There have been many technologies we have explored this semester. Each technology has advantages and disadvantages and some have similar purposes. There are also many differences. Blogs, Wikis, and Webpages all have different purposes.

First, blogging is a great way to share ideas with others. It can be extremely beneficial because everyone has a different point of view and by sharing our different thoughts gives everyone the chance to learn a different perspective. Blogging is also a great way to share links to webpages that may be useful for other people.

Wiki is a site that allows for collaboration. It is a way to work with other people, but not actually having to be together. It allows for one place for all the information to be shared. It will be less likely that information won’t get lost and it will be easier to communicate to many different people at the same time.

Webpages, such as Weebly are a great source for professionalism. Everything is easily organized and it can be used for many different purposes. It can be used for a portfolio which would be useful during interview. It can also be used for students. My CT has a webpage that her students can go to to find links to their homework. Webpages are different from blogs and Wiki’s because it really isn’t about sharing ideas back and forth.

All of these sites have benefits that should be used in the classroom. Many times schools are not fortunate enough to have all these technologies, but if I am able to have the students have access to the computer then I definitely will.

Attribution:

Title: NeverKnowsEnough

Website: neverknowsenough.blogspot.com/

So I Googled an image of lacking motivation and this is one of the pictures that came up. I thought it was adorable! And this is definitely how I am feeling right now, like all I want to do is sleep! I don’t know why, but I literally have zero motivation right now. I keep trying to tell myself that there is only one week left so just get through it, but I can’t. I have a final tomorrow and I have had pretty much the entire day to study for it, and I still haven’t! I keep staring at my computer screen hoping the terms will learn themselves.

I am sooooooo ready for Xmas break. I have definitely checked out.

I have seen Wikis online before when I am looking something up, but I didn’t really know what they were. I think it is a great idea to have a site like this that allows for collaboration. It reminded me a lot of Google Docs where their can be multiple editors. It is a great feature on Wiki that it saves the original form just in case something gets edited that shouldn’t. One nice thing about Wiki’s is it is easier to communicate with many different people at the same time without having to individually make sure everyone is receiving the same information.

There would be many ways Wiki’s would be useful for the classroom. First, the site is free and extremely user friendly. Students would most likely not have a problem learning how to create a Wiki. Especially now, students love technology so it would be a great way to get the students excited about learning. Not only would the students be learning about the content, but they would be learning about technology too. They would also be learning how to collaborate with one another. These are all qualities they need to learn, so it might as well start in the classroom.

One thing I would do for an assignment is to have a few different groups, each group working on a different Wiki. The Wiki could be based on the subject being taught at that time. I would require each student to contribute to the lesson content. Not only would this be a more fun approach to learning, but it will allow the students to work together, but not actually be together. When students work together they learn different perspectives and learning can become more meaningful.

Before taking this class, I had no idea what a Personal Learning Network was. There have been many technologies this semester that I have learned related to building up my PLN. Some of these include: Blogs, Twitter, RSS Feed, Delicious, Google Docs, and Web Pages. There are so many useful things that PLN’s can do. I enjoy being able to share ideas with one another because everyone contributes something different and by sharing our ideas everyone can benefit.

The PLN that I have enjoyed the most this semester has been Delicious. Delicious is extremely helpful because many times there are way to many pages to save so I just don’t save them. This page allows me to save all my pages in an organized fashion. Delicious helps build my PLN because it allows me to view other people’s saved sites. I have found several extremely helpful sites that people have saved about teaching. Though I have no really used the information on those pages yet, I think it will become extremely useful next year and into my teaching career.

Even before we researched Google Docs for this class, my friend had told me about it. We had a government exam and we wanted to complete the four essays together. It was so beneficial to both be working on the material, but not be together. I was able to see the corrections she made, and vice versa. This is definitely a tool I will want to introduce to my students in the future, especially when group work is required.

Finally, blogging is probably the best way my Personal Learning Network has been built up. It is an excellent way to share our ideas and have conversations about those ideas. I like being able to discuss ideas both about education and other less important things like movie reviews.Adding media and adding other extra features makes it more enjoyable.

I definitely think this class should continue to have the Personal Learning Network a part of the course. It is not only fun, but it will be very beneficial to us in the future. I learned in my IDES class that the only way to succeed at anything is by helping and having the help of others. Personal Learning Networks are the ways to communicate with others and a way to help everyone succeed.

Attribution

By: onlinemoviesunlimited.com 2007-2009

Title: The Blind Side Review-Love can change anything

Website: http://blog.onlinemoviesunlimited.com/free-download/the-blind-side-review-love-can-change-any-thing

This weekend I was obviously home so my whole family and I decided to see a movie. We saw the Blind Side. First of all I absolutely love Sandra Bullock as an actress, so I thought I might enojoy the movie–and I definitely did!

The movie is based on a real-life story. It is about a boy who really has no place to live. His mother is a crackhead and his father is dead. He is also a very big boy. They call him “Big Mike.” Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw play the parents of two students that go to Big Mike’s school. They are a wealthy family because they own multiple fast food restaurants. The youngest boy, SJ befriends Big Mike. When the family sees Mike walking in the rain with nothing but a bag of clothes, she takes him in for the night. One night turns into many nights and Mike becomes part of the family. He also starts playing football, and since his size is so big, he is an outstanding player that all the big colleges’s want to recruit. I don’t want to go into much more detail so I don’t ruin the movie!

I just really liked the movie because it was sad, funny, and real. I got out of the movie and it made me want to go help someone because of this family. It also makes me realize how fortunate I am after seeing how some people have to live.  Definitely a movie to see =)

Attribution

Picture by: UMass Darthmouth CITS/ Instructional Development Team

Title: Student Resources-Clickers

Website: www.umassd.edu/…/images/iclciker.gif

One technology I wanted to research more about was iclickers. I am a little familiar with them already because I needed to use them for one of my science classes. However, the only thing we used them for was to answer a few questions that were more for the teacher to see if we were in class rather than for our grade.

There are a few downfalls with iclickers. Especially in college, with big classes it can be very easy for students to give their iclickers to another student if they don’t want to come on a particular day. Therefore, if the teacher is using the iclickers for attendance purposes, students might possibly cheat the system. Also, from my experience our teacher didn’t give us a grade for the questions he asked. Since he did that, I never really paid much attention in class, I just clicked an answer so he knew I was at least there. With iclickers a teacher can see the answer a student gave, but it is like a multiple choice test. Though those tests can be good, it is hard to assess how the student is actually thinking. It will be hard to know if they really understand the material or whether they just made an accurate guess.

I also don’t know if I would use iclickers very much in younger grades. I think it’s great in high school and college, but I have a hard time picturing younger grades with them. Maybe I think this way though because I’ve never seen them utilized in the younger classrooms before. I’d be worried that the students would cheat off of each other, either by looking at the screen or their neighbors iclicker. Even though these are simple devices, younger children can make toys out of anything, so I’d be worried they could easily distract themselves with the iclickers. However, once they got used to them and it wasn’t a new technology they wanted to explore, it might be just like using paper and a pencil.

However, there are many positive things about iclickers. First, I like that the only thing that costs money is the hardware. With many technologies, there can be fees which can’t be afforded by the school, so the students miss out on the opportunity of using different technologies. Also, iclicker has made their hardware suitable for special needs students as well. They use different light patterns to indicate whether a vote was cast or not which would help color blind students. Those students that have difficulty seeing can easily use this because there is only six buttons. The buttons are lower on the iclicker so the student can differentiate between the buttons and the surface. The system also comes with braille.

There are several teacher benefits. One is that iclickers can be used on both PCs and Macs. Teachers may be worried that by installing iclickers they are going to have to redue their lessons to accomodate it. However, this is not true. Iclicker can run on PowerPoint, Word documents, Adobe, and more. The main menu bar sits at the top screen, so it would be easy to have the class answer a question at any point in the lesson. With iclickers, grades and responses are saved so it is easy to go back and calculate grades, attendence or whatever purpose it may be used for. The system also has a tool called “Question on the Fly” which allows the teacher to ask the students unplanned questions, but still saves their answers.

Iclickers are simple to use and won’t distract the student from the teacher’s lesson. There is also an anonymous setting in case teacher’s don’t want students to identify each other. I like this feature because many times students are afraid to particpate because they are afraid of what their peers might think. Overall, I like iclickers. It seems like a good way for students to stay focused because they have to answer questions throughout the lesson.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned in another blog, but for TE 401 we need to teach two lessons. One of them is a science lesson and the other is social studies. I get to teach my science lesson with another girl from my class and we started it today. I’ve never taught an actual lesson in the classroom before so I was a little nervous, especially in front of fifth graders. They can be intimidating!

In science they have been learning about the human body systems. Our lesson was the review before they begin a whole new unit. We decided to have each student have a role. The roles were doctor, health care specialist, and connector. Each job had a few questions to answer. The students were given computer time to research the information to answer the questions correctly.

It went really well though! I gave the introduction and let the students know that they needed to treat us with respect, but I did so in a fun way. Then I asked them several questions are the body systems and what would happen if the systems didn’t work properly. I was so sure that the students would not participate and I’d have to call on them. It was the complete opposite though. I had to eventually cut them off because they had so many ideas they wanted to share! It was great.

They all worked really well together. They asked lots of questions which was a good experience for me because I got to teach them what I knew and also how to be independent and look up answers on their own. Even with our lead teacher in the room, I felt really comfortable. I stopped the class a few times to announce things I had forgotten to say. Normally, I would have thought I wouldn’t be that outspoken, but it seemed natural. It gets me excited because I think that definitely means I’m in the right profession. I just thought I’d share for those of you who might be intimidated about teaching. It’s really fun and not nearly as scary as it seems =)

The technology I explored this week was Google Earth. I’ve heard about it from people, but have never tried it. The first thing I did was Google my house. It was crazy! It is so weird getting a different perspective of my town. I wasn’t even sure if it was Frankenmuth because it looked very different from above. I would definitely have the students find their house first because I think that would peek their interest and make them want to use the site for other educational purposes.

I thought there were many good qualities that Google Earth could be used for. First, it would be great for science and even social studies lessons. The reason for this is because their is an educational link that leads us to sites about hurricanes, oceans, all kinds of science related elements. It also allows a person to view outside of the earth and view the moon and other planets. This would be a great way to teach students about outer space. It also allows a person to view the weather which is something all elementary students learn about.

I like how Google Earth has the 3D buildings. Sometimes students have a hard time visualizing things, so I think by actually being able to go through a virtual tour of a building can really make the information come alive for them. I like how it even allows people to tour sports stadiums. This would probably be something to really interest the boy students.

I also like how the site is very user friendly. It is a free site and it is set-up so easily! It is very beneficial to have the links divided by category. The links include educational, fun, travel, sky, ocean, etc. The site also has other helpful tools. It allows a person to find the directions from one place or another (even far places). It also has a button that shows where global awareness issues are at. I went to one and it was really neat. It shows the exact location of the problem. Then is has details and a video explaining it. This would be very useful to the students if they were working on awareness issues. The site also has a few links in other languages. This would be very helpful since many schools have ESL students.

Overall, this would be a great tool to use in schools. Students nowadays are very tech savy and this would be a great way for them to apply the knowledge they learn to their own lives. I think it can be both educational and fun. There is honestly not much I didn’t like about this site.

Attribution

Photograph by Ian Britton

Website: FreeFoto.com

Link: http://www.freefoto.com/preview/90-15-57?ffid=90-15-57

I LOVE X-MAS!!! I know its only November 15th, but my roommates and I decided today would be a perfect time to decorate for Christmas! We started the day off by watching Love Actually to get us in the Christmas spirit. We put up our white tree with lights and the ornaments. We put up mistletoe, stockings, and all the other fun decorations! I am even downloading Christmas music right now! Christmas seriously puts me in a great mood!

I was just thinking today about using technologies in the classroom. I have been preparing two lessons to teach to fifth graders for my TE 401 class. These fifth graders love the computers so I thought it would be fun to use some kind of technology with them. The only problem is we have one class period to teach our lesson and one class period is only 35-40 minutes. I have also read that with younger grades transitions can take up to 5 minutes! Hopefully with fifth graders it would be less, but I still need to factor in transitions into my lesson planning.

My partner and I decided to have the students research some information online. We are giving them the specific site to find the answers they need to answer the questions we gave them. This is the only part of our lesson that requires technology though, and I am a little bummed about that. Especially after researching some of these technologies I want to implement them in my teaching right away, but I am not able. I’m just wondering if using certain technologies can only be done if there is a lot of time to work with them.

I also have been considering my internship placement, and I am most likely going to be in an urban school setting. My friend is in a third grade class in an urban school and she is very frustrated. She said the kids have a reading level of kindergarten. I am really looking forward to using computers and technologies with the students next year, but if they are at a kindergarten level that might not be possible. It might not even be possible for the school to afford these kinds of technologies? I just didn’t know if there was a way for us as teachers to bring technology into the classroom still in these certain situations.