Reflection on the Inquiry

I started this project a while back and I knew that this project would be something that was important and close to my heart. I was very interested in way to use the different technologies but I never thought that I would learn this much about my topic. I chose to research how technology can aid students with an autism spectrum disorder. It was great to read about the different ways that technology has been used to help these students and it was interesting to learn the creative ways that they thought could help them learn. I believe I spent a lot of time on this project. I worked very hard because it was important to me, we talk about in a lot of our classes that we need to make learning and teaching relevant to students because they will be more motivated to complete the project with more effort. This is the way I felt about this project. I learned so much about different ways that technology can be used to help students with autism. It was a very meaningful project and I intend on using the resources in the future. I also enjoyed looking at a few other inquiry projects because they were very informative and interesting. I think that this is a very important part of our technology class and I believe that it was very worthwhile.

Final Exit Slip-Technology's role in teaching and learning-following up from first post:

I agree with some of the things that I started out saying at the beginning of the semester such as the fact that we are in a generation of technological learners. I was naïve at the beginning of the semester when I talked about the different technologies that students use in the classroom. I believe that every student learns differently. When a student comes into your classroom at the beginning of the year it is your job to find that way of learning. One of the ways that you as a teacher can modify instruction is by using different types of technologies. At the beginning of the semester I used a computer and a “Smart Board” as examples of the technologies that students can use. I did not know that by the end of the semester I would find the possibilities are endless. From computer games, to virtual reality, to electronic whiteboards, I have learned a better understanding what is out there to aid my students in succeeding. I have found that the role of technology in teaching and learning is much greater than I believed it to be before. I know now that students are so much more advanced in the use of technology and some of it is even frightening (safety on the internet) and how the students are using this technology. I have changed my specialization for the Master’s program to technology because I believe that the role of technology in teaching and learning can make such a great impact on student’s learning. Technology really has something for everyone, all kinds of learners. I have researched different ways to help students with special needs in my classroom using technology, I have learned from others how to use technology to foster reading and writing skills and so much more. I am fascinated about the use of technology and look forward to learning more in depth about the different technologies available for students.

April 8, 2010 Exit Slip

Today we talked about Chapter 10. The chapter was about authentic assessment. It is more about student centered. It is having students demonstrating what they know instead of what they don't know. This chapter focuses on performance. It has some tools that we can use for assessment. I really like this chapter because it shows an alternative way to help us assess our students rather than using traditional assessment tools such as multiple choice. One of the authentic assessment tools that we used is clickers. The advantages of using clickers are that they are somewhat anonymous. It shows what students know without having other students see their response. Other advantages are that they can be used as a pretest and post test. It is also great for feedback for the teacher about what students learn in the classroom. They can be used for spelling tests. Some disadvantages are that it is expensive to own the clickers. Another tool that we learned about electronic portfolios. Another thing that we talked about was computer based tests. We used some survey tools that you can use in the classroom. A reason to take a computer based test is that you can cut down on paper budget. All the results can be stored in a spreadsheet. This is a great way to save time as well to help you with grading because it grades them automatically a lot of times.

The contemporary issue that we talked about is how technology creates a more unique science education experience. She talked about video conferencing and how you can bring in different people and guest speakers into the classroom without having them come directly to the classroom. It is easier to to have people talk to the classroom without having to fly in certain people. I think that it is a great way to help students understand science because it makes many concepts visible. She also talked about incorporating virtual worlds into instruction. It makes learning more tangible for students. It is more interesting to hear something from a person instead of simply reading from a book.

We also talked about a couple of cool tools. The first cool tool that we learned about today was flickr. It is a tool to store your photos. It is great way to share your photos with others. Some unique aspects of this is that you can organize and edit your photos. It is a great thing to help you upload pictures to a map.


Great Books to read:
Harry Wong-First Day of School.
Visible Learning is about a bunch of research studies. What factors affect student achievement the most.

Chapter 10

This chapter has touched on the subject of assessment throughout the whole book, I feel like I have a good foundation about how you can effectively assess students. We talked about authentic assessment during our chapter presentation earlier in the semester. We talked about how students learn more effectively when teachers use authentic assessment and do not always test them on rote memorization. I really liked the idea in this chapter about having students do a news broadcast when they are doing current events. I know as a student I really enjoy doing more fun activities rather than tests. Personally if I am not interested in learning the material and my teacher simply gives us multiple choice tests or tests that focus only on memorization I will memorize the material for that particular day and forget about most of the material by the next day (probably about 95% of the material).

I also really liked the section on assessing growth over time with electronic portfolios. I feel like this is a great way to assess students because it shows their progress compared to themselves rather than assessing them against others work. I feel like this is an effective way because we have actually seen it done and experienced it in this class. I think that is a great way to test whether students are doing their work. I have felt like doing the best work possible even though we are not graded in this class. I have enjoyed the projects and I like having them all on moodle because it allows me to go back and review what I have done. I could see how this could be very helpful to students because it is an assessment tool that is very effective when working with ELLs. I believe that this is true because it is not assessing them according to other students rather to their own achievement.

I have really liked using other assessment tools in this class like the clicker assessment tool. I like how this tool can be anonymous to the class because I think it encourages students to respond the questions that are being asked. We used a assessment tool in our TESOL class today that we used our cell phones to send a text to the answer that we chose. It was a fun way to get everyone involved and everyone participated because it was anonymous and it had no bearing on our grade.

Another great way to assess students that we have used in this class are computer based surveys. I think that a lot of these tools are very helpful to use because a lot of them are anonymous to the class. It is a great way to decide whether you have taught the subject so that students understand it.

Week 13 Exit Slip

Today we learned about chapter 9. This is about visualizing with technologies. It talks about many different visualization tools that you can use in the classroom. There are several visualization tools that the chapter discusses. They include video productions, mathematical tools, scientific tools, digital cameras and mobile phones, and video modeling.

Next we talked about some cool tools. One of the cool tools that we learned today was twitter. It is a social networking site that you can use to follow people. Another cool tool that someone talked about was twidla. It was a really cool site that reminded me a lot of paint. It was interesting. I liked how we could join other people in like a chat room with paint. It was super fun. Another cool tool was called LiveMocha. It was a cool site that you could use to learn another language.

We also talked about a couple contemporary issues. We talked about cheating using Ipods. It was very interesting to see how people use different technology to cheat. I do not think when I was in younger grades we thought about the different ways that you could cheat with technologies. We also talked about online etiquette.

Chapter 9 Reflection

This chapter talks about making learning visual through the use of technology. I first read the chemistry visualizations. I would not use this in my classroom necessarily because it is not appropriate for the age group of students that I am looking to teach. I can see how this could be useful in a high school classroom to help students visualize learning. I always hated chemistry because my teachers did not make it visual or fun. I could see how this could help students understand molecular structures.

On the other hand, I really loved the geography visualization technology. This is more my style when it comes to learning. I like the idea of solving social and environmental problems. I still do not see how this could be helpful in my classroom. I could see how you could use like Google maps for the classroom to show the students actual structures that they have seen or to take the students on a virtual fieldtrip to somewhere new. I think that this could be really fun for the students.

The math visualizations are also too advanced for an elementary classroom. I think that my students would have fun visualizing fractions using different games and simulations.

I could see how digital cameras and phones could be more on the elementary level. I think that most of the students in my classroom will have contact and experience with cameras and phones. I think that students can visualize so much using this technology. I really like the idea of making documentaries and stories with pictures. I think that could be very beneficial for my students. I think that they would enjoy recording their stories with pictures or making different videos. Such as the stop motion animation that we are doing in class. I think that students would really enjoy doing these activities.

Week 12 Exit Slip

Today we talked about some different design elements today that we can use in the classroom. I really liked this presentation because it gave me a lot of new resources that I can use in the classroom. Like I said about the chapter I did not know how to incorporate these different elements into the classroom setting. But now even more so I know a lot of different things I can do and use in the classroom. I really like the design a garden website. We could not figure it out with these computers but I really love the idea, especially in a cold climate where it might be difficult to make an actual garden.

Today we talked about a cool tool called Symbaloo, this is another search engine/bookmarking site. It was a great way to bookmark certain websites and I could see how this could be useful for a classroom because it is color coded and it is organized well. I think that I could really enjoy using it in the future.

One of the contemporary issues that we talked about today was a "paperless classroom" and how it would look like in a classroom. One of the advantages to a paperless classroom is saving of time and money not using paper to make tests and assignments. We do not have to take time out of our day to print things out or copy things. It is a great way to upload bilingual worksheets and such because they are able to convert them into their language if you have ELL's in your classroom. One of the concerns of a paperless classroom is that it is hard for the students to transition from paper to paperless and back again when they go from grade to grade. Another contemporary issue that we talked about today is about the addiction of video games. Studies have shown that the actual video game is not addictive it is something that is let off in your brain when you are playing. That is very interesting and new information for me, I have always believed that it was the actual video game that was addictive. The other contemporary issue that we are talking about was that China decision to lift censorship.

Chapter 8

When I first read the title of this chapter I thought about many different things about “designers” but I did not really look at it the way the chapter has set it out. This chapter is all about design inside and outside of the classroom. One thing that the chapter talks about is how to enhance learning and make it more meaningful by adding different design elements. The four areas that the chapter discusses are drawing design ideas with computer aided design software, testing designs and building mental models with simulation software, developing programming skills while designing in the media arts and finally designing music with composition software.

When I was reading this chapter I had some concerns on how these designing programs could be used in the schools. When I just looked at the page the capitol letters “CAD” stood out among the rest of words. I have heard of that design program because I remember my sister coming home and talking about it from her engineering classes. One of my concerns right off the bat is how the students in my classroom were actually going to use a tool that engineers use and take classes on. Another concern that I had while I was reading was how I was going to learn these different design programs and as usual the chapter came to the rescue. It taught me all about different design programs that are child friendly and easy to use. I really liked the idea of having the students design their own objects on these programs like the Pro/DESKTOP which has a design, drawing and album setting for the children to play around with and create different things. I have always been a big fan of creativity and art and in my mind this is a great form of art that many of the children in my classroom could probably relate to.

March 18, 2010-Exit Slip

Today we talked about communicating using technology. We first talked about discussion boards. Its an online forum to post our thoughts and not in an instant feedback. There are some advantages and disadvantages to using discussion boards. You have to wait on responses. One thing that is great about these discussion boards are that you can talk to people across the world. We talked about an example of a discussion board called ePals. It is a great thing to use in the classroom, it has lesson plans, academic vocabulary, and the grade levels that you can teach these lessons to. It is pretty user friendly way to connect classrooms. You can communicate through discussion boards to anywhere around the world. This is a way for children to talk to others and communicate back and forth.

The next type of communication that we talked about was different kinds of chats. We talked about how this can be a more immediate communication tool. It is limited to people on your "buddy list" which has its advantages and disadvantages. It can be a safe way to communicate but it cannot allow students to communicate with a diverse populations, like the discussion board example that we talked about before.

Another tool that was talked about is video conferencing. It connects students with people from different places. One thing that is great is that you can have students talk to experts. They can "come" into the classroom via video conferencing like Skype, and Cisco. It would be great to have an author for example that your children love "come" into the classroom and they can learn and interact with others without the issue of travel costs. It is a great alternative to an expensive field trip. It is in real time so you have to make sure that you have planned out the issues with it. When you want to talk to someone from another country they might be in a different time zone so you have to be aware of that issue.

Video Conferencing
Like: Virtual Field trip
Dislike: Hard to plan

Discussion Boards
Like: A great opportunity for students to interact with students in other countries or in other time zones
Dislike: not immediate communication

Instant Messaging
Like: Immediate interaction
Dislike: Can have some safety issues

Podcasts and radio
Like: very interactive and engaging and they can use these different Podcasts in the classroom. Gives students the opportunities to use it as a project and it can be used to teach children about different subjects. They will be more inclined to use it because its what their peers have created it.
Dislike: might be unsafe or inappropriate

Social networking sites
Like: a great communication tool that have both immediate and delayed communication tools within them.
Dislike: hard to keep track of students on certain websites, you have to use a safe website.

We also talked about different contemporary issues. We talked about education and games. We talked about different educational games and ways to incorporate games into our classroom. This opened my eyes more to the idea of using games in the classroom. I feel like we have talked a lot about games already but she brought up some great games that we can use to help our students learn. I liked how she talked about the different resources that we can use like WebQuest. I think that we should incorporate games into the classroom because many children can relate and will be more inclined to engage in a lesson.

Chapter7-Communicating with Technologies

This chapter talks about how students in our classroom have entered another realm of technology that generations before us have not met. Even young adults like ourselves are behind the time with students in our classroom when it comes to technology. This chapter talks about the different ways to communicate using technology.

The first way that the chapter discusses communicating is on a discussion board. One of the first things I read was that it was different and somewhat better in some ways than one-on-one interactions. When I read this the first time it kind of scared me because I think that we have to be careful to make sure that our students lives are filled with rich social lives not just consisting of online conversations. But I see where this type of communications can be seen as a more positive way of communicating, because it talks about how communicators have to be more careful with there speech, they can double check what they are about to say. This is one thing that is great for many people who might not always be great in the one-on-one conversation setting. I know personally that I feel more open when I am writing someone online instead of in person. I know that is one of the reasons that Jeff wants us to come see him in person. I am glad that as a technology teacher he also puts emphasis on the one on one social interaction. I also like the idea of the discussion boards as being without bias. I think that is great, biases such as gender, race and age are taken out of the mix and people can be "themselves" or they can recreate themselves online. I think that might be a negative part about communicating online. I think that a lot of people hide their identity online and that can become dangerous, especially for young students in my classroom. They can be talking to a so called 10 year old but there is really no telling how old that person really is. That is why it is important to be on a safe website for students and younger children when communicating with technologies.

A great way that the book suggests that teachers can use this technology is to build international connections and project work. Asynchronous communication (communication not in real time) can be used when students are in different time zones. When we were reading about video conferencing a couple chapters back, that was one of the disadvantages. A lot of times if we wanted to take our students on a “virtual fieldtrip” then we would have to do so not in real time but that would not work with the video conferencing. They cannot realistically have a conversation when the time in another part of the country is about 2 A.M. This type of communication can connect students with others beyond the immediate classroom, opening windows to new learning experiences by exposure to new ideas, cultural diversity and unique partnerships (pg. 143).

I really liked that the chapters always give some options for child friendly websites. I think that is one of my main concerns with most of the technology that we use and having those safe alternatives is such a great option to use in the classroom.

March 4 Exit Slip

Today we talked about a different way to take attendance, we talked about a more child friendly ways. He told us that we could do themed based attendance for different seasons or holidays. We also talked about the chapter. I learned some about different wikis and blogs that I hadn't seen before. I think it is a great thing to use in the classroom. Jeff also went over a couple of different ones after the presentation. We talked about Edublogs. It is a safer alternative to control who sees your blog. Another option is Class BlogMeister. It is a different way that we can use as a template or an example. We cannot become part of this website because you have to be part of the project. It is a cool way to see how to use the blog with their students. We are using Wetpaint as our Wiki service. It is a great way to create projects for the classroom. We can have a what we did in class wiki. Another one that we can use is Wikispaces. Another one is PBWorks. Wikispaces are cool because you can take ads away. Some of the ads can be inappropriate so they can remove them off of your wiki site. I think that it was interesting learning about the various cool tools. I really liked Dropbox, it is a place to put files off of your computer. It is a great way to help save your data and access it later at a different place.

Chapter 6-Community Building With Technologies

In class we talked about the issue of social skills and the ability to act socially acceptable on a one-to-one basis. We talked about this because the increase in social software on the internet. The first part of the chapter talks about different social software that includes blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networking spaces like Facebook and Myspace. Because of this class I have been able to experience most of these examples. I actually have grown to like the blogging idea. I think that it is a great way to let people know what is going on in my life and more importantly in my classroom in the future. I think that this is a very useful tool to use in the classroom to connect the users (parents and students to the teacher and the class organization).

One thing that the chapter discusses are knowledge base Forums. It is a collaborative database that supports shared process of knowledge building, by defining problems, hypothesizing, researching, collecting information, collaborating and analyzing. There are two important features, they are a special computer program for developing a common information base installed on a local area network or on a remote server accessible through the Internet. The other important feature of the Knowledge based Forums is that it is a systematic model of inquiry based on the scientific method and informed by current research in cognitive psychology. I like the idea of Knowledge based forums. Its another way that students can teach the technologies instead of the other way around. I like that they are all contributors on this website. This kind of site empowers students because their opinion counts. I like this idea too because it is a great way for students to share what they know, I like how they can share notes, questions and ideas. I like how this chapter talks about encouraging students to make school more meaningful by being mindful and goal directed. When they are teaching with the technologies, they are not just sitting behind a screen answering questions in a box or just simply pushing a couple of buttons, they are not going to learn that content.

Wikis are another way to help students connect and make learning meaningful. Before this class I was unaware of what a wiki really was. I knew of Wikipedia like anyone else but I did not know that the term wiki was actually something that was out there on the web for people to use. I really love the concept now. It is a great way to communicate and help keep in touch and organized with class. I see how I can use this in my classroom. Similar to the blog idea in the first paragraph, I could create a class wiki (similar to our in class) and put what we do each day for the parents to access. I really like that idea because I want my parents to be well aware of what we do in class and how they can continue the education at home. I really can see how this can change the way I teach in the future. Before reading and learning about Wikis I had all intentions to send out newsletters each month or something similar but now that I have these different tools that I can use it is really helpful. It provides me with less work and it provides the parents a great way to find out what their students are doing each day. I know when I was young, my mom and dad would ask what I did at school and I would say nothing or I played on the playground. I think that parents will really appreciate the daily schedule to help them feel more confident in my teaching abilities and the content that their students should be learning.

A day in the life of a Technology Student

Today we learned what Rick Rolling is. I had never heard of it before this morning. We learned that it is a phenomenon where people click on something off of a website and they get sent to a different video of a guy singing a very catchy song.

We learned about different ways to model with technology. We learned that it is great to have students to learn with the technologies, we want our students to teach the technologies not the other way around. One of the Mindtool that we discussed were concept maps. Another one that we discussed were spreadsheets. They showed us that we can organize our data with the spreadsheets. It is a very useful thing for teachers to use for grades and keeping track of data. Students can also use it to record data from experiments, which is very useful. It can do calculations that can help us save time and keep our grades accurate. We also went to a website called easy diagnosis, it was interesting. It was an example of modeling with expert systems. One way that we can use this in the classroom is to use it as a research tool and science projects. The next Mindtool that we discussed were databases. We looked at UF's database that we have used in the past. I think that these are very useful tools to help with research and discovery. Another example of a database is Delicious, that we use to bookmark the different websites. We also talked about different ways to use the spreadsheet. We talked about online grade sheets instead of using Excel. We talked about different techniques to use in Excel. We can just click auto sum and it adds up all of your data. Another type of spreadsheet to use in the classroom or anytime is Google docs. It is a great way to help you keep track of data online.

Next we talked about a contemporary issues. We talked about the social effects of technology on children. One difficulty is the inflection that is meant by communicating electronically. I think that I have that issue when I communicate online. I can never tell what they mean by certain things that is written online. I think that people are more inclined to be more open and honest online, that can be a positive and negative aspect of communicating online. The next contemporary issue that we talked about was sexting. I think that this is a major problem that has to be addressed in classrooms of older students. Children do not understand the consequences of sending these out.

We also talked about our scratch projects and what makes something interactive. Some characteristics of non-interactivity are that the user has no control, cannot manipulate, not engaging, and no feedback. Some characteristics that of an interactive project is that the user controls ad manipulates the project. Another aspect in an interactive project is lots of feedback. There is a reciprocal relationship between the student and the project. It helps the students understand the content more effectively and helps them know how well they are doing. A couple things that are expected for our Scratch project is to have content based material, developmentally appropriate and it is interactive. We have to tweak our project to make sure that we are making the text and images developmentally appropriate. We should have the text on the screen for us to read it twice, this accommodates the students that do not read as fast as we read. Our goal for this project is not to be a non-example, meaning not on the left side of the spectrum. Our goal is to be somewhere towards the right, more interactive, developmentally appropriate and has good standard based content.

Modeling with Technologies

I think the first thing that we learned in this class was to make sure that we let the students learn with the technologies and not just to let the technologies teach the students. The first paragraph in this chapter talks about that, how a lot of technologies used in the classroom are simply to teach students. They try to memorize and understand the content that is presented with technology and then they are trying to master the content without much experience. So far in this class we have learned how to use many different technologies for students to use for their real benefit. In this chapter in particular it talks about different technologies that can help students “conceptualize, organize and solve problems” (pg. 82). Some of the tools that are presented are called Mindtools. They include databases, concept mapping, spread sheets, miroworlds, systems modeling tools, expert systems, hyper media construction tools, constraint based discussion boards and visualization tools. Contrary to the way that technologies are usually used Mindtools have students teaching the computer and not the other way around. I intend on using these different tools to help my students learn more effectively in my classroom. I think that I would have been using the technologies negatively like it talked about at the beginning of the chapter if I was not made aware of the other tools.

The first Mindtool that is presented in the chapter are concept maps. We briefly learned about them last week, I think it is a great tool to use for organizing thoughts. I think that it can be used in my classroom because they can use these technological concept maps to help them organize even better than a paper version can. I did not think that the computer ones were that much more effective than paper versions but now I believe that the computer based concept maps are more effective. One reason that I think that these are better for students to use is that the students are able to reorganize their thoughts as many times as they want. They are able to add text and delete tax without making their concept maps messy or unorganized or confusing. I think that the technological concept maps are also prone to becoming messy and confusing but students can play around with them and make them work for themselves. I think this a great example of how students can begin to teach the computer rather than having the computer teach them.

Just another day in Technology-February 18, 2010

Today we talked about chapter 4. Amanda and Kelsey did the chapter presentation and I thought they did really well. I really liked the presentation tool that they used. They used Prezi which I thought was confusing to make presentations but they made a really great presentation! I think that I would use this presentation in the future now, whereas a few weeks ago I would have steered away from it. I really liked this chapter content because it was more relevant to the other classes and learning. I love writing so learning how you can incorporate technology into writing was great to learn about. I also liked how they gave us several resources that we can use in the future. I think that they are useful for early education which was great.

Next we talked about other resources that we can use to incorporate technology into writing. We talked about many different tools that we can use to create concept maps. I think that this is a great thing to use to plan and organize their writing. Next we talked about student publishing on the internet. We talked about several sites such as readwritethink.org. It is a website that helps students write more effectively. It was a fun interactive website for teachers and students. We talked about another resource for online publishing by Google called Google docs. It is meant to be a collaborative writing tool.

Next we talked about some cool tools. We talked about BrainPop. We have seen a lot about BrainPop in our other classes. We also talked about Dweeber. It is a social networking site for children which is nice for them. We also talked about Skype. It is a video conferencing site, it is not geared towards children but it is nice for distance learning. She talked about how you can talk to people in different places or have "guest speakers" from other places talk to your class from their home. We also talked about ePals.com, it is a learge global community of connected classrooms. Teachingdegree.org is a resource that gives examples of how Skype can be used to enhance learning. It also has a getting started links to help if you are not familiar with Skype.

We also talked about different contemporary issues. One of the issues that was addressed was CyberBullying, it was very useful and relevant to talk about this issue because it is a big issue when it comes to students being online. We were introduced to many resources that we can read up on the subject. The next issue that the class talked about is obesity and video games. I am very surprised about the impact that video games have on a child's weight. We talked about some things that we can do to promote activity while using video games. We also talked about the issue of the time spent in school. Students only spend 14% of their year in school. So we talked about how short of a time children are really in school.

Supporting Writing with Technology

When I first started reading this chapter I did not understand how technology could be used to help students write. When I think about writing I often think about a pencil and a paper, writing down your most inner thoughts and drawing doodles around the edges. Using your creativity to create a narrative essay or using books and the internet to write research papers. I now understand many different tools that can assist students in writing and helping to make writing a more enjoyable task. The chapter describes many different components of writing. The five components are setting goals, planning, idea organization, composition of text and editing.

The first tool that the chapter describes are concept maps. I have been taught since a young age to make concept maps to plan my papers and organize my thoughts (two of the components right there) but I have always done them the traditional way with pencil and paper. The chapter introduces many different technological alternatives to the traditional way. This semester I have had the opportunity to use one of these technological concept maps for our science class. It is a great way to organize and plan because it was easy to move around the different subjects and make different connections. I plan on using this specific tool in my classroom by having my students plan their writing with the option of the technology tool rather than the traditional model. I really like how the chapter gives us different sites that we can find the different concept maps. That is a great resource that I can use in my future classroom.

Another tool that the chapter describes is Microsoft PowerPoint. I never thought about this tool as a writing technique. I agree with the chapter that it can be very distracting when making a presentation. I think that we get too caught up with the fun aspects and lack in the actual writing. I like how our class has also given us other options to present material like Prezi and Glogster. I think that this helps keep students involved and engaged because it is a good change from the traditional PowerPoint. They are also more interactive than PowerPoints, because students have access to them on the web and during presentations. I think that these different presentation tools also can be distracting because students can get caught up in pressing all the buttons and focus less on the content that it is presenting. I can use these different tools in my classroom to help my students develop their presentation skills. We all know that I have to work on my own presentation skills, so I look forward to helping my students develop speech skills and presentations using the different tools.

Another way to incorporate technology into writing is to publish writing on the web. The chapter discusses how this can help students to become more motivated and inspired if they get to publish their paper. They are getting a sense of authorship. I think that this is a great idea, especially that the chapter provides children friendly forums. Another thing that the chapter suggests is to read this book called The Pigman, and the students get to write the “last chapter” and publish it online. This is a great way to help students feel good about their writing. I can use this to keep my students excited about their writing. I do have the concern of safety with this tool. It think that most of the parents of my students will not agree to let their children publish their work online. I like that there is a child friendly website in the chapter but I am still cautious about having my students publish their work online.

I think that all of these tools will be helpful for my students to engage and look forward to writing. This chapter has opened my eyes to many different writing styles, like the presentations. It has also given me many resources to use in my classroom, like the concept mapping tools. I think using technology will help some of my students better develop their writing and create a sense of authorship.

More about Technologies

Today we did our chapter discussion. We had to critique the different things that we did and did not do correctly. It was one of the hardest presentations I have done. It was so intimidating that I had to be aware of the "um's" and "likes." I was so caught up with trying to not say those words that I seemed to say them more.

We also learned a lot about Scratch today. It was very useful because before this class I had no idea how to do this. I tried and did different things over the weekend and I could not figure it out. I now have a better understanding of the programming language.

I have also learned more about different technologies that we can use in the classroom to foster causal reasoning. We learned about Microworlds, virtual worlds, simulations and games. I think that this is a very useful thing to learn about. I did not think of these things as educational or helpful, so it was nice to learn about how it can contribute to meaningful learning.

Chapter 3

This chapter was about meaningful learning and how to use technology to benefit the students in your classroom. I think that I learned a lot about making learning meaningful for my students by reading about the different technologies that can foster causal thinking. I really liked learning about technologies such as Microworlds, simulations, virtual worlds and games. I never really knew how to incorporate these different technologies into my classroom because I really did not know how they could promote learning. I always thought games and virtual worlds were nothing but games that people played in their spare time and they did not get any benefit from them. Now that I know the differences between the different technologies and also their uses I can easily incorporate them into the classroom. I can see how virtual worlds can show students real world experiences and have them do real world experiments. I am slightly concerned about having my students on some of the virtual world sites. I know some of the virtual worlds that students can access through the internet can be dangerous. I think that as a teacher I cannot use these types of virtual worlds in my classroom but I can use a more child friendly version instead. I really enjoyed learning about how I can incorporate these different technologies into the classroom.

What I learned in Class Today

First we started off the day by taking attendance. We wrote on the board for the first time, which was fun and easier than expected.

We talked about Chapter 2. The people that presented today used Prezi, it was interesting to see one of our classmates work on a different type of presentation tool.

Presentation Do's and Don'ts

-watch your words (...um and ...like) and don't broadcast them, just move on and be aware of them

-knowing the technology-some things are not going to work the way you think they are going to work (try and mess up is better than not trying at all)

-Organization-make sure you are well prepared

-Variety in the presentation

-Great job moving around the classroom, great movement-progress monitoring (don't move too much)

-a bit long...the presentations are 30 minutes long

-be aware of the questions you ask-do not ask "not" questions when using multiple choice (because they are confusing)

-Be cautious about relying too much on notecards

-clarify the words that you are using-(example: firewall vs. filter) make sure to use the correct words when you are talking about your chapter

-Make sure the data that you use in your presentation is up to date

We also talked about different websites that we can use in our classroom. We talked about WebQuest, which gives an intentional use for the Web. We can use this tool right away as a teacher because the WebQuest is already planned and made for you.

We also talked about website credibility. We talked about the different steps that we should do while evaluating websites. This is so important for our classroom as well as in our own lives. One thing that is very important when searching is triangulation. Triangulation is finding the same information in different locations. One of the websites that we can use in our classroom is "All About Explorers," which is a website that is made by teachers to help students learn about fake websites. We have to be careful of the domain names. We saw an example of a .org website that is not credible at all. I think this is such a useful thing to know and teach in our classroom.

We also took some class time to revise our inquiry questions. We each shared our question and had other people help us make our question better. I really enjoyed getting feedback so that I can make this question meaningful for my future students as well as for myself. I think that this is a very useful process for us because it helps us think critically about our questions. Having our peers reflect on our question provides us with more ideas to make our question more polished. My question is: How can educators use technology to support learners with autism spectrum disorder?

We learned about Scratch. It is a very interesting tool. It is a great interactive tool that we can use in our classroom to make student's learning more meaningful and fun.

Website Credibility

When evaluating a website students should go through many different steps to check that it is a credible website. Our book gave us many different questions to evaluate the information provided. The students should first search on the website for the answers to these questions. For example they need to check if it is published by a credible organization. I was looking at the Tree Octopus website and the first thing that I saw was a picture of an octopus in a tree. More importantly I saw that the organization that was behind the website was called Greenpeas, now it sounds like a credible source like Greenpeace and I did look over it at first but then when I read it again and followed the link at the bottom of the page it gave me a error screen. I know from this bogus organization as well as prior knowledge that this website is not legitimate. Another question that students should ask themselves when reviewing a website for credibility is if there is a reference page where the bibliographies are credible. Just like when I was talking about the octopus website, I followed several of the links and it led me to an error screen again, it also had People for the Ethical treatment of Pumpkins, now that again could easily be looked over for something credible but the link did not bring me to a website. Another question that students should consider are if there are any gaps in logic, or is there missing information that is relevant to the subject. Something that I noticed when I was reading the Octopus page is the part about donating money. It says that you donate straight to the octopus. This is not logical and it tells me that this website is obviously not credible. I looked at the Dihydrogen Monoxide website and the first thing that I did was look at the bottom of the page to see when it was last updated and if they had a credible organization that supported their cause. There was a phrase that stated: “Note: content veracity not implied” which tells me that it is not truthful information. I also learned from the book to look for different signs that they are just using their website to advertise and get money. They have a ton of different advertisements everywhere on the screen. Another thing that makes me think that this website is not credible is that it says that it is not affiliated with EPA. It is also not credible because it is also another name for water and it is talking about all the “dangers.” Another thing that I found that was tricky and manipulative was the many common uses, all of those things are what water does and it was making them sound negative. So students should search for websites with credible sources as well as credible organizations.

This was a very interesting task because I would have thought a few of these websites were credible before looking at the criteria to evaluate the information within a website. It was comical to look at some of these different websites because they were so outlandish but I know how important this process is for students in my classroom. This will change how I teach in the future because it will make me aware of the credibility of websites. Some of these websites that are on the web are very tricky and you have to look very closely at websites in order to find the hoax behind them. I had to read the organizations on the Octopus website a couple of times before I realized it was not Greenpeace and instead was Greenpeas. I think that this will help me as well as my future students when working on the web.

Digital BookTalk! Clifford and the Grouchy Neighbors by Norman Bridwell

The booktalk was such a fun experience for me, I really enjoyed picking a book, choosing the way I was going to do my booktalk and then planning the whole thing. I believe that I put a lot of effort into making my booktalk. I first had to pick the book that I wanted to do for my booktalk. That was really fun because I chose a book that I have loved since I was a child. Then I had to make props and costumes for the booktalk. I made different props for the different scenes in my booktalk. I had to make a Clifford costume for my dog Tye. One of the hardest parts of the booktalk was having my dog as the main actor in my small film. I was very worried that he would eat the other characters or eat the props (he has a tendency to eat things). It was also hard for him to stay still, so the whole booktalk was an fun filled adventure. I was pleasantly surprised by my dog’s acting skills. I really was impressed on how well he stayed in his one spot while filming. I think overall the filming part of the booktalk went very well. I also had to make a script for my sister and I to read for the booktalk . After filming all of the scenes we did the audio for the booktalk. Next after everything was uploaded onto my computer I had to use Window’s Movie Maker to edit and combine all of the different elements. This was an especially difficult part of the project because you have to align all of the audio with the video and create headings and credits. It was a fun and great learning experience. I believe that I exerted a lot of effort on this project and I am happy with the outcome.

I think the value of this course task is to show us that we can use these types of things in our classroom, not only can we encourage our students to make their own booktalk about their favorite book but we can also make some to promote different books that we are going to read in our classroom. I think that this is a fun and worthwhile project that will be very beneficial in our classroom. I think that students will find a lot of gratification and pride from doing a project like this. They are able to speak their mind about a book that they really enjoy and show their classmates what fun and exciting books are out there for them to read. I kind of view a digital booktalk as a digital show and tell. I used to love show and tell and now students can show their fellow classmates their favorite books, just in a different way. I really liked this project and see how it can be beneficial in my future classroom!

Chapter 2 Reflection-Investigating With Technologies

The first thing that struck me in this chapter that I had not thought of before is researching on the web. I did not think of it as being meaningless in the ways that it talks about. It is very true, even for myself that if a teacher gives us some close-ended questions to find in a chapter that we read or on the internet we are not looking to learn but just to find the answers. I learned from this chapter that we need to follow a step by step process in order to make our research meaningful. The four steps that are included in this process are: Plan, use strategies to search the web, evaluate, and triangulate sources (page 15). This will change my teaching because I will give my students direction, I will help become effective researchers and I will help them to become intentional. I like how they talk about modeling in this chapter and how to model intentional research. Modeling is something that I will always use in my classroom and now I am learning how to model technology concepts to my students that I did not know how to do before. I also learned about different search-engines and directories. Before reading this chapter I would have told you that they were the same thing, but now I know the benefits of both and how to use them more effectively. Something that I will use for teaching and lesson planning are the social-bookmarking websites. It is such a great resource that we can use when we are teachers for finding websites that other teachers use as well as other classmates. I liked the Diggo bookmarking site that they mentioned in the chapter. I like the idea of a digital transparency that they were talking about, because something that I have issues with is remembering why I like a website so much. I think that this would be great to use for websites where I only like part of the website, like the activities or only the lesson plans. The evaluating of websites in this chapter has made a big impact on the way that I intend to teach. I have thought a lot about the dangers of using the internet in my classroom and I believe that there is a great importance in evaluation of a website. I think it is an essential to teach our students how to evaluate a website for fact and for fiction. I think that the questions and the guidelines that this chapter provides will help me teach my students the difference between a legitimate source on the web and also a illegitimate source. The section about safety and privacy also has impacted my thinking and views on teaching with technology. I have always been in support of the filtering devises for students because I think that their safety is the most important thing. I know how frustrating it can be though to search online for different things on a school computer and then not be able to find anything because of the installation of a filtering devise. I think that we as teachers should try to find that middle ground and educate our students and how to use the internet more effectively. I am still kind of confused on how you reach this though, what I mean is that we are responsible for the safety of our students in our classroom. This gives the schools and teachers a great responsibility so I guess we have to monitor our students closely and make sure they are not straying away from the intended topic and material.

What I learned in Class Today....January 14

Today we learned about adapting tools for our elementary students. We talked about how we need to incorporate the different technologies into our individual grades. In this class we are talking about more general technologies for all the grades, not on the particular grade that we are going to teach. We also talked about having classroom wikis, we talked about the benefits of having these classroom wikis in our classrooms in the future. I did not really think that we could use them in our classroom but now I can see how the classroom wiki would be very helpful. We can use them to involve parents in our teaching, we can put our schedule and homework for our students. We also talked about a particular contemporary issue, we talked about having textbooks online. In my opinion this is a great idea for many reasons. For example, using such a tool like a "Kindle" can have many benefits for personal use as well as in the classroom. We can use this for cost issues, instead of paying fifty dollars for a textbook we can pay only ten dollars. It is a great way to minimize the weight of our student's backpacks as well. When I was in middle school I remember the huge backpack that I had to carry around. My back was killing me by the end of the day and I was not keen on bringing that backpack everyday. Using online texts is a great alternative to this. Students can have books accessible at any time and can bring them almost anywhere. An issue that I might have with using online books is that we are not using physical texts. In my opinion, there is many benefits of having the physical books in hand. They can interact with the books by looking at the pictures, some physical books have textures that students can interact with and feel. Online books do not have that valuable aspect. One thing that I really enjoyed learning this class is the different tools that we can use for presentations. I like the idea of steering away from PowerPoint. It is a great way to keep our students engaged and involved.

Chapter 1 Reflection

In chapter one, I learned that meaningful learning for students has five different characteristics. The characteristics for meaningful learning are Intentional, Authentic, Cooperative, Constructive, Active and Intentional. When I first read this chapter, I did not know how technology would tie into all of these different characteristics. Before reading for example, I did not know how technologies could be used in the context of cooperative learning and collaboration. I have always that the idea in my head that technology was something that students did on their own, it was individualized and sometimes anti-social but through this chapter I learned something new that I did not think of before. Technology can be used in an individual basis but it can also serve as a great communication tool. For example, the chapter stated that it could connect students inside the classroom, around their town and even around the world. I love this idea of cooperative learning. This is one way that I might change my teaching styles because of this chapter. I want my students to see how other students view things around the world, we can use these technologies in science to see the different animals around the world, first hand using technology, or we can see other cultures and talk to other students in different languages. This type of technology opens the door for so many teaching possibilities in my classroom. The chapter also discusses how our instruction should be active and engage the learners. They can manipulate technology in their own way and teach technology in the ways that they want to use it. Another aspect of meaningful learning is being reflective learners. Students need to find meaning in what they do in order to stay engaged in their learning. This type of teaching allows students to ask questions and allows them to find meaning for themselves. They are not just given a solution to the problem but as good teachers we have to allow them to find answers for themselves. Another characteristic of meaningful learning is making learning authentic, and what is more authentic in these children’s lives than technology. We can give our students a chance to learn using the technology that they have been exposed to since they were little. We are relating their learning to their own lives. When we are using their video games such as Nintendo DS or other game systems to teach a lesson on math they are able to relate because they know how to work this type of technology and it does not seem so formal and intimidating. I think that this has changed my view of teaching because they have always taught us to make learning relevant to students lives but not in this way. I now see that technology can be used to make learning relevant and fun for our students. I think this chapter opened my eyes up to so many more possibilities for teaching and learning. I believe that technology can be used in so many different contexts that I would never have thought of without reading this chapter. I can see the benefits of using these technologies in the classroom and I look forward to the chance to try out this new teaching style in my own classroom in the future.

Digital Autobiography Reflection

I feel that I put a good amount of effort into making this project. It was frustrating at first because when I was creating the first digital autobiography I tried to add my own music but I was unable to use any of my music files. Then I searched through the music that they website provided for me. I picked the music that I found that I feel fit my video the best. It was very difficult to find any music that would be appropriate for a video about my family. I found music that deals with love and I think that it helps make my video more fun and meaningful. Another part that I put effort in was picking the pictures that I was going to use. It was hard to come up with a time in my life to highlight for my video. I put a lot of effort in finding the photos for this project. I really enjoyed creating the different captions for the pictures. I created an Animoto autobiography first. When I was creating this project, I could not figure out how to put the captions under each of the pictures so I put the captions before the pictures that they pertain to. I think that this was difficult to decide what captions to put for each of the pictures. I also had to organize them so that the captions and the pictures match up correctly. Next, I made an autobiography using PhotoShow. That was a similar experience. I had some of the same issues using this tool. One thing that I liked more about this tool is that I can put captions under each of the pictures. I think it made it tell a better story than the Animoto tool. I got to see the benefits of using the second program because they each had different aspects. I think that I put a lot of effort into this project. So I decided to use the Photoshow tool for my digital autobiography. I went back and changed some of my original autobiography to tell a better story and better utilize the tool. I think that it was a great project and it was a lot of fun creating a story of my life.

I really think that this is a valuable tool. I think that completing this task lets us experience a different way of presenting things in class. I think that it is a very valuable tool to use in my classroom. I can use it to show my students a short presentation of my own life, and they can do the same to show their fellow classmates about themselves. It is important to create a positive classroom climate so that students feel comfortable and safe in the classroom. One way that we can create this climate in our classroom is that we can get to know each other. Another way that we can use this tool in our classroom is to use this program for other lessons. We can use it for showing visual images of concepts. For example, if we are teaching about mammals we can show a picture slide show of animals in different continents. With the different continents we can add in music that the students would associate the type of music with. We can use music from the “Lion King” to represent animals from Africa. We can also create different videos using the Voicethread for the students to add in their own voice. When the students can hear their own voice and see their own pictures on the video they can feel important. I think that this is a great social tool as well as a teaching tool.

Response to Frontline Video

The Frontline video opened my eyes to so many things that I did not think of before. In the light of all of the new technologies that our students are exposed to, it forces teachers to be entertainers. We have to capture their attention by using different technologies in our classroom. Our students are used to getting things right away, having immediate feedback. With a traditional teaching approach, students are not always getting responses right away. They have to practice in order to learn different things and they have to be patient when they are trying to learn. This becomes frustrating for students and we as teachers need to use the technology to help our students learn more effectively. This video also opened up my eyes to the idea of cheating. For example, in the video the students said that the majority of students use “Spark notes” instead of reading the actual book. This has to be considered in our classroom because we have to reevaluate what is considered cheating in our classroom. We have to ask ourselves how we are going to discourage this cheating.

Another issue that we have to take into consideration in our classroom is that most of our students are part of the social networking websites. These websites provide these students with the opportunity to create their social identity. This should be considered in our classroom because now we do not only have to worry about physical bullying but we also have to worry about cyber bullying through these social networking websites. As teachers we have a responsibility to teach our students about safety and how to use technology responsibly. We have to consider this as part of our classroom management plan, so that we can help our students learn good social skills, whether it be one-on-one social situations or online social situations.

I thought that I was part of the technology generation but after watching this video I realize what some of my students will be dealing with, due to the technology that is part of their lives. I never considered the different technologies to use in our classroom because I was not taught that way. I learned from this video that there is always going to be a significant generation gap due to technology. Students will always view me as the technology “dinosaur,” I think in my classroom I will be able to use this to my advantage. I will use this gap to help students feel empowered in my classroom. To some extent these students can teach me about technology while I teach them other needed skills. Some of the things that I will due differently in my classroom is incorporate a lot of different technologies in my classroom. For example, as an addition to their learning in the classroom I will have different computer programs that helps the students with different skills such as math. They will be able to get immediate feedback for their work. I will change some of my teaching by teaching students about “good cyber citizenship.” I will teach my students how to behave appropriately on line as well as on the play ground. I think that technology is very beneficial for my students and I intend on making it part of my future classroom.

What I have Learned in this class so far

In class today I learned a lot about incorporating different technologies in my future classroom. Usually when I think of technology I only think of computers. I have not really thought of all of the different technologies that are possible for use in our classrooms. I have learned some of the importance of using different technology in the classroom. I have also learned how to use different technologies such as digital autobiography, and blogging. I have not used blogging in the past and I now know how to use this tool. I also learned about social bookmarking. I can see the benefits already of using this tool. I will use this tool in the future as well as for this class to build my different resources to use in the classroom. I have also seen the impact that technology has on our students in the classroom because they are growing up in this technological world. It is our responsibility as teachers to make learning relevant for our students and I learned today that technology is important to our student's learning.

Role of Technology in Teaching and Learning

I believe that the role of technology in teaching and learning is to give students an opportunity with different kinds of technology. Some students will work more effectively using technology such as a computer instead of writing on a piece of paper. I believe that this generation of students has so much experience with technology that we have to incorporate that into our teaching. I think that when a student comes into our classroom it is our job to make accommodations for that student. We have the responsibility to help our students succeed in our classroom. Some students will use technology to succeed in our classroom while others will work more effectively using physical materials such as books, or worksheets. I believe that technology such as the “Smart Board” is such a great resource to use in our classroom to give the students other opportunities to use what we have just taught them.