Week 13

My partner and I feel really good about our lesson plan. We are excited to be able to "teach" our lesson next week. We worked hard to try to make it interesting and fun for the students. We ran into a little bit of a snag while creating a worksheet in Excel, but we managed to figure it out while working together.

In this class, I have learned so much about the technology that is available to help me as a teacher. I plan to use my knowledge learned in this class to enhance the learning process in my own classroom someday. It is definitely a must for teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms. Students use technology everyday in so many ways and they are accustomed to it. Technology also helps audio-visual learners see and hear the material they are learning.

I have really enjoyed being in this class. CK is a great instructor, and I have learned so much about technology and helpful links for teachers. Sometimes things went a bit fast for me, since I am an older student and not so familiar with many of the programs that the younger, traditional students have probably used quite a bit. Whenever I needed help, CK or one of my classmates was always there to answer my questions. Thank you so much to everyone!

VoiceThread

Wow! VoiceThread is very innovative and looks to be extremely user-friendly. As a future high school math teacher, I am probably going to need to get up to par with all these new programs. I have never used VoiceThread before, so I probably won't incorporate it into my lessons right away, but I am positive that I will eventually. I foresee that it will be especially helpful for students who have missed lessons on difficult concepts. By using VoiceThread, I could diagram examples and use the doodling feature to show how the problem is manipulated. Other students in my class can also explain how they tackled the problems. I wonder if you can use it like a SmartBoard and save the manipulations that were performed in the form of a video?

Powerpoint Project

Our powerpoint project is going okay. Soniya has been a great partner. She has been patient with me because I had an emergency with my husband yesterday. He had signs of a heart attack, so I had to rush him to the Emergency Room. I was having trouble concentrating this morning because I only had a few hours of sleep. Soniya and I divided our work, and we are using our strengths to make the presentation turn out well. Our powerpoint is on the subject of Integrating Technology into Classrooms. Working with a partner definitely makes things easier for me. It lessens the burden of work, plus it helps to expand ideas and creativity.

Chapter 7 Discussion

I am not sure that technology for instruction and activities in a classroom will ever quite catch up to the technology that the students use. It seems like students, especially teenagers are always ahead of adults. That being said, it is important for teachers to stay up on the latest technology for teaching. By doing this, teachers will be able to captivate their audience and give them a more current learning experience.

Online chats and instant messaging seem like they would be distracting if used in the classroom. However, they could be set up to be used outside of the classroom. This would give the students more time to discuss projects or assignments, without interrupting the "real" instruction.

There are several benefits to asynchronous, text-based communication over synchronous, face-to-face communication. First, some students are not very assertive and they may not get a chance to contribute to the discussion. Second, some students are not native English speakers, and therefore will need extra time to translate their thoughts. Third, asynchronous communication can take place with students of other classrooms, even around the world. Overall, asynchronous communication can encourage different points of views and deeper learning for everyone.

Podcasts are basically a newer version of passively delivering information to students. There are some benefits and drawbacks, though. One benefit is that the student can listen to the podcast at the time and place of his/her convenience. Another benefit is being able to rewind the podcast and listen again to parts missed. On the other hand, students are not able to stop the educator and ask questions, which would be a drawback to using podcasts instead of face-to-face instruction. Also, listening to a podcast prevents the audience from seeing the facial expressions and body language, which sometimes results in effects being lost.

Videogames can help develop studying if the games are educational and relevant to the material. Students can develop excellent hand-eye coordination and repetition of material can lead to memorization. Also, videogames enhance learning by providing visual and sound effects, which will help the students learn the material. I have children now, and I limit their videogame time to 30 minutes per day. Since two of my boys have ADHD, the short time limit reduces the amount of frustration they experience.

Personality Type

I believe that some people learn better by conversing in learning communities, while others learn better by traditional instruction. Some people even learn best by themselves. In my opinion, a person can learn one way with one subject matter, and learn better another way with a different subject matter. Based on my own personal experience, as well as my experience with children, I have found that children can learn many different ways.

I think students definitely have different learning styles based on their personality types. As I stated above, students' learning preferences may change as the subject matter changes. According to the personality test that I just completed, I strongly believe that it will help for me to get to know my students better. In order to do this, I might give them a personality test similar to the one I took. Based on the results, I can tailor my teaching manner to the majority of the class, while still considering the other students' learning preferences.

Excel in the Classroom

Excel is a very useful program. Since I am going to become a high school math teacher, I definitely plan on using Excel in my classroom. I will probably use it to create worksheets, as well as use it for my grade book. Using a spreadsheet for a grade book will help to eliminate errors, because I can create formulas to figure grades instead of using a calculator. This will not only minimize errors, but it will save time, allowing me to spend more time teaching.

Some other applications of Excel in a math class, might be to show students how to create a graph using formulas. I would begin with simple formulas and then gradually increase the complexity. In addition, older high school students could make models for younger students. They could employ their knowledge on how to work out a specific type of problem and then create a spreadsheet to teach the younger students how to solve the problem.

Week 3 Discussion

Inspiration looks like a great program for students to use when writing papers. It helps students get started, organize their thoughts, and visualize their ideas. In addition, it looks very user-friendly and easy to teach the students how to use it. The most interesting aspect is the ability to switch to the outline view, which is created for you when you design the concept map of your information, and any editing done in the outline view is automatically transferred to the map view. In my classroom, I would most likely use Inspiration when the students are required to write research papers.

In my classroom, I would probably have the students use the Writely program for collaborative writing when working on group science projects. This would enable the students to import their research information and then compose and edit their documents. Once they have created a rough draft, they could send it to me for high-quality feedback or to another group of students for peer review. Since I will most likely be teaching high school students, I could save my teaching time by allowing the students to use blog posting on the internet for peer review.

The first time I taught math, I felt like I knew the material pretty well. However, explaining it to very young students on their level was much harder than I thought it would be. After teaching the concept of multiplication facts several times, I definitely felt like I had a better understanding.