Final Class Period!

Really appreciate the thought that we can always contact Dr. Boyer, even in the future when we have our own classrooms.

3 Ways I will integrate technology into Ella's Class:

• This is a third grade classroom and I will integrate technology in many ways. I will create a wiki that will allow me to post pictures, homework assignments, class discussions. This will allow the students to have access to what happened in the classroom after they leave and also allow the parents to see on a regular basis what their child is doign during the school day.
• Secondly,  I will have a SMART Board, I think allowing the students to be up and active in the lesson allows for a funner learning environment and the kids want to come to class more because of it I think. You can use one of these tools with any lesson.
• Finally, I will have my students have "penpals" from across the world. I think it would be a good experience for them to see how other students learn, and be able to become global without actually leaving their classroom.

I appreciated how Dr. Boyer allowed us to ask questions at the end of the class period about anything we had thoughts or concerns about.
I wish we didn't have to have lecture for this class, I don't feel like it is necessary.
I don't understand why they are changing the way portfolio is done, we finally just learned how to use Dreamweaver and now their changing it.
My attitude towards technology has changed over the course of this semester a lot. Before this class I had never put any thought into encoorporating technology into my classroom and now there are so many options I don't know if I can use them all! I throughly enjoyed this class, as it was a lot of work but I think that it was well worth everything! I was able to learn about things that I may never have before such as scratch. I really do think I will use this in my future classroom along with many other options I learned about from this course!
THANK YOU :)

Podcast

This is the one assignment I had so much trouble with! Wouldn't have been so bad if I wouldn't have erased my only copy of it! But thats besides the point. I wound up having to redo the whole thing, and I thing that it still turned out great! I actually found more information on the topic to backup my argument so that was nice. I still really like the idea of making a podcast for my classrooms, their really easy to make especially if you have the information that your going to use. For example, if your just going to record your classroom lessons of the day, then you just have to record while your talking in class. Thats not hard at all! So although, I had issues with creating mine; only because my computer crashed, I will still use podcasts in my classrooms because i think its beneficial for students. They already have ipods so why not?

End of Class Slip

Technology Integration:

Teacher integrates technology in her classroom:

• SMARTBoard; active lessons
• Engage students in coopoerative learning.
• Actively engage them/participation.
• Online Collaborative projects;
• Learn from students in different parts of the world
• Reaching out to experts in the field.
• Virtual Penpals (epals.com)
• Daily online blog
• Use for students AND Parents.
• Online Assignments
• Open classroom (trasnparent teaching, document what is going on in the classroom)
• Recognition- Student accomplishments and success.
• Students have their own blogs to share their opinions. (more intersted in writing)
• Being exposed to current events
• Sharing their perspectives - in and out of class, global citizen.
• Laptops in the classroom
• Having laptops in our classroom allows us to blog and do online collaborative projects.

Students get to enjoy a more collaborative learning environment and share their work with the world!

Some ways to get collaborative projects could be to reach out to experts in other countries via skype, and wikis. Bring them into your classroom!
Writing assignments become more meaningful to students when you give them a global audience (audience outside of school, writing for more than just the teacher).

Somethings we could do before technology:

• Send home assignments (write in the planner,newsletter)
• Collaborative projects (different grade levels, other schools in the same city)
• Effective classroom management plan can allow student engagment.
• "Open Classroom" sending home a newsletter, call home.
• Students keep a journal about current events by looking at a newspaper.
• Sharing perspectives (within our own classroom)

Things that we couldn't do before technology:

• World-Wide collaboration
• Active blogging
• Online (Only within the last 10-15 years)
• SMART Board and Laptops.
• Recognition of student work.

Could do better:

• Engagement/Participation - Not solely responsible but increases it.
• Cooporative learning
• Open Classroom - don't have to "kill all the trees"
• Could tweet, blog, maintain wiki.
• Collaborative projects.
• Sharing perspectives - can go beyond the classroom
• VERY current, current events.
• Assignments

Technology makes classrooms much more effective!
Which technology do I use? Trying to find the perfect fit between the most effective technology and what your trying to create takes some time and thought.

Reasons to use technology
1. Use technology to reinforce learning
2. Be creative in using different kinds of learning (homemade elmo, named it grover.) Creative ways of asking for funding.
3. Communicating with your parents all the time, not just for parent/teacher conferences.
4. How students can stay connected wtih other people of the world.
5. Teachers admitting they don't know everything.
6. Use technology that students already have.
7. Use technology to engage your students not to entertain them!

Distraction is not a new concept! Technology may increase this concept.

Should you use your personal technology in the classroom?

• No, don't put your personal stuff at risk! Seperate those two worlds!

Week 12 in class assignment

http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=20120&CategoryID=2595
Third Grade Online Video

http://www1.gcs.k12.al.us/~podcast/audio/christmas_08.mp3
Third Grade Podcast

http://www.exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=x773f0c21e79547458e18f84a5e9e55e0
Grade 1 and 2 Spanish Smart Board Lesson

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/samurai768/1379954
Scratch project

http://www.primarygames.com/math/numbereaters/index.htm
Online Math Game

Chapter 10 Rethinking education

This chapter allowed us to consider all different aspects of technology in the classroom. I liked how the author's included their own opinions in this chapter. Its scary to think about all the changes that can be made just in the short time of me still being in school and also while i'm in the classroom teaching. How much will the technology part of this world evolve and change over the span of my career? But the thing is, is i'm in school now learning all this what about the teachers who aren't in school and are just thrown into a technology world like this. How do they cope with having to evolve technology into their classrooms? I know before taking this class I didn't know how to do a good portion of things I have learned. I didn't even have a blog or twitter, now I have both! Although, there is still so much to learn, after reading this book and taking this course I believe taht I am a step ahead of current teachers in the technology world. I am glad that I read this book and have a different perspective on technology and all the aspects it entails.

PSA

Our PSA really wasn't that hard. I think the hardest part was matching all of our schedules together to be able to film it. We figured out a topic no problem and it all fell into place. We sat down, filmed the video and then put it on the computer and made magic happen.
I think it was something new for me to do first of all, I made my youtube debut. That was pretty awesome I must say. But overall, I think this would be a good lesson for students to partake in. I feel like you could use any topic and its something that gets the students out of their seats and thinking about other topics. I think depending on what grade I teach, I will use this activity!

Out of class slip 11/11

Today is a work day! WOOOO.

Chapter 9 was presented today:

• Liked that they started wtih a quote, and explained the quote in their own words.
• Had a good idea about using scriblink, did a good job of exhibiting plan b
• Not equal distribution between talking.
• New Grouping.
• Assigning the perspective.
• Summary in 5 minutes or less

Its interesting in class when Dr. Boyer said that we are coming into the education community under a lot of scrutiny. We have to show and prove ourselves as to what how were going to be different and be able to interact technology into the education community. I think this is one of the things that TERRIFY me about becoming a new teacher. I am terrified that I will not be able to live up to the standards of a new teacher in todays world. I would hate to go through 5 years of school to not be able to ever get a job.
I think my last post said that I was overwelmed about this class because there is just oh so much do. Well because I was a productive student last week, I am well ahead of what is due, I need to continue working on my inquiry wiki but hopefully that will be complete by next week. I then will only have to focus on a PSA.
That being said, I am greatful to have a work day to catch up on anything else also.

Chapter 9 Rethinking Education

This was a short chapter, but it had some good points. I'm not a parent, but when I see kids playing video games I still question its relevance to the real world. Especially the games that consist of shooting people and what not. I've always saw it as negative, but when they said that those games are problem solving, they make a valid point. I'm not saying the shooting thing is still a good idea but games that include problem solving and reading and what not are useful. As far the excersise aspect of it though, I think kids need to find somehting a little more engaging as far as physical fitness goes. I did just see a commercial for a toy for little kids that is a bike, you have to petal and you follow it on tv and what not; I don't know it looked cool. Anyways, I like the idea of parents sitting down and playing a video game with their child, and the child has to teach them how to play. I think that is awesome, becacuse 1. it allows parent/child interaction. 2. Teaches the parent why the child plays specific games.

chapter 9 Blogs,wikis, podcasts

Social networking in schools is not something I have ever thought about. I know when I was in school is was always blocked from ALL computers in the school. You would get in trouble if you somehow found a way around the blocking and got onto facebook,myspace etc. But to actually read about ways that teachers are using Facebook and Ning (i've never heard of that before) was interesting. I liked how the one class that used Facebook helped the student that became ill to stay in touch. I think that it was also interesting to see that it made the classroom relationship a lot stronger because everyone was able to participate in this experience. I think that as a future teacher it could be a definite possiblity to use a social network in my classroom. I would obviously have to have all my ducks in a row in order to allow this to happen with teh school district. I would have to have set guidelines, reasons why I can use social networks vs. some other form of technology, etc. Facebook is very popular amoung kids these days, I think if I were to present the idea of using facebook in the classroom they would be overjoyed. But there would have to be very specific guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not. Overall, I like the idea of using social networking in my classroom.

Screencast

http://www.screencast.com/users/Crutl914/folders/Jing/media/cd5a7266-b3b2-4778-a15b-0b1729464f72

Sliderocket.com was my cool tool. Once I finally sat down and checked out the website, played around on it for a bit I thought it was a sweet tool. I wish I would have been on top of my work because I totaly could have used it for my presentation in 381 but thats besides the point. Anyways, it took me awhile to actually record because I kept having to redo it. I would stumble on my words, or have dead air for way too long, etc. it was pretty bad. But once I got it and recorded it for the fifth time I had a good idea of what I was supposed to say. When I listened to the final recording, I still noticed some errors but I don't think they were too large that it was in need of being recorded again. I really liked the tool that I chose as well, it was fun.
Creating this screencast initially I was nervous, I think thats why I procrastinated but again thats besides the point. I was nervous because I had no idea what I was doing, I had never done one before, and then I had also never used the cool tool before, it was ALL new. But after I actually did it I realized "wow that was easy" and also it was a great way for me to learn how to use something new. I think if I work with older grades such as 4 or 5th graders, I would definitly incoorporate a screencast lesson into my agenda. I think they would enjoy being able to learn something new and they can do it by creating a screencast. I like it a lot.

Exit slip 11/4/10

What did we do in class today?

I can't imagine having a school that doesn't have teachers. I have never thought that is where education would turn too. Years ago we would say that it was impossible, now anything is impossible apparently! I guess as long as the students are learning, and becoming educated in their area of expertise then I guess there is nothing wrong with that. In the end its all about the students and to make sure that those students learn what they are supposed too. Its funny to see a "one room schoolhouse" I feel like education is going back in time with an updated technology aspect.
Presentation:
Good:
Selected who was going to respond.
Relationship of the main themes
Venn diagram; looking at the interactions between everything, was a great idea, it allowed us to see all aspects of the strategies.
Student creating content is much more powerful than teacher creating content.

Bad:
Recording venn
Give directions before students break into groups. ; I know I like to socialize, and if I don't have specific directions beforehand, then yeah, I will talk to my group members, especially if I know them really well. Good tip!
Group sizes need to be taken into account. Things might not be as productive in larger groups than if you break them up into smaller groups.
Use diffferent colors.
When summarizing; students have to come up wtih 5 words or less.

Scratch:
Randomize the problems, score.
Do I know what to do when I use your problem? Students may not know what to do, give specific and clear directions.
Text on screen should be visible for the time it takes you to read through it twice. *****RULE of Thumb!

Chapter 8 Rethinking Education

How schools can cope with the New Technologies was an interesting chapter. I was suprised when I read that under 70% of the students entering high schools will graduate on time. I want to change that! In Beloit, I know that the graduation rate can be higher than what it is, and I want to go home and teach and be the teacher that pushes those children to know that they CAN do it! If I was able to move to the south, I would love to work with the schools down there to raise their graduation rate! I think that all kids need to know and believe that they CAN do it just like anyone else! But there are so many students out their that don't believe in themselves and it saddens me! I completely agree when it said that "designing a better education system means understanding where the existing pieces can best be reshaped, brought together, or played down. I agree, you can't fix something if you don't know where to begin! I think that, using this strategy, people will know their information and majors really well. You obviously can't become a doctor if you didn't receive all the other certifications needed to aquire that. Also, with this strategy, I think that students wouldn't be able to barely get by, it would take a lot of work and studying otherwise they wouldn't get their certifications to reach their dreams. I cannot imagine a child go off to college at the age of 15 or 16, I know that it has happened but I can't imagine. I was terrified to come here at the age of 18, I don't think children are ready to experience that at such a young age. The one thing about all these strategies to improve the education system that bothers me is that we are so worried about starting our children on their journey of a career and becoming an adult at such a young age are we forgetting about them being children first? They need to experience all the troubles, stress, entertainment, friends, etc, everything that school has brought me over the years I hope that my children get to experience as well good or bad.

Chapter 10

People don't use cds anymore, music is downloaded onto an ipod mainly and played off of that. Now, they are putting books online as well that you can download. I don't like that idea, I want to have a item in hand that I can read, I don't like to read off of a computer screen. Its crazy to me to see how far the world has come in terms of schooling. It used to be you had to look everything up in a book at the library, etc. Now, you just google everything. Weather one way is better than the other, I don't know but I know that google is A LOT faster than book. When i'm a teacher I will for sure use the web to be able to connect with other teachers, I think that it is awesome to be able to connect with teachers from different states and countries. Its also nice that you can get different ideas on a specific lesson. I will also use the web so that my students can present their completed assignments. I think that it allows students to be proud of themselves and their work because they have a larger audience to present to. One thing as a teacher that I have always enjoyed doing for an english class for example is to give my students a notebook that they can write down their thoughts,ideas, etc. in any form, just to allow them to have that one security in their life that they can tell anything to. But after takin this class I don't have to use a notebook, I can use a blog for example and still be able to document that my students are doing their assignment. I think that students like having that one thing to turn to when they need to get their thoughts out and maybe their home life isn't so great so they can't tell someone their. I want my students to know that NO MATTER WHAT they are always welcome to talk to me about anything. Granted, i'll be working with elementary students but I want to work with 3-5th grade so about that age they can start having issues and being able to express them openly i think.

Class 10/28

First and foremost I want to say that IT IS TOO COLD!
After seeing Nicks' deilcious account, I realized I needed to step it up a little bit. He had over 100 links saved. Thats crazy!
The group that presented today did a good job of conducting a student to student interaction. Also, they allowed us to see what everyone thought and both sides of the sepctrum. One thing that I think they did that none of the other groups have done was to bring the whole class together and recap what was said during the discussion. They had really good enthusiasm for presenting this.
Some things that they could improve on were to watch the uhms, anticipate group sizes (more for for vs. against), clearer expectations/directions for discussions, and DON'T say the end.
Funding is available for those with initiative. The government obviously is not going to give you the money without a little work! You have to lay out a game plan that you can receive money or funding for technology.
If you don't have initiative then the students aren't going to have initiative. *****
I thought the webinar was AWESOME! It was so interesting being able to interact wtih EVERYONE in the class at one time. Thats really cool that you can talk to people to or atleast that they can hear you, i'm sure in the next few years it will be upgraded so that you can interact with eachother with talking.
Podcasting:
I really like the idea of podcasting and I think this is one of the activites that i'm very excited about.
Contemporary issues
k-12
Articles can be paper based but online based might be better and will have more resources.
Once you find an article you need to write a script.
1. Big Picutre, why is it important?
2. What is the point of the article?
3. Your commentary, what do you think, what does that mean as a future teacher?
MUST have clear, audible speech! Its a waste of time if we can't understand what your saying.
We are supposed to be spending 9 hours on this one class, if we have 5, 3 credit classes that is 45 hours all together! THERE AREN'T THAT MANY HOURS IN A DAY!
Dont' get me wrong, I really like the lessons that we have to do in this class, but it becomes overwhelming when they all start overlapping with eachother and each week, we get another one piled on. Sometimes I feel like you should let us fully complete one assignment and then add another. Its fine if a coupel of them overlap but haveing 5 of them all at once to work on, and also having a million other tings to work on in other classes, that is when stress starts piling up, tears come out and being frustrated takes over!
Looking at all the assignments that we have assigned for this class, I could spend an entire week just working on this class!
SWOT Analysis
Strenghts
opportunities
weaknesses
threats

What may be lost and what may be gained

This chapter had a lot of good points that were brought up. I think one of the main points that it brought up, that I will incorporate as a teacher is to keep the students motivated to learn. If the students are motivated and want to be there rather than because they have to be there then thats where a lot of the behavioral issues and the drug problems decline. You have to show to your students that you care, that you want them to succeed in life, and that you will do anything for them to reach that goal. There are a lot of parents out there who don't care about their childrens' schooling which is very sad to me. But since I knew I wanted to be a teacher that was my main philosophy; to be that one person that those students turn to when the rest of the world has shut them out. I want to be the teacher that they look back on in life and say "she is the reason why i am the way i am today" I think that if parents want to take over there children's learning environment by homeschooling or private tutors, etc. then that is their perogitive, but I feel that they should look at all aspects before making that decision. Will their child be socially awkward? Will they succeed even more than if they were in public schooling? etc. What really frustrates me is the parents who think they can just buy everything to get ahead in the world. This goes for everything, while I was in school both of my brothers played hockey. They played youth hockey all the way through high school and when try outs came around the kids whose parents had money always wound up on the A teams weather they were good enough to be there or not. The same is true in the classroom, students whose parents have money, will spend it on all the technology that they possibly can so that their student can get ahead. Don't get me wrong i'm glad they care, but are they doing the work for their student, is their student actually learning something, or are they just blowing their money away? I think that too an extent students should get an option of what they want to learn, but I also believe that they need to have the fundamentals to get them through life even if they are boring.

Chapter 8 Blogs,Wikis, Podcasts

I am so intrigued by podcasts. I don't know why, but I think they are so cool. I think its awesome that anybody and everybody can just babble on about nothing if they wanted, turn it into a podcast and post it for the world to listen to. I mean I can babble about a whole lot of nothing for people to listen to, give wonderful opinions on any topic, I think thats right up my ally. On another note, I also like that you can use podcasts in the classroom, you can just record the whole class so whoever misses it can hear what happened, or you can use it as a tool for your students in other ways as well. I never heard of teachertube.com but I like the idea. I think when I become a teacher, I would like to use videocasting. I think that the students would enjoy it, and if I say gave them assignment that they had to present on a certain topic, they could go back and view themselves. One of my biggest fears is public speaking. After I took comm 101 that fear was lessened because 1. I had no choice but to overcome it otherwise I fail! 2. They taped every speech and you were able to view yourself after the fact, and I got to see how many times I said "Um, like", played with my hair, fidgeted, etc. It was a great way to get useful feedback on my performance. Next, I LOVE THE IDEA OF LIVE STREAMING! I think that working with elementary students they are so open to do anything and try anything. Especially to tell them were creating our own tv show, HOW COOL IS THAT!? They wold love it! This chapter was useful because it gave me more interactive ways to interact with my students in and out of that classroom and I love that!

Get out of class slip

At the beginning of the semester I didn't like the idea of not having point systems for grading. Now that we are half way through the semester I have decided that I really like that its all about expectations and the work that you put into the project vs. points. I think that it allows us to fully expand our thinking and know that we will get graded based on the hard work that we put into the project. Is it possible to incoorporate that into an elementary classroom?
The group that presented today did a good job overall, I had a hard time hearing them sitting in the back of the classroom. I liked the way they split the groups with different flavors of suckers, that was very creative. They did a good job, going around and talking to the groups, and also they were very prepared and you could tell! They also did a good job about integrating their background knowledge into the presentation. Used the timer. Jigsaw, allows the students to interact more with each other than teacher student interaction. Each student becomes an expert in something and each student gets to share their expertise wtih each other.

We then moved onto tips for the SMART board. Locking an object allows it so that objects can't be moved. When I go back to revising my interactive white board lesson; lock any objects that is appropriate. Next, grouping objects together, high light both objects and use the drop down menu and click on grouping. Cloner, drop down menu, click on infinite cloner. Think about color choices; bright colors are not projected as bright like on  the computer! Watch out that you didn't put too much text on your pages; especially depending on the grade level that you chose. Rule of thumb for text size; smallest would be 24-36+. No more than 36 words on the slide.
I really appreciated getting help wtih my IRLO, you were very helpful and understanding. I really like that you don't treat us like "idiots" because we don't know how to do the technology that you do.

Scratch

Oh my goodness where do I begin? Scratch, is very complicated but exciting at the same time. I had a great idea but it turned out to be too complex. I was going to work work on Area teaching third graders and the game that I wanted to create was tetris. But, that was too complex for this assignment so I broke it down with Jeff's help into creating shapes and asking the students to figure out the answer. If the students get the answer correct then it says "nice job" if they get it incorrect it says "oops try again." Once I got started and knew how to create everything I went to down and it went really well. But when I first started it took me a long time to figure it out and fully understand it. I think that if I were to take this into a job interview I think that it would boost my chances of getting a job; first because its using a different program that many teachers have no idea how to use. Also, it shows that I have interactive ways of teaching the children. I do think that I would use this in my classroom and just tweak it so that it was developmentally appropriate for whatever grade I get to teach.

Interactive White Board Lesson

I really liked creating my own interactive white board lesson. At first, I had an idea of what I wanted to do; work with language arts. But I wasn't sure what to do, so I put many different activities together and said I was done. But then once, I thought about it I decided to make a lesson that I can actually use in my future classroom. So I chose to work with subject and preticate and present the information that I would explain to them what it is, give examples, etc and then I created some different activities for them to complete. It took me a while to create all this but I am very happy with the outcome. This impacts my future teaching because it allows me to think about the different steps that I'm going to have to take to teach these children something new, Its different because I know it so I have to think about all the different ways that they may not understand, etc.

Chapter 6

I don't like how they kept saying that homeschooling its making its way back to be the social norm. I understand and agree that people should learn what they want to learn, but at the same time, some of the things that a parent will teach their child may not be as useful as what they wold learn in school for example, if parents start teaching their children about farming and house chorse like back during the american revolution, that does not benefit society in a large way at all. I think that children should have to go to Elementary school to get the basica knowledge of life; writing, sentences, A,B,C's, etc. and then after that if their parents feel it neccessary to still homeschol htem, then that is their choice. I also agree, when it says that as a teacher you need to show them how to do it and then let them do it; you need to be their to offer assistance NOT to do it for them. Then you test them on what you worked out to make sure that they understand and are learning. Today in 381 we went over standards and what not and he said that you need to teach and then you have yoru assessment and I always hated tests but being the "teacher" now, I understand why you give out tests, I don't think it will be my sole way of assessment in my classroom but its nice to understand it now.