Public Service Announcement

Link to my PSA!

This was a very fun project to complete! Ashley and I had a great time filming this video! We put in a good amount of effort planning the video, getting the props and setting right, and editing it to make the finished product. We had some glitches along the way including not knowing that we had to keep the flip camera vertical when filming with it. This mishap forced us to film a great deal of the clips again. Once everything was filmed, we had some issues editing. Our problem was that we had the video maker on still-shots instead of moving ones. Once we had this figured out, the rest was fairly easy. I love how the video turned out! I personally think it is hilarious while still getting a very important message across. Very time consuming, but well worth it!

I think that knowing how to create a video will help me a lot in my future as an educator. As a teacher I can not only make videos for my students to watch, but I can have them create their won videos for projects. This can make things so much more interesting for the students. I think that this will just add to the fun that students can have when learning something new as well as reviewing older material. Now that I know the steps and a lot of the details, I will be able to easily use videos in the classroom! Very cool project! :)

Today's Class

Today we started out class with the discussion on chapter 10. The group did a great job with their presentation. They used the jigsaw strategy, which was very beneficial to us coming to a consensus as a group about what our vision for our future in education. One thing that we learned is that when we use a specific strategy, we should straight out tell the class what strategy is being used. They all did a good job using multiple technology to make the presentation flow more nicely. Once again, we really need to think through the directions to make sure that the students understand what is expected of them as well as the materials they may need to use. I also am starting to really think about the importance of lifelong learning. It is such and important concept. We then did an activity to see how many different types of technology we could find that relate to our future careers in education. I found some very cool activities and resources that I can use in my future classroom! We then saved them on Delicious so we could use other students findings as well. This really helps with resources and saving time trying to find something useful for our students to do in class. Once again, the was a very informative class! :)

Interactive Whiteboard Lesson

I thought this was a very fun project to complete! It took sometime first of all deciding what I wanted to do. When I decided on creating a second grade math lesson, I thought that measuring would be fun! I then picked out different backgrounds and other fun things that I thought second graders would relate to. Once I had my idea, using SMART Notebook was actually pretty easy. After I got my peer feedback, I was able to fix up my mistakes, and hopefully met the expectations with this assignment! It took me quite a while to get comfortable with the program, but after that I think that everything else went very smoothly!
I think that knowing how to make a lesson in SMART Notebook will help me make things more interesting for my students in my future classroom. Interactive Whiteboards were something that I have never worked with until this class, and I am so happy that I finally did! I have fun using them, I can only imagine how younger students must feel when they get to use them! I know that in the future I want to use activities like the one I created to get my students excited and ready to learn. With just a little extra effort on the teachers part, they can really make a difference on what the students pay attention to and will hopefully retain better. I am excited that I now know how to create and interactive whiteboard lesson, and I plan on using more of them in the future.

Chapter 10! Rethinking Education in a Technological World

This chapter was a recap of the previous chapters. It also brought all of the main points together, leaving the reader with a powerful message that technology is where this world is going, and we need to do whatever we can to make sure we prepare our students for this new society. There were many things that really stood out to me in this chapter. First of all the fact that we were all raised to believe that all learning takes place in school. We are all so used to the idea that school is where all of our learning occurs, and our teachers are the sole source for information. Now with technology involved, learning is more a lifelong endeavour. Individuals can now take learning into their own hands, and learn more about what they want to know more about. Thing such as technical schools and homeschooling are giving people the chance to start doing this. When someone is able to learn a deeper understanding of something they are really passionate about, they are more likely to gain more knowledge and retain the information better. This chapter also discussed student motivation toward education. Students will once again be more apt to learn the material if it is something they really enjoy. This way they will be more motivated to learn, which is so important to gathering and retaining any type of knowledge. Something that also caught my attention is the fact that what is important to learn is changing. Instead of students focusing on memorization of facts, they should have the knowledge to be able to go out and find the information that they need. This makes students more accountable for their learning. It is also evident that many of us will be switching careers throughout out lifetime. This means that people of all ages should be comfortable and willing to go back to school, and do something new that they are interested in. Once again, making learning a lifelong endeavour. It was also discussed how leadership and the government support of technology in education need to change. We need someone that is willing to take this inevitable change, and make it reality. Someone like Horace Mann who did everything he could to change education into what he thought was the best for students to learn. The government also needs to step in and make technology in all school equal, giving all students a chance to succeed on an even playing field.
All in all, this book really taught me a lot about being a future educator. I now realize the supreme importance of incorporating technology into my classroom, as well as giving my students academic choice.With all of my students most likely going in to different work areas when they are older, I don't think they all need the same exact information. This book really showed me a different way to view technology in the classroom, and I plan on using the information to make these visions a reality for my students!

My Podcast!

I thought this was a very cool assignment to work on. Once again, I completed something in this class that I never thought I would be able to do! Finding the article and creating the script wasn't actually as difficult as I thought it would be. I found a very interesting article that really related to what this whole class has been centered on. The script really came together nicely. Recording the script was easy because I had the sheet right in front of me and was able to just read! Adding the music effects was also fairly easy because I used the website that we were given in class incompetech.com to find music to download. Organizing all of the sounds were actually not too bad either. The one thing about this project that took me forever was exporting the podcast as a mp3. It was not working, and I got super frustrated! After quite a while I figured it out, and then was able to turn it in! I spent a fair amount of time and effort on this project, and I am happy with how it turned out!

I think that knowing how to complete a podcast is going to not only benefit me in the future, but my students and their parents as well. I think this is just another tool to help students if they are not in class, or if they need more help on something. This could also be a very cool project or assessment for students to complete. There are just so many possibilities with podcasts in the classroom is amazing! I am really glad that I know how to create a podcast because I feel like the more knowledge I have in technology, the more my students will relate and want to come to class! :)

Today's Class

Today we started out class with the discussion on chapter 9. I thought this group had a great idea with trying to use scriblink to facilitate our discussion. It was a bummer that it didn't work out, but I still think they did a great job with their back up plan. This just goes to show again the importance of always having a back up plan when using technology. I think that scriblink would be a great tool to use in the classroom. I want to see if I can figure this out to use in other presentations in the future. Another thing that we talked about was how to make sure that when you have students give their responses that they need get to the point. This group told us to give our responses in five words or less. This made us be specific with what we needed to share with the class. We then had time to work on other material, which was a great help! I think this is important to do this when students are feeling overwhelmed to give them time to catch up! It was much needed!

Chapter 9: What Does it all Mean?

This was a very interesting chapter about how we as parents and teachers can start to bridge the generation gap and integrate new learning technologies into existing practices. It is one thing to say that teachers should integrate technology into the classroom, but if they don't know how to do it, what can they do? There is an obvious gap between where young people and older people are in terms of technology, and it is important for everyone to try and stay on the same page, especially in the field of education. I really like the example where a child who was really into a video game was able to teach their parent how to play the game. This is one way that parent can bridge the gap. I also like the idea of a parent getting an account somewhere where they could chat with their child, which would be another good way to communicate. We were all young, and it is important to keep that in mind when we are educating the youth. We need to find ways to connect to them, and make learning more meaningful. Technology is the way that education is going so we as teachers need to make sure that we are taking into account our students. We need to do whatever we can to help the children learn to the best of their potential. I know that as a future teacher that I will need to make adjustments to how I teach based on what will get through to my students. Teachers need to be flexible, which I think is a good thing to be. There are too many teachers set in their ways, which is exactly the type of teacher I didn't like having. All in all, I think that teachers need to relate to their students to better understand what they can do to help the be successful in the classroom.

Chapter 10 and Epilogue

I thought this Chapter was a great wrap up to the book that I read. It did a great job of bringing everything together, and stating the main points that the author wanted to get across. The two main trends in the use of technology were stated as that more and more content is being added to the web very fast, and that more an more of the content on the Internet is collaborative. One quote that I found to be very interesting was, "If we fail to graduate students who are not able to create, sustain, and participate in these networks in a safe, ethical, and effective ways, we've done them a disservice." I think that this statement is so true. We as teachers need to realize that technology is the way our society is going. If we don't incorporate technology into our classrooms, we aren't doing our jobs because students won't be going out into the world prepared for what they will face. Even if some teachers don't want to change their ways of doing things without technology, they have to realize that in this day and age it is so crucial to the success of our students.

This chapter also discussed many shifts that we as teachers need to recognize in order to best educate our students. These shifts include things like the open content that the web has to offer, the opportunity for 24/7 learning, the construction of collaborative and meaningful knowledge, that teaching is a conversation and not a lecture, to know "where" learning, that reading means more than just being a reader, the web and its use as a notebook, that writing is no longer limited to text, that mastery is in the product, not the test, and lastly that contribution, not completion, is the ultimate goal in learning. Teachers need to consider these important ideas when they prepare their students for the real world. Teachers need to connect their students, they need to be content creators, collaborators and coaches for their students. They need to test out the technologies first, and make sure they know what they are doing before they tell the students to do it. I think it sounds like a challenge, but it is something that I am willing to do for my students!

I also thought that the Epilogue was very interesting. This teacher used so many technologies that made his life so much easier! I think it would take a lot of organization and planning to run a classroom like this, but I think it would be time well spent. Having such an organized classroom kept everyone involved in the class updated on what was going on. Everything was current too, which is relate able to the students. Overall, I thought this was a very cool organizational way of running a class!

Today's Class

We started off today with the group discussion guides. I thought the discussion guides did a great job with the organization of their presentations. Professor Boyer also shared with us a link to a charter school that used computers as their mode of learning all day long. I thought that this is a very interesting idea, and would be something very neat to look into. One thing that professor Boyer suggested we do when facilitating a discussion is to make sure you give the directions before you have the students get up and move. Also it is important to keep things simple when they are displayed on the screen. Sometimes too much on the screen can be overboard for the audience to look at. We also then went over some Scratch helpful hints. I definitely need to fix up my Scratch and get help! I also need to go over my annotative bibliography to fix it up and make it look better. I like that we are able to go over things that we are expected to do in class. I really learned a lot today that I didn't know before class and when i was making my bibliography. Even though I am stresses out with the workload in this class, I know I will be thankful that I know how to do all of these things when I am out in the world of teaching! :)

Cool Tools Screencast

My Screencast!

This screencast took me quite a while to do considering I kept making mistakes when I was recording it. I still have some mistakes, but I was getting a sore throat from doing it over and over again, so I think a few mistakes it ok! :) I also really enjoyed my website, so it took me quite a while going through it and finding the best things I could talk about in the 5 minutes that we were given. I also had a rough time staying in the time limits. I had too much to say, and kept running out of time! I think I put a good amount of effort into the project, and I think the final piece proves that!

Overall, I think this would be something very helpful to students. When they are able to see the steps that they need to take in order to do something, they will most likely be more successful. I think that this would be something that I could link to our class blog if it was something I expected them to do for homework. I think this project for 331 will help me in my future as an educator because I will be able to use this technology more easily. I had never really thought I would ever be able to create a screencast because it sounded far too tricky, but now that I know I can, I will hopefully use it! Even though it took quite some time to complete, I am glad I had the experience of creating a screencast! :)

Chapter 8: How Schools Can Cope with the New Technologies

This chapter starts off discussing the three imperatives to using technology in schools; customization, interaction, and learner control. It is important for students to be able to have the choice of the knowledge they want to learn individually. Interaction means that computers can give immediate feedback to learners and to engage them. Learner control refers to the choice of learners putting their own understanding and learning into their own hands. Then the chapter goes on to discuss three main ways that technology can bring together new and old ideas on technology. The first of these ideas is performance-based assessment. This involves national certifications and skill-based assessment systems. Students would be able to get certifications that direct them to their specific career goals. They achieve as many of these certificates that they need to to be qualified to work where they desire. This gives learners more choice, and hopefully keeping students interested and keeping up with education. I think this is a super idea, but I still think it is important to get those other important aspects into education. I don't think that it should be so directed because students will be missing out on so much important information that they can use for the rest of their lives. The next idea discussed in this chapter is curriculum designs. This type of curriculum can help students focus their learning around their goals and interests. Once again I think this is generally a good idea, but it takes out a lot of other important aspects of knowledge. Lastly, new approaches to equity in a digital world was discussed. The hope of technology based schools is that it will keep students interested because they will study things that interest them. The drop out rates will hopefully decrease. As a future teacher, once again, I plan on making sure to let my students have academic choice. I think it is very important for students to study what they enjoy, but I also think other knowledge is imperative to be good citizens and other things like that. I wouldn't like to have schools like this because I am much partial to the ways schools are run today, but some aspects would be nice to slowly incorporate into the classroom I will though be open to change based on what these new technologies are bringing, and if they are included in the district I end up teaching in.