Final Blog: Technology in the classroom

 How important is it to incorporate technology into your classroom? What are the benefits to you and your students? What are some of the challenges? What are the important lessons you will take with you from this class and use?

It is very important to incorporate technology into the classroom.  Technology is a big part of our world today.  Mostly everything is online now and students are use to technology.  The benefits of using technology are better lectures, a broaden view, and many possible lessons.  Student's are all about technology today.  When using technology the student's feel in control and are proud that they know what to do.  Technology benefits teachers and students by broadening their experiences.  Technology adds more to the lesson and makes it creative.  Their are many challenges in using technology.  Sometimes technology does not always work.  Technology might have bad connection or even complicate the lesson being taught.  Some lessons shouldn't be taught with technology.  Also, many students may always expect to have technology incorporated in their lesson which will make it difficult to do anything without it.  I can take many important lessons from this class.   I learned to use photoshop which was a big help.  Now I know that I can edit pictures to fit a certain size on the website.  I also liked learning about word.  I never knew all the things you can do on word.  Now that I know more about these programs I am able to teach my future students about them.  Learning about these programs helped me understand technology more.  It has made me more comfortable especially using the smartboard.   Many schools have smartboards and they are really good to use.

Examples of Portfolios

One good example is: http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=2814408673732&id=94404660812025
I chose this portfolio because it isorganzied and easy to navigate through. This portfolio is inviting and attracts the eye by having pictures.

One bad example is: http://www.plu.edu/~bittlejl/photos/home.html
I chose this as a bad example because most of the portfolio is vague and not attention grabbing.

Copyright

Copyright for teachers seems like a serious thing to take into consideration.  Growing up and going through the different grade levels I never thought they needed permission to show a movie.  There were times at the end of the year or before we went on break that a teacher would show us a movie that had no educational purpose.  They probably never got the copyright law approved to show the movie.  I am surprised that you need to ask to show a movie.  When you show the movie you don't normally think about all the details that go along with showing that movie.  The pre-school that I work at during the summer shows a movie every thursday.  I'm sure that they haven't asked permission to show those movies.  Outside the school enviroment there is all kinds of copyright laws with music.  If you share music that can be considered going against the copyright laws.  I think we should teach students about copyright laws so students can respect and understand what it means.  Having them play a jeopardy game like we played in class may help them understand how serious it can be.

Scenario

The timeline for a video project that I would give my students would be over the course of a month.  I would have students construct interviews with people from different time periods.  For example, they can interview parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, or friends. The content area would be history.  And the age level would be directed to high school students.  To prepare for this video project I will need to design questions for students to ask the people who they are interviewing.  These questions will be about different things going on in History during the time when these people lived.  I would also have to put students into groups.  Each group would need to borrow a camera to record their interviews.  If the students don't know how to work a camera they will need to have a lesson.  As a teacher I would give students a rubric on what should be included in the video project.  Some challenges are having access to video cameras.  Also having students find people they can interview.

Prep Work
- Get the materials needed such as : cameras, handouts,
- Plan deadlines for project
-Have the project in sections over the course of one month so students don't get overwhelmed


Students should have a 5 minute interview with  each of the three people they chose to interview. Each students video should be 15 minutes all together. Videos will be presented to the class.

Reflection on video project

I liked doing the video project.  I thought it was a good learning experience especially since I never did this kind of video project.  The filming of the project was the easiest part of this project.  Me and my partner knew what we wanted to film and how we wanted it to look on video, so this part was the easiest.  I would say the most difficult part was cutting down the music to fit certain parts of the video.  If I were to improve this project it would be to have more time on the project.  If we had more time on this video project we could have added so much more effects to the video. If I approached this project differently I would have planned it out more to have it almost perfect.  The skills I learned from doing this video was editing.  Editing the video was the biggest skill for me.

Interactive Whiteboards

Interactive whiteboards enhance teaching and learning by creating new ideas for the classroom.  Creating lessons on the smartboard are fun and attention grabbing.  A simple lesson can be turned into something interactive such as a math lesson, science presentation, or a history review.  The smartboard confused me at first.  I think I was overwhelmed with all the things you can use.  But after having a lesson on using the smartboard I felt much more comfortable with it.Pros- It gives children something to look forward too.  It also gives the teacher a chance to get away from lecturing.  Teachers can create a range of different lesson plans and activities.  Cons: Technology does not always work.  The board can also be placed either too high or too low.  Teacher might become dependent on just the smartboard.  One lesson plan that I created was Science.  I taught about the different animals and how they hibernate.  To incorporate the smartboard I would have them do activities on which animals hibernate and which do not.

Software Skills

I think all the software we learned about were all beneficial. These softwares will help our teaching and add many possibilites to our classrooms.  Taking the time to go over this software was interesting and definatley worth it.  I am more aware of the different technology and how to use it properly.  Even in microsoft word learning about the different fonts to use.  I always knew there were hundreds of fonts but now I am more aware of how to use them.  And in my own classroom I will have to make flyers and handouts for parents so now I know what will catch their attention.  I have been using Microsoft Word for a really long time and never knew all the stuff I could do on it until learning about it in this class.  Learning to use a smartboard is important. Technology is getting more advanced each day and I think teachers need to try new things.  The smartboard offers so many new ideas.  Kids love the smartboard and seem to be excited to use it.  Learning how to use a smartboard will keep the classroom refreshed with new ideas.  I also like concept maps in publisher, more for the teacher than the student.  They are helpful when teachers need to plan out what they want to teach for a certain amount of time.  If a teacher is teaching a unit.. this gives the unit an overview of what the teacher wants to include.  I am happy that I gained these software skills to be a better teacher and use technology in my classroom.

Web Resources

I thought all of the web resources we discussed in class were useful.  I especially like Rubistar, United Streaming, and Ethemes.  Rubistar is a great tool to have.  Instead of making your own rubric it does it for you.  This cuts down some time on projects and lessons. Rubistar has really good rubrics for projects that would be great for the classroom.  I would use Rubistar in my classroom because I use it now for my education classes.  It helps that Rubistar is easy to use also.  United Streaming is awesome.  I love all the videos that you can use in your classroom.  It is easy to navigate and is broken into different sections.  I love the videos for all of the subjects.  Especially videos for Science and Social Studies.  I feel that these two subjects are harder to understand for some students.  Showing a video for these subjects might help the students grasp certain concepts.  I loved the magic school bus when I was a child and was happy to see it was still present now.  I also enjoyed Ethemes, I liked the lesson plans and the activites they had for the students.  United Streaming would be most useful to me.  I loved the videos and the lesson plans that went with them.

Inspiration

I really like Inspiration.  I think that it's really useful in a classroom.  There are so many different things you can do to enhance your classroom.  Inspiration can be used to create lab reports.  You can make visual handouts.  Students can make Venn Diagrams to use in Science. For example, they can compare and contrast animals.  Both students and teachers can use concept maps. Teachers can use a concept map to plan out their unit objectives.  Students can use a concept map to help them learn.  Concept maps can even be used for Pre-K and Kindergarden because you can use pictures on the map.  You can use a concept map to create a job chart for your classroom.  Inspiration can be used for cause and effect activites.  It is also used for productivity tools and assessments.  This can also be used to make outlines( show relationships between characters in a play or book), graphic organizers, worksheets, and study guides.  I would use Inspiration in my classroom because there is so many things you can do with it.

Social Bookmarking

I believe social bookmarking would be a great application in the classroom.  Students can use a bookmarking site to save websites that will be beneficial for all the student's to excel in certain subjects.  If students had to find background information on different writers lives they can bookmark all the websites that they find.  This can give organization skills to the students as well as making it easier to search online.  As a teacher social bookmarking can organize all the lesson plans I would use in my classroom. Instead of going to Google and typing in to find the website again I could just bookmark it.

I think social bookmarking could help me out now.  I search the internet for new websites everyday.  I like to read quotes and there are many websites that offer really good ones.  If I bookmarked these websites I would not have to use a search engine all the time.  Social bookmarking makes everything fast and easy.  Also, lesson plans that I find now I can save in my bookmarking.  Social bookmarking seems like a really good idea no matter if your a student, teacher, parent, or just someone who searches the web. 

GoogleApps

I really like GoogleApps I feel that it is fairly easy to navigate. I like all the different things you can do on it.  I never knew it existed until now. I plan on using GoogleApps now that I know about it.  It seems like it would be a good tool to have whether your in elementary school, high school, or college.  If I were to work in a group it would make my life easier because  I could share information quickly.  We wouldn't have to send emails back and forth to each other. ( which can get so confusing) I like how when you type in words it saves everything you write, right away.  That is really cool.  Because unlike a word document you have to constantly save your work. A disadvantage is they don't have as many applications.  For example, in the presentation section they have less backgrounds and details.  Some of the things GoogleApps offers are presentations, text documents, spreadsheets, drawings,images and videos.  They offer a wide variety of applications to use. 

Incorporating blogs in your classroom

I think incorporating blogs is a great way to grasp students attention. When students are given readings  for homework they can respond on a blog.  They can respond answers, ideas, or even questions about the readings.   Also, you can have students write about how they feel that day. I would use this idea for maybe a Special Education classroom.  When I observed a Special Education classroom they wrote in journals so blogs would probably have the same effect. For a science experiment, students can blog their findings.  And if each group has a blog they can look at other groups answers. Blogging is a good source of communication, rather than emailing back and forth.

A disadvantage to using technology is it does not always work.  Internet connection does not always work properly in the classroom.  Also, not every child has access to a computer at their home.  Parents may also disagree with using technology if technology is not used at their home.

Technology has many advantages.  Most technology intrigues the child to want to learn.  Students seem more excited about the lesson if somehow technology is incorporated.  Using technology brings new ideas.