Class Reflection # 10

Next year I will be in practicum 2 which means I will be doing most of the teaching myself in the classroom. This is a scary thought but at the same time I am excited to show off all the technological things I learned in this class. I hope that I will even be able to show my future teacher some things that she does not know about.

Class reflection # 9

After doing my final project I learned that the scholastic web page has way more resources for teachers than i would have ever thought. here are some of the things scholastic offers to make the classroom more fun, or you could use these for extra credit of homework assignments too.

Lesson Plans
Teaching Strategies
Tips for new teachers
Printable worksheets
Make your own web page
make a calendar
Make a to do list
Online activities
Scholarships
Contests
Interactive lessons
Interviews with influential people
Polls
List of suggested books
Class support
Games
Message board
Arrange for an author to visit your class
Podcasts
News articles

There are so many things on this site that it is hard to keep track of it all, even though I've been there several times. I will definitely be using this as a resource in my class room.

Class Reflection # 8

Today we finished our class presentations. Everyone did a really good job. Some of the web pages that were talked about that I found interesting are teacherweb.com, brainpop.com, and discovery streaming. I learned that we have a free trial through teacherweb.com which I am excited about. I really liked brain pop too. It would be neat to have the kids in my class ask a question and send it in to be answered. Also discovery streaming is a cool website because you can watch discovery videos, the only thing I don't like about it is that you need a user name and password to get in.

Class Reflection # 7

Last week we started on our class presentations. Some things that I learned in class today from them are freerice.com, teachertube.com, wetpaint.com, and rubistar.com. Rubistar is a good place to make rubrics for your class. Wetpaint is a site you can make a wiki website from, and teachertube is a good place to find video clips to use in class. I think freerice.com is my favorite because for every word you know the definition to the UN world food program donates 20 grains of rice. This would be a fun activity to do with your class while helping people at the same time.

Role of technology in Education

I believe that the role of technology in education is to enhance the learning experience. The internet is such a great resource if used correctly, and I learned there is a lot of software out there that I could use as well. I think that our job as teachers is really to show the kids which web pages are reliable and which ones are not, and don't be afraid of information, but embrace it as the way of the future. There are countless ways to use education in the classroom and really it is our job to figure out how to use it in a way that keeps the kids attention yet is still educating them. My view of technology has changed because when i first came into this class I thought I didn't need to take the class because I already knew everything, but now I realize there are so many things out there that I didn't know about, and can use in my classroom now. It is almost overwhelming how many resources teachers have available to them, but now that I know my options I can make informed decisions about what I want would be the best technology to use in my classroom.

Final Thoughts

I am excited to be able to put to use the things I learned in this class. I can't wait to use a class web page to communicate with parents and send homework for students who missed class. Communicate with other teachers and students online, read books online, play online educational games, use the SMART board, Kidspiration, interview people from around the world on the computer, web 2.0 programs, and everything else I learned in this class. This class was great because it showed me some of the programs that teachers have available to them, what legal issues we might run into, and how to be creative in the classroom. I'm am thankful for what this class has taught me.

Assignment #5

here is the link to my class web page:
Go to http://www.scholastic.com/classhomepage
Class User Name: missfclass
Class Password: washington

For my final project I chose to do a class webpage. I have heard that every teacher should have a class webpage, and thought it would be a good idea to get a start on it now. I looked a long time for the perfect spot to make my page and finally settled on scholastic. Scholastic looked like it had a lot of fun resources for kids and it looked like it had the most and best options for a classroom. Some of the features it includes are:

Class Announcements- for parents and students
News Announcements- from around the world
Input your own Google Calendar
Links to kid websites
Teacher Book list
Class photo album
Online activities

It was a little bit hard making a website for my class because I do not have my own class yet. I had to input fake scenarios and I considered making a fake class photo album, but eventually decided against it. The web page its self was a little more confusing that I was expecting too. I would press save, but when I would go back to my site it wouldn't there. Also it was a little slow in loading, and it didn't offer quite as many things as I had hoped. After creating the site, I now feel comfortable with using it, and I think it is a good way for a teacher to have a web page because it has all the basics, and it was set up just for teachers. Scholastic does have a lot of resources you can add to your page too. My favorite part of the web page is the online activities section. You can include games and learning tools that scholastic has on their web page. For example they have something called global trek and the kids can click on it and choose whatever country they want to go to, and learn a lot of great information about it. They also get to meet other kids from that country. I believe that once you get the hang of this page it is a good way for a teacher to make a web page esp.if they do not know a lot about how to make a web page from scratch or do not want to take the time to do that.

The second part of my project was the Google Calendar. I had not used one of these before, but thought it would be easy enough to figure out. I was right, it was very simple to use and another good resource for teachers, either just to use for themselves, or to use for the classroom. I liked how the web site integrated the Google calendar into it. Allowing you to give more detail to the events on your calendar down below.

Class in 5 years

I have no idea what my class will look like in 5 years. I'm sure the improvements on technology will be pretty major. Things will probably get cheaper, so maybe computers for the kids will be more affordable. I'm sure there will be some new software that is out for the classroom and more web 2.0 sites that I will be able to use. I'm sure that in 5 years the classroom will be an even more exciting place to be, however I'm also sure that it will keep getting harder and harder to keep the students attention.

Internet Safety Issues

Internet safety is improtant, especially for children. Some problems that are out there are innnapropriate adds and pop ups, kids being taken advantage of- either with money or by a predator, online bullying, also you need to make sure the students are using reliable internet sources. Some ways to protect your students would be:

use an online database to get articles
give them a list of restrictive sites to use
teach them not to give out personal information
use a filter- net trekker or web quest
work in pairs- accountablitly partners
let them know the teacher can see what they are doing online- use syncronize
teach them how to use the internet safely

Assignment 4 Technology Education

You can view my Lesson Plan in Google Docs.

The tools I would need to add technology are a projector, a computer, and the internet.

Technology could make this lesson plan more interesting by including video clips and allowing the students to do outside research on their own, allowing them to look up origami they would like to try by themselves.

Some challenges would be finding a video of origami making, if none could be found, the teacher could film a video herself.

The Nets for students this covers are: II.II, II.III, III.I, III.II, VI.I

Online Conference

I listened to the podcast by Sylvia Martinez. She lives in Los Angeles, CA and is president of Generation YES. Sylvia has designed educational games, curriculum, and online experiences for teachers and students. Sylvia speaks and writes on subjects such as the use of technology, simulations and games to enhance educational opportunities and enable youth voice.

The podcast talked about ways to use web 2.0 in the classroom, but it wasn't very informative. She was obviously talking to older adults who were not as familiar with technology. She said over and over again that you and your students are a team, and don't be afraid to get them involved in the planning or ask them questions, and not to be afraid if your technology assignment doesn't work.

I think the main thing I learned from this podcast was about G cast, which is a way to make podcasts from your phone. She brought this up as an alternative for teachers who don't know how to use other podcast equipment. I was a little let down. I was hoping to learn about web 2.0 sites that I had not heard of instead of hearing about scavenger hunts for old equipment that could still be useful.

Power Point

power point- use a picture or texture as the background, insert clip art or a drawing, organize slides, insert movie or song, use animation, make your own animation, slide transition effects, write with 3D text, use 3D shapes, time your presentation, insert a hyperlink

word-insert clip art/drawing, change color/font of text, insert a table, use columns, word count, insert symbol, insert page numbers, format the page, double space, change font color and size, use highlighter

excel- make a chart, money, percent

Class Reflection #6

Friday I had the opportunity to go to the library with my class and watch the librarian use the Smart Board. It was interesting to see how the students responded to it. It seemed like the students were more engaged because they wanted a turn to write the answer on the board. She also read the class a book using the camera projector. This was the first time I've been able to see how these things work in a classroom setting.

SMART board presentation

Here is the link to my SMART board presentation. The NETS in this activity are: II,IV,VI. For this presentation I prepared by walking through the project on my own, and testing out the links to make sure they worked. Turns out one of the links did not work so I changed it to one that does. I also wanted to make sure I knew where all the correct tools were to use my presentation.

As a class we will read the question at the top of each page, then I will ask for a volunteer to come up and choose the correct answer. This will involve drawing a shape around the correct answer, moving a check mark to the correct answer or writing the correct answer in. Learning will be assessed when we talk about which answer was correct and why. The only change I made to this project was the broken link. This will make it better for my students because they will now be able to see an actual picture rather than just read the broken link name.

It was good to be able to do my presentation in front of the class and see everyone else's presentations too. I was able to see things that worked well and that the class liked along with some potential snags. It seems a big problem that kept occurring was making sure the board was centered, also several people including myself had problems dragging things across the board. I guess it becomes more natural the more you do it with your class, but it just doesn't seem like the easiest thing to use. Also a lot of the time if you are using it, you are standing in front of it and have the projection on your face which is distracting. I think if I were to use it in my classroom I would always control it from the computer, but let the kids come up and touch it.

Dare to Dream Classroom Technology

I read the blog Dare to Dream. This blog was written by a woman named Barbara who is an administrator in a Pre-k through 8th grade school in Los Angeles. On her entryNo Longer Content to Surf the Top of the Waves She talks about using video games in class which she describes as an "incredible tool for deepening the student thinking and learning." She says she used the video games in 6th grade social studies during her lesson on ancient civilizations. they looked at "SimCity, SimSocetiy and finally decided on CivRome, which starts with the early development of city-states as a means to deepen the students understanding about building cities. Suddenly the students were no just reading about the choices others had made but they were planning and making choices." this got me excited to be in her class just reading about it.

In another post called Instant Messaging for Class Makes Student Thinking Transparent she talks about using instant messaging in class. She sets up a group chat with for the students and herself to participate in. the students are able to chat with each other online which is valuable for several reasons 1. you have a transcript of what the students are thinking 2. the classroom is completely silent. 3. she can input advice whenever she wants and make sure the students are on the right track before it is too late. what a great idea!

Web 2.0 in the classroom

I found a lot of interesting sites today in class. One of them is a great tool that can be used in the classroom called assign a day. Through this web page you can creat a calendar with assignments on it for students to view. It is free which is great, and I think it will help the students to have an interactive visual that they can use for their homework assignments. It is also a great tool for parents who want to see what their child should be doing for homework. Another webpage that was really fun was willowweb. This is the website for Willowdale Elementary school which has radio for kids by kids on the site. It even has radio from other countries. It is a great way for kids to listen to other kids and even participate in recordning thier own radio podcast. Another site I found was called Ta da. This site is an easy to do list that can be great to use either by yourself as a teacher or for your students so that they can see what assignements will be due next.

Class reflection # 5

Last week at Chain Lake we made Valentines holders for Valentines day. It was a lot of fun. Parent helpers came in and we broke up into small groups. I was in charge of making sure my group got their holders made correctly. I loved being able to work one on one with the students, meeting the parents, and looking at the final results. I had a group of all boys and was afraid they would not listen to me, but they were great listeners and thier holders turned out great!

Class Reflection # 4 Google talk/ Skype

Google Talk/ Skype are other great ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. With the use of these you can make free calls to anyone over the internet. This would be a great thing to use if you wanted to interview someone in class who could not take the time to fly all the way out, like an author for instance, or you could use it for fun, like using it for show and tell. Either way I will use this in my classroom.

Class Reflection #3 Smart Board

I remember last year in my math class my professor used the Smart board on a regular basis. I think the Smart board can be effective, but in that class I feel like it was more of a distraction than anything. I remember there were a lot of problems getting it to do what you wanted and the set up time was so long that he lost the attention of everyone. In that class I vowed never to use the Smart board in my class because it was not an effective learning tool and it looked big and akward. Now that I have seen more of the things the Smart Board can do I am more excited about using it in my classroom, but I think I will only use it on special occasions for special lesson plans, not on a daily basis.

Class Reflection #2

I am observing in a third grade classroom, I've been going once a week for about 5 weeks now. It is really fun to be helping out with the class. Last week I had the opportunity to help out in the first grade class. When I came in the students were drawing pictures for thier friends. One of the little girls was drawing a dress and she told me she wanted to be a fashion designer when she grew up. While I think being a fashion designer would be fun too, it made me kind of sad that children in first grade are already so focused on image and beauty. I hope that when I am a teacher I can help them see the things that really matter in life.

Assignment #2

1. Class Activities- It is important that in an elementary school classroom you are not always lecturing the children. They are full of energy and long to get up and do something. I looked for websites that had fun learning games and activities for kids to participate in, to make learning fun! The website Classroom Activities was loaded with good resources. A great resource they had was the link to a web page called Ask A Geologist where students are able to email their questions to a geologist who will write back to them. I could use this in a geography lesson. Another great resource this website had was a link to the Web Museum where students can look at famous artwork online. I would use this for an art lesson.

2. Advice For New Teachers- I am new at teaching and therefore do not know everything about the field. I think it is important to get as much advice as possible from people who have already walked down the road so that you don't make the same mistakes someone else already did. People on these sites have some good ideas and advice on how to make things more efficient. Some good advice I found was from Ten Tips for New Teachers, they suggest sending a thank you letter to everyone at your cooperating school. I did not think of that before but it's a good idea and I'll definitely be doing it. Some other good advice is from Teacher Tested Tips that has good ideas for how to give class jobs as well as what kinds of jobs to use.

3. Fund-Raising- Schools always need more money. Honestly I'm looking forward to fund raising with my class. The more money you earn the more field trips you can go on, the more projects you can do, if there are kids in your class that can't afford everything, you can provide for them, and you can buy special rewards for you class once in a while. You could even donate the money you raise to a person or organization in need. Fund raising is no longer selling cookies door to door, there are so many fund raising activities that can teach the students to work together and help out in the community. A good idea from Top Ten Fundraising Ideas is to sell potted flowers, they say to buy them from a nursery, but I think it would be more fun to have the children grow them in class, that way we could make a science lesson out of it as well. A second idea from that website is called a community Fingerprint-a-thon. I had never heard of this before but evidently you can have the chamber of commerce sponsor you , the kids do all the work and when it's done you can make 10-15 thousand dollars!! More information at The Kid Safe Network.

4. Science Experiments- Science is my favorite subject so I look forward to doing a lot of experiments in my classroom. I think hands on experiments are very important for students to retain information and the more creative am, the more likely my students are to catch my enthusiasm for science. An experiment from Agricultural Experiments suggests comparing the amount of vitamin C in fruit. I could also tie that into a health lesson. Another experiment that sounds like fun is from Home Experiments it's called exploring acids and bases with red cabbage. I could use this experiment for a health or science class as well.

5. Classroom Management- It is extremely important to know how to manage your class. If you do not have techniques for how to keep a controlled class atmosphere, you will quickly loose control altogether. The site Simple Rewards, Amazing Results had some great ideas for free rewards for children who behave. For instance you could reward them with a special inside lunch, a longer recess or a special seat. A good idea from Practical Classroom Tips for Teachers is setting up a point system where each period is worth 20 points if you have to remind your students to be quiet you subtract 5 points, but if they are quiet on their own you give them 5 points.

How I could use the SMART board

I thought what we did in class was a great idea for how I could use the SMART board in my classroom. I could make my own or use one of the pre-made templates so that the children in my class could count camels for instance, and put them into piles, or add fruit and vegetables. The great thing about the SMART board is how interactive it is. instead of looking at a picture with 3 apples and 6 bannanas they can actually move the apples and bananas into piles and count them up as they move them.

Assignment #1 Technology Literacy

I feel like I have a lot of experience with technology. As I read the Professional Preparation Performance Profile it seemed a lot of the things listed were vague an up to your own interpretation. this is exciting because it means that teachers have a lot of freedom to do assignments with thier students that they want to do. The main things I want to learn in this class are the different types of technological tools that are out there that I don't yet know about. I already know how to make a web page, research on the internet, make a power point, things of that nature, but I'm sure there are tools out there that I do not yet know about, for instance I would like to learn more about the Smart board and other tools separate from the computer.

I think technology should have a large role in education and learning. There are so many new technological advances that people in large companies are using. The reason we go to school is to learn everything we can to prep us to go out into the world and be competent adults. It wouldn't make sense not to use technology as much as possible in the classroom to get students comfortable with what is out there so that they won’t be confused when they get into their career. Technology definitely aids learning and it would be a waste not to use every resource available to teach our students. Besides that, it keeps them interested.

There is a wide range of standarsd that students in 3rd grade should meet, some of these things include:
1. Produce a media-rich digital story
2. Use digital-imaging technology to create works of art
3. Recognize bias in digital resources
4. Select and apply digital tools to collect, organize, and analyze data
5. Identify and investigate a global issue
6. Conduct science experiments

Three ways I could help my students meet the NETS standards for their age level are:

1. The students could conduct a scientific experiment using computer software, digital instruments and measuring devices. I know there is software to conduct physics experiments. Maybe they could make a digital ramp for a ball to follow and calculate how long it will take for the ball to drop. (I, II, III)

2. The students could take an interactive test online that I prepared for them. The students would be allowed to take the test at home, and it would be graded by the computer as soon as they were done taking it. (III, IV)

3. The students could participate in an online interview with experts. They could talk to scientists conducting experiments at the North Pole through a computer camera and ask them questions. The students should take notes and ask questions pertaining to our class assignment. (V, VI)

Integrating Successfully

I read the article Integrating successfully from winter 2007. It was a very interesting article about a school named Hall Memorial that won a grant for $ 225,000 to invest in technology for their school. The principle wanted to use it wisely do he did his research and finally decided to use it on one Smart board to see if he liked it. The teachers, students, and parents loved it so much, he bought one for every classroom.

One thing I learned was about the Blue Chip school grant. I have never heard of this before. I wonder how a school qualifies for this grant. Something else that I found very interesting was that they had conversations with scientists over the smart board. I thought that was a great way to use the boards. I would definitely try to use that in my class.

My Website

This is the link to my website. Making yhe actual webpage was not hard for me to do, however, thinking about what I wanted my webpage to be about was hard. the first webpage we made was much more time consuming than making a webpage through google pages.

Class Reflection # 1

I am doing my Practicum in a third grade class at Chain lake Elementary. I was hesitant at first to be at this school because it is small and rural, but when I walked in on the first day I was so glad to be there. I absolutely love my teacher Mrs. Stafford. she is a wonderful woman with a lot of experience. She has been teaching for more than 30 years and is retiring this semseter which has been a blessing because she has been giving me all her old materials so that I can use them in my classroom. I love the kids too. Some of them are so funny. On the first day in class I met a little girl who told me she had a boyfriend and she was embarrased that her friends were spreading the news around.

Technology Standards

Some technology standards I would like to work on in this class are how to integrate technology in the classroom successfully. Right now it seems a little overwhelming with all the options that are out there. I want to learn some things that are simple and fun that I can start out on and then add too as I get more comfortable with it. Also I would like to make a class web page and learn more about Microsoft Excel.

Chain Lake Elementary School Website

Chain Lake elementary school- the home of the cheetahs, is the school I will be doing my observation at. Here is the link to the web site.

What I like about this site is that it starts with an opening letter from the principal as well as a picture of her. I also like the links section because it has a complete list of student and parent resources including the state report cards, parent handbook, and a link to the library.

The only problem I see with the web page is that it is not kept very up to date and many of the links are broken.

Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today's Learners Demand

In this article Marc Prensky discusses three types of students that teachers encounter:
1. The students who are truly self motivated
2. The students who go through the motions
3. The students who tune us out

He goes on to say that while our school system is designed reasonably well to deal with the first two, the third group is a real problem and fast growing. Children today expect to be engaged by everything they do and when school is not as engaging as video games or the internet they cannot stand to be there.

While reading this article I realized just how different todays youth are from when I was a child. It has only been 12 years or so, but technology has really improved. I grew up on old mackintosh computers and super Nintendo systems, yes we had a TV, but we did not even have cable. Computers were not yet a household item and I don't think we even had internet access in school yet. Today technology is surrounding children. They constantly have access to all sorts of entertainment that I did not have. Growing up I enjoyed school, but I suppose I didn't have any of these surreal entertainment systems to compare it to.

I think a big problem is that with so much information that is available to them online they may begin to question the need for school at all. I suppose that our job as teachers is changing, and that it is not necessarily our job anymore to teach our students everything, but rather teach them how to find information for themselves and how to know which sources are reliable.

I also think it is very important for us as educators to keep up with the excitement of today's entertainment. Why can't we make real life just as exciting as video games or include games, and adventure into our classroom setting? I think Prensky had it right when he said "Maybe if, when learning the “old” stuff, our students could be continuously challenged at the edge of their capabilities, and could make important decisions every half-second, and could have multiple streams of data coming in, and could be given goals that they want to reach but wonder if they actually can, and could beat a really tough game and pass the course—maybe then they wouldn’t have to, as one kid puts it, “power down” every time they go to class." The question is: How do we do this? Prensky answers by saying "As with games, we need to fund, experiment, and iterate. Can we afford it? Yes, because ironically, creating engagement is not about those fancy, expensive graphics but rather about ideas."

Why I Want to be a Teacher

I want to be a first grade elementary school teacher beacuse I want to impact students lives. I love children and I love knowledge so teaching is the perfect way to combine the two. I get excited when I see a student understand a new concept. Also, I had many good memories when I was an elementary school teacher and I hope to have as much fun with my students as I had in elementary school.

This is a picture of my elementary school :