Week 07

Throughout this semester, I have learned about a lot of cool tools that I can bring into my classroom. I have about all the different resources, such as Inspiration, Google Docs, and the powers of yahoo or even Google. I have also re-learned and touched up on some things that I have been previously learning. This class has helped to emphasize the importance of bringing technology into the classroom, embracing it with your students, and to keep up with the new technologies. A teacher should be a lifelong learner, keeping with all the new developments, which will also help enhance their classroom learning. I am working towards becoming a math teacher, so the most relevant technologies I can see bringing into the classroom are WebQuests, Excel projects, PowerPoint, and even Inspiration. As a teacher one of the most beneficial tools I have learned about is using Yahoo! Bookmarks, and all the cool things you can do to keep track of all the updates of favorite websites and what not. I am planning on becoming a High School teacher, and with so many students it can become difficult to keep track of all their updates, but RSS feeds can be a life saver for me! It can help keep a teacher sane with all the assignments you will have to keep track of. Technology is an amazing and necessary tool to become comfortable with as the world moves forward, and new updates are constantly happening. By taking this course I feel much more informed of what tools are available to help improve my teaching skills, and what my students can get out of my classroom!

Week 07

This was I learned yet another fantastic tool for teachers. WebQuests are going to be an amazing tool to use as a teacher. They allow for some much freedom, but most importantly a higher level of learning for your students. WebQuests can be short range projects to long term extensive projects. It is much more than being a web tool is can go much further than just using the internet. It guides the students to which tools they need to use! This is also to guide your students in how to search the web effectively. There are so many positive aspects to using a WebQuest! It provides all the information the students’ needs, from the resources to the expectations of the project, knowing how much effort students need to put forth.
The next challenged I faced this week was working with my group; which I felt that we did not even work together at all. Not much effort was put forth or collaborating on how we were going to accomplish this project. It is always a challenge to get in a group, but this has by far been the worst group project. I felt like I was pulling legs to get this done.
Working in Google docs however was amazing, I wish I would have known about this a long time ago. As a teacher it is a nice tool to see who is partaking in the project. Most importantly as a student, you can work on a paper at the same time, but in different places. This is a great tool to teach others, especially when you are working on the same paper. You can create your papers a lot more efficiently using Google docs. Overall this was yet another great week, with a lot of wonderful hands on learning! Thank you for sharing your discoveries!

Week 06

I absolutely love excel, and I am not kidding. It has so many magical tools to help anyone trying to get organized with so much data or trying to make something more logical and systematic. Right now I work in a sales department where we run tons and tons of reports with an overload of data. I have learned so much about the power it can provide! Now my challenge is to make this information carry over into the classroom. There are so many options, what I love most about excel is the ability to create organized documents on your own, especially amazing tools for sorting. Say I want to play bingo in my class; there is a formula available to scramble up the equations so each paper would print of differently. When I was going through the links provided for the third tab, a lot of them are no longer good. I also was not very clear on exactly what the assignment was calling for, so I did the best with the information provided. The article went over the importance of searching and finding the correct information on the Internet. It is imperative that you learn the necessary tools to help locate the pertinent information needed. Most information can be found on the Internet now, so as teachers we need empower our students with the plethora of different ways to search. Another important point the article noted was being able to make sure that the data you are reading is accurate. There are so many different websites available, and the correct information may not always be posted. If they feel that the information provided may not be right, they can double check the information the “old school” way of actually using the books in libraries!

Week 05

This was another very informative and challenging week for me, I learned about new concepts and a theory on education that I had not known about prior to this class, and was challenged to incorporate the ideas into a lesson plan for other teachers. I absolutely love power point, it is an amazing tool for education. It helps to sum up ideas in a very simple and organized format. Both the teacher and the students can use it to present their ideas to share with the class. As a teacher, you can post your PowerPoint’s up for your students to use as study guides in your class. As a student it helps guide and create presentations they may need to do for their classes. A PowerPoint is a simple format for almost anyone to use, it is very interactive as well, and you can use special effects to keep the audience’s attention! It helps hold to attention of the classroom if used effectively.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a new theory that I had never heard of, but a very useful one as a new teacher. Mr. Bloom created levels of academic performance that was imperative for learners. The six levels; knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; go from minimal memory to a vast understanding of facts and concepts. There are many different types of questions to ask as a teacher when testing to get the answer that you are looking for. These questions will also help the students get a bigger meaning from the assignments and see the connections. This will be a very useful philosophy to know as an up and coming teacher, knowing how to ask the questions in a way that will get the answers you are looking for! This will help get the students to gain a better insight as to why they are doing certain things!

Week 04

This week was a great technology week for me as a new teacher. I learned about fantastic new tools to incorporate into the classroom, the mind map and RSS feeds! I am most excited about the mind maps; it allows both the teachers and students to express creativity on their own. It can be used for as number of different types of learning tools. For the project I created a quick cheat sheet on the Quadratic Formula, so one excellent use is a study guide. The reading also recommended to use as a tool for students to express what they have learned using a mind map. It allows them to put concepts together in a way that will help to make more sense as well as learning even more about the subject. It also will allow a teacher to see how their students understand the topics that were gone over in the classroom. The article mentioned that when a student presents it to the classroom and explains their mind map, it helps them understand the topic even further and see what mistakes they might have made when they attempt to explain their thoughts. Another new tool that was gone over in class is the use of RSS (really simple syndication). As a teacher you may have your students write blogs, post projects, and what not. The RSS feed will let you know when these things and projects have been posted in an organized manner, so you do not have to keep checking, especially when what you are looking for is not consistent when something new is posted. This could be used for your favorite websites as well as what your students are doing. I just noticed the symbol is on my Google mail site! Now I know what it is.

Week 03

Technology will be very prevalent in my classroom as well as the personal uses. There are so many different types of websites that provide a plethora of diverse resources for teachers, students, and parents. I am planning on teaching math in Jr. High and High School. Instead of using the board to teach them their new subjects, we can use technology for lessons as well. This may enhance their learning as they will be receiving individual attention from using technology! As a teacher you can really only help one student at a time, but technology and the creators of these programs has gone to great lengths to change the way we teach and the way we learn.
“…the student of the year 2000 should use a computer freely and easily, as naturally and as well as the well-educated student of today uses the basics: reading, writing, and mathematics. It will be fun to participate in the changes of the next two decades, and see if education can meet this challenge.” (P.17) This quote read closely to home, being that I was that kid. I grew up with computers and saw the advancements and learned while they were being created and improved. I have always been comfortable with computers, and have seen how far technology has gotten involved with education. It’s been an amazing ride and I can only imagine where technology will take us in the future!
Students in classrooms now have a completely different concept of computers and technology than I did growing up. Today children see technology as a learning tool, it provides “…non-judgmental feedback for the children…” (P.22-The Computing Teacher) Students grew up with technology as it is, having a basic understanding of it, and are more eager to learn of its uses! They see it as a an essential instrument and can learn a great deal more from technology, than the classic way teachers have been teaching. Computers are becoming more of norm in the classroom setting, than when I was even in school. The only requirement we ever had was using Word, now there are many programs set up to help them learn subjects in a whole new way! Technology has made stimulating changes in education and its practices.

Week 02

After going through all the steps of the Internet Activity assignments, I have now become more comfortable with all the new technologies required by this class. I have learned to effectively use bookmarks and make them available on all computers. As well as getting more comfortable with blogging. Lastly the amount of many different websites available for teachers and students. They are great guides for anything that you may be seeking! It’s comforting to know that support exists and it will be available whenever it is in need. I never even heard of most of these sites, my personal favorite was www.snopes.com. It is a very valuable site for questionable statements, rumors, or suspecting urban legends. In today’s world you hear so many different things that you are not sure whether or not you can believe them. The internet has become such a powerful portal to use in so many different ways.
“Teaching for Understanding” was an interesting article on how to use technology to help students learn with understanding, despite what ideas they may have already discovered on their own. A teacher’s main challenge is to help learners expand or modify existing preconceptions. Next the teacher must be able to teach the facts and principals, in order for the student to gain a greater understanding. A teacher can use technology in the classroom as a very powerful tool to see how a student comprehends the subject matter and what concepts they may be struggling with. “…students can confront their misconceptions, enhance their incomplete knowledge, improve their intellectual abilities, and construct ever more accurate representations of ideas and processes.” Technology is a great way to entice students to think in their own way, to be more open to new ideas, and think broadly about subjects proposed by their teachers.