My Beliefs

When it comes to technology in the classroom, I think it entirely depends on the experience of the teacher. The more comfortable a teacher is with technology, they more students will want to use it. The more they see a teacher use technology and have fun with it, the more they will want to explore and have fun with it. It is the same with anything in the classroom, if a teacher doesn’t like art, their students will not like art, if a teacher doesn’t like science, their students won’t like science. However, the same is true for teacher passions. The subjects teachers are passionate about their students will be passionate about.

The other thing that teachers need it training and that responsibility is not entirely on the school district. The teacher needs to seek out information on the internet and in local workshops in places like public libraries in order to use the technology they have in the classroom. If they do not know how to use what they have, they will not be comfortable enough to use it in the classroom or in a lesson. The more confidence a teacher has with their equipment, the more they will use it.

Lessons Learned

The PowerPoint on the tools for change was very interesting to me. At first it starts talking about new technology and how it is becoming more and more portable and how you can apply it to the classroom like connecting with the cafeteria and getting textbooks on Palm Pilots. It then goes on to compare what a classroom without interactive media is like and what a classroom with interactive media. You can see in the comparison that a classroom with these tools can become very interactive, they even have a diagram with a classroom set up of how to incorporate these methods.

The other article that I thought was interesting was the Millenials article. I loved that they interviewed kids and asked what their ideas were about new technologies should be. They had ideas such as pencils that will repeat back what the teacher has said, or a teacher with a calculator. They thought of devices that were wireless, small and multifunctional. These are kids that have seen the technologies of today and want to bring them another step farther. With imaginations like this, it will be incredible to see the technologies of tomorrow.

Strengths and Weaknesses

After reviewing the UNI survey and net standards, I have discovered that I still have a long way to go when it comes to technology. Some areas that need some desperate improvement are my computer terminology, learning how to trouble shoot, knowing more about copyright laws and ethics, knowing how to use adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs, using electronic informational and reference sources, using video conferences, understanding data bases and how to create them, using graphic organizers, and using instructional software.

As a beginning teacher, it will be very important to integrate these things with the students. For example, electronic informational and reference sources are good for students who need a visual picture of what they are learning about. Also knowing the basic computer terminology is so important because like any other kind of jargon, exposure to the words is essential. If I’m not using the proper vocabulary, how can I expect my students to? Also learning what special devices can be used with diverse learners will be so key. If there is anything out there available for children to help them catch up to their peers or help them participate at their grade level, those tools should be used and integrated into a classroom.

One of the online podcasts that I would use would be http://www.odbmsjournal.org/. This podcast talks about databases and has nine episodes that outline what a database is and how to design one. Through this podcast, I will be able to increase my basic knowledge so that I will be able to make and design my own databases. A workshop that would be good to attend would be the troubleshooting workshop by Southern Gas Association. The instructor has taught the course for 15 years and although it is a course designed for businesses, I think troubleshooting is a general problem, a skill that doesn’t change much between professions.

Article #2

When and How Should Keyboarding be Taught in Elementary School?
http://ci.coe.uni.edu/facstaff/zeitz/web/general/WhenHowKeyboardingSmith.pdf

This was a study done by the University of North Carolina in 2002 about when elementary students should begin to learn keyboarding skills and how they should learn them. They stressed the importance of teaching students good form early so that they do not develop the habit of searching and pecking and having to learn the skill all over again. However, the elementary school teachers seem to wonder where in their already busy curriculum they are going to teach keyboarding. Some of the conclusions that were made from this study were that 3^rd grade seems to be the best time to formally introduce students to keyboarding, but allowing students to experiment in 1^st and 2^nd grades. They also say to set aside time every week as you would for handwriting and to make sure that the students are hitting the keys with the correct fingers.

Keyboarding is a skill that all people eventually develop. From online chatting or writing papers for classes, everyone eventually will learn how to keyboard, it seems as natural as writing now a days. The important thing seems not to get elementary students 100% proficient in keyboarding, but making sure that they are doing it properly from a young age to avoid bad habits and the student having to relearn how to type on a standard keyboard.

Article #1

New York Times: Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html?_r=1

This article posted by the New York Times talks about some high schools that are running into problems issuing laptops to their students. It starts by talking about Liverpool High School in Liverpool, New York and the struggles they have had with students using the laptops for things like exchanging test answers, downloading pornography, hacking into local businesses, and playing games. When the school attempted to tighten their network security, students found a way around it and posted step by step instructions on line about how to do it. Other issue they were facing was financial problems. Not only was the mere buying of the computers costly, but the maintenance of the laptops was spendy as was the training for the teachers. Parents complained that their money was being wasted on something their child was learning to type and play games on, and teachers complained that their lessons were being distracted by computer glitches.

This article was not very complimentary to the idea of renting laptops to high school students, saying that they were not getting the learning benefits from it that the district was hoping for, but here is something to consider: in the example of the problem with tightening network security, a student learned how to get around it and then posted instructions on the internet. Albeit that the action was not conducive to learning, you have a high school student that is out smarting college graduates in network security and creating web pages. Is that not learning how to use technology? The greatest problem is that the teachers cannot keep up with the students. If we could learn how to channel that energy to hacking security systems into something else, then we would see more positive benefits. The truth is, the reason the students are playing games, hacking systems and downloading pornography is because they don’t know what else to do with them.

I lied before... this is the second to last post!

Today we had the chance to work on our webquests with our groups. I actually really enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. One, I think it helps that my group is working really well together and that we are sharing ideas with each other. I also was in charge of typing and creating the webquest this week (meaning that I was the one running the computer) and it really got me thinking about how much one really does learn by doing! It was a great refresher for me on PowerPoint and I learned a lot of things by having my group mates show me how to add certain features. It just really got me thinking about how important it is that our students get this experience, this one on one contact with technology and that they have the opportunity to create and to explore.

Second to last Post!!

Today we had an introduction to our webquest. I have to admit I was a little nervious because I have never done a webquest before but it looks like it will be really fun and easy. I think they are great because it gives a chance for the kids to really interact with technology, not just look and admire it. Hopefully we will not run into too many bumps in the road because I think that is why teachers get so turned off to technology. They struggle with what they are trying to accomplish and end up spending 20 hours on a project that should have taken 2 hours. I am confident that our group wil do well though.

Reflection on Technology lesson

Marla Morin
November 25, 2008
Reflection on Field Experience
Technology is one of those necessary evils…ok maybe that is a little harsh. Technology really is a very useful tool to have in a classroom and with the direction that this world is moving in, it is more and more important for our children to have exposure to it as early as possible.
In our field experience, we have good lessons and bad lessons with technology. Our first two experiences with technology in the classroom were not very good. Our first lesson that we did with our sixth grade class involved our digital story. As we tried out the video on our cooperating teacher’s computer, we could not get the video and the sound to work together. We could play the sound and watch the slides, so we pulled out our story board and as the cues came up we just clicked on the slide so the image would come up when we wanted it to. We made due, but it wasn’t as good as it could have been.
Our second lesson involved a PowerPoint. Again, we were having problems getting Mr. Wyatt’s computer to work with our saved documents on our flash drive, but this time we learned our lesson and Heather brought her computer. Unfortunately, it is an older computer and took a very long time to load. Then in order to get the projector to recognize the computer we had to re-start it. We started the lesson without the images, but the students I think would have come up with more ideas for that lesson plan if they had had the images first. We eventually got the PowerPoint working and the kids got the idea, but again, it would have been much better if we had been able to use the PowerPoint how we had intended.
The third time we got things down. We used another PowerPoint to again display images, but this time I brought my computer and got there with plenty of time to get everything set up and made sure that the computer connected properly to the projector. It worked out very nicely and it really helped students to understand the content of the lesson.
Our fourth lesson consisted of stations. One of the stations included writing a diamante poem on the computers that were available in the classroom. Unfortunately, there is no printer available in the classroom and we couldn’t save all of the documents between each rotation so we just had the students leave the windows open. However, one student didn’t hear the instructions and closed all the windows on his computer. I don’ think it really matters though, the programs are so old on those computers that I doubt we would have been able to open them on one of our laptops.
Our final lesson was another successful one with technology. We had students do news programs reporting from an assigned ancient civilization. Our teacher brought in his digital video camera and we recorded each of their news shows. We were able to burn it into a DVD and add a few headings and a little music in the beginning. We then watched the news shows the next day in class. The kids really enjoyed it and the DVD turned out pretty good.
As an overall observation on technology in the classroom I think I learned two major lessons. One, you always need a back-up plan. Sometimes, computers don’t work, some fuses gets blown, or one of the other million other potential disasters occur. You always need a back-up plan just in case something doesn’t work. The second lesson I learned was that you need to make sure you have plenty of set up time, especially if you are using unfamiliar equipment. You have to know the programs, computers, and whatever other kind of device you are using to make sure you know how to fix small problems, and with that you may need a little extra time.
All and all I really liked incorporating technology into our classroom. I think it made our lessons a little more interactive and gave some exposure to the children about what kinds of things they are capable of doing. I would have liked to sit in on one of their computer lab days to see exactly what they do in the computer lab, but I guess I still have a lot of field work ahead to be able to see that.

Technology Interview Reflections

1. What did you learn from this interview?
I learned just how much is available for teachers! It is so great that they have so much available for the whole school, that you don't need to have everything in your classroom, but that you can have access to cameras and projectors. It must be hard however to try to get as much exposure as possible to technology when there is only one lab to share between 500 students.

2. How will this experience affect you as a teacher?
I now know that technology can be a great tool, but you need a back up plan and you need to make sure everything works the day of! There were so many times that we had a great plan set up, but because of Mr. Wyatt's computer not reading our file or the change in format etc, the lessons did not move as smoothly as we had hoped.

3. How did this experience change your thinking about the use of technology?
I thought it would be a lot harder to integrate technology. The idea of a PowerPoint in the classroom just made me think of a lot of extra work, but it really is very easy to put together a quick PowerPoint of images and information and it is great because it is a way that all students can see. I do know that getting their hands on the technology is very important as well but hard to come by at times. That is why when you get to have time in the computer lab, you need to take advantage of that time because it is precious.

final week of field

This week we did something really fun with technology. We created a news program with our class with the show taking place in ancient civilizations. The students had to come up with four stories about different topics and we recorded their news programs on a video camera. We then turned the video into a DVD with a little bit of music and some headings and watched it with them the next day. The kids really enjoyed it and it was fun to see them on camera and see them use their imaginations.
Despite all our attempts to use technology in the field we had some success and we had some failure. It definitely takes some time to plan it out and make sure that everything will work, but it is great to see students learning through technology. Our teacher was great too. He makes a lot of PowerPoint's to help the students visualize information and to make a lecture a little more interactive. It would be nice to have a projector like he does in my classroom to be able to replicate what he does, but one does have to be careful because it is very easy just to sit and lecture with a PowerPoint.

Our Technology Disasters!!!

It looks so easy to use technology in the classroom, but really it is quite difficult when the technology doesn't want to work!!! In our first lesson, we wanted to use our digital story to start talking about Mesopotamia but when we brought the digital story in on our junk drives, it wouldn't work on Mr. Wyatt's Mac! We tried and tried different things. We could get the sound and the images to come up, but it wouldn't play all together. So we just had to play the sound and click along the images. Not what we had planned, but it worked I guess.
The second lesson we wanted to use a PowerPoint of images in order to engage the students and to get some ideas generated for the activity we were going to do. Unfortunately, the PowerPoint wouldn't work on Mr. Wyatt's computer either! This time we were a little smarter though and Heather brought her computer. Unfortunately, her computer was running a little slow and then when we hooked it up to the projector, it wouldn't display her screen!! GGGRRRRR. We finally got it to work but we were half way through our lesson plan by then. Now we know that we have to use the computer that we create the work on to insure that all will work and get to class early and set things up to reduce problems

Week One Field Experience

We are actually very lucky because we were placed in a classroom with a lot of technology (OK, not a ton, but a lot more than I had growing up that is for sure). The teacher in our classroom has an overhead, a laptop, four computers for the kids, and a projector to hook up to his computer for any kind of presentation he wants to give. Mr. Wyatt is also the webmaster for the school which means he does all the website stuff for Cascade Elementary.
I have been able to see him use PowerPoint's in the classroom to help display vocabulary and definitions. I think this is a great idea but he just put the word and it's definition on the PowerPoint. I think it would be neat if he not only had the word and the definition, but also a picture of the word. For example, on this weeks vocabulary list, he has words like waders and tributaries. It would be a snap to find pictures of those words and trow them onto the PowerPoint to help our visual learners and our ELL students remember what these words mean.

ninth blog

Today we mostly discussed the assignments that we need to do for the rest of the semester and what will be expected of us in these assignments. It was very informational and helped us understand what is expected of us over the next few weeks.
We also worked on our websites which will be due after field. So now the big question, how do I apply what we did today to what I will do as a teacher? Well I think it is important to lay out for students what the expectations are and what you want them to do. You want them to be creative but if you are not specific enough with your outlines, then the student may go off into a never-neverland tangent and will think they are doing the work correctly.

Oito

Today we worked on making web pages for our classrooms. These I thought were extremely helpful because it covered a multitude of things that a parent would want to know. It has a calendar, announcements, contact information for the teacher etc. These are all things that parents should know, and it is all right there whenever they want it.
One thing that I might do in my classroom is periodically take a survey to see how much parents are utilizing the website. It is a lot of work for the teacher to create and to keep updated, but I think it is worth it if the parents are using it frequently.
Also, I think it is good to continue to send some things home with the kids because they need that sense of responsibility. Sheets like spelling lists, permission slips etc. could be signed by parents so kids learn how to bring things to home from school and then bring it back. The website would also be good because it would cut down on costs to the school.

The Seventh Week in the Semester

Today we mostly just worked on our digital stories. It is neat to see how it is all working together, to see all the different parts work together to give one amazing product. I think that is something to point out to kids. Let them see how we cannot ignore the importance of working together. Maybe make a story where the music is messed up, or the images are not clear and have them reflect on what happens when something is off balance. Then relate this to real life. What happens when we do not hold our weight or when we don't do our part? Also it would help them to understand how something that is happening in another country is affecting us in the USA. To see how everything really is interconnected and many times our actions extend past our own vision.

Week Six

Today we had a review of our story boards and started to look for pictures online and some music to go with our digital stories. To be honest it was more of a work day than a "learn something new" day. But it was productive and I did learn about how to get music from youtube through zamzar, which I don't know is necessarily a good thing, but it is nice to know that if we do need something like that in the classroom, there is that option. We also learned about a program called Audacity and how that can be a tool for recording. It's nice that it is a free download. I think students will have a lot of fun with that because who doesn't like to record their voice and then listen to it? We could use it with all kinds of narration projects but also for interviews in the classroom.

Semana Cinco

Today we worked on our story boards for our digital stories. I really like the idea of story boarding because it involves so many or Gardener's multiple intelligences. You have the visual learner (or the artist) who can draw the pictures, the intrapersonal learner who can write the story, the musical learner who can choreograph the mood of the music and those who love to play with computers can think of good ways to pan and fade on the pictures.
Story boarding would be a key part of the design process if you were to have students make digital stories in the classroom. But I also like the idea of having student make story boards for reports or papers. It gets students thinking, "where do I start and where do I end? How do I get there?" It would be a good break from the normal outlines and all the roman numerals involved:) Even though many papers do not involve pictures, some people need that pectoral representation to imagine what the heck they are writing about.

Week 4 reflection

This week we learned about digital stories (they are stories that are digital:). It is using a computer as a media to tell a story or present information to a group of students in a new and fun way. I like how you can show so many images at once and give the information at the same time. I think that because it is using technology that it will really engage the students as well.
As I was exploring the digital stories website, I discovered that you can use this idea for many different things. There was a digital story about how a student's parents met! I thought that was great. Not only could we use this tool to teach children, but it would be a great way for students to do an autobiography or talk about their family history. You could use this for anything!! It would definitely have to be geared towards older students and would be a project that would span over several weeks, but it would still be a great project to do at the beginning of the year so that students can get to know each other.

Week Three!!!

Today we created websites!! It actually was quite fun, I remember in my freshman inquiry class at college (Portland State) we also created websites and it was something that I really did enjoy doing, however it is very time consuming:( This time it was hard for me to get the pictures aligned how I wanted them and to get the text to wrap correctly and I didn't understand why for some reason when I viewed the page it looked differently from the view I had on the editing page. All in all it was a good experience. I don't know how much I would use this for my classroom though. Like I said, it is very time consuming and I think I would prefer to use a blog for classroom stuff because then parents can make comments and it is easier to put on postings and videos etc. But it is good tool to have in case the students one day need to be able to create websites or there are parents that would prefer to navigate through a website instead of a blog.

Week 2 Blog

Today was a very interesting day. We were able to google chat! and of course create wiki's (not to be confused with whizy-wigs :) but we also explored new technology that we can apply to the classroom. Our group looked up SMART BOARDS which are so fun! At my previous school, Portland State, in the Library they had SMART BOARDS they would use to help classes with research. Our group here came to the conclusion that these boards are really great for high school and college, but with small children you are going to have a very expensive piece of equipment that is going to receive a lot of abuse.
I'm glad we had the chance to explore more the features of gmail, I was very impressed with how interactive it is and how we as students especially can use it to help us with our many group projects. I guess in my opinion I am more of a fan chats, but I think I just need more practice with the wiki in order to truly appreciate it and know how I can apply it in the classroom. With the group chat, you could help your kids practice their typing skills and have small groups go to the computers and chat together. With the teacher in the group you can monitor who is saying what and if anything is inappropriate. The rest of the class could be reading or working on another project, but I know for me personally, I got the best practice typing when I started chatting with friends online.

week one post

We learned quite a bit about blogging this week. It was something that I was never really into but after seeing how easy it is to use and to access, the idea occurred to me that this would be a great way to keep parents updated about what was going on in the classroom. You could upload pictures of students doing different projects or doing different activities and then explain to parents what you did in class that week. This would also allow parents to make comments and give feedback about the activities you are doing in class. You could also post announcements and upcoming events.
Of course there will always be the challenge of those families that don't have computer or Internet access in the home but for those families you can send important information through the students or through the mail. This however would be easy to update and would give the students a chance to get class information through technological means.