Today's Class

This is the last class of the semester!

Three different ways that I am going to integrate technology into my second grade classroom:

1. The first way that I am going to integrate technology into my classroom is that I want to have a class blog. I am going to keep both my students and their parents up to date on what is going on in the classroom. I think it is so important to keep parents informed, as well as letting them see what their child is doing throughout the day.

2. The second way that I am going to integrate technology into my classroom is to use and interactive whiteboard. I think these tools are so amazing, and I know second grade students would be so excited to use something like this. Now that I know how to create a lesson and that I have access to SMART Exchange, I can really change up my lessons and keep my students excited to come to class and learn!

3. The third way that I am going to integrate technology into my classroom is too use computer and video games to help my students learn. I think that when a student is excited to do something, they will get the information that I am trying to get across. After being in 331, I now know of games that my students can enjoy playing while they are learning.

The main thing that I learned in this class is to always try something new to relate to students. Technology is such a big part of our lives, and it isn't going to go away. It is important to get our students used to using it as well as letting them enjoy what and how they are learning. I learned so much this semester and it has changed my outlook on technology and its use in the classroom. I thought that you had to be a technology savvy type of person to do a lot of the things that we did in this class. I am most definitely not that good with technology, and I was still able to complete all of the course tasks so I am proud of myself! I know that i can take this information and use in my future as a teacher!

We ended class with a great discussion and wrap up of the semester! I loved this class! I really learned a lot! :)

Today's Class

Ways that the teacher integrates technology into her classroom from the video:

- SMARTBoard
    cooperative learning
    engagement and participation
- Mac Computers
   laptops
   large number of computers
   mobile lab
   access to computers
- Online Collaborative Projects
    connect with peers (world-wide)
- Daily Blog
     assignments posted for parents and students
     open classroom
- Students write blogs
    current events and classroom activities that can be shared
    global audience

We then divided this list into things that we could have done before technology, things we couldn't do before technology, and things that we could do before but can now do better now that we have the technologies. It is important as teachers that we use things that will help our class even if they can only be done with technology. We then did a jigsaw activity with information from two articles about how and how not to use technology in the classroom. I thought this helped because we were able to hear about all of the other ideas, but only being an expert on one of them. I think this would be a fun activity to use in the future classroom.

I know that I need to get going on my Technology Inquiry Wiki! Fun class period! :)

iRLO

I thought this was very difficult to complete. I had a very hard time figuring out how to use Scratch. It took me forever to get the final project completed. The thing I didn't like about Scratch was that every little thing that I would change with my script would change everything. I was getting very frustrated, and I am happy that I am done with it! I definitely took my time, and created a project that I think is satisfactory.

I honestly don't know if I would ever use this in my future as an educator. I think that it is a cool program, and I would have my students use already created Scratch projects. I just think it is way to time consuming and complicated to make these games. I think that this would be fun for the students to play around with and try to create their own. I am happy that I was able to try using Scratch this semester because it gave me more of a background in different things I could possibly use in my future classroom. I also have something to show other colleagues and administration in my future. I'm sure there will be some people who love using Scratch and will use it in their classrooms!