Assignment #5

My Final Technology Project focuses on learning about the Oregon Trail. For students living on the West Coast of the United States, I think it is important to learn how the pioneers of this region came here. In this project, students will work together in groups to research, write a screenplay, and act out the script to make a movie.  Having fun is important to learning, and students will enjoy interacting with history as they reenact scenes from the days of the Oregon Trail.   
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Week #9

The Tech and Learning article "Caught on Film" by Bob Sprankle is packed with great ideas of how implementing a video camera into everyday teaching engages students, enhances teaching, and encourages learning. I learned that creating videos often in class is a great way to help students remember what was taught -- they can review lessons via video, and they can make videos of themselves solving problems. Videos are also a great way to communicate with parents -- send them highlights of the class through videos. A video camera is also great for chronicling the year --videoing exciting learning moments and experiences throughout the school year so the students can remember highlights throughout the year. Another great idea that caught my attention was to, as a teacher, always carry your small video camera so that if you see something that applies to what you're teaching about, you can film it and later show it to your class. Another idea that Sprankle presented was having your students make tutorials for the next year's students on how to do well in the class. "Caught in Film" contained a lot of great ideas for incorporating video cameras into the classroom. It inspired me to, when I have a classroom of my own, invest in a small video camera to capture the joys and the processes of learning in my classroom.

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Comments

Angie - http://www.sitzleralyssa.blogspot.com/2012/10/week-6-generation-im-article.html#comment-form
Alyssa - http://www.angiegarza12.blogspot.com/2012/09/week-three-3.html#comment-form
Bethany - http://www.bethanylowesblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/reflection-2.html#comment-form
Amanda - http://amdowns8.blogspot.com/2012/10/week-7.html?showComment=1350263852308#c6492111756470473505
Kendra - http://kendracotton.blogspot.com/2012/10/reflection-6.html?showComment=1350433747457#c2757392513338645036
Tootsie - http://tootsievasquez06.blogspot.com/2012/10/week-5.html?showComment=1350264449294#c244399079613834219
Sigrid - http://sigridthoreson.blogspot.com/2012/10/reflection-5-distractions.html?showComment=1350433582611#c3574472677400291090
Whitney - http://wright2whitney.blogspot.com/2012/10/reflection-4.html?showComment=1350433370906#c6475695349678300784
Sarah - http://sarahstoker.blogspot.com/2012/10/reflection-4.html?showComment=1350259505271#c7312535565004294077

Week 8 - Twitter

Twitter proves itself a helpful ally to a teacher in many ways. It provides an excellent medium for teachers to share experiences,  blogs, and classroom ideas with each other. Presenting an opportunity for global collaboration between teachers, Twitter builds community between people with like interests, even though they may live across the world from each other. Twitter is also lends itself to a teacher by organizing tweets according to hashtags. Thus, if a teacher wants her students to tweet a reply to, say, a literature question, they can send their reply, all under the same, unique hashtag, and Twitter will collect the responses.

Reflection #6

I have been thinking of how, with technology and the internet playing such a big role in the classroom, there is so much more potential for unwanted information to infiltrate into the classroom and into the minds of young, impressionable children. Thus, it is very important for the school to have internet security and be able to monitor every website that is accessed by students. Although technology is amazing, it has its drawbacks, such as allowing access to the web which can be full of dirty things. But thanks to internet safety nets and security, children can be kept safe and covered.

Reflection #5

Technology is making the world smaller. When I was young, there were so many parts of the world that I wanted to travel and explore, but could only imagine. In today's classroom, these places can be visited for free - virtually. Teachers now have the opportunity to take their classroom exploring at Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon using Google Earth. Opportunities for intercultural interaction are many and varied, such as skyping or blogging with students from a school on the other side of the planet. The world is getting smaller via technology as teachers introduce their students to other cultures and places that most kids only could have dreamed of seeing.

Reflection #4

The rate in which technology is transforming how we get information is alarmingly fast. Six years ago, when I first started middle school, if I wanted to find a definition for something, I looked in a dictionary. And if I was going to write a report on a historical figure, I checked out books from the library to get information. So much has changed since those days. Now all one needs is a laptop, iPad, or smartphone to have dictionaries and libraries worth of information in their hands.

Week #7 - How Technology Can Help with Math

I had been puzzled with how technology could help with math until I started reading about the edublog (edublog.org). Using an edublog, or any type of blog, math assistance is made easy. Teachers can post helpful links or videos that apply to the students' math homework. They can also share slides from class, or videos of them working through tricky math problems. To make it more interactive, students can post math problems they are having trouble on, and other students can assist them by leaving helpful comments. Teachers can monitor the blog and reward students who are helping others problem-solve. Teachers can also use blogs to interact with other teachers and share brilliant ideas for how to teach math in more understandable or more fun ways.

Reflection #3

I have a dream of one day teaching overseas, perhaps in the jungles of Bolivia or the plains of Africa. Today, for the first time, it struck me how hard this could be. Besides the fact that I may not fluently speak my students' language, I realized that I probably will not have access to much technology, if any at all. I might not even have electricity where I teach. In this class, I have seen that technology is hugely helpful in a classroom. It helps the students to focus, it presents great opportunities for interaction, and it enables the teacher to connect with other teachers to exchange ideas. If I'm not careful, I think I could learn to rely on technology too heavily in teaching, so much so that if I get the opportunity to follow my dream and teach overseas, I will not be prepared to teach hands-on, engaging courses without the assistance of technology. Although I want to embrace every tool I can to help me be a great teacher, I need to constantly be aware of how I could teach any lesson just as well without the help of technology.

Reflection #2

The community library in my hometown undergoes yearly renovations, and each year it seems like more computers are added. Many years ago, there were just a couple of computers in the library on which adults would check their emails. Any kids in the library were checking out books to read. Now, when I walk into the library after school is out for the day, all twenty of the computers are full, many of them with kids playing video games or on facebook. It used to be that to get away from the world, kids would immerse themselves in a good book and enter the world of fiction. Now, kids go to video games or the world of social media. Is this something we, as future educators, should be concerned about? Will young people continue to choose video games over excellent fiction? Are these video games stimulating and broadening the horizons of their minds the way a good book does? As I watch this generation invest so much time in front of a screen, I don't know whether to embrace or shun the movement from fiction to gaming and social media.

Reflection #1

In the AVID class that I help out in, once a week we do "binder checks" to make sure the students are keeping their binders and agendas updated and organized. This is aimed at helping them practice for being an organized college student. After doing binder checks last week, I was thinking how, when these students get to college, probably none of them will even carry binders or paper agendas. Probably everything will be done on computers or iPads. This made me wonder whether our binder checks were a waste of time,but I realized that binder checks reinforce the importance of organization, and whether you're using a NetBook, laptop, iPad, or good-old three ring binder, organization is very important.

Make your own slide show at Animoto.

Week #6

Generation IM pointed out just how "plugged in" to technology today's children are. Citing the evidence that children spend hours in front screens, the author showed that students are not simply lazy viewers. They are engaging with society through wiki's, blogs, Facebook and more. Kids are using the internet in a far more active role than most adults, and thus, they are learning it much faster. Teachers are struggling to incorporate technology in the classroom just because they don't have time to learn all about it. When teachers do incorporate technology, however, they are finding positive results. As a future teacher, this just reinforces the fact that technology will play a huge role in my classroom. As a science teacher, I would use interactive technology in order to be able to explore places we would not have access to in our classroom, like the Grand Canyon (via Google-Earth) or inside a blood vessel. Also, it would be neat to construct video games that were based off of the science curriculum to allow students to interact with the material and digest it more fully.