Lecture Monday 4/27

In class on Monday we read an article by Richard Worzel about what he thought education would be like in the next 100 years. I agree with some of his ideas but not with all of them. We thinks that technology is going go become way more important and used more often in schools. I agree with that statement. You can already see the increase in technology use today, so imagine how much we will use in 100 years. I don't know if I believe what he says about computers reading your brain waves. Even is this is possible, I don't think it would be a useful tool in everyday schools. It seems odd and unaturaly for a computer to know what you are thinking and to know the level of how you understand something. I also don't agree that distance education will take over and there will be no physical classroom. I think that the world knows how important human contact is and how important one-on-one conversations are. Even if we can use techonlogy more we still need human contact and relationships. Teachers will still serve a purpose in 100 years, i believe.

Lecture Monday 4/20

In class on monday we had a guest speaker from PATINS Project. PATINS stands for Promoting Achievment through Technology Instruction for all Students. Their goal is to provide students with the techonology needed for them to learn and participate to thier full potential. In class we learned what assisitive technology actually is. She defined it as any item or piece of equipment or product used to imporce the functional capabilites of children with disabilities; the key word being any. They can be simple things like a pencil grip or a calculator or more high tech things like voice recognition and word prediction software. We then learned the 4 primary uses of assisitve technology. The first is communication; these tools help students communicate with others. Examples are the board with pictures on it that you can pick the picture and it says the word or phrase. There are also things like M3dynamic display, which allows you to type in a message and then it says it out loud. The second use it Manipulation, which allows the student to do simple tasks and use everyday appliances. To cover this category different students use differnet switchs to do different things. There are many different types of switchs, head, touch, mouth and many other options. The third use is Posistioning and Mobility. This is often not covered by PATINS, becuase physical therapist deal with this. It has to do with wheel chairs and other mobility stystems. The fourth use is Learning, and things like adaptive computer access. There are things like alternative mouses for computers and one handed key boards. ZoomText allows someone to make things larger so that they can read them. There are also things like talking calculators and Operation Frog, which allows you to virtually disect a frog. After learning the 4 uses we watched a few videos of students how utilize assitive technology. For more information on PATINS you can go to , www://PatinsProject.com/in.htm

Lecture Monday 4/13

In class on Monday we learned about legal issues and ethical issues. Examples of academic dishonesty are plagiarism, fabrication, deception, cheating, sabotage and professional misconduct. All of these things are examples of things that are illegal or wrong in the academic world. These things become difficult for teachers to police. There is a controversy as whether or not to enforce the rules to stop cheating or to try and deter them. I personally think that they go hand in hand. We should try and stop it before it happens, but also enforce rules and consequences when the rules are broken. A statistic says that 21% of teachers have ignored at least 1 clear cute case of cheating. It is a personal decision as to how strict you will be as a teacher with cheating. I personally think that you should not be tolerant with cheating. I do think that you should listen to the students, because sometimes things happen on accident or without the student’s knowledge. If this is true they should get a warning and be punished the next time.
Another issue is Facebook; we watched a movie about a teacher that was fired for the pictures and comments that she had put on Facebook. We discussed in class if we thought it was right for the teacher to be fired. I think that it is okay for a teacher to have a Facebook, I think that they should be careful about what they put on it. I don’t think the comments and picture she put where appropriate, but I don’t think that she should have been fired. I think that she should have been given a warning. I do understand thought that parents might have been uncomfortable. Finally we discussed copyright issues. It is a difficult thing to work around, but as a teacher you need to make sure you are not copying things and passing them out to your class without being legal.

Lecture Monday 4/6

In class this week we discussed an article titled, "At Chater School, Higher Teacher Pay" by Elissa Gootman. This article talked about a charter school that is opening that is going to pay teachers a salary of $125,000 plus a potential bonus based on performance. The idea behind the school is that the higher pay will bring in the best and most qualified teachers, leading to higher success for the students. In order to accomidate for the high salaries, the teachers will work londer days, years and assume more responsibilites. They will be attendance coordinators and discipline deans. The school will also scrimp on other things for the building and classrooms.

This article is very controversial. There are many people that support the idea and are up for trying new things, while others think it is a bad decision. The people that disagree think that you are going to have overworked teachers. They will be getting more pay but will be doing so much work that they will get burnt out. They also believe that the students willl be missing out by not haveing extracurricular options and have different electives to chose from. The question is also raised, as to how do you decide who these wonderful teachers are. What makes them the best? In the end I feel that it is worth trying. Why no give it a shot? I am not sure that is will neccesarily succed, but if they have enough people backing the idea, and families and students who are willing to be a part of it, I don't think we are doing any harm by attempting something new.

In calss we also talked breifly about learning tasks and professional tasks. Learning task are; content exploration tasks, production tasks, communication tasks, data collection and analyse tasks, and productivity tasks. Professional tasks are things that cover assesment, administration and classroom managment. The professional tasks are the things that the teacher needs to deal with themselves. They are not tasks given to the students.

Lecture Monday 3/23

Data Collection/ Analysis Tools

Data collection and analysis tools are tools that allow students to learn using technology to gather information and synthesize it. These tools help to keep information organized and enhance the learning that can be taken place when collecting date. Some examples are Polleverywhere.com. This webiste allows the teacher to place a question then the students text in what they think the answer is. You would have to get permission to use cell phones in class, but if you could it is a way to ge the kids invovled and motivating, using a technology that they are familiar with, thier cell phones. Another example is Go Motion. This could be used in science or math. It is a device that sensors a persons motion and graphs it. It then can tell you the speed and other information about that moment in time. It is a new and exciting way to learn about physics idead. Another interesting tool is Timeliner. This is a resource to help a student put togehter a timeline. It allows you to add graphics, movies and text and also link to websites or word documents. On timeliner you can do actual research, while not havig to switch from page to page. I think that these tools are very fun and interesting. They will greatly increase the motivation and attention of the students. It is a more fun way to learn than sitting taking notes, listening to the teacher.

Podcast and Lecture for March 30th

Productivity Tools:
We learned about productivity tools in class this week. A productivity tool is something that helps you be more effiecient by saving time or by imporving the quality without adding time. A calculator is a good example of a productivity tools. These tools either make something better while lasting the same amount of time, or they make something take less time. Overall these are very helpful becuase the less time you spend doing on one thing, the more time you have for another. The tools can be useful for both teachers and students.

In class they seperated the productivity tools into four groups: Document Production, Time Managment, Research, and Instructional Panning and Managment. Each groups helps increase effieciency in its own way. First document production tools are things such as Word Processor. They help you correct spelling and grammar mistakes, make text changes, and allow you to share and collaborate on a project through technology. There are other tools that do the same thing as word processor such as, Zoho Writer and Open Office. Zoho Writer allows you to access the processor through the internet and Open Office is a free version of Microsoft. There are also more complex tools such as SmartDraw.com and Inspiration. These tools help you enchance your production, using graphics and other resources. The next group is Time Managment. This is very important for students; they need ot keep track of due dates, tasks and other responsibilities. By using these toold they are developing metacognitive skills. An example of a time managment tool is I-Pod to do list. It works on iphones and itouchs and is basically a high tech calander system. There are also things like Outlook, todalist, and Google Calander. Research is the next category. These tools allow you to find information faster and to find more reliable, crediable information. They also give you access to a wider range of resources. Examples are Google Notebook, Delicious Accounts, Think Quest and Google Scholar. One of the most interesting tools, i thought, was Zotero. This a tool that you can download that makes a workscited for you. It collects the data needed and stores your resources. It would be very helpful when doing research and writing a paper. The final category is Instructional Planning and Materials. This tool is based more towards the teachers instead of the students. It allows the teachers to stay on task and get more things done. I really enjoyed the 100 classroom freebies website. This was 100 resources that teachers could use for free. It is very helpful and saves the teacher time in having to find the reasources, download them and pay for them. Microsoft Template and Office are also examples.

In the end I think that utilizing the production tools that are out there is a very important thing to do. In this era there is so much that can be done and everything is moving at such a fast pace that we need to take advantage of increasing effieciency if we can. I will remember alot of these tools when I become a teacher.

Communication Tools- March 9th Lecture

In this lecture we learned about Communication tools and how we can use them in the classroom. We first discuess the different ways that we as people can communicate. There is one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. An example of one-to-one commuincation would be a phone call, it is one person talking to one other person. One-to-many is like a teacher leacturing to a classroom of students. Many-to-many is the most difficult and can be confusing, but an example would be like a chat room, where many people can add thier thoughts at any time. There are also two other, different, types of communication; asynchoronous and synchronous. Asynchornous means that the people are communicating and different times; for example sending an email is asynchronous communictaion. The person recieving the information does not have to be present when the other person sends the information. On the other hand synchronous communication is when people are thier at the same time. This is like a chat room, or a phone call. YOu have to be present to recieve the information.

Having a way for students to communicate with each other and with you as a teacher is very important. There are many technological resources that can be used to enhance this idea. You need to decide what works best for you, maybe set up a wiki, or have a seperate email just for school. Yack Pack, is also a interesting technology that allows students to actually speack to each other and leave messages. Also when dealing with communication tools it is important to make sure that they are safe for the students to use and outside people can not get into them.

Production Tools- Lecture on March 2nd

In class this week we learned a little about production tools and how you can use them in the classroom. Production means the form of learning whereby students create a product or concrete artifact that is the focus of learning. Examples of production tools would be storymercials, digitial storybooks, powerpoint presentations, brochures, comic strips or things like webpages and digital scrapbooks. There are so many different option and many ways to explore technology while using a production tool. The four different tasks that you complete with production tools are Narratives, Persuasive, Infromative, and Environmental or Participatory. Overall you pick a tool and task and use them to create a product to explain what you have learned in a creative way. The only set back is that the students need to learn how to use the technolgy and they need to not get caught up in the technology and not actually learn the content. In the end the learning is the most improtant part not the technology used. But these tools can be very useful in keeping the student attention and motiviation high, as long as a fun way to have a lesson and project.

Content Exploration Tools

In the past few weeks we have learned about content exploration tools. These are tools that can be used to explore new knowledge, review knowledge or apply knowledge. There are seven different types of content exploration tools, here is a list from the least complex to the most complex; Reference, Drill-and-Practice, Tutorial, Educational Games, Simulation, Open-Ended Tools, and Integrated Learning Systems. I will discuss a few of these tools.

First, the least complex tool is Reference tools. These have the purpose of providing information. They are usually in the format of text, images, animation, wtih no significant interaction for the person using them. The lowest tech/ no tech examples of these are text books and reference books. Also insturctional videos like Reading Rainbow. The Hi-Tech examples are things like US Census "Kids Corner." This website allows kids to learn information about the country population. Another site is Metropolitan Musuem of Art. This website is very fun because it allows kids to learn about art and do fun activites in order to learn about the musuem. YouTube videos and News Sources are also examples of resource tools. In the classroom they can be a more exciting way to present new information.

The next complex tool on the list is Drill-and-Practice tools. These serve the purpose of reinforcing concepts, while supplementing practice and feedback. Flashcards are the most common example of drill-and-practice. Other examples are multiplicatoin tables, and typing programs. Online there are websites like Aha Math and Quizlet that allow for drill-and-practice learning. Aha Math is fun becuase it turns the math problems into games, for example to do addition you count fish is a fish tank and there is an interactive boy that talks to you.

Tutorials are the next complex tool. These are a mixture of reference and drill-and-practice tools. They serve the purpose of instructing and giving practice and review. The onw downplay of a tutorial is that the student does not have room to ask question, they can only be taught what the tutorial tells them. Examples would be Rosetta Stone, to learn foriegn languages.

Lecture Monday 2/16

In the lecture on Monday we learned how to make observable objectives. This means that the objectives are ones that can be measured. It means not using verbs like; understand, appreiciate, think, know, believe and to instead use action verbs. Examples are compare, translate, create, construct, describe, measure, define and identify. The action verbs are more descriptive. A pattern you can use it "Given the _____, the student will be able to _____,based on_____." The objective should discuss the conditions, which is what you will give the students and what you have to work with. The objective should also explain ther performance, as to what the students need to do. Finally it should include the criteria, which is how you, as a teacher, will judge if the student meet the goal.

We also learned the plan, SNOWY. This stands for standards, needs, options, what and who. SNOWY is the scaffold for helping you to chose the best tools to use. Standards is first deciding what standard your lesson will cover. Next you look at your Needs. This is what you need for youe project, like materials, environment, time and students. The 3rd step is Options. This means what is the availabilty of the things you need. Then 4th comes the What. This is deciding what tools to use and how to use them, along with providing a brief decription. Finally, the last step is Why. This final step is to explain the decision and how the tools address the effectiveness and enhanment.

Chapter 9: Technology in English and Language Arts

2/16/09

For this week, instead of a preleture podcast, we had a reading. The reading was about how to integrate technology into language arts, and why it is important to do so. They began by discussing the changes in literature over the past couple of decades. The definition of literacy needs to be expanded. In order for us, as teachers, to expand this definition we will need to use our new resources, which include technology. This goes back to shift. Students learn in new ways know and we need to recognize this. One of the new things that we can teach them is to learn how to learn to new literacy technologies. As a teacher they need to start discovering things for themselves and this is possible through technology.

Some of the key terms that we learned in the reading were QWERTY keyboard. This is the name for the way we type of with a keyboard. Those letters are the first 6 letters on the keyboard. There is a debate as to whether we should teach keyboarding as a prerequitsite to using computers, so if they shuold learn to type through using the computers. There are diffrent views but many people take the middle ground. They do a short lesson on keyboarding and then do more practice as needed while using the computers.

Other things that we need to think about as teachers are the fact that technology always us to be very social and that we are teaching a more diverese set of students. Technology allows us to have a world wide classroom. You can communicate with people in other countries and learn many different multicultural ideas. Along with communicating across countries, we are beginning to have more diverse classrooms. There are many different nationalities, races and ethnicites. It can be difficult to teach literacy and english to these students, so there is definitaly a new challenge. You can use things like CD's and online workshops to help these students learn english.

In the reading there were three technology integration strategies. The first was in Language Skills Development. This means decoding words and phonics; acutally learning to spell and read.There are many websites online that can benifit children. They make learning into fun and games. The reading listed some acclaimed sites such as GameGoo: Learning That Sticks. These are very motivational for students and allows them to practice outside of the classroom. Electronic dictionaries, thesaureses and Talking Word Processors can also be used to help with language development. The second strategy was Literacy Development. This is reading and comprehending. There are things like interactive storybooks that allow children to read a book online, that will talk back and allows them to choose different endings and paths. Also tracking system like Accelerated Reader and Blogs are very benifical All of these things allow students to share thier ideas about what they learned or be tested to see if they truely understand. The final strategy is the Process Approach to Writing. The techonology of a Word Processor has been such a help with the writing process. It allow students to fix errors during the revision process very easily. It also gives students the ability to use things such as spell check, grammar check and word choice helpers. There are also technolgies to help students prewrite, by making diagrams and outlines.

Overall technology is a very useful and helpful resource in the Language Arts area. All teachers should begin to integrate it and to realize it is a very substantial part of the new students of this ear. There are so many resources to take advantage of. It may be hard work but it will be worth it.

Pre-Lecture 2/09/02

In this pre-lecuture podcast we discussed many things. First we reviewed what we have done so far. Basically what we have covered has been there to convince us that techonology is imortant and we should take advantage of it when we are teachers. Also that we need to change the way we teach to better fit these new type of learners.

Then we began talking about how to actually use techonology. The first way was for assesment. Using it for assesment mean checking for learning and also what is missing to make things better. Examples comoon assesment techniques are test, quizes, projets, journals, presentations and simply asking questions. The podcast gave us three ways that we can use technology. The first was Easy Test Maker which is there to help with efficiency. This is a website that you can use as a resource to make quick and easy tests. The next example was Quia, which helps with effectiveness. On this website you can search through mutliple subject to find activites, quizes and fun games to help your teaching process. Finally to enhance your students learning you can use Wrtie to Learn. This is a website that can give students immediate feedback to thier writing and reading comprehesion skills. This is a tool that allows us to do something that we never could have without technology.

The next way we learned to us technology is for administrative tasks. These tasks are the annoying, but important stuff that the teachers have to do when they are not teaching. For example planning, tracking and deciding on things. To help plan the podcast offerend a website called Curriki. This is a place to learn about new lesson plans, to share lesson plans and to get an overview of how other teachers are teaching thier subjects. It becomes a way to get new ideas quickly and efficiently. Next they showed us PDA software to help tracking and managing. These are like handheld computers that can track attendance, students schedules and give emergency updates. Many business men and doctors use them and some schools are starting to incorporate them.

The final thing we talked about was classroom managment. Having all this technology is a great things but it come with a great risk. As a teacher you have to deal with some techonolgies not functioning. You have to handle the problems and offer new solutions. Also technology may be a way of distracting the kids, but it also could keep them more focused becuase they are enjoying what they are doing. You, as a techer, have to find that medium where you use technology to help keep them focused instead of distracting them.

2/1/09 Lecture 2.5

In lecture 2.5 we discussed a few things. First of we continued to discuss teaching standards. We looked at the difference between the Indiana Teaching Standards and the NET-T standards. In general they both promote teaching creativity and allowing the students to grow and learn as much as possible. The Indiana standards go a little more into depth on the actual content that you need to teach whereas the NETS-T standards talk more about how you can do so; saying to integrate technology and to use different approaches to teach different contents.

Next, we talked about professional development. Professional development is how we keep up with the shift. They discussed how we will continually need to learn and grow all throughout our careers; there will always be new problems in front of us that we will need to tackle. There are 2 types of professional development. The first is formal. These are more official things that are documented, like renewing your teaching license, taking college courses and going to seminars and conferences. These are things that are required to keep your job as a teacher. The second type of professional development is informal. This is development that is not documented or required. These are things like reading periodicals, new papers and new books. Technology is a great resource for informal development. We learned about things like RSS feeds. This is were you have one site that had all the new things from your favorite sites sent to it. Therefore you can keep up on the new news, without having to search a million sites.

The last thing we learned about was our E-portfolios. We learned why we are making them. We are making them to show our progress toward learning the professionals standards, it also presents and organizes our examples of our capabilities. Finally it gives us a way to reflect on our own work.

The lecture was very helpful and taught me some new things and ideas.

Graphic

1/23/09 : Graphic about Podcast

Practice with pictures

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Digital Native's 1/23/09

Januaray 23, 2009
The podcast discussed standards and the rules that teachers have to follow. First there are standards that the teachers are subject to. An example fo this would be that the teacher understands key concepts and they know how to motivate the children. The second type of standard would be what they actually have to teach. For example in 4th grade math you have to teach number sense and computation.

The other goal of the podcast was to teach you how you could use technology; they are to increase efficiency, increase effectiveness and to enhance learning. You are using the technology to help your lesson plan, not making a lesson plan just to use the technology.

Then we learned the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives are born into the technological era. They use the language and want things to move quickly and they enjoy mulit-tasking. A digital immigtant is someone who is learning or has learned to use technology, but still has the basiv ideas of doing step-by-step processes. Immigrants tend to use technogogy but, not at the same rate that natives do. The article discussed how immigrants need to change so that they accomidate the digital natives.

We also learned how to use webquest to reasear and provide new information.

This is a Practice

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