My Extra Credit Podcast

Listen to this podcast to review the involvement of each country during World War II!

Blog 12

I really enjoyed reading my classmates' blog posts. My favorite subjects were probably the different web 2.0 technologies that we focused on because everyone came up with really cool tools that I could definitely use in my teaching career. Also, I enjoyed reading the positive comments left by others on my blog. The encouraging words gave me more inspiring ideas for my classroom!

Next, I would really like how to learn how to use SmartBoard technology and how to create programs for my classroom. I think one of my favorite things that we did during this class was creating the technology we wanted to use for our lessons. I believe that I would find learning how to create my own programs really helpful.

I feel that I can achieve my educational goals by using the different technologies we learned in this classroom. By continuing to use them and incorporating them into lessons, I will stay familiar with them and be more aware of new technologies and educational tools.

Blog 11

Prior to this semester, I already had a Twitter account. I use Twitter frequently as it helps me stay in touch with friends at other colleges and back home. Also, it allows me to keep current with the news -this is important to me since I don't have a tv in my dorm, so I don't really know what's going on in the real world. These other uses for Twitter are helpful and they really do demonstrate why the technology is so useful.

This semester I did not tweet that much as I have been so busy with school work and other activities. It is nice to receive the Twitters on my phone because I know that if I had to go to a website to check up on people, I would just go to Facebook instead -the convenience of receiving text messages from certain people is very nice.

I don't think that Twitter really has a place in the education setting as I feel it would be more of a distraction to the students than a helpful study tool. As far as teachers sending out reminders for when assignments are due and so forth, there are other websites such as Blackboard and the class websites that can deliver this information. I think that students would take advantage of Twitter technology at school and use it to possibly invite people to parties, make fun of classmates and do other things that have nothing to do with enhancing their learning.

My Podcast

Blog 10

There are so many web 2.0 tools to choose from!! I feel that many web 2.0 tools can be useful when teaching but it is important to keep the students' age group and subject area in mind. When teaching, I think that I might use a tool called Prezi. It is very helpful for creating presentations. Prezi can serve as a planning space for papers or projects or a poster board to present information to the class.

I might use Prezi when teaching a lesson to my students because I can have all of my information present and simply navigate to the areas I would like to focus on. For instance, I could give a step-by-step presentation on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for kindergarden students. Order and following directions are important lessons for this age group. Therefore, I could create a short presentation with arrows, text and pictures that would help me teach this lesson. Here's an example of something I created using Prezi:

I think that web 2.0 tools can be extremely helpful in teaching k-12. I also feel that they are useful in college and teaching students how to stay organized and manage their time. Although it's important to evaluate the appropriateness of a tool for students, I believe that there are many options out there, teachers can simply find what suits their lesson and learners best.

Blog 9

When studying for exams, I usually make notecards to help me review my notes. I plan to use this study technique in my classroom my using the online resources, the Flashcard Machine. Students and teachers can create notecards for free and use the program to study for tests.

I would use this website while teaching because I can create notecards and have my students review them in class -perhaps even make it a game. I know that some students may not review the best way with this technique so I plan to incorporate different study and review methods when appropriate. Another reason this source is helpful is because parents can help their child review shapes, colors and sight words that we will be learning in class. This positive reinforcement will promote student learning.

As a teacher, I'm not too sure about how I'll use Excel with my kindergarten students. However, I'll probably use similar problems to enter grades and to form report cards. Regardless, I found some of the Excel techniques to be interesting and if I end up teaching a different grade level, those skills may be helpful in recording class averages and grades for tests and homework assignments.

Blog 8

I feel that I didn’t have any grammar or spelling errors in my interactive story. Also, I tried to make sure that my audio was easy to hear and sounded good during the presentation. I used all readable text and made sure that the text was left justified so it would be easiest to read.

Further, I tried to make sure that my background did not interfere with the slide.

I also kept the navigation buttons consistent throughout the story in order to make it friendly and easy to navigate.

I feel that by using educational videos in combination with computer programs or resources that reinforce the same skills, my students will be able to learn effectively. For instance, by showing a video about how to identify shapes and then using a computer program or interactive powerpoint that also reinforces shape recognition, my students will have different ways to master the skill. Therefore, I will be able to reach the majority of my students as my teaching methods will apply to different learning types.

Some new skills I acquired last week and in working on the Powerpoint 2 Assignment were how to plan out an in-depth presentation such as the interactive story. I really tried to make it interesting a provide readers with choices that they would enjoy. One skill that will be beneficial to me both in furthering my education as well as teaching would be how familiar I got with my Mac in making this presentation. I didn’t really know how to use most of the tools and so this project forced me to figure out what everything did and how it all worked. This information is helpful because now I feel alot more confident with the program and I will be willing to use presentations in my classroom.

Blog 7

I think that presentation software in the class will be advantageous to me because it will keep my students interested and help promote classroom discussion. However I feel that a huge disadvantage of it is how appropriate it will be for my students. For instance, I would like to teach kindergarten so I’m not exactly sure how appropriate a powerpoint presentation would be for my students -lecturing to that age group is definitely inappropriate.

Powerpoint can be helpful to a student that learns from attitudes and perceptions by keeping slides organized while interesting at the same time. When students start integrating knowledge, slides that incorporate information already studied would be most helpful and informative. When students begin to analyze the information, slides with bullets and detailed explanations of concepts would be appropriate. In order to get my students to use the information we are focusing on, I would have examples so that the students could use problem solving skills and evaluate the situation. So that the students can be most productive, I would incorporate thinking maps and interactive slides into my Powerpoint presentation. This would help ensure that my students put there knew knowledge to work and would also provide me with feedback as an educator as to how effective my teaching was.

Cell phone usage in the classroom is really important to me because I feel that if some sort of basic rules were covered, the usage might possibly be acceptable. Instead of students getting detentions for cellphone usage and teachers getting frustrated, wouldn’t it be better for everyone to teach a compromise? Here is an article that discusses the use of cellphones in the classroom -I find it particularly interesting as it makes you consider how cellphones might have caused the Columbine tragedy to turn out differently.

Economics Project

Blog 6

I definitely think I will use some of the web 2.0 resources in my classroom! I feel that my students will benefit from these tools and as a kindergarten teacher, I believe that the variety of techniques and tools will keep my students interested and engaged in learning.

Wikipedia started out as a good learning source. However the problem arose when people without knowledge on a subject matter began editing pages -the information was no longer completely factual. I feel that wikipedia can be a good starting point for research but I believe that my students need to do more in-depth research and have their wikipedia information verified by other resources.

Making our wiki's last week, I learned many different skills! I think that I will use some of these skills throughout my teaching career because I found it interesting. Also, once I figured out how create anchors and link pages to one another, it was relatively easy. I believe that a webpage could be a great way to keep my parents informed and provide my students with information covered in class. These tools could also be helpful in providing my students with study tools and supplemental materials!

Blog 5

The internet can be very helpful to students who do not have access to a library or when the library doesn’t have the materials that students need. However, the internet is not helpful to students when they use it for social networking in class or when the information can only be found in a book. Also, as a teacher I have to make sure that cyberbullying does not take place.

I hope to use some of the sites mentioned in the book as child friendly search engines. I checked out http://www.askkids.com/ which was definitely great for kids. It provided students with options on how to refine their searches to get more specific information and the website had fun colors and images.

My goal is to teach kindergarten so thankfully my students won’t be trying to check Facebook or look at inappropriate websites. However a concern I have is that if a student is on the internet, there are many sites that are inappropriate for them to discover -be it because of pictures or simply content that is way over their head. I hope to use educational software such as SuccessMaker and Larson’s Math as the primary reason for my students’ interactions with computers.

Blog 4

As a teacher, I plan to use the ideas about making outlines and organizational maps in my class. For outlines, I can use technology such as Microsoft Word that would allow my students to organize their ideas and form well written papers. For organizational maps, I could use the Inspiration software, Microsoft Word or http://bubbl.us/edit.php.

I would definitely encourage my students to use outlining and organizational mapping. I feel that they are very important in allowing students to visualize how much information they have and it is an effective way to organize it so it can all make sense. Also, mapping can be used for all students in many grades. For kindergarten students, mapping is a way to have class activities and facilitate group work. For students writing papers, an outline or map can allow an individual to make sure that their ideas are flowing and making sense.

In the last week I have learned how to evaluate websites and find information faster on search engines. As a student this is very helpful because I can keep the evaluation ideas in mind when researching information and deciding if it is credible or not. Also, finding information faster is important because it means that I can save time doing homework and research.

Blog 3

Because I would like to teach Kindergarten, I would want to create a lesson aimed at learning goals for my young students. I might create a powerpoint using Microsoft Powerpoint that would allow me to teach a science lesson about the concept, sink or float. By inserting pictures, ClipArt, and videos of objects sinking and floating, the powerpoint would allow my students to see examples and get an understanding of why some objects sink while others float.

I found a website that violated a few of the rules we learned in Chapter 6. The website for Cafe International, http://www.cafeintl.net/ is very complicated and hard to navigate, violating rule 12 and the text is in all caps, against rule 9. When you move your mouse, the objects on the page move also. This is interesting at first but soon becomes annoying when you actually want to get closer to the text and read it levelly.

I don’t have much experience with copyright and fair use of materials in an educational environment. I know that if a material says you can use for educational distribution, you don’t need permission and can copy and distribute materials to your students. I’m not sure about distributing materials from textbooks and novels. As a teacher, I would create materials such as wordsearches or games and distribute them to my students and colleagues. If my student created something that I saw a need to copy, I would ask their permission and do accordingly.

Inspiration!

Blog 2

As a student I’ve used MS Word for papers, handouts, study guides, homework assignments and projects. I saw my teachers use MS Word to formulate homework assignments, handouts, tests and quizzes. I also saw a few teachers use MS Word instead of a whiteboard -teachers would type the class notes instead of write them on the board.

In Chapter 9, I liked the idea of a Jigsaw Model for teaching computer skills. I am familiar and fond of the jigsaw teaching method for class lessons and subject areas. However I had never thought to translate this teaching technique to one that works with computers! I am definitely interested to see if I can implement this idea in my classroom. Other ideas that I might choose to use as a teacher are making links to the internet and importing information other sources -I feel that these skills will be beneficial for class assignments as well as teaching because I can click the link and show the class an important site or graph that I imported for the lesson.

In class so far, I feel that the test formatting assignment was very helpful as it took different skills that I was aware of while also allowing me to acquiring new skills and helped bring them together in a way that will prove very beneficial to me in the future. After all, as an educator, knowing how to generate assessments is crucial. I think that I will use these skills to make a variety of tests and quizzes so that my exams will be comprehensive while also clean and easy to understand.

Blog 1

I feel that technology is important in education. However, I feel that basing curriculum off of using technology is not the best idea. It is the teachers job to teach and I believe that technology should be used as a support system for lessons and learning.

I plan on using technology in my classroom to help supplement lessons. By allowing my students to play educational games, they will be allowing me to observe how effective certain classroom lessons were. It also allows me to assess my teaching techniques and determine if they were effective or not. I hope that this class will help me to develop fun worksheets and newsletters that will help my students review and practice skills taught in class.

On a broad note, do y'all think it's really possible to use iPods to help teach our students? What's your take on that school of thought? Would podcasts be effective for teaching lessons? To what age groups or grade levels?

Blog 0

Previously, I have used Microsoft Word and Works, Powerpoint, Excel. I’m familiar with my iPod, iTunes and computer. I’ve used technology for school, entertainment and for the satisfaction of my personal curiosity and questions. I frequently use the internet and have accounts with Facebook, Twitter as well as e-mails.

I hope to become more proficient on the internet by learning shortcuts and tips to make my research faster and more efficient. Also, I hope to learn little techniques that will be helpful for reports and hopefully in my classroom. I feel that if I feel very comfortable with types of technology that will be used in my classroom as this will make a great resource for my students to learn and gather information. I’m very interested in learning how to make my own webpage and I hope that this will make me more computer savvy. Plus, learning how to make my own webpage will help with being a teacher and guiding students to print assignments and posting links for them to use.

playing with an image