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?