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.