Stop-Motion Animation Reflection

In the stop-motion animation assignment we used imovie which is fairly simple to use. One thing that I liked about it was how easily you could add your pictures to it and create a production. Going into it I thought that it was going to take our group a long time to take as many pictures that we needed.

I liked our groups idea, we used Marissa's dog, Mr. Ty as our star and we were a little uncertain how he was going to behave. But he actually did exactly what we wanted of him. Our public service announcement was on the importance of training your dog. Me and Marissa were having lunch and as I dropped something from the table, Mr. Ty jumped up and stole my sandwich that I was eating. Then Marissa decided to train him so he would behave better around her friends. The next time that we had lunch, he sat on the ground and was very well behaved the whole time. The moral of the story was that people love a well trained dog. It was a lot of fun and it was very cute.

I would love to create a stop-motion animation in my future classroom. Like I have said before, I really want to teach early elementary grades so some of the things that we have done are really more pertained to older students. But I an always thinking of ways that I can incorporate them for younger students. It may require a lot of help from me, but I am sure that they can be active participants in creating the story line and acting out the scenes.

I am still really surprised how fast we created it and how many pictures it took for only a minute or so for the final project.

Scratch Project Reflection

This project was a lot of work. It took me a very long time to figure out how exactly to get the "sprite" to do what I wanted it to do. After playing around with it a lot and getting some information from classmates and Jeff, I eventually figured it out. The more I messed around with it the better I think it got. Once a person learns the basics, you should be able to manipulate it anyway you want.

When I finished it i did get a sense of accomplishment. I made everyone in my house play with my moon phase model that I created. They thought it was cool and I tried to get my 11 year old to create his own, but I didn't have time to give him much direction and he quickly lost interest.

I feel that this would be a fun and interactive project that student can work on over a period of time. They are not something that can be created in a short amount of time, I don't think anyway. I do feel that it would be a very rewarding project because I was very proud of my finished project in the end.

Since I want to teach K-2nd grade, I feel that I would have to be very involved in helping students create these projects if I was to use them in the future. I think they it would be perfect for third grade and up though because it does require some reading skills and coordination to create.

I still could place context on one and have younger students use the "game" to reinforce inportant concepts and skills with the younger kids in my future classroom.

Podcast Assignment Reflection

This assignment was a lot of fun. I made my podcast in audacity which is pretty easy to use and did not take a lot of time to create. My hardest part of this assignment was trying to come up with an interesting topic that was educationally relevant. After many scratched ideas I decided to make it about adventures and how the local library is your source for wonderful adventures without having to leave your town. I talked about how you could visit the jungles of Africa or the Pyramids with just a trip to your library. I thought it turned out pretty well and that any student no matter their age should be able to create one fairly easily with little instruction. I feel that I should be able to incorporate this type of technology into my future classrooms for a fun way to have students share their knowledge of a subject in an interesting way. I liked that we had the freedom to create pretty much whatever we wanted but it is a little broad for younger children. When I use podcasts I think I will give them a topic like science or math to make it more focused but besides that it was great and I enjoyed creating it.

Exit Slip How did your Idea of Tecnology Changed over the Semeter?

My idea of technology has changes some from the beginning if this semester. I though to begin with that technology was important and that teacher should incorporate it into their curriculum. Now I feel much more comfortable using technology in the classroom and I like learning about new technologies. I have enjoyed this class so much that I am changing my masters specialty to technology. I want to learn more about how to incorporate technology especially with younger children since I don't see teachers using it as much as they could with the younger grade levels.

April 8th Exit Slip

Today we reviewed chapter 10 and started with going over authentic assessment and performance assessment. In this class since it is a technology class we focus on performance assessment We learned that the clickers had different capabilities such as texting which I did not know you could do with them. He also shared a few books that are useful for new teachers. Visible Learning and How People Learn and Harry Wong-First Days of School. He stressed that feedback as a teacher is a great way to know how you are doing as a teacher. Through doing assessments you will know how effective your teaching is because you can see how your students are learning. He talked about how struggling readers feel that they are the only ones that get off task when trying to read. But in fact everyone does. The clickers can be used to show students these facts. That not everyone gets the right answer all of the time. Clickers are expensive which is a downfall of this device. Polleverywhere.com can be used in place of a clicker using cellphones. Next we talked about rubrics. He said that rubrics are difficult to create. It is very easy to create a crappy rubric and very hard to create a really good rubric. They don't allow for much creativity on the part of the student. Then we talked about electronic portfolios and how many students are using them for student led conferences. Then we went into computer based testing. Using survey tools can be used as a computer based test and they can be graded and give you a spreadsheet of the data rather quickly. After the chapter discussion we went over contemporary issues and cool tools. Kathrine went first and talked about hoe technology can help students learn more about science concepts with technology. Bring experts into the classrooms to discuss their expertise either through video conferencing or actual classroom visits. Kelsey shared her cool tools which was flicker which is a photo sharing site. Katie shared wordle.com to make word clouds. Amanda was up next and she shared Ning.com. Finally we finished our stopmotion animation. All of these tools are very useful to use and I will definitely use them in my future classroom.

Chapter 10 Assessing Meaningful Learning with Technology

I was looking forward to this chapter. We have spent lots of time in class and in the text finding out how technology can be used to help students and support meaningful learning in the classrooms. But there has been no talk about how to tell if your students are actually learning through the process. This chapter discusses two different types of assessments. One is authentic assessment which is evaluating their authentic learning. The other one is performance assessment which is assessing the actual skills that a student has by seeing them perform that skill. I feel that we have been assessed in this class according to performance assessments. We have received a met or not met depending on weather we were able to complete the required assignment using technology. I agree with this type of assessment. Especially if it is on an individual basis. If you assign a podcast you will know if a student is able to use the technology or not to create it if they produce one and it meets your requirements. I will definitely use this type of assessments in the future since I feel that they do work and show the instructor that they can create the required task. I like the portfolio idea for keeping students work all in one place. I forget sometimes that when I have my own classroom we will not have a class website like we do in our college classes here. Creating a place for students all to submit their assignments and keep them together for later use is a great idea.I watches some of the reviews on the site that was mentioned in the chapter called foliotek.com. This site seems to offer many different options that are useful in creating an online portfolio. Rubrics are important for assessing technology. A rubric is a set of requirements for any particular assignment. As long as the requirements are met the assessment is complete. I like rubrics, they help me stay on track for my assignments and keep me inline with what the instructor is expecting for a particular assignment. There are sites online that can help instructors generate rubrics such as ide.ed.psu/ITSC/RubrProc/ that is mentioned in the text. I would probably need help with creating a rubric for the first time and this tool could be very valuable to me in the future. The student response devices that we have used in class before we mentioned in this chapter. I feel that these tools would be very useful for assessment on a whole class basis. Since they are done somewhat anonymous students will not feel pressured about raising their hand or answering with the whole class looking on. I hope to get a set of these in my future classroom to use for assessments. Our TESOL teacher used a website that allowed her to do the same thing but with students using their own cell phones and texting in answers. That would probably be great for older students but I don't think (or I hope that) my future Kindergarten or First grade students would have cell phones that they can text on and use in the classrooms.

April 1st Exit Slip

Today we learned about chapter 9 which was presented Christine and Sarah. The discussed that visualization is a key tool for learners and technologies can help with visualization. I thin that they did a great job of sharing what the chapter was about with the class. I shared my contemporary issue today which was focused on how students are using different technologies in the classrooms to cheat in the classroom. During my search for a topic I was anticipating finding links such as plagiarism and spark-notes but I ran across numerous sites that were mentioning how students were using ipods to cheat. This was interesting to me because I thought that you could only really put music on one and maybe pictures. I did not know that you can put documents into the ipod. The class input was great when I did my presentation. Many mentioned that they did not know that students could do this in the ipods like I thought. And many thought that listening to music during an exam is helpful for some to focus and concentrate on the material. Marissa mentioned about whether or not is a teachers place to teach students how to have online etiquette. The class agreed that students do need to be taught when is the appropriate time to type correctly like writing formally and informally. The cool tools were on twiddla, live mocha and twitter. These sites were pretty cool. I really liked the twiddla site since students can collaborate on assignments. I liked the idea of collaborating with other classrooms I definitely feel that I will use this in the future. We also took pictures for our stop motion productions. I am excited about that since we are staring "Mr. Tye" Marissa's dog.

Chapter 9 Visualizing with Technologies

In this chapter it talks about technologies that help people visualize what they are thinking when they don't have much artistic ability. It focuses on five types of visualization tools: scientific, mathematical, digital cameras/phones, video and video modeling feedback. For the science part I can really see how this can help students. For example when models are created to represent things that can't normally me seen or when they are created for space concepts, such as my Scratch model of the moon phases. these visualizations are very important to teach concepts that can not physically be held in your hand. The book mentions that students learn a lot more when they are involved hands on with creating the models. Creating maps is another tool that is helpful for students to visualize the learning process. There are many sites that the book lists that are helpful for creating maps. Google Earth is a cool tool that is mentioned that I have used before. Google maps is another thing that I use often when I am going somewhere. I like most of the tools that Google offered. They are pretty user friendly and I think that students would not have much trouble using these tools to explore. I think that Mathematical tools are very important for students to visualize as well. Technology tools have helped me understand math, especially geometrical shapes and planes. I am sure that many students will benefit from the ideas mentioned in the book about using technology as manipulatives for math to make the learning more meaningful to them. I had never thought before of the graphing calculators as really being a helpful tool, but I did use mine often to visualize the graphical information in my textbooks. My favorite topic from this chapter is the visualization with digital cameras and mobile phones. These are probably the ones that I am most familiar with since I am always taking pictures and sending them either from my phone or by uploading them and emailing them to people mostly family. I know for a fact that video is fun for children and easy for them to create. My son has a camcorder and he makes the funniest videos all of the time. I need to teach him how to edit them and create title pages and such like I did for my digital booktalk. That was fairly easy and I am sure that students will love watching themselves on screen. This chapter has taught me much more than what I already knew about visualizing with technology. I will definitely use these techniques in my future classroom since I know from experience that students love using these tools and that they keep them engaged and assist with their learning.

Exit Slip for March 25th

Ø First we checked our delicious accounts to see if we are on track for the class requirements at this point we should have 60 bookmarks to be on track. One way to build your account is to check out your classmate’s accounts.

Ø Then Jeff asked us to take a look at the “feed bag” on the class website. It contains many articles that are useful for you to put in your delicious accounts. Some articles could be useful for our inquiry projects and worth look at. He will post information that is useful to teaching and technology.

Ø We reviewed who needed to do digital autobiographies, cool tools and contemporary issues presentations. Then we reviewed the podcast assignment briefly before introducing Carlee and Erica who are teaching Chapter 8.

Ø For Chapter 8 they taught that students should learn by designing. They shared a few sites for students to use to learn how to design. Designing allows for students to be challenged and for them to create projects that they are going to be able to do and will learn the concepts that are involved in the process. Some of the new programs that are available allow students to design a product and test it before actually building the project in real life. They shared the site www.http://algobeautytreb.com that allows students to build a simulation of a trebuchet. This will let students play around with settings on their models before finding the best design for their project. They discussed the progression of this technology from the logo to microworlds. Next they discussed constructionism and the Scratch website http://scratch.mit.edu and iStopMotion. Scratch we have already used and probably are fairly familiar with this program. The other iStopMotion is similar to the one we are going to use that involves taking multiple pictures frame by frame and then putting them together as a finished project. iStopMotion is not a free program. Designing music was another aspect discussed. GarageBand and Impromptu. These are fairly easy to produce with children. Studies have been shown that this tool does help students create music on their own. One program available for younger students was http://creatingmusic.com. They discussed that designing tools are meaningful learning and teachers should use these tools in their classrooms. Then we explored different simulations for bridges, science simulation, gizmo and design your own garden. Class shared feedback with the presenters.

Ø For the cool tools presentations Tiffany shared the website Symbaloo http://symbaloo.com/us/ which is a search engine tool/bookmarking tool. It creates a full page that can be used for specific websites and tools for in the classroom. A very good tool for organizing websites. Netvibes and igoogle are other similar tools that Jeff mentioned.

Ø Contemporary issues presentations that were conducted today were by Rachel who shared information about a paperless classroom. Her article referred to a teacher using PDA’s for students for their work and then they upload them to her. This saves time and is useful for ELL students since formats can be changed to other languages like Spanish. Loren was next and she discussed video games and how they can be incorporated into the classrooms to prepare students for state tests. Kathleen went last and she discussed China’s recent decision by Google to lift censorship.

Ø Jeff discussed the features of GarageBand and how to create a podcast using this program. It is only available on a Mac computer. This program is different than the Audacity one discussed last week since it has preloaded music and sound effects. Many of the features are easier to operate in GarageBand. Then he showed us how to save the files into mp3 files. Resources are listed on the agenda page for tutorials on these tools.

Ø We went over the homework that is on the agenda.

Ø After that we went over the stop-motion animations and the expectations for this project. We discussed it in our individual groups.

Ø Last we discussed posting our exit slips to our learning logs.

Chapter 8 Designing with Technologies

From reading this chapter I have realized that there are many different design programs available for students to use in class. I have only had experience with a couple of design programs, scratch being one of them. My Dad use to have a cabinet shop and I would help him work on a design program that he had for Kitchen layouts. I remember it being really helpful for his clients to visualize what they wanted on a screen and then be able to change things that they see would not work for them. He told me that it was much better than his two dimensional drawings that he had previously done for clients. I really liked the one about creating the trebuchet.I haven't tried it yet, but I am wanting to create one and see how it will work. I wish they would have given us a chance do these fun types of programs when I was in school (though it was so long ago we didn't even have the internet at school or home). I really liked the scratch program that we have already used in class. It really took me a long time to find out how to manipulate my sprites, but when I figured it out I could make it do what ever I wanted it to do. I want to incorporate designing tools into my classroom in the future. One reason is because they are very engaging for students and they can learn skills that can transfer over to building actual models like the book mentions being done with the trebuchet model. I want to teach Kindergarten or first grade but I still feel that if I can find the right design program it can be incorporated and modified for young students. They can catch on to things pretty fast. I know from experience that my chidren have been able to play games on the computer and video games quite well even without being able to read. Actually I think that the game zelda for the gameboy helped my oldest one learn to read. He would constantly ask me what the game was telling him to do, so I told him that he needed to try and sound out the words on the screen.

March 18tth Exit Slip

Today we talked about the impact that technology has on young children. Jeff talked about how his daughter at the age of one is definitely interested in technology and knows that when you take a picture with a camera that you can see your picture on the back of it. I know exactly what he was talking about because every time i used to see my boys doing something cute I would pull out the camcorder and they would freeze and stop what they were doing. I liked the epals site that Kathleen talked about in her chapter review. I like that it gives you an option to connect to classrooms around the world. There is also a place to post your classroom grade and topic for other classrooms that are working on the same topic can see you and form a relationship between the two classrooms together through discussions. I like the video conferencing topic too that was discussed. The suggestion of having a children author to skype into the classroom and discuss how they wrote the book with your classroom.

Like
video conferencing- some are free, fun for students to interact with others around the world
podcast and radio- students can record info to share with others with the class
instant messaging- instant answers and communication
social networking sites- fun and interactive and students love them
discussion boards- easier to formulate a thought since you have time to respond

Dislike
video conferencing- some are very expensive and you need to take the time to learn the tool
podcast and radio- could be a little unsafe and it is possible for them to find inappropriate information
instant messaging- hard to govern
social networking sites- harder to regulate conversations that are on task
discussion boards- not real interactive

Weather we would use these tools: I like the majority of these tools and would like to figure out a way to incorporate them into my future classrooms. Some I am a little unfamiliar with and would like to learn more before I state exactly weather I would use them or not. According to the discussion in class I think that the majority of these tools are easily incorporated into the classroom with a little practice and planning.

Learning more about our podcast assignments was very helpful. I think that it is going to fairly east to use the audacity tool to make a podcast. I look forward to exploring this tool when I get home and see what I can create.

Ch. 7 Communicating with Technologies

Chapter 7 talks about the growing use of the internet for communication. The chapter discusses that the internet has made many things possible such as online classrooms. I will definitely agree that I probably would not be where I am right now if it was not possible for me to take classes online. My only reason in choosing to go back to school and not find a job was the option to take many of my classes online or early enough in the day that I could be home for my children when they get home from school. Another reason that I wanted online classes was because I live 45 minutes away from the nearest college. This form of communication has enriched my life as I know it has for many students that want to further their education. Chapter 7 also discusses the importance of online discussion boards. I have had to make many online discussion posts since I have been taking classes. Though I see the use of them for online classes, I feel that when I have a class on campus and still need to post online that it is not as helpful to me. I feel that many of the topics that we are required to discuss can easily be done in class without me needing to keep track of how many posts I made and if or if not I responded the correct amount of times. I can see how these discussions can be beneficial, but I feel like it is not always helpful to me. On the other hand, I do feel like using instant messaging helps me. I must be the type that wants instant replies. When you told us about the Google docs that was an awesome tool. Marissa and I needed to work on a lesson plan for a class and we uploaded it to Google docs and both of us were on IM and discussing what we wanted to change in the lesson. It really worked out great. I also IM my friends and family that I see online from time to time. I think that these types of technologies could be useful in a classroom to extend your class discussions. I just feel that if I was to use these that I would need to find a safe site that I can set guidelines on and monitor the discussions for meaningful learning taking place. Our class would be great since you can only get into the discussions if you are a student in the class and there are guidelines on what the topics are for the discussions.

Ch 6 Reflection Commuity Building with Technology

I agree with the authors of our textbook that technology has definitely changed the way that people communicate. From my personal experience, I have family that is all over this country and being able to send a text or an email to tell them something is really nice. I know that I am more likely to do one of those things instead of calling because of time zone differences and not knowing when people are at work or home. That way they still get my message when it is convenient for them. I felt like the chapter talked a lot about the things we have already learned in class such as the wiki’s and blogs and how they can be used in a classroom setting. I like the idea that was mentioned about having a class wiki like the one about the Holocaust. This seems like it would be a lot of fun for the students as well as educational. They would need to so some type of research to make their adventure as realistic as possible and other students could edit and alter it since it is a wiki. This reading has shown me that there are many ways that teachers can incorporate different technologies into their teaching. The idea that blogs could be used to assess student’s understandings of the context that was mentioned is exactly what we are doing here. I really think that this would be beneficial to use in a classroom with older students. I plan on teaching the early elementary grades so I am not real sure as to how I would incorporate a blog into that. But I think that first or second graders would love to have a story wiki where they could go in and change the story like was mentioned in the chapter. The global schoolhouse sounds like an interesting thing. I read an article for our science class that was on the same lines as what was mentioned. The students in the article kept a log of the moon phases every day and shared them with students around the world. They were able to learn the different ways the moon was represented in other cultures. This is learning that they would have probably not had otherwise if it wasn’t for the internet and an educational online community to share their thoughts with. I want to use as much technology as I can in my future classrooms; I feel that it keeps students interested in the learning process and more involved.

Fbruary 25, 2010 Exit Slip

Today the attendance question asked who had ever heard of "rickrolling". It was extremely annoying to me that I did not know what that was. I had to look it up as soon as I got back to my computer. It is where when you click on a link you are transferred to a music video on youtube instead. I feel that the contemporary issue topics that we talked about today were interesting. I did not really realize that sexting was such a big issue and that the charges for it were so tough. I am glad that he went over the inquiry projects because I have been a little confused about what is expected of us for this project. I also feel more comfortable about my Scratch project after it being reviewed today because I an much more sure that mine is representing the correct content for the age and the interaction level is what he is wanting (i think).

Chapter 5 Reflection Post

This chapter was interesting to me. I liked the way that it said that computers are used a lot of the time as a “teacher” for students. Instead computers should allow students the opportunity to interact and use the technology to help them construct “mental models” that they can use. That way they are contributing too, it is not just answer this question with something that you have memorized in your head and I (the computer) will tell you if it is right or wrong. The way that the chapter suggests making these models is with “mindtools”. It makes sense to me that teachers should incorporate technology tools for students to organize and gather their thoughts with. The only things I think of is are these really useful if it is something that can easily be done on paper in less time? For example, concept maps, I have only used concept maps to organize my thoughts before writing a paper. They were very easily constructed on paper. We had to make one for our science class on the computer and I felt like it took me forever to get all of the lines to show a connection like I wanted them to. I would have spent more time on the concepts I was highlighting and less on making it look good if I was to do it on paper. On the other hand, I do agree with the textbook authors that spreadsheets are good tools to use. These programs (once figured out) do help with having more accurate data. I know that if I am trying to add a whole row of figures by hand I might miss a number here and there or need to add it multiple times before I get the same answer twice. I like that you can total a whole column on a spreadsheet in a matter of a few clicks. This is much easier than doing it on paper and more useful to me. After reading this chapter I do agree that teachers should incorporate using some type of mindtools into their teaching so students learn to use technology to help them learn. I want to teach the early elementary grades so if I was to incorporate these tools into my teaching I will need to research what is available and try to adapt it to younger students. The book stated that most of these are used for older grades.

February 18th Exit Slip

Today we had Kelsey and Amanda doing their presentation. I really feel that they did really well with their presentation. I liked their examples of websites that they used during their presentations. The cool tools explanation was interesting to me. I really liked the one that Kelly mentioned about the stud website dweeber. I feel that teachers could use this tool to pair students with similar academic levels or varied academic skills to study together or work on assignments together as a group. Erica shared great sites that talk about cyber bullying which is a growing problem in the classrooms today. That bullying is not just an outside of school issue, it carries over into the social aspect of school too. Before she talked about it today I really thought that if a student was being bullied by someone online they could just ignore it or log off of it. But since students are all online and friends of each others online pages, other students can read these comments and carry it over to school. I am interested in figuring out some of the problems that I am having with Scratch at the end of class.

Ch. 4 Supporting Writing with Technology

When I began reading this chapter I was thinking to myself, how can technology really help students with writing? I was thinking that using a computer for writing and having spell check and things help. But I never thought of using an online concept map to organize my thoughts before. It makes sense because I have seen the ones that I have made on paper and a computer based map would be much neater and organized better. In turn would probably mean that I could see what I was thinking more clearly to be able to use what I have recorded. Another tool for writing was teaching students to use power point presentations. My son was making one of these earlier this year. He needed pictures of himself and he created a story based on himself-basically and autobiography. I know that he enjoyed making his presentation because he would come home and tell me about what he was doing. I do agree with the book that sometimes people can get carried away with creating power points and make far too many slides in their presentations. I like how in this class we have been asked not to use this program and explore other presentation options. The site that I found for my meaningful learning website had a place that was for kids to post their own writing on. I like this idea because students will have more pride in their writing. The class we took last semester about teaching us how to teach writing was a lot of work, but we worked so long on a book project that we did that I have tremendous pride in mine that I made. I also agree with the chapter that peer feedback helps make your writing better. Everytime I read my story in class someone would have something that I could add to make my story even better. I also liked the way that we “published” them in a book form. As a future teacher I want to use technology to my advantage when having students write. I want to introduce them to different tools that can help them get their creativity flowing. This is a great way for students to learn about different technology tools and enjoy writing at the same time.

February 4th Exit Slip

Today mostly all I took away from class was the different ways that teachers can use technology in the classrooms. When I read the chapter for today I did not feel that it gave that much information about the differences for microworlds and other things like simulations and virtual worlds. In the class discussion i received a better understanding about what microworlds are. Me and Marissa had our book chapter discussion today. I feel that over all it went pretty well. Having to be aware of the time was a little frustrating and trying not to say umm's and like's is difficult. I really appreciate the way that Jeff spent a little more time reviewing the scratch program because it is hard to start on. I feel more motivated to go home and start on this assignment over the weekend.

Chapter 3

February 5, 2010
Chapter 3
Below is a link to our presentation for today. Please log on and feel free to look around as we get set up.
http://tasandmer.glogster.com/chapter-3/

Chapter 3 Reflection

Chapter three was about how experimenting with technology helps students learn to reason better. It discussed how learners need to use causal reasoning by hypothesizing, conjecturing, experimenting, speculating and testing. This chapter has taught me that students can learn so much more if just the right technology is introduced to them. I did not think that games that have virtual civilizations had much of an academic aspect to them until now. As a teacher I want to take what students are interested in (fun and games online) and incorporate some educational aspects into the mix. The chapter mentions microworlds, simulations, games, and virtual worlds. These ideas are great ways to get students that have various learning styles involved in your lessons. I experimented with most of the sites listed in the chapter. They were pretty cool to play around with. I am very interested in learning how to incorporate these different tools into my teaching some day. I want to teach Kindergarten or First grade, so some may not apply to me but I am always looking at how I can modify the information that I get in my classes for younger grades. I especially like the Jeopardy quiz games site. According to the chapter, for this to be meaningful learning for students and not just memorization, the questions need to have meaningful responses. Not just answers that are previously memorized. I feel like I could use this tool for studying for different tests with my students. Jeopardy was the first computer game I had when I was younger and I loved to play it. Well let me rephrase that, it was the only computer game that me and my sister had when we got our first computer. I am glad that my kids have an opportunity to learn in so many different ways that when I was in school. I can remember when our middle school first got computers in a new computer lab. We only had two games to play on them (Oregon Trail & Where in the world is Carmen San Diego-I think) and but we all looked forward to going to the lab every week. The learning games that are offered know includes so much more. For example, the SimCity one mentioned in the chapter. The players are in control of their land and property. This is such an interesting game. The only thing I wonder about is that students may become so involved into the game that they think that it is real.

What I learned in class today.

I liked watching the autobiographies from today. I realized that even though we used the same program to create our autobiographies we all had unique presentations to share. I feel that I can use this site in the future with students and the projects will still be unique. I think that I learned how to better phrase my inquiry question since we took class time to revise them with the class. I know that I changed the wording of my question before I share it and then when I shared it the class thought the wording of it was fine. Another thing we did today was we talked about the Scratch assignment. I thought that this was fun to learn. I am excited to go home and try this site and see what I can create. I like that it can be created as an interactive experience for the person using what you created. I want to show it to my kids and let them explore the site.

How to Teach Learners to Evaluate Websites?

We all know that anyone can put anything on the internet and it doesn’t necessarily have to be true information that they are passing on to the public. But young children may need to be told about this so they don’t believe everything that they read online. Especially since more and more assignments that students need to complete, require searching the internet for information. Chapter 2 of our book mentions that teachers should teach students steps to learn how to tell if a website is valid or not. The two main areas to focus on when evaluating a site is: relevancy and credibility. When we are teaching students how to tell if a site is accurate, we need to teach them to ask questions to themselves to evaluate the source and the treatment of the subject on the site. For example, “Who provided this information and why?, Does the organization have a vested interest or bias concerning the information presented?, Is it clear when the site was developed and last updated?, and is a Bibliography or resource list included?, Is someone trying to sell us a product or point of view?, What kind of site did it come from (.com=commercial, .gov=government, .edu=educational institution, and .org=nonprofit organization), Is this primarily an advertising or a marketing site?” (pg.22 Meaningful Learning with Technology by David Jonassen et.al.) We want students to use reflective thinking about what that particular site has and what it might be missing in terms of content. After students have done the two steps above, we should teach them to verify the information by checking with at least two other websites and see if all of their information is in sync with each other.
I used these steps when I looked at the sites listed for us to evaluate. The one about the tree octopus the first thing I did was try to find the author of the site and see if he was an expert in his field. There was a drawing of the author of the site and a document that was smudged out saying, “was smuggled out of a filing cabinet in the main office of a black helicopter farm by loyal Cascadian Sasquatch operatives...” a little shady right there. A google search of Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus led me to numerous sites that said that site was a hoax created in 1998. So this site did not pass the triangulate test. Another site I tried these steps on called All About Explorers. The first thing I did was read the link at the bottom that was about this site and it tells you on that page that the information is fictional on the site. If we give students the right tools they can learn how to spot the websites that contain false information.

Digital Booktalk Reflection

This assignment was a lot of fun. I don’t have much time to explore some of the programs that are on my computer, so using the Movie Maker was fun. I started my booktalk in another program and realized when I was finished with it that I was unable to save the movie file in any format. I think my program was out of date and I could not find any updates for it. Thanks to Marissa, I found the Movie Maker program (which I had on my computer and did not know). It is very easy to use and the help function was useful to me. I spent a long time working on this assignment. Mainly because I had a particular vision that I wanted to portray in my booktalk. I had my kids and one of their friends help with the video. It was more difficult that I thought it would be to get three children to follow my direction on camera without me saying anything that would affect the audio of the video. But, after lots of video I was able to edit it to something that I thought was cute.
The value of this assignment to me was that I feel proud of what I was able to make. I had never tried to make a movie before but it was a lot of fun. Plus my kids learned a little something about it from helping me. My oldest one has tons of video that he has filmed with his camcorder and I am sure he is eager to start creating his own movies as well.
From using children in my booktalk for our class, I feel that students would love creating one of these in my classroom. I can imagine each class creating a digital booktalk and sharing them with the other classes to promote reading in the school. My video is funny to me. Mainly because the two in the movie are going off of what the other one is reading for their direction. And the one reading could not stop laughing at the two acting it out. I had to edit out a lot of chuckles in the recordings. They had fun with the whole process and helped me with create my finished project.
The process started with going to the library and selected a few books to use, then we read the books and created a character list, next we decided who was going to be which character. After that we made the “costumes” and wrote our roles. Before we started the filming, we made a few practice runs of what we were going to do and say. I was a little concerned at the beginning that they would not like it. I was definitely wrong. These digital booktalks are a fun way to get students more interested in reading.

Chapter 2 Reflection

Ch 2 talks about the different trends in technology. One topic was Internet researching and how it is a common thing these days. The only problem with searching the web is how to trust the information as being a fact. Simply searching the web for information is not learning. For students to learn, they need to have a purpose for searching particular information and use it to solve a problem. There are steps for this intentional information searching: 1. Plan, 2. Use strategies to search the Web, 3. Evaluate, and 4. Triangulate sources (pg. 15). All of these will help students decide if the information is true and believable.
First, when teaching students to evaluate sites they need to be taught to ask themselves questions like, Does the information pertain to what I am looking for?, Can this information help me construct new knowledge? Second, evaluate the credibility of the information. Questions such as, Who provided this information and why?, Is the site created by an organization that you have heard of? I like the one mentioned in the book, Is this site trying to sell me something? I know that my son is 11 and he use to believe that every commercial that he seen on TV was real. Now he will tell me that they are just trying to sell stuff and things are not always real that they say on TV. I never actually told him this; he came to the conclusion on his own. Third, you should triangulate the information with other sources to see if you get the same information across the board. All of these steps can help students but I feel that many of them figure out ways on their own as to how they are go about trusting the information they read. I know that I check other sources if I think the information is not believable in my mind.
This chapter also discusses social book marking sites. I absolutely love my delicious account that we created. I have been bookmarking sites that we have used for other classes like math and science so I will have them at a later date. I will share this information with my students when I become a teacher. I think it will help them manage the information that they get from the internet and keep the sites that they know are valuable saved for easy access at a later date.
WISE seemed interesting to me. I need to check it out. It is an interactive approach to teaching in the classroom. That incorporates science learning at a different level. It is recommended for students in grades 5-12. This chapter has taught me that technology is very useful and needed in the classroom. Student’s tend to be more involved when teacher’s motivate them with new and exciting gadgets that they can use. After reading this chapter I want to keep myself informed about the new technology that is available for students. Also I will try to think of ways that this technology can be used to benefit students learning in my classroom.

What new thinking did I take away from class today?

I like the "what we did this week update" idea. I feel that it will help me a lot as a student and a teacher. Sometimes I try to take notes and keep up with class but then I go home and try to read them and don't remember what I wrote. Having a place to go will be very helpful for me. On the other issue that we discussed for these updates, I am a parent so I feel that if parents are able to see what went on in the classrooms it would help them know what is being taught and maybe how some of it is being taught.

I like the idea of using the kindle in the classrooms. The only issue that I have is that it seems that they are very expensive. But, I don't know what elementary textbooks cost so they could be just as costly. They would be much easier for students to transport and read with them when they have time to read on it. I know that for me personally, switching to a digital copy of a book would probably help me read more since I have wait time different places that I go and having it on hand I could read some here and there when time is available.

I loved the clicker thing we used. I am very interested in learning more about using this device. I want to teach the younger grades and there is probably one of these devices that could be adapted to assess their learning. Especially for the silent students in the class. I never thought of using a device like this in a classroom environment before, but I see how it is truly beneficial to an educator.

I appreciated having an input into when assignments are due in class. I think that teachers need to give up some of the control in the classroom to get their students more involved in the class community.

Digital Autobiography Reflection

I loved creating my digital Autobiography for this assignment. At first I was a little overwhelmed about this assignment, but I turned out having a lot of fun with it. It was interesting seeing what the different websites had to offer. I had only used one of the sites before which was voice thread. I knew that it would be a good option but I spent a good amount of time researching the others to make sure. I am glad I did because I really liked the site that I choose. Roxio was a perfect match for what I wanted to create for this assignment. I choose it because it offered a good variety of backgrounds that I could choose from and the option for audio and text. After viewing it you will see that I went a little crazy with the text aspect. I wrote what I wanted to say but then decided to add in bubbles with text what the kids would be saying. I ended up spending most of the day on Friday researching sites and creating my autobiography. I feel that I exerted a huge amount of time and energy on this assignment and it was a lot of fun!
The value that I get from completing this task was the sense of, “look what I made”. I showed it to my Husband, my kids and my sister when I was finished with it. I have pride in my completed project. I am also adding it to my delicious page so I can use this site in the future. The hardest part of this assignment for me was deciding what to show and finding and scanning all of my pictures. I did not realize that most of my pictures are not digital, so I had to dig through my photo albums and scan them all into my computer. Having the option to choose 10 pictures I thought was going to be simple, but that is the part that I pondered over the longest. I couldn’t decide if I wanted them all of me or my kids. I decided that I would put up one of me but mostly show my kids since they are really the biggest thing in my life right now.
This assignment has been useful to me as a future teacher because it is a fun and creative way for me to share a part of myself with classmates or future students. Creating a digital autobiography was much better that standing up and saying my name and having to think on the spot of something about me to share with the class. I think that students will love using technology in their own way and making something that represents them to share with classmates. I plan on teaching younger kids, kindergarten and first grade, so maybe I can help them create something short that tells the class a little about them. Overall, I think that this was a beneficial assignment.

Growing Up Online Reflection

Technology is obviously a huge part of the lives of young people. From watching this video I didn’t really learn anything that I was not already aware of before. Well, let me take that back, I did learn that kids are spending more and more time online than I had thought before. It seems very time consuming to keep up with everyone that is online. In a way I think that it is excellent that kids are learning how to use technology to keep in touch with friends and family around them, but in some cases it may be a little excessive. For example, in the video where the kids are in social situations with one another they are still highly involved with the computer instead of interacting with one another. I don’t particularly spend that much time at my computer unless I am doing research or homework. I am not someone that “grown up online” but as a parent and as a future teacher I need to be aware of the type of lifestyles that kids have and that includes what they are doing online. Parents and teachers can not dismiss the way that kids are living, they need to be aware of it and monitor it the best way that they can. Using monitoring software is not the way since kids are sometimes a step ahead, like the boy in the video that said he knew how to manipulate the parental control software to get to what he wanted to online.
Before this video I didn’t think much about addressing students on any of their outside of school activities. The parent comments in the video have changed my mind. They seemed very disconnected as to the world that their kids were living in. I think I need to be someone neutral that can discuss issues as I see them arising. As a future teacher I think the main thing I need to address in my classroom is the safety issues about using the internet. I think that it is ok for students to have these sites and friends online; they just need to know that everything that they put on the internet is public. I would want students to think about what they are doing and saying online. Such as asking them whether they would say or do the things that they are posting in a public place where everyone could see. That is basically what they are doing even if it seems a world apart because it is online.
My kids are not quite into the social networking sites yet. So I haven’t had to deal with any of these issues with them so far. The video did teach me something that I was unaware of though. I did not know that “club penguin” was a kid’s social networking site in a way. My son does use that site; I thought it was just games. Parents and teachers are not going to change how kids are communicating. But we can try to teach them how to do it in a safe way and not to devote their entire day sitting in front of the computer.

Preface and Ch. 1 Reflection

Reading this preface and first chapter has reinforced my feelings that technology is important to incorporate into teaching and learning. I completely agree that teachers should use technology to engage students in the learning process. And that technology can be utilized to help students acquire meaningful learning in schools. These sections discuss that teachers should let go of some of the control in the learning process and allow students to explore and gather their own learning about the world with guidance. There are many ways that teachers can use technology in the classrooms to help students succeed. I agree that teachers need to stay on top of technology and use these resources in their classrooms. I feel that even if the school you are working at is lacking these resources, there are ways to use what you can get and incorporate it into your curriculum.

Chapter one talks about how student’s in schools are taught to pass tests but are not taught why things occur in any real life situations. I agree with that statement. I remember being told, especially in math, that this is how you get the right answer. There was no reason shown to me about how or why this is right, just this is the way it is done. I did learn how to get the right answer, but as the book talks about I did not get any meaningful learning from it that I could use in my life. And really I did not retain much of the steps and problem solving that I was taught at the time. I agree that student’s need to have learning experiences that relate to real life (Authentic Learning). If I can’t connect something that I am learning to something that I am doing, why do I need to know it? This class is exciting because what we are going to be learning is information that I can take with me into my future teaching career.

One interesting point that is mentioned in Ch.1 is that when technology was first beginning to be used in schools it was to give students an alternative way to receive instruction. Not necessarily for students to learn using the technology, but for them to learn from the technology. I have never thought about this being different things before. I am guilty of purchasing products for my kids to use, such as the leap pad, for them to learn how to use technology to learn. But it is basically instructing them and they are not really learning from using the system. Since every time they don’t want to try and read a word they can push a button and it reads to them.

Using technology to help students think and reason are mentioned in the chapter. I know that as a future teacher I need to think of ways that students can learn using technology. I also need to stay up to date on the new technologies that are available to teachers. I am interested to read more into this book and see how teachers can use technology to help students learn. I still feel a little unsure as to how to know for sure that the technology is helping them think and not just instructing their learning.

First day exit slip

What new thinking did I take away from class today?

I am very excited about this class. I am looking forward to learning about all of the new technology that is available to teachers to use in their classrooms. I feel pretty comfortable with technology and want to see how teachers can use the technology that students are accustom to in the classroom. I know from having children that they are very interested in their technology and how it all works. They show me things that I never knew that their "toys" could do. If teachers use student's interests to their advantage, students should be more motivated to learn in the classroom.

Role of Tehnology in Teaching and Learning

What is the role of technology in teaching and learning?


I feel that technology is very important in teaching and learning. Mainly because students now are very familiar with technology and love using it to learn and explore. Most students have computers at home, video games and even cell phones that they love to spend their free time using them on a daily basis. Teachers need to use what students love to get them engaged in classroom learning. In order to accomplish these task teachers need to feel comfortable with the technology to be able to teach students with it in their classrooms. Connecting what they like with what they need to learn is the key.