Post #10

What I gained from this class was computer competency. I feel I am savvy in all the programs we went over. Before, I just knew enough to get by writing term papers for my classes, but even that was in Word 2003. I really feel I know my way around the program now. This class has also inspired me to go out and Google answers for how to do things I don't know how to do. I feel like I will be able to keep my head above water with computers in the classroom now.

I feel confident about the project. I think we pulled together as a team and were able to get things accomplished. We provided a very wide scope of everything we learned in this class to make a cohesive presentation. The best part is we were able to apply this to best suit the teacher's needs and it wasn't difficult to achieve both goals.

I will most surely use Power Point presentations to teach classes in the future. I was won over once I learned how to quickly put together a good presentation. I love creating my own backgrounds and since I've become familiarized with the process I've designed presentations for group projects outside of this class. I would also like to make use of the crossword feature in Excel. I like the security of knowing if my school does not provide me with an online grade book that I will always have one with Excel. And to this day I am still using the shortcuts I learned on Google. I will use the websites I learned about in class such as Inspiration and Jinga.

I liked sharing blogs because I was able to check my own opinions/beliefs against my classmates. It showed me if I ever had a far out belief. Also, it was cool to see my peers cool creative ideas and findings. Then the feedback was always beneficial.

Post #9

I feel confident about my project on poetry. We had one group meeting last week in which I feel we were very productive and accomplished a lot towards the end result. When we met with Ms. Kirkendoll a lot of what we already had done fit into her criteria. Of course, she gave us ideas for what else to incorporate to not only fit her needs, but also better our project.

In our meeting I designed the jeopardy game which we will be using to follow-up the lesson to quiz the students to see what they have learned from the lesson. Also, each of us designed our own section of the lesson. I was responsible for the segment on haiku. Then, Annie and myself went to visit with Ms. Kirkendoll and since we've been adjusting our project to fit her more.

Based on the last time we met I furthered my knowledge on how to use wikispaces. I familiarized myself with it's easy use and the level of easy communication came to grow on me.

Post #8

My group could use Webquest for our middle school language arts project by creating a webquest for the students to do on poetry. At WebQuest.org there are several links to sites in which you can author a WebQuest free of charge. It gives guidelines for creating a fun and effective webquest that I am almost sure I could create one to go along with our poetry theme. Just off the top of my head I could have students search for their own examples of the types of poetry mentioned, not including examples used in class. This would prove their understanding of each type of poetry and would make learning about poetry more interactive than just reading different poems to them.

A creative Web Quest idea I found for a language arts class was for students to write a biography on historians, inventors or scientists. By doing so they saved a dying alien race and the end result was an essay and a power point reporting their data. The students present their findings to the alien leader so he can take information back to his home planet and make his world a better place so the aliens can survive. This is a fun way to motivate middle schoolers to research earlier generations and their helpful contributions to our lives today.

I am a lot more comfortable using Excel now and believe my knowledge on creating online crossword puzzles will be easily applied to teaching an eleventh grade English class. I think using that to set up weekly vocabulary drills would be good exercise for the students to study the words in a different and fun way. I've also become fairly more acquanited with WikiSpaces and am starting to see the benefits of using it to communicate over that of e-mail. I would love to set up a class wiki space, but am wondering if that would easily be carried out. I'm still having a hard time convincing others of the ease of communications of wikis.

Post #7

The web-based tool I selected was teach-nology.com. It's a website that contains lesson plans for different subjects, printables,and educational games. The parts of the website I saw being most applicable to my classroom was the page-maker section. It had templates you could easily create rubrics, print out signs for your classroom, or handouts based on subject area. The hand outs I could see myself using for an eleventh grade english class would be fill in the blank, matching, and proofreading. These worksheets could easily be used for daily warm-ups or weekly quizzes.

The main use I could see for Excel or a similar program would be as a gradebook for keeping track of my students grades. I love the ease of copying formulas and series into the program. I will more than likely use its functions to evaluate each student within their own class and in comparision with all my other classes. By using averages and seeing where each student falls in comparision to the class average and all of class averages I can better see which students require extra assistance and if class averages seem low than I can re-evaluate my teaching strategies. Also, if one of the assignment's average seems unusually low when compared to others then I will know I need to re-visit teaching that area. Basically, using the averages and charts will help me to evaluate myself and my students so I may do my best to teach them what they need to know.

An idea I found was using Excel to teach budgeting. This would probably be more easily applied in a Math class, but I want to teach my students the skills they will need to survive in life. So if I could find some way to incorporte this to my curriculum I surely would. I think it would be easily relatable to juniors in high school because they are soon to be going to college and the sooner they learn this life skill the better prepared they'll be.

Post #6

Overall, I think my presentation was well put together. I was impressed with my ability to create a background that looked like one of the ready to go templates. My content was good in the sense of the many varieties of media I had working for me: pictures, sound, clip art, media, etc. However, my content as far as sentences go could probably use some work. I think I did a good job on navigation throughout my presentation, linking my slides to one another and outside sources in a cohesive manner, with fully functioning hyper-links.

I think I could use computer peripherals such as a disc drive to play music that has something to do with what we will be covering that day in class. By playing the music first thing it gives students some time to transition and mentally prepare for my class and can even foreshadow what topics we will be discussing that day. Plus, I just think it's fun. From there I could go to the dry erase board and use the board to write on instead of always using a power point. We could have class discussions and I could write important phrases the class needs to know on the board, so they may make sure the key phrases are included in their notes.

Last week I became a little more familiar with the powerpoint program. I had no idea you could create your own background and once I was able to create one that looked as professional as the templates that came with the program I was on board. I think the assignment to create your own presentation, like one you would use in the classroom was a great activity because it really got me excited about using technology in the classroom; I'm one who abhors using power point to teach! Now that I see it can be fun and interactive I think I am more willing to use it and now that I have the skills to make the presentation interactive, I will be more likely to teach some lessons using Powerpoint.

Post #5

The website I critiqued was the Florida State homepage. The website did a fairly good job at remaining within the range of the guidelines established by the text. There was a cohesive color scheme (the school colors) and very little changing between different types of fonts. There was a large flash graphic which switched between (seemingly important) stories. It was a little distracting, but other than that information was displayed well. To the right was a bulleted list making information pop out at the reader. And the toolbar remained in the same location when navigating through the pages. The color scheme was also closely related as the viewer went from one page to the next.

I feel there are more disadvantages than advantages to using presentation software in K-12 classes. This could be that I am just not well enough acquainted with how to get the most out of using programming software to teach, but I feel that sometimes technology detracts from the lesson. In instances of technology taking awhile to set up or going through the proper steps of problem solving a teacher can lose the class's attention and take fifteen minutes to get it back. I can see how it would be valuable if you were a travelling teacher, instead of having to write a flow chart up on the board eight times a day, or even if you remained in the same classroom, but erased the board to cover other information. I just feel that outside of obviously easier applications that these new technologies are too heavily used/relied upon. Also, I think if I were to try and get my students to use these technologies that I would have to spend more time teaching them about the computers than the content.

Power Point could easily be incorporated to one of my lessons and accommodate each of my students and their different dimensions of knowledge. An example of incorporating Power Point in the classroom would be getting my students to put together short presentations to help prepare for vocabulary tests or go over topics we have been discussing in class. Specifically, students could create a presentation in which was colorful, interactive, and displayed creative ways to help remember the words definitions and spelling. Also, they could include bulleted lists of study tips. I would group my more advanced students with beginners and hope that the more advanced would help the beginners understand the process more.

Post #4

As a teacher I would use outlines and concept maps in my classroom if my students seemed to be struggling to organize the thoughts for papers. I like that by using computer programs, such as Inspiration, it minimizes students' ability to copy information from encyclopedias or the Internet. Using concept maps helps students to better understand how to put ideas into a logical order and by incorporating technology it forces them to actually gain the knowledge and not just copy answers.

I would encourage, but not require my students to use outline and concept maps. I would not require it unless the class as a whole demonstrated that they were struggling with organizing the ideas they had for their papers. If that was not the case I would not require my students to use these concepts because I know each student is unique and not everyone learns the same way. I would encourage their use though because outlining is helpful in determining what needs to be in your paper and weeding out what is unnecessary. What made me see how I could apply concept maps to an English class was the table on 128 which broke up short stories into sub-groups.

Learning how to determine what to look for in a website to use for class was probably the most valuable lesson from last week. First off because it helps me pick out good sources to use and secondly, if I know how to determine good websites, I can teach my students how to find reliable sources. Also the lessons on Google short cuts were helpful. I'm not sure how all those tricks will be applicable in the classroom, but things such as looking up definitions instantly have been useful to me already in college. I think I could use the website to check errors for websites I created or wanted to use which I see being most valuable for the former because I am still hesitant in my computer savvy (even though I can tell I am already getting better.)

Stephanie's Podcast

Click on the title of this post and it should redirect you to my podcast. Happy listening!

Post #3

I liked the text-reading software mentioned in thee second field trip of the chapter. I would try to incorporate that into a lesson plan for a sixth grade language arts class. I know, as a student, sometimes even I find reading monotonous--as shocking as that is for a student studying to be a English teacher to admit! I would find a program that reads the text to me to be helpful and as the text stated it leaves students to perform higher on Bloom's taxonomy because the computer is dealing with the lower level functions. I would use the text-reader technology to scan in a short story that had something to do with what we had been going over. If we were working on a theme it would tie in that way, or if we had been focusing on literary devices, the text would tie in some of what we had gone over. By using this technology in the classroom it would free up students to pick up on what I was hoping they would learn. If they were usually bogged down in the reading, they'd be (hopefully) take notice of the symbolism or theme of the piece rather than being worried with the mere words on the page.

Concerns I have about supervising a technology based class room in the sixth grade are that not everyone comes from a well educated classroom. I fear the use of computers would impede learning rather than enhance it because perhaps not everyone has received an education in using a computer. I think more of class time might be spent in my assisting students with the use of the computer rather than facilitating higher learning. Also, I'd have concerns at keeping my students off of MySpace or Facebook and other inappropriate websites. Being only one person overseeing the classroom, if I were assisting a student who is less familiar with the use of a computer, I might not be able to make sure the remainder of the class are staying off of these sites. Eleven and twelve year olds could get themselves into some trouble by wandering onto websites or viewing content they know is inappropriate for the classroom. Yet, they might do it given the opportunity to look cool in front of their friends.

In perusing the Internet I came across http://www.abcteach.com. This website seemed to be useful because (with membership) I would be able to create my own worksheets. It would generate handouts such as crosswords, word searches, circle & spells, unscrambling, and more English related subjects. I thought this was cool because I've had to generate a word search before without a template and it was not as easy I initially believed. Also, the generators they offered were new and insightful. I had never considered circle and spells before (which are the same word spelled correctly once and incorrectly three other times and students must circle the version of the word which is correctly spelled.) I think access to these generators would help me save time and have a wide range of different activities ready to go. I've had teachers before who used worksheets for extra credit. It was a easy way to fill the remainder of time if the planned lesson finished early that kept the students engaged and continuing to apply what it was they had just learned. Also, it doubled as keeping students from pestering the teacher about extra credit points if they had fallen behind.

Post #2

As a kid I used to spend hours on MS Word, writing creative stories and comedic routines. In school I have used MS Word primarily as a tool to write and edit papers. Recently, I started to re-type my handwritten notes into Word to organize the information more clearly and to re-visit the information I quickly scrawled in class. My teachers seem to keep the use of Word to the obvious applications: writing up handouts, study guides, and tests.

However, I once had a teacher who broke the mold and used Word in a more creative way. She used the table and text art features to design bingo cards for her classes. The idea was to turn that weeks vocabulary into a bingo game to be played in class. She would write the vocabulary terms in the rows and columns of the table and read the definitions of the words she called out. It was up to the individual student to know the definitions and match it to the word on our card. This was an easy way to incorporate the use of Word in the class room in a fun way that was applicable to what we were studying.

The skills this class have taught me so far that I see as being useful are: formatting tests, use of the print screen button, and shortcuts I wasn't aware of before. Tools such as page break will be useful for formatting tests I administer. I can see the knowledge of the print screen button coming into use should I need to make a tutorial to show my students how to navigate around/operate a computer. I can copy the images of screens they need to see, paste (Ctrl + V) them to a program such as paint, and save them. Then I can use a program such as Movie Maker to create a tutorial, using the saved images. It will be a presentation I can show to the class or post to a class website where they can view and get help outside of class. Other shortcuts I've learned are little things here and there, such as how to increase and decrease the size of the paint brush in the Paint program, beyond the options that are available to click on. Also, the actual ability of creating a short cut to programs I may need to readily access.

Picture

So I spent too much time on the window, the bed looks disproportional and is unfinished.... :/ But here's my artwork.

Post #1

New technologies, such as computers, are becoming increasingly important to the educational system because they teach students many essential real world skills. A prime example of these "real world" skills would be basic operation of a computer. There are few professions that do not require some basic knowledge of how to operate a computer and familiarizing students with these functions is preparing them for when they enter into the workforce. Also, learning these new technologies teaches students how to retrieve and analyze information in a way that may be more effective to the various learning styles. I agree with the issues raised in the first chapter. An important issue to realize is that not all students will grasp how to work with computers, for some it will because of the divide, but it's crucial to realize students will working at different paces and to recognize those effected by the digital divide. The difficulty was mentioned of having to keep the fast learners engaged, while assisting those who are struggling, and that will be something I have to think more about how to balance. I did like the Fruit Files idea though because it was a lesson in familiarizing students with finding and saving files to the computer and offered a suggestion of how to keep students of every ability engaged in the activity.

Some ideas I have for using a computer in my classroom (although I doubt I'll use all of them) are: Power Point presentations, writing papers, and/or vocabulary games or quizzes. I could use Power Point to lend visual aid to my lectures, but this is highly unlikely as because I even find Power Point presentations to be boring. More likely I would reserve the use of Power Points for if I ever had the students break into groups for a group presentation of a book or literary device we had been learning. I would allow students to use a computer to write some of their essays, although not all. This is because while I see the value in using a computer I wouldn't want them to lose other necessary skills. While the occasional use of a computer would familiarize them with MS Word or something similar, help them correct spelling errors, and save time in re-drafting, I wouldn't want them to become completely reliant on the technology. As the book stated, some older methods work just the same and are more cost effective. I would want them to write some without computers so they could maintain penmanship and time management. I know there are some tasks, such as the SAT, which they will not have these technologies available and I do not want to handicap them in that way. So my classroom would be about balancing old methods and new technologies so students get the benefit of new technologies, but their education does not suffer. The third way I might incorporate new technologies into the classroom would be to find/design a fun game or quiz that would test my students for vocabulary or quiz them on the book we had been reading. That way it's a fun, interactive way to get the information to them that breaks up the monotony of the normal school day.

Something in this chapter that bothered me was discussing how the teacher's role is becoming more of a facilitator or "co-learner." This bothered me because I don't see it that way at all. I do not think my role as the teacher is to present the information and step back to let the students figure it out for themselves. Granted, I won't tell them everything, I do want them to figure out concepts and ideas and answers for themselves, but I feel my role is to guide them to get there, not to play the part of a baby-sitter. I was just wondering if anyone else got that from that portion of the text? To me, being an educator is to teach the students something. It's not necessarily always curriculum, sometimes it's such things as thinking outside the box. I also think the best approach to do that is to be there asking probing questions, guiding the students to reach these conclusions for themselves, not taking a seat and letting students teach themselves. I think technology can help achieve this goal, but as I stated above it's a balance between tried and true and new technology.

YouTube - FRIENDS

Blog Journal #0

I've been using a computer since I was six years old. I came up with computers and I cannot remember a time without this technology. That is why it is so grossly embarrassing that I am incompetent with using technology. When I was six I painted pictures using the paint program. As I grew older I used the Neopets virtual website which started to familiarize me with html coding. Interested in this I went on to design websites, but it has since been three or more years since I hanged up my html coding hat. Since then the most computer coding and networking I've had to do has been on MySpace and Facebook (i.e. not much.) The last computer workshop I had was in seventh grade, so needless to say I am in need of a "refresher."

I hope to grasp some sort of computer competency and learn the ability to navigate around a computer well. I'm hoping this class at the very least will improve my tech-savvy, as it is now my fingers may fall on some unintended key and I'll spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to un-do the action. Even more ideal would be if this class could make me a computer whiz! I hope I learn how to problem solve (as mentioned above.) Also, I hope to become more knowledgeable in all the programs that will be taught to us.

I learned I fall close to the middle ground of each category, but lean (even ever so slightly) toward active, sensing, visual, and sequential. I learned I am an active learner, which means I do well with hands on activities. In solid lecture style classes my learning style particularly stuggles to focus. I learned I can compensate for lack of activity and discussions in class through my studying. I knew this, but I am also a sensor. I'm patient with details and good at memorizing. I'm more patient, but dislike courses that have noapplication to the real world. Visually I retain the most information because I am skilled at remembering the details of pictures, diagrams, and charts. As a sequential thinker, I learn by following steps that fall in a logical order.