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.