workplace learning).  The discussion in our small group was very good but I felt that the large group discussion was slow and almost absent.  I really would have liked to talk about all of the topics rather than just one.  I'm sure this had more to do with the amount of time we had.  After this, we evaluated their presentation and we were shown the notes that were taken on the iPad.  The note idea seems like a good idea on there since you can carry it anywhere but it would be even cooler if you were able to actually write on the screen and have it turned into text.  One thing I learned right away is that you should also write out your directions in addition to saying them so your peers/students can see the directions and expectations in case they forget.  We went over scratch again today and learned a bit more about how to create our iRLO with it.  It seems like a very interesting program but I'm feeling a bit lost with my IWB.

Ch. 5 Rethinking

I thought out of all of our readings so far that this was the most interesting.  I liked how the book gave us an overview of almost every alternative schooling outlet and gave us information that we didn't know (at least that I didn't know).  I was very surprised to hear that homeschooled kids did better on standardized testing even if they had a parent with a low educational background.  The section on workplace learning made sense to me and I agree with it.  I feel like if you need additional learning in your career that it should be provided at your workplace (if they expect it from you, expect it from them).  I liked the idea of distance education especially if its a program that you cannot get at your school.  I find this to be really good because you can share your ideas with people from all over the place and get additional views on the content you are learning.  This is benefitial in many ways other than schooling but I like the idea of being able to learn anything you want from anywhere you want, even if it is from someone all the way across the country.  Adult education sounds interesting for seasoned learners who want to continue their education and gives them an outlet that fits them a little better.  Learning Centers are benefitial but I think they should only be used for additional help or additional learning, not as a primary source.  The technological ways (videos, tv, computer, etc.) also seem like an advantage for additional learning or for people who just can't make it to a classroom.  It seems like something good for distance learning or for summer classes, but I don't think it could work for me as a full time thing.  If that's what works for others, thats fine but I could never use those ideas as my sole source of teaching or learning.  At the end of all of this, I feel that a lot of these ideas are good, for additional learning.  If someone chooses one of these alternative ways, thats great.  To me though, I feel like you need the school community that is real like a building with real classrooms and real people that are face-to-face.  To me, you just get more out of a traditional school especially the social aspect of school.  I still think technology is important in the school environment though.  I think I would like to introduce something with the distance learning into my classroom such as having a pen-pal via the internet or even encourage learning centers for children to go to for extra help if they need it.  Also, I would like learning in the workplace because if I need to learn something new as a teacher, I want it to be done by my school.  One thing that I will do differently with this is encourage something like a distance learning project or incorporate possible summer activities online for future students or past students to stay on top of schooling.

Chapter 7 Blogs

I think Flickr sounds like a really cool program to use in a classroom whether its used in a lesson or if the students are using it for an assignment or for a project.  I really liked the fact that you are able to bring out more detail into the pictures and discuss it more in-depth.  Also, I like the idea that the 4th grade teacher used of having virtual guest speakers.  I think it sounds like a cool program to bring pictures almost to life and make lessons more interesting.  It's a way to have virtual fieldtrips and bring more creativity, technology, and fun into the classroom.  I really like the reading and all of the ideas that were in the chapter and how to use Flickr.  The reading really gets the wheels turning in my head and opens up a lot of oppurtunities to use the program.  I think this just makes me want to use the program in a classroom and find ways to get the kids to use it too.  I really liked the idea of the virtual fieldtrips and the guest speakers to liven up the classroom and to bring pictures to life.  I think it would be great to show kids how to use Flickr and have them be able to create projects with the program and critique the photos more in-depth.  With this new idea, I will do more "fun" things in my lessons.  I will do more mini-field trips to link the lesson to something they may already know.  I could bring in a guest speaker for a small amount of time.  The program is exciting to me and I can't wait to use it.

Exit Slip, Oct. 7th

Today we discussed our IRLO assignment and what our expectations were for this assignment.  We discussed ways of making lessons more interactive and how to get and give better feedback.  With this, we were introduced to the program, "Scratch".  The program is meant to allow us to create an interactive way of teaching a lesson while giving instant feedback to the student.  What was really cool about the program is that we can create a lesson and the child may use it anywhere as long as they had an internet connection at home (there is a scratch community that we can save our lessons to).  This is not only a free program but allows us to make an activity that can target on exactly the student needs to work on.  I thought all of this was really cool since it gives them instant feedback and helps the learning feel more like a game.  This could expand the classroom quite a bit and you could use this as an activity for children who get done with classwork early and need something to focus on that is still constructive.  Also, my group presented chapter 4 today.  It went alright.  I learned that the SMART board is a lot easier to use than I thought earlier and that it's fun to talk in front of people no matter what the age.

Exit slip

Today, we discussed our technology inquiry questions and did an overview of our interactive whiteboard lesson.  The assignment sounds like it will be pretty fun and I look forward to learning how to use the SMARTboard for the lesson.  The idea of putting together the lesson and doing it for the class seems really cool and a good way to learn how to use everything at SMART's disposal.  The only thing is that I now need to figure out a benchmark to use for the lesson.  I learned a lot more about how to use the SMART technology and that makes me feel much better about the assignment.

Ch. 4

This chapter was a bit different for me.  I thought it was interesting to learn about some history/changes in American Schooling through time.  It gives you a better appreciation of what you are getting into and opens your eyes and makes you think, "How much further can we go?"  It feels a bit overwhelming at times to think of all the changes that can come up so fast, but we must embrace all of this.  It will be to our advantage to adapt and it will benefit our students.  We all know that there will be more changes in schooling and its exciting to almost see it happen right in front of us.  The reading though makes me feel that technology is even more important than ever in the classroom.  Yes we know that we will eventually have to learn to use even more types of technology, but its always going to be there.  It proves that you can almost do anything with technology in your classroom.  You can use things to increase participation, cause more in-depth thinking, and teach them the newest tools out there.  The reading makes it aware that schooling is always changing and technology in the classroom is the next "revolution".  From this chapter, I will want to learn everything there is for technology in my classroom.  I, as a teacher, will want to be up to date on knowing how to use everything and learn how to incorporate it into my lessons.

Ch. 3

In this chapter, the discussion of how technologies so far haven't really changed schooling and how it is hard to not only get the funding for them but how to use them, really interested me.  I agree that certain technologies haven't really "expanded" the classroom like they have been expected to do and I also understand that there is a gap in who will get to use the technology (hard to get everyone on the same level).  Also, it does make some sense that it is hard to manage your classroom with all of the new technology that is out there when most all the kids will know more about the use of it than you will.  It also does make sense that you cannot replace teachers because they have that "human touch" and can do many things a computer never can.  Also, it is hard to disagree with students undermining your authority when they feel like they can learn better on their own and don't have to listen to a person that is not on a screen.  All of this makes sense to me but the main thing is how to get everyone on the same page here with technology.  Is there enough funding to get all schools caught up?  Maybe not, but I do believe that you do have to use the most up to date items in your classroom to prepare your students for their futures.  I will take all of this information into consideration and find a way to manage my classroom appropriatly even with the expanded use of technology.  I want to blend all of this together and give my students the best that they can get.  I will give everyone equal oppurtunity and make sure that they know that you can learn withouth an electronic device at times.  I want to have this challenge and look forward to facing it.  I want to re-invent how parents think they're children learn.  Not only will they use technology but they will learn how to talk in front of each other, expand discussion, and continue to do hands-on learning.

Chapter 2 late post!

After reading "The technology enthusiasts' argument", there are many things to think of with the topic at hand.  I would agree with the fact that some aspects of schooling seem to be "lost in time" and haven't changed a whole lot at all.  I do agree with this but I have a different view on why.  I think the reason it hasn't changed isn't because we don't want to, but because the people who taught our current teachers, they taught them how schooling was when they were students and so on.  With that, it seems like we are stuck in a sad cycle of teaching other teachers and students about our past and teaching them the way we were taught.  I believe we should teach them for the future, particularly their future.  This does not mean throw away all books and never to longhand math problems again, but it does mean that we have to prepare our students for their future's, not our pasts.  As we discuss and read even more, I see that technology is vital to the new classroom and that we need to use it.  Once again, this does not mean that I will "clean house" on teaching.  You need to know when to use technology and how it is connected to what they're learning.  I look forward to using technology in my classroom and teaching my students many tools that they can use to improve their learning.  I look to find a nice balance between technology and traditional schooling.  I would like to show my students ways to grab eachother's attentions by doing presentations that aren't powerpoints or a poster.  I want to find better ways of assesment such as clickers or using the smartboard like we do in class.  Anything to get them to use technology in a fun yet educational way.

Growing Up Online

Watching "Growing Up Online" was a very scary but true message.  As shown in the videos, kids are connected almost all the time no matter where they are.  With this, you cannnot control what they do, who they talk to, or do the basics to protect your child from danger.  Technology is a double-edged sword.  It it a great tool to expand your horizons and learn to use new outlets to share ideas and gain more knowledge but at the same time, its a way to get into serious trouble and change who you are for the worst.  All of this changes how a student learns.  It shortens their attention spans, allows them to learn outside of class or learn something complete different while you're right in front of them.  Other downsides are bully.  Children now "need" technology to learn.  To me, it does not even seem possible that elementary kids now could ever sit in a college lecture someday for 2 hours at a time.  I sometimes struggle with this but know when I have to pay attention.  My fear is that they will never fully learn how to pay attention without some kind of screen or a program to do everything for them.  I still know that we need technology to teach our students and to help them remember what they are learning.  There are ways to prevent cheating with sparknotes and to have them focus in school.  The biggest problem to me is what happens outside of school.  Do parents regulate what their kids look at or who they talk to?  Do they even communicate with family members through speaking?  Do parents even care?  These are things that I cannot control.  Yes, I can do whatever I can in my classroom to help them learn but what effect the outside world has with technology is not controlled by myself.  In my classroom I will NOT allow social networks to be open.  I will not allow ipods or music devices to be out and I will never allow phones to be used for anything personal.  There are things that I will do.  I will encourage use of video, use of a SMARTBOARD, I will use technology to grasp and keep their attention.  At the same time, I will have students learn to use these technologies and expand their horizons.

Chapters 1-3 of Blogs and Wikis

This reading makes me think many things about how I want my classroom environment and message to be.  It also makes the role of technology even stronger in schools.  I do believe that you need to use up to date technologies in your classroom not only to benefit the students, but to progress as a teacher.  Technology in the classroom has come so far since I was in elementary school (only 15 years ago) and it's crazy to think of how far it will be in another 15 years.  Children now days have access to many forms of media and technology everyday; be it at school, at home, or at a friends house.  Since they are always bombarded with such things, it only seems logical that they would excel by using technology in the classroom.  The main objective here is to teach kids something valueble that they can use and teach it in a way that they will remember it.  If you believe that the kids will remember your unit on the Revolutionary War by reading a textbook then doing a video presentation or some other media outlet, then thats what you should do.  For my classroom, I will look to teach my students in the best way possible.  This does not mean that I will completely throw away the textbook and the discussions but I can add new technologies into my teaching.  I can have my students learn to blog their ideas and share them with each-other.  You can assign groups to do a fun podcast once a week to share a topic with other students.  One thing I really want to incorporate would be the Kindle.  It would be awesome to allow your students to have any book they want at their fingertips at all times.  If you're teaching older students, you could have them do a text question of the day just to spice up topic.  All of this allows the students to interact socially but also by using new technology and technology that they already use everyday.  Remember, my main focus is to teach my students what they need to know, but do it in ways that will help them remember it for good.  If my students learn better by discussing a topic then sharing it electronically or with a different media outlet, then so be it.

Exit Slip

Today we learned some tools for the SmartBoard.  We also had a good, long discussion on or readings from the Preface and Chapter 1.  We had some good discussions and shared our opinions on the importance of education in public schools and how this will affect the future of public schools.  The SmartBoard overview was very nice.  It was cool to learn how to use simple tools that help advance a presentation.  This was very helpful since our Ed. Psych class is having us use this technology for presentations without ever showing us how to use it.  This was all very helpful and it was nice to share and hear oppossing views on our readings.

"Look at the tree octopus!"

Upon viewing these amazing and truely "educational" sites, it is easy to see how students can read anything on the web and believe it.  Many students think of the internet as the one, true source for any question they have.  One big problem is that even with a lot of really good, reliable sites out there, there are many that are just made up and false.  For me, I would teach kids the old way of finding out if something is true.  First of all, I would introduce them to something they may have never seen, a book! (Note: They have seen books, this was just saracasm.)  I would teach them to use other supplies at their disposal.  First, I would teach them to search in their library for other multiple, "credible" resources on what they are looking up.  More than likely if there is not any hard literature on the subject, then it is more than likely false.  Beyond that, you can teach them ways of finding credibility online.  You can teach your students to use powerful tools such and EbscoHost or even go onto National Geographic if is contains anything with animals like the tree octupus.  I would teach the importance of finding multiple sources that are from different resources such as a book, an encyclopedia, a newspaper, a magazine, and then a website.  Also, they could speak to experts or do interviews.  For the octopus, they could call someone from the zoo and for MLK Jr. and the Explorers, they could look in a published history book.  I would teach my students to be well rounded; the more credible sources, the better.

Exit Slip from last week

The new learning that I took away from class was how to use my delicious account better and to be more organized.  I learned with this, that I can save multiple resources and have them at my fingertips at anytime.  With this, I can share my tools and look at others to use for my own education.  This helps with keeping up on organization and really expanding your ideas while sharing them with others.  I like the class wiki since we all have our stuff on one place and it makes it much easier to get to everyone else's stuff if you need to use some of their resources or just read up on their blog.

Preface and Chapter 1

I found chapter 1 to be very insightful and raise many questions.  Like everyone and especially anyone going into teaching, I am curious and a bit scared of technology.  As discussed in the chapter, technology is always changing and giving people more power at their finger-tips.  It is true that people can learn anything they want from almost anywhere at anytime.  Like anything with technology though, this is good and bad.  I agree that schools must adapt with the growth of technology and give our students the tools that will be useful in and outside of school.  It is important to incorporate ideas and technologies that are relevant.  At the same time though, you should not abandon the traditional American schooling.  We must put the two together somehow.  You need technology to help the students learn in new ways and show them how to use what is available for them.  This also allows them to learn more out of school.  Also, you need traditional schooling to teach things that you just can't get from a computer or phone.  Without schooling you miss out on learning how to be social, build self-confidence, meet friends, learn to speak and interact with others, discipline, and the most basic tool of all, listening and comprehending.  I agree that technology must be used in schools but it should not replace teachers or the normal way of schooling but come together as one and give our students what they need.  As I become a teacher, I will learn to incorporate new technologies into my classroom.  This does not mean that I will abandon books and writing and choose cellphones over everything else, but I will use the technology that is vital for children to learn to use.  You can use podcasts to put extra teaching online for students to reach or for parents to see what you're up to.  You can start a blog to challenge thinking outside of school and share your ideas anywhere and at anytime.  I will use technology hand-in-hand with traditional schooling.

Exit Slip

I took away a few things from todays class.  We learned how to use a few new good tools that we can use in our classroom.  It was really nice to learn about delicious.  This will help with better organization of teaching materials but also help expand what you are able to do in the classroom.  It is nice to have all of the sites that you need in one place and in a nice order so it's easy to find anything whenever you need it; plus you can always add new tools all the time.  I thought it was nice to get the class calendar today; that will really help with my organization and help with my confusion of when things are due.  The class wiki is a good idea since we will all be in one area which makes it easier to get to blogs and other peoples materials.  One thing I do not like about this is that it takes people really long to just add their information.  Today I learned more about organization and how its key.  Delicious will really help with this so I'm happy we learned about that.

Digital Autobiography

http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/02caa13d2a

I did not have to exert too much effort on this task but then again, it was more fun than usual homework so it didn't seem like I had to do a whole lot.  It was fun to do something like this but I wasn't able to get any music put onto it.

The value in completing this task is that I was given the oppurtunity to use a new program and expand my understanding of using something visual besides a powerpoint.

This impacts my future teaching by showing me that I have many other ways of showing a visual aid.  This also helps me understand how others may learn and how to help them learn through this tool, be it they make their own or watch one of these "videos".

First Class Questions: What does technology mean to you? (nothing exciting to read)

1. Technology to me means the use and integration of the most recent and up-to-date programs and software to help anyone with any task (i.e. typing, playing music, etc.). The word to me means any advancement that makes life easier or gives you a new approach to things.


2. Technology integration would be finding ways to use it in the classroom and ways to use it to benefit the learner; be that for reading, writing, or any arts classes. It could have many different looks. One could be teaching kids how to type or even basic programs that help them learn.