Reflection Post

Reflecting on any life experience can be beneficial. It gives us an opportunity to step back and look at a situation from the outside. When I step back and look at the experience I had in taking this course I am flooded with thoughts. Not only was this course fun and easy to enjoy, but it was also challenging, thought provoking and pushed me the limits on my technological knowhow. I was definitely a little weary about the whole Blogger assignment when it was first given. But now, sitting here writing my final blog posting I have to say it was an overall great learning experience. It forced me to analyze the material I was reading the book and gave me an opportunity to see how beneficial many of the topics and technologies we discussed can be in my future classrooms. This was a great way to integrate the learning objective of critical thinking into a fun and useful internet tool.

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The blog was not my only concern when reviewing the syllabus that first week of class. I was also very hesitant to do group work in a class that only meets once a week. It is difficult enough to cultivate successful projects on your own let alone organize and structure a project with 3 or 4 other people when you all are on different schedules. But, after doing the collaborative lesson plan assignment I realized that even though it was a challenge is made me feel much more capable of working with others from a distance using technology. This took care of the technology/information management learning objective that was discussed in the syllabus.

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The last comment I have to make about this course is that I never expected to retain so many of the resources shown to me throughout the course. I look forward to using sites such as Wikispaces, Google groups, Blogger, Delicious, Livebinders, Prezi, Rubistar, Questgarden, and many of the other great sites we were taught to use this semester. I can’t wait to discover more great ways to integrate technology into my future classroom and use all the great tools I have learned in this class! Thank you to not only my fabulous professor, but also to the great group of peers I had the privilege of working with this semester as well.

 

So to close I just want to say....

 

 

Journal #11

Digital Portfolios and the Importance of Starting Early

As a future educator, it is important to understand the purpose and importance of putting together a digital portfolio. A digital portfolio is a great way to showcase your skills in technology before even beginning at a new job. It is a great way to stand out among other applicants for any positions you might be applying for as a technologically savvy educator. Most people in the education world will admit that there is a great value in being able to seamlessly integrate technology into your classroom. Not only should you as a teacher have a digital portfolio but it is also a great idea to cultivate digital portfolios with each of your students as well. There is a great blog posting I found from the Getting Smart blog that discusses the merit in developing digital portfolios with your students.

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In the post the author, Kathy Cassidy, discusses the success she has found in developing digital portfolios, via a blogging platform, with the six year olds that she teaches. These online portfolios are a collection of all of the students work from reading to math. It is an age old practice to collect and organize your student’s projects to track their process, she has just modernized the process by taking these portfolios digital. It is a great way to keep parents as involved as possible when they can just log on to their child’s digital portfolio and see exactly what their child has been achieving at school. She also discusses how the students tend to put more effort into their projects when they know it is not only their teacher that is going to see their work, but also anyone who can access their blog. She says it can be a great motivator.

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Creating a blog at such a young age is also a great gateway to discuss many important issues like making sure that you aren’t posting any personal information on the web. The fact that we live in an increasingly digital world is something that we can’t deny. The post states, “Children need to learn early that it is important to present yourself well online and some of the ways that can be done.” Honestly, I really couldn’t agree more. I look forward to using this knowledge in my future classrooms.

The video below is a great example of a teacher using technology to explain the importance of a digital portfolio.

 

Journal #8

Taking an in depth look at another educator's blog can not only help you understand them better, it will also be a great learning tool on how to improve your blog. As with all new mediums, the more you view and critique, the deeper your understanding with them becomes.

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For this blog post I will be analyzing and critiquing Kathy Schrock’s blog.

The first thing that I notice when I open her blog is that it is very minimalist in design. The background is white and the writing is in a fairly average black font. As I scan through the first several blog posts I notice that she has lots of pictures and other graphics that spice up the look of the blog more so than the actual page design. In each post she has at the very least three multimedia items whether they be videos, pictures, or something else entirely. She uses hyperlinks regularly that link out to the specific things she is discussing- jsut as we have been taught to do. I was scrolling down and realized that there was virtually no end to her blog.

Journal #9

Critiquing: "7 Degrees of Connectedness" K-12 online Conference

Getting Connected

The entire video was set up on a bulletin board that would zoom into different clips and portions of the video, which was a really creative way to transition from portion to portion of the interviews. It was also was really entertaining that the video was set in the format of a walk around the speaker's, Rodd Lucier, neighborhood in Ontario. It made it such a conversational type. The video then flashed to a real teacher named Jessica Swift. She spoke about her experience with beginning to use Twitter. It was really interesting that she was so nervous to connect with people and yet she ended up making such strong relationships with other educators despite her reservations.

Rodd then brought up podcasting. There was a testimonial from a guy named Mark about his experience with podcasting. He went from being a listener to Rodd's Teacher 2.0, to being someone who interacted with others through their podcasts, and now he actually produces his own podcast to practice connectedness.

Then the bulletin board brings us to another associate of Rodd's that he met while traveling in China. This portion talks about how helpful Instagram can be. He sums it up very short and sweet by simply saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, so one post on Instagram is lie an entire paragraph on a blog.

Journal #7

This week I again decided to go with the alternative choice for my journal post. Having done so many posts on the chapters I am excited to get a chance to do this assignment another way. So, I have found an educational game that I will be able to use in my future classroom

I wasn't exactly sure where to look for these sorts of games so I started in the most basic way I knew, typing "educational games" into Google. Ahhh, good old Google. I of course was over loaded with over 100,000,000 results but after exploring the top fix or six choices I decided that I wanted to choose a game from the Nobel Prize site I found. Not only did the "Nobel Prize" in the name of the site make me think it was a respectable site to use in a classroom, but it was also a ".edu" versus a ".com". Which, as we discussed in class is another way of weeding out unreliable sources.

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 There were many different games listed on this site, many of which were involved with earth sciences or anatomy. Since I am going to school to be an English teacher those games did not interest me as much. It wasn't until I came across the "Lord of the Flies Game" that I knew what I was going to do. The game is very professionally designed, presented, and organized. It is set up as an island with many different locations you can go visit. Each location has different activities that quiz the students knowledge of important quotes, character traits, symbolism, plot details, setting, and other knowledge the students should have ascertained while reading the book, The Lord of the Flies by WIlliam Golding. Not only did each section quiz the students on different aspects of the books but the games were designed in different ways as well. Some were matching, some were fill in the blank, and even true and false. They weren't your average quizzes though, they were set up like tree climbs or battles between two characters. at the end you get rates on a scale of one to five butterflies.

After reading this novel with your class over the course a few weeks this game would definitely be useful. I think this would be a great tool to use as a study tool that you could encourage the children to do in class with partners. Not only would they be "tricked" into having fun while they studied, but they also have a great way to review from home if they come across any trouble with the game when they play it in class. Below I have provide a brief video that summarizes this book so you can explore this educational game even if you haven't read the entire book!! Have fun! (you may even accidently learn something in the process )

Journal #6

Webquest, What's That?!

Instead of writing another blog post about my most recent chapter I decided to do something a little different. I looked into different Webquests designed around technology.

You may be asking yourself, what is a Webquest? I know this is exactly what I was asking myself when I was first given this option for my week six journal. So, I decided to do a little digging. According to the Webquest homepage that is linked above, a Webquest is "an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web."

Now that you know what a Webquest is, a little history lesson. It all began when an educator named Bernie Dodge- with the help of colleague and friend Tom March, formed the model in 1995, within the walls of San Diego State University where they were both employed. Since its inception thousands and thousands of teachers all over the world have embraced this new way of integrating lessons into the 21st century mind set.

The Creators

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I looked at a Webquest designed by Melissa Fox for 3rd to 5th grade students. It is basically designed to teach them basic computer parts. It's introduction states, "Do you know what a computer is? Do you know it has special parts? Do you know what these can do for you?". While exploring the different tabs of the Webquest I found that it left much to be desired. The information given was very vague and the pictures used were very generic and poorly spaced. I thought that it would have been better suited for students in 1st or 2nd grade, rather than 3rd to 5th as she suggested. When she listed the different parts of the computer she listed on part as "blank paper" which is used to put into the printer. I thought that could have definitely been omitted. I think even first graders know what blank paper is. I also found that she used the same graphics more than once on different tabs. There are so many different photo sites available to anyone with access to the internet that I thought it was interesting she reused the same fix or six graphics.


Below is a video on how to create a Webquest if anyone is interested in making their own. Maybe it will be more successful than the one I have critiqued above.

Journal #5

Summary:
Using the internet for research is certainly not a new idea. I think that integrating the internet into your teaching style is a natural response when you have grown up in a technological world like my generation has. I have used tools from Ask Jeeves to online presentation websites like Prezi I have always integrated online research and tools into my educational assignments. So its an easy transition to think of using it in a teaching capacity. I thought that some of the statistics given in this weeks chapter were a little shocking. Like only 52% of internet users know how to judge the objectivity of an online source. This really made me question whether or not I can properly judge it or not. It also said that only 35% of online users know how to properly narrow down and overly broad search. This doesn't surprise me as much since there is so much information available online and there is only so many ways that you can narrow down your choices properly.
Using the internet is always a good way to start but the big problem that educators need to discuss in their classrooms when teaching it is the act of plagiarism. Since everything online is able to be copied and pasted onto your own work like a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation it is so incredibly important to teach your students how to properly site the information they are given. Although plagiarism has always been an issue, with the use of online resources the chance of doing so is so much greater because its a simple right click away instead of a tedious task with a pencil.

Tech Tool 5.1:
Photo and Audio Resources on the web are something that people are using more and more ofter now that the web is integrated into so many facets of our everyday life. Flickr, Photobucket, ad Shutterbug are just some of the hundreds of photo websites that are available for public use today. They are usually completely free and make it easy to share photos from any location instead of storing them on your hard drive. It even makes it easier to share them on websites you design or blogs like this one.

Focus Question:
What are search engines and how do they work?
According to our text book which is sited in journal posting one below, search engines are software programs that use networks of computers to access information about a topic from it's databases. So they are basically sites used to retrieve information from the internet in an easy way. There are many different search engines you can choose to use but according to a study done in 2007 Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL are the most popular search engines used and account for 95% of online searches done world wide. However, Microsoft has recently introduced a new search engine called Bing, which is now used approximately as often as each of the ones I listed before.

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Journal #4

Summary:

Chapter Four; Integrating Technology and Creating Change

Integrating technology into our classrooms is something that we can either fight or embrace. Once you decide how to you feel about it you need to realize, that it doesn't really matter. All joking aside its something that regardless of a teachers thoughts on the matter has to be integrated into our teaching methods and even classroom organization. Personally I look forward to implementing some of the exciting technological tools that this chapter, as well as this entire coarse has shared with me

Tech Tool:

Edutopia

After exploring this most recent tech tool I was pleasantly surprised to have found yet another useful tool to use in my future classrooms. This site organized great articles, links, photographs, and blogs by grade level and subject matter. It is neat to think that if you are a third grade math teacher you can connect and learn along with other 3^rd grade math teachers that are posting and sharing their thoughts on activities and articles that pertain to your specific age group and subject matter. The About Us portion of the site helped for a good picture of the minds behind this site. It is said that the goal of the site is to “transform the learning process by helping educators implement the strategies such as: empowering students to think critically, access and analyze information, creatively problem solve, work collaboratively, and communicate with clarity and impact”. One of the most interesting things I came across was this video on collaborative learning.

Focus Question:

How does technology promote educational change?

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Since change is happening all around the world, every second, of every day, the most direct impact that technology has that promote educational change is the enabling of communication. Educational social networking sites allow teachers from the entire world to communicate with one another and share thoughts and ideas that innovate other teachers’ approaches. Educational publications that are posted via the internet spread faster than they ever would have without the technology we have access to and the touch of a button. We can use our cell phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers to access up to date information on any curriculum we’d like to look at. In my opinion the impact technology has on communication is its biggest factor in influencing change not only education but in nearly everything. People are the facilitators or change and when people can share the changes they see around them and access the information others share about their changing worlds the possibilities are endless.

Journal #3

Summary:

Chapter 3; Developing Lessons with Technology

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This chapter had a lot of interesting points to it. The overall conclusion that I came to is technology is the educational innovation of our time. It is something that cannot be ignored. We have to embrace the use of technology in our classrooms in whatever manner we see fit. But, however we decide to integrate it into our teaching style; we need to make sure to balance it with the tried and true analog methods as well. Whether it’s using technology to discover what to teach, how to teach it, or to track the students’ progress we really have an obligation to our students to embrace what technology offers and share its benefits with them. We live in an increasingly digitalized world and not taking technology and all the tools it offers into the classroom would be a detriment to not only our students but also ourselves and efficient educators.

Tech Tool:

Verizon Thinkfinity

Verizon Thinkfinity is a really amazing tool. Although it doesn’t publish much of its’ own educational tools or articles it is a great place to start. It is basically a place you can go if you are interested in educational programs and websites to use in your classroom. Their resources link gives you all sorts of different portals to full websites like National Geographic Education, EconEdLink, EDSITEment, and many other credible and useful sights. They also give you more specific links that lead you to articles and activities within the websites listed above. For example under the EDSITEment link they have a hyperlink to an article titled, “It Came from Greek Mythology”. Regardless of what you use this site to access it is hard to deny its usefulness to any educator or student.

Focus Question:

What is meant by “lesson development using technology”?

Lesson development is something that by the name alone is very obviously a necessary part of a successful classroom. The book describes it as the center to the work that every teacher does. It describes three parts to lesson development; what to teach, how to teach, and how to know what your students have learned. When I think about it broken down like this its importance becomes even more prominent. If a teacher doesn’t grasp how to successfully develop a lesson; or at the very least acknowledge the importance of doing so they are sure to fail in some facet of their duties. When thinking of lesson development I can think of no tool that could be more useful that technology Technologies such as websites, applications, portable computers, tablets, cell phones, or portable music players can be utilized to develop each of the three parts of lesson planning. You can use search engines to determine what you would like to accomplish with the lesson. You can also use online social networking with other teachers to figure out multiple ways in which you could teach the lesson. And finally, you can design quizzes that the students can take on laptops or their cell phones to assess what the students have learned at the end of the lesson.

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Journal #2

Tech Tools

In the chapter two of our text I found several very interesting tech tool sections. But I decided to look over Tech Tool 2.1; Web resources for visual learning. Although many of the hyperlinks had been deactivated, the few I was able to access were a lot of fun. Molecular workbench is one website that I accessed that I found really intriguing. It is a scientific resource that has a great number of simulations at the students’ disposal. It has everything from biology to physics shown in a way that even someone that isn’t interested in science, like me, can enjoy and learn something from. I hope that I am able to find some of these great web resources for my students to utilize. I know that when teachers introduce new web sites to me I was always very excited to learn how to use the tools given and find new and fun ways to incorporate them in my educational and sometimes even home life. For example, the Wordle sight that was shown to us in our last class gave me a great idea for a humanities presentation I am working on. I have already incorporated it into my power point.

Summary

This chapter was all about utilizing technology for all of its benefits in a learning environment. As you will see in my response to the focus question below, Technology is a great tool to aid in the use of visual learning. But, although that is a wonderful was technology has helped with the educational system it does not begin to explain its immense impact. Whether you are a behaviorist, scientific cognitivist, or constructivist- technology can be an instrumental tool in taking your lessons and teachings to the next level. Teacher centered lesson plans can be devised using a number of different tech tools- whether it is something as simple as a power point made available online to help students study to something as complicated as organized online quiz where the teacher designs the questions and the student completes the exam. There are many ways to use technology to develop student centered lessons as well. You can assign children into groups and let them design their own blogs based on a book that they have read as a group- possibly having each student pose as a different character from that book. Although you set lose parameters it is up to the students to really take it to the next level. This is a great way to encourage collaborative learning for students to take part in outside of class from the comfort of their own home. The uses of technology are endless in a classroom, from online grade books to blogs for homework- it is something that can be constantly integrated into out educational world of the future.

Focus Question

How do students use technology for learning visually?

As we all know as future teachers and current students, everyone learns in different forms. Some are auditory learners that thrive best when listening to lectures and lessons read and explained aloud. Others need a much more hands on approach. And other still find that visualizing the objects of our lessons are the best way to absorb the knowledge. Technology is a great way to help those visual learning students you may have. I think we all know that teachers are almost always on a very limited budget. So, we can all safely assume that when a science teacher is doing a unit on the ocean- it is impossible for them to travel to the nearest ocean with their class and scuba dive down to the ocean depths to show them what creatures and plant systems lurk beneath the water. Technology makes this possible. You can use websites and or movies shot with high tech underwater camera equipment to show your students the real ocean life without taking them directly to it. All monetary costs aside there are some things that without technology even a very fortunate teacher with unlimited resources would find challenging to show her students. What if you were doing a lesson on outer space? Without the uses of telescopes and satellites and other high tech equipment the scientific community would know so little about the mysteries of our galaxies. Without those technologies we could not only visually show our students these marvels but we may not be able to explain them at all.

 

Same source as journal posting 1, "Transforming Learning with New Technologies"

Journal #1

Focus question:

What constitutes a highly interactive, inquiry based learning environment?

A highly interactive, inquiry based environment can be broken down into several different parts. Highly interactive is defined as “providing educational activities in which students and teachers are not just the consumers of what technology offers, but are active creators, shapers and evaluators of the information and experiences that technology presents. Inquiry –based is defined as something “that teachers prepare, deliver, and assess lessons differently while students think critically and creatively about the learning they do and the technology they use.” So when you look at the definition of each part of the whole it’s easier to understand what constitutes a highly interactive, inquiry-based learning environment. It is an environment in which the teacher not only helps the student to create and utilize new ways to use technology that they’ve been given access too, but they also design lessons in which these technologies are the center and the students are encouraged to think differently about each technology.

Tech Tools:

Ultraportable laptop computers

As a teacher in this day and age we need to come to grips with the fact that technology is something that we will need to utilize to be successful. In chapter one of our text book there is a very helpful tech tool portion about Ultraportable laptop computers. It discusses how useful and almost necessary it is to not only have a computer, but to have a lightweight and portable one at your disposal. This way you are able to have constant access to a digital “filing cabinet”, as they refer to it. I just invested in a new laptop this December and I am very happy with its portability and ability to run multiple programs at a quick pace. The book seemed to think that those two aspects were very important. Those, as well as battery life are said to be paramount. I think that little articles like this are incredibly helpful to future educators and should be appreciated for just what they are- helpful tips based n people who’ve been where we are planning to go.

Source:

Maloy, Robert W., et al. Transforming Learning with New Technologies. N.p.:
     Pearson Education, 2011. Print.