Bloge, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 9) Reflection

Had this chapter been at the beginning of the book I would have told you that I don’t even know how to use Facebook. I would have said that it is a waste of time and a way for people to try and know everything about everyone. I would have said all these things because I was not on Facebook and didn’t like the idea of everyone in the world having access to me. Now I have a Facebook page and enjoy being able to be a click away from communicating with friends and family that I don’t get to see very often. I’m not sure how I feel about using Facebook in the classroom because I think it will create distraction in the classroom instead of promoting learning. I like the idea of being able to collaborate with just about anyone and having anyone post ideas, but I think there are other less distracting ways to do this. From what I read it sounds like you can make a site as private or public as you want and as a teacher you can decide who has access to what your students are posting. I know that Facebook can be addicting and I don’t think students need another reason to be on Facebook whether they are at school or at home. There may be some parents who don’t want their children on Facebook for whatever reason. This could cause problems because it wouldn’t allow all students to participate. I know this can happen no matter what technology you use, but I feel parents would be more willing to allow their children to use a wiki or blog instead of Facebook. I think that you could get the same results from using blogs and wikis in you classroom as you can get from using Facebook. You have just as much control over who gets to look at students work and comment on it by using a wiki or blog as you do if you are using Facebook. I think because there are so many other ways for students to collaborate that using Facebook isn’t needed. I find it weird to think about using Facebook as a tool in the classroom; I’m not exactly sure why, but I do. I do think if used correctly Facebook could be used as a great tool in the classroom, but I don’t see myself using it in my classroom with all the other technology that is out there. I would rather introduce my students to technology that they haven’t seen before or might not know as much about. It would benefit my students more to use a blog or wiki because these may be tools that they haven’t used before. In most cases, using Facebook wouldn’t teach them anything new about technology because most students are on Facebook and already know how to use it.

Rethinking Education (ch 7) Reflection

Chapter 7 in Rethinking Education talked about what could be lost or gained as a result of the new revolution in education. One of the things talked about was a loss in access to technology. Having a free public school system allows all children, no matter what their socioeconomic background, to have access to an education and thus technology while at school. Granted, the children who are from poorer neighborhoods tend to have poorer schools and not as many opportunities, but they are given access to some technology. Being introduced to new technology is very important in this day and age with more and more jobs requiring the use of technology; students need to be prepared to use it. With more and more people hiring tutors, homeschooling, or having their kids attend private schools it seems that those students already at a disadvantage are falling even further behind. Teachers need to prepare their students for the future, but have to be careful with the types of assignments they are having students do. This is because not all students have access to computers outside of school. If you expect students to do research for a report or project outside of school, you need to think about the access your students have to computers. Some students may not have a computer at home and may not have a way to get to a library or friends house where they could use one. The digital divide between students is something we as teachers need to think about when asking our students to do certain things. We need to prepare our students for the future and not being able to do certain projects because of access to technology could seriously inhibit that. As teachers, we may need to give our students other opportunities to work on a project. If this means staying after school for an hour to supervise and open lab time, I think it would be worth it. Showing students that you are willing to help them succeed is going to make them respect you more and believe you when you say that you want them to succeed. The chapter also talked about the positive impact technology has had on education. One of the gains talked about was that technology makes education more engaging. Using technology in the classroom can make a lecture more interesting because it keeps the students focused on what they are supposed to be learning. Something as simple as using an interactive white board instead of a normal whiteboard can make learning more interesting. The use of an interactive white board is more fun for the students and shows them different types of technology you can use in different situations. By using technology to keep your students interested, you are also preparing them for the future. Introducing them to the different types of technology that are available to them will give them options to use later in their own careers. As a teacher, I want to help my students succeed in any way that I can. I will use different technology in my class room so my students can learn how to use it and will be better prepared for college and future careers. I will also try to minimize the digital divide that might exist between my students. If that means spending extra time at school so that my students can have extra time to use a computer, then that’s what I will do. I want to give my students every opportunity to do things to the best of their abilities.

Exit Slip

We learned more tricks and tips for making IWB lessons today.  Some of these tips included locking objects, grouping objects, infinite cloning, page layout and inserting sound.  Locking objects - right click on object, go down to locking option and choose how you want to lock the object.  Now the objects can't be moved if you don't want them to be moved.  Grouping objects - click, drag, and drop box around both objects, right click and choose grouping from the drop down menu.  Now you can move both objects together.  Infinite cloner - right click and choose infinite cloner.  Now you can continually pull that object and don't have to clone it multiple times.  Page layout - watch size, color, amount and position of text on the page.  Inserting Sound - go into gallery essentials and choose sounds that you want to insert into your presentation.  You can also right click the item, click sound from the drop down menu and insert a sound you have already recorded.  These tips and tricks will be great when I start to revise my IWB lesson and will also be helpful when making IWB lessons as a teacher. 

Rethinking Education (ch 6) Reflection

In some ways, education has changed a lot since people started learning as apprentices and some things are beginning to look similar to how people were taught back in that day.  During the days of apprenticeship, parents were the ones who made sure their children were taught what they would need to know to succeed in life.  As more and more immigrants came to America, the government decided that children would have to go to structured schools.  The government and teachers decided what the children would learn and the parents were no longer the main educators.  Now in education we see a mix of parents, children and teachers deciding what children will learn depending upon where they are going to school.  Kids are no longer forced to attend an actual physical school, they are able to go to school from the comfort of their own homes if they so choose.  As a future teacher, I don’t want this to become the norm because then I will be out of a job, but I don’t think it is a bad way for children to learn.  I think in some cases children would be more successful taking classes online and learning from their parents than they would be if they had to come to a school and learn from a teacher.  I think life-long learning is going to continue to happen whether we as teachers want it to or not.  We as teachers have a choice to either support our students and the learning they do outside our classrooms or hinder it.  I want to teach my students how to go through information they find and figure out if it is relevant to what they want to learn about or not.  I think students would do better in school if we encouraged them to use the skills we were teaching them to research things that really interested them at home.  I feel this would keep them more engaged while in class because they know that they will be able to use the skills they are learning to do something they really enjoy.  I also agree with teaching students how to learn instead of just wanting them to memorize a bunch of facts that may or may not help them in the future.  If we teach students how to go through information and pick out the big ideas and important things, it will prepare them to pick out important things in all aspects of their lives.  Sometimes I think teachers get too caught up in teaching only the subject that they are supposed to be teaching instead of also teaching the students to actually learn the information.  As a future teacher I will not only teach my students about science, but I will show them how it applies to everyday life.  For example, there is an element of physics in everything that we do in this world.  Until I took physics in college I never really thought about why some things are possible, but because my professors taught us practical applications as well as academic ones I am better able to understand how some things work.  I want my students to be able to use what I teach them in the future, whether it be in college, a job, or in everyday life.  I will help my students succeed in all areas of life by making sure I teach them how to learn and use the resources that are available to them.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 8) Reflection

There were a lot of different technologies talked about in chapter 8 of Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts that would be great to use in any classroom. The tools talked about all had to do with producing audio or video that could be shared with anyone in the world. The tool I liked the most was publishing videos to the web. I’m sure a lot of the students that I will teach in the future will have either posted a video to YouTube or watched a video from that site. As a teacher, I want to make sure that my students know how to use these sites appropriately so I would incorporate them into my classroom. One way to do this would be to tape students giving presentations during the day and upload them to the internet so their family and friends would also be able to view them. You could also tape announcements every day and have them on a wiki or blog that parents can access to find out the important events that are coming up. The chapter also talked about podcasting. I like the idea of podcasting because it could be used to tape lectures given in class. Once you tape the lectures you could post them to a blog, wiki, or to your own website so students would be able to access them at a later time. This would allow them to add to existing notes, or catch up on notes if they missed class for some reason. The only draw back for this would be that students may deliberately skip class because they know you will post the lecture online later and they will still get all the information as everyone else. You would have to think of a way to make sure that this didn’t become the case because it could punish everyone if you had to stop posting your lectures. As future teachers, I feel it’s our duty to learn about all the ways that we can help our students succeed so when we get into our classrooms we will have a big toolbox to use. I want to be able to solve any problem that my students throw at me, whether it is keeping them engaged or finding a different way for them to learn something. I want to help my students succeed in school as well as in life and I know that they will be asked to use different types of technology in whatever they decide to do after they graduate. By introducing them to new technology or helping them get better at using the technology that they already use, I am preparing them for their future as well as helping them learn the information they need to know now for the class they are in.

Exit Slip

Blog Your Thoughts - I think home schooling is a good alternative to the traditional classroom because it can help alleviate some of the pressure kids feel from other students while in school.  I think there are a lot of resources available to parents who want to teach their children at home and they would be quite easy to use.  It also allows parents to decide what their children are learning and how they will learn it.  There are also some draw backs, like not being able to interact with other students as much, but that might be what that child needs to succeed in school.  There are groups that parents can get into to help socialize their children, which I would recommend because it will make their transition into high school or college that much easier.

Exit Slip - We learned the basics of Scratch today.  It seems like its going to be a complicated assignment and I'm not really sure how well I will do at it.  I think it will be a good assignment and it will be a good thing to learn because it will help me help my students in the future.  Completing this assignment will help me use similar technology in the future and give me an alternative to lecture when teaching my students a new concept.  I think this will be a fun assignment, but it will also be a challenging one.

Rethinking Education (ch 5) Reflection

Learning is leaking from the classroom to home and as teachers we can either accept this leak or we can try to dam it up and stop it.  I think it’s a good thing that students are willing to learn outside the classroom in other than traditional ways.  Some students learn differently than others and as hard as teachers try, they can’t always accommodate every single learning style found in their classroom.  It is beneficial for students to have access to television shows, games, and computer simulations that will enhance what they were supposed to have learned during the school day.  Some students are more hands on and need to actually experience a situation for it to make sense to them, while other students learn better from watching a movie or just listening to a lecture.  The idea of homeschooling and technical certification is harder to swallow because it is taking students that would be in traditional schools out into a different environment.  Most parents who have their students take part in this type of education have specific reasons for wanting their children to learn in this way.  It most likely has nothing to do with the type of teacher you are, but has to do with the environment in which they feel their child is most likely to succeed.  As teachers we need to teach to the best of our abilities and use the tools given to us to make sure our students are learning things that will benefit them later in life and help them to succeed.  I feel that learning centers and distance education are other ways that only enhance a student’s academic experience.  Learning centers are great for kids who need extra help in a certain subject but may not qualify for special education classes.  Children can go to these centers and get help in whatever subject they may be struggling in so they can do well in school.  Distance learning gives students access to classes that may not be offered in the school they actually go to.  This is a good way for students to take classes that actually interest them and not be limited to only classes offered at the physical school they go to.  As a teacher I will encourage my students to use any resources that are available to them to help them learn.  I want my students to want to learn and if that means giving a student the name of a website or the name of a game that might help enhance what I taught in class that day then I will.  I know from experience that lecture doesn’t always work for kids in every subject, sometimes the best way to learn something is from trial and error, and eventually you find something that makes it stick.  I will make sure my students have access to multiple ways of learning the same information so everyone in my class can succeed.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 7) Reflection

Flickr seems like an interesting tool and a great way to share your photos with multiple people.  I would find this type of technology most useful in finding pictures that people you went on a trip with had posted.  This way you can easily access photos of things you may have wanted to take pictures of, but were unable to for whatever reason.  From an academic standpoint I don’t know how useful this tool would be to me because I want to teach secondary science.  The examples given in the book were mostly about writing stories or illustrating stories with pictures you can find on Flickr.  In most science classes, there is not a lot of story writing going on and if pictures were needed to illustrate a paper or project you can always find images on Google or other websites.  There were a couple ideas that I thought could possibly be used in a science class and one was using the annotation tool to insert comments about certain objects into a photo.  This would be a good way to get students to use technology to explain the parts of a picture and how it is relevant to whatever they may be researching.  I also thought it was interesting how you could link pictures to Google Earth to see what other pictures had been taken at the same spot.  It would be interesting to see what other people had taken pictures of at the same site that you were at, or what other angles the same thing you took a picture of were taken at.  You could use this feature in a geography class to look at the different landforms that people thought were interesting in a certain place.  Flickr seems like a good tool, but honestly I don’t think that as a teacher I will use it.  I feel there are easier ways to find pictures and use them in projects or presentations and there are other programs that can be used to make presentations that I am already familiar with.  If I had to use this website I would be more than willing to learn how to use it and implement it into my classroom, but at this time I am not really excited about using it as I was with some of the other tools we have talked about in class.  I don’t think it will be as useful as some of the other technology we’ve discussed and would rather use a few tools to their full potential instead of lots of tools at minimum potential.    

Exit Slip

We were introduced to Scratch, a program used to make interactive activities to help students learn about a certain topic.  It looks like a fun project, but does look like it will be time consuming and quite difficult since I have no experience in programming.  I'm looking forward to working with this program because I have never used a program like this before and like to learn new things.  Using this program now will help me develop skills that I will be able to use later as a teacher if I want to make a learning tool for my future class.  I will also have one tool made by completing this project and will be able to add too it or revise it as needed.

Rethinking Education (ch 4) Reflection

Education has changed a lot since it first began, but the way schools are run and things are taught have remained the same for some time now.  In the 19^th century, many people learned by apprenticeships.  They watched other people do things and imitated what they did to learn new skills that would become their lives work.  People during this time probably thought that this would always be the way that people learned new things, but with the invention of the printing press, the Reformation, the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution the way people learned changed.  Once the printing press was invented it made it easier for things to be put on paper in huge quantities.  This made it studying things more convenient, which led people to think that all people should learn to read and write.  Small schools were established and changed many times over the next fifty years to what we know schools to be like now.  It is amazing to me that the things we are taught in school, the way schools are built, and who becomes teachers hasn’t changed much in the last fifty or so years.  In the early 20^th century, there were not a lot of male teachers because teaching was considered a female profession.  Now there are more men teaching, but a majority of teachers are still female.  The core subjects taught in most schools are still the same and the book talked about how we may need to change what we teach to coincide with the changing world.  We may need to implement more technology classes into schools to help students learn and better understand the new technology that will be introduced as they go through school.  Being able to use technology well is going to be something all students need to learn no matter what type of occupation they want to pursue.  I think one way to make sure that students don’t fall behind in the technology department is for teachers to use technology in their classrooms while teaching.   Students will be introduced to some of the technology and will have examples of how to use some of the tools to look back on in the future.  I want to teach secondary science some day and feel that to really prepare these kids for the world that they will eventually be out in; I have to use technology to teach them.  I won’t be able to just use a whiteboard and power point presentations to make them learn the material I want them to learn.  Whether it is having students read articles or books and blogging about them, using a wiki to find assignments they may have misplaced, having a Delicious account where they can store all their cool websites or any number of other technologies, we as teachers need to introduce our students to the new technology that is out there.  In most cases we won’t even be introducing them to something new, but showing them how the tools they are already using can be used for academic purposes.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 6) Reflection

Social bookmarking is definitely a good idea and a good way to have access to a lot of information in one place.  This chapter talked about Twitter and sites like Delicious, which would both be good tools to use in a classroom.  Personally I don’t really understand Twitter and don’t really like the idea of using it, especially for personal reasons.  Academically it could be a useful tool because you can post questions for others to see and get a wide range of answers from anyone who is ‘following’ you.  I think that using a blog is just as easy and you can get the same results because people can comment on your blog about what you have written.  At some point teachers have to choose what technology they will use and which technology they won’t because I feel if you use it all, it will become quite overwhelming.  Sites like Delicious or Diigo on the other hand I think are very beneficial for teachers and students.  Delicious or Diigo allow you to keep track of the websites that you find very beneficial when doing research on certain topics.  Instead of keeping all these websites in the favorite area on your computer, you can create your own website so you can have access to them at all times.  This way when you are at school or work and need to find a website you can’t remember the name of, you can log on to your Delicious account and find it quite easily.  If you just had the website saved in your favorites at home, you would have no way to access it and wouldn’t be able to get the information you needed.  A website like Delicious is something I would have my students start making at the beginning of the school year so that by the end they would have a really good resource to use in the future.  I would also give them access to each other’s accounts so they could see what their fellow classmates were researching or found interesting.  This would be a good way to get to know your students and what they enjoy to do or what they are interested about learning.  These accounts are very easy to set up and would be easy for you or a parent to check on to make sure that students were not adding sites that were inappropriate.  All the tools that I have learned about so far in this class would be beneficial to students in their own ways, but I feel that a tool like Delicious is one of the most beneficial I have seen so far.  Except for maybe RSS, this is the best way to put a lot of information about many different topics into one easily accessible place.  It can also be looked at by multiple people and you have access to other people’s pages so that you can find even more sites that might be helpful.  This is one tool that I will continue to use and either have my students each create their own or have the class as a whole keep one that all students will be able to contribute to.

Exit Slip

We learned how to use an interactive whiteboard to make a lesson.  I have only been exposed to using this software since I have taken this class.  It is amazing to me how much technology has changed just in the last five years since I have been out of high school.  When I was in high school, we didn't have interactive whiteboards so getting the chance to work with them in school is a great new learning experience for me.  I'm glad that we went through tips on how to use the software so I will be able to use it in the future in school and as a teacher in my own classroom.

My Motivation

My motivation comes from my high school teachers.  I don't have a specific one, each one motivated me in different ways and helped develop my thinking.  They all let me know that I could accomplish anything that I put my mind too and were there to help me when things got tough. Even if I didn't think I could accomplish something during class, they always told me I could and would help me figure out a way to get things done.  A lot of how I go about solving things is because of how they taught me to figure things out and to not give up too easily.  I want to motivate students by letting them know that they can do whatever they put their minds too.  The only thing holding them back is themselves and that if they want something, there is always a way to get it.  I would let them know that I am willing to help them with anything so that they can accomplish their goals.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 5) Reflection

Before this class I had never heard of RSS or Really Simple Syndication.  If someone had come up to me and started talking about RSS I would have been totally lost and really confused.  Now I realize that RSS is a very helpful tool and not too hard to use once you get the hang of it.  I think this technology would be very helpful to students and teachers because it concentrates a lot of information in one easily accessible area.   Having a student set up an aggregator where they can subscribe to feeds from different sites would be helpful when students want to find new information on a certain topic.  I think in terms of students using this technology it would be most helpful in a high school level classroom where students have to do a lot of research for projects or papers.  It would also be an advantage to students who already are very passionate about something and want to know when new information about that topic is written about.  As a teacher, an RSS feed would be helpful in finding new ways to teach certain information or just keeping up to date with new information that is being published on the topic you are teaching.  It would also be a good way to keep up to date on current events in education as a whole so that you can make sure that you are still following all the rules.  Having students set up aggregators so they can receive their own RSS feeds would be a good way to teach students how to evaluate websites and decide which ones have good information and which ones don’t.  Once they subscribe to a certain feed, they will still have to sort through their aggregators and decide what information they get is important and what information is not.  I think as a future teacher I would either have each student set up their own aggregator or have the class make one as a whole.  I want to teach science, so I would have each of my students find information on a certain topic we will be discussing that year and subscribe to and RSS feed for that topic.  It would then be that student’s responsibility to check and maintain the feeds that come in on that subject.  This would be an introduction on how to use the technology so that maybe later in the year they each set up their own aggregators and maintain their own personal information.  Either way I think this RSS technology is a good one to have because you have access to a lot of information in one area.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 4) Reflection

I am a nontraditional student who already has a bachelor degree in clinical laboratory science and while getting that degree I was told never to use Wikipedia as a source.  My professors told me it was not a credible source because anyone could add false data or delete things that were very important.  Basically it was bad because anyone in the world could write what they wanted and you wouldn’t know what was true and what wasn’t.  After reading the chapter about wikis in Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts I came to realized that my professors were quite wrong and Wikipedia is actually a great source that is really easy to use.  The author of the book talks about how there are many more people who want to make Wikipedia accurate than there are people who want to vandalize it.  He talks about one teacher who purposely put false information into thirteen different entries and within hours all of them were fixed.  This leads me to believe that the information you find on Wikipedia is just as accurate, if not more accurate, than the information you would find on a more ‘credible’ website.  I think the thing that scares teachers the most is not knowing if the information that their students are finding is accurate or not.  Wikipedia or any other wiki that is used should be treated just like any other website you come across when trying to determine the accuracy of a source.  Compare the information to that which you find on another site and look to see how often and how many times it has been updated.  I think using wikis to find information on the web is a great idea, but I like the idea of building your own wiki in your classroom so students can display their work or have access to class information.  I think as a teacher I need to be open to the technology that is available to me.  I may not like it all or understand it, but I need to be willing to learn it and incorporate some of it into my future classroom.  The best way I can think of for using a wiki would be as a bulletin board where I can post worksheets or handouts that I have given in class.  I would also list due dates for assignments or projects the students are working on and it would be a place where parents can go to see what their children are doing in my class.  I would assign a different student every week to daily post what we did in class, kind of like we do in lab for Education 331.  I like the idea of having one place where students can go to find all the information they need about a particular project or assignment.  This way they don’t have to worry about losing handouts and missing part of an assignment.  It would also be a good way for students who are sick or missed class for some reason to catch up and even get their homework done before coming to class the next day.