Thursday, February 28, 2013

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.

photo credit link
 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 )



Thursday, February 21, 2013

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

Photo credit Link
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.







Thursday, February 14, 2013

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.




Thursday, February 7, 2013

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:


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 3rd 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?
Photo credit:http://importanceoftechnology.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Impact-of-technology-on-Communication-2.jpg

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.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Journal #3

Summary:
Chapter 3; Developing Lessons with Technology

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 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.