When I first heard about Twitter, it wasn't really something I felt like I could get into personally. I just didn't see myself updating tweets about where I was or what was going on around me, especially since I mainly used Facebook to update my status. But once I really looked into it, I found that Twitter can be very useful for following fellow educators. My idea of it just being a status updating site was way off the mark. Although I don't use it enough, I can now see how Twitter can be used in the education field.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Podcast Reflection #12: Opening things up to really prepare kids
This week on Driving Questions, Kevin and his guest Kay Tibbs discuss issues such as over filtering in school networks as well as its effect on us educators preparing students. Like some previous podcasts, the situation that is coming up is the ability to properly teach the students about being responsible with their resources and technology. Kevin makes a valid point that many people are so worried about moving forward to quickly in teaching students about new technologies that we are actually moving to slow, and the students who are there now need to have us along side them as mentors, otherwise they are learning and dealing with all these new things on their own. Another huge issue in dealing with students and new technology that I have touched base on before is copyrighting and plagiarism. Many students do break copyright laws unknowingly, or will plagiarize someone's work because they don't understand how serious of a problem it can be for them. We as educators need to have a very strong knowledge of these and must be able to teach them the proper ways to use information that they find on the web.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Podcast Reflection #11: Story Chasers and more with Wesley Fryer
This podcast from Driving Questions was with guest speaker Wesley Fryer and his project/initiative called Story Chasers. The concept of Story Chasers is getting students to go after stories much like storm chasers go after storms. One of the main tools that the students will use is Digital Storytelling. After learning more about this, I definitely want to use this as a project for my future students because it is integrating so many different uses of technology as well as being creative and telling a great story. Using Audio clips or Videos to go along with text seems just a little more exciting for me than just reading a story. Particularly with video clips, it can be a great tool to teach students what is necessary in a story and what you can do away with, especially faced with time limits on projects. Also, it seems like this would be a great thing personally to use with my family when I get a little older and have a family of my own. Having recordings of other family members that may be gone in the future would be such a wonderful thing to be able to keep and pass down to my children.
Podcast Reflection #10: Leading toward the future with Steve Griesbach
This week I listened to another Driving Questions podcast which had a guest by the name of Steve Griesbach, the Superintendent of Gower Middle School in Burr Ridge, Illinois. Steve talked about how the focus of technology wasn't based so much on the application or the tools itself, but on learning the information. He wants to focus on deciding on what you want your students to learn, and then figuring out the best way for them to learn it, and I like his take on their teaching technology. Another great point that is discussed is the current budgeting cuts going on throughout the country in education. The best way to get more money and have more community and faculty support is to explain and show them how technology is helping their children and students learn. The other thing I took away from this was that with the use of internet in schools, it is important to know that that opportunity has a chance of being both good and bad. You need to teach the kids how to be responsible with the use of the internet both in and out of school. This is definitely one of my favorite guest speakers so far!
Podcast Reflection #9: Relaunch Episode
In this episode of Driving Questions, Kevin raises an excellent point talking about the future of smart phones and their possible use in the classroom. I remember when I was in high school that phones were mainly used by students for sending text messages and calling. Of course though, technology is ever moving forward and phones now have many different functions. I like the idea of using certain educational apps in the classroom because it can offer a different perspective than just doing a project or assignment out of a textbook. For most adults, we favor using laptops or computers with keyboards because that is the easiest way for us to type and create documents. But nowadays most kids are so used to texting and chatting on their phones that it wouldn't be very difficult for them to use word processing applications on their phones. Even though I feel like it may be difficult to monitor student's actual work during class, I like the possibility of using smart phones in the classroom.
Podcast Reflection #8: From little tech use to leading the way!
I really enjoyed this podcast because Kevin's guest Stacey was a teacher who had very little experience or skill with using technology in the classroom before she was recruited to be a technologies teacher at her school. Knowing that it would help her job security, she took the position. I really liked it when Kevin talked about how most people would think its easy to jump into a new position, especially in this job economy, but not necessarily considering how Stacey would have to adapt and learn, becoming more technologically advanced. She seems like a very driven person who understands that you need to be willing to go out and learn new things in order to adapt and become a better educator.
Scenario
As an educator, I believe that I have several strong attributes that make me qualified for this position. I am a leader, knowing that while I will care about all of my students, I am not just their friend. I feel that I am very focused, and that will transfer over to my students once I show them my dedication to teaching them my content area. Lastly, I feel that I am very kind and respectful. My policy with my students will be the idea of "fair, but firm." This means I will treat them with respect, and expect them to act their age and pull their weight during class. But I also have a few qualities that I need to work on. First off, my planning and organizational skills could be better. Also, I feel like that I could be more punctual when it comes to completing my work, as well as checking for little mistakes more often than I am now.
In the next three to five years, I see myself in a high school position teaching business and coaching football and baseball, and will hopefully be on my way to getting tenure. The best way I can achieve this goal is to become as educated and diversified in using technology in my teaching style. Although I want to teach business, it would be very naive to think that I will not need to use technology in my classroom. I will have to constantly push myself to learn new programs, applications, and resources so that I can in turn to help my students to learn what I am teaching. And in order to learn about new software programs, I will have to become very good at organizing and utilizing my time outside of work to learn it. I know that as an educator, the term "free time" isn't something I will have a lot of in my first few years. Hopefully being a coach, I will have to find ways to learn the new software between teaching, practices, games, and other functions outside of the classroom. But even though that may seem difficult, I will have to push through and be diligent in my learning, because if I don't learn it, not only does it not help me, but my students will suffer as well.
I believe that technology is something that will continue to become a necessity in the teaching field. And through this necessity, students' ability to learn can be impacted in a very positive way. Very rarely will you find a student who doesn't know how to use technology very well, and because they do have a good base understanding, it will be easier for me as a teacher to educate them in my field using different tools, programs, and technologies. Each student is different of course, and this is another great reason why technology can be a great impact on their learning. I will be able to see which students are understanding what I'm teaching and which ones aren't. Through this, I can find different ways to get the student to grasp the information if they aren't able to grasp it through the channels I am using with the rest of the class.
Personally, technology has become a daily need in my education. When I was a student in high school, more often than not I was learning out of a textbook or from a lecture. Now, though, I have learned about many different technological tools, programs and resources that can easily enhance my learning abilities, and it is only going to continue to grow from here.
Another great thing about many of these technologies is that I can try to share my knowledge with my fellow faculty members. I know that for the older teachers who have been in education for many years, it may seem scary and difficult to learn how to use the many different programs and tools that are available to help us teach, such as smart phone applications or iPads. The best way I can try to pass along my ideas and encourage the use of technologies is to share my lesson plans, demonstrate how different programs work in different situations, even be willing to meet with them outside of class time and teach them how to use the programs that they may have difficulty understanding.
One of my favorite websites to use for presentations is Prezi. It is a very fun and interesting way to present your information. Instead of going from one slide to the next, each piece of information is all on one slide, and will zoom in and out to each new piece of information. I believe this will keep students engaged better than a normal Power-point presentation. Considering I'll be teaching business, I think this will be a new way to give lectures during class. Another great idea I want to incorporate into my lessons is the use of Google Sites. Since I will hopefully be teaching business, I feel like I could utilize this by having my students each create their own website that they can post their work and notes to. Also, they can visit each other student's site and be able to share some ideas with one another, or critique each other on what could be better on their site.
I feel very confident that if I am hired for this job, then I will push my students to become very advanced in their understanding, knowledge, and use of technology both in and out of school.
In the next three to five years, I see myself in a high school position teaching business and coaching football and baseball, and will hopefully be on my way to getting tenure. The best way I can achieve this goal is to become as educated and diversified in using technology in my teaching style. Although I want to teach business, it would be very naive to think that I will not need to use technology in my classroom. I will have to constantly push myself to learn new programs, applications, and resources so that I can in turn to help my students to learn what I am teaching. And in order to learn about new software programs, I will have to become very good at organizing and utilizing my time outside of work to learn it. I know that as an educator, the term "free time" isn't something I will have a lot of in my first few years. Hopefully being a coach, I will have to find ways to learn the new software between teaching, practices, games, and other functions outside of the classroom. But even though that may seem difficult, I will have to push through and be diligent in my learning, because if I don't learn it, not only does it not help me, but my students will suffer as well.
I believe that technology is something that will continue to become a necessity in the teaching field. And through this necessity, students' ability to learn can be impacted in a very positive way. Very rarely will you find a student who doesn't know how to use technology very well, and because they do have a good base understanding, it will be easier for me as a teacher to educate them in my field using different tools, programs, and technologies. Each student is different of course, and this is another great reason why technology can be a great impact on their learning. I will be able to see which students are understanding what I'm teaching and which ones aren't. Through this, I can find different ways to get the student to grasp the information if they aren't able to grasp it through the channels I am using with the rest of the class.
Personally, technology has become a daily need in my education. When I was a student in high school, more often than not I was learning out of a textbook or from a lecture. Now, though, I have learned about many different technological tools, programs and resources that can easily enhance my learning abilities, and it is only going to continue to grow from here.
Another great thing about many of these technologies is that I can try to share my knowledge with my fellow faculty members. I know that for the older teachers who have been in education for many years, it may seem scary and difficult to learn how to use the many different programs and tools that are available to help us teach, such as smart phone applications or iPads. The best way I can try to pass along my ideas and encourage the use of technologies is to share my lesson plans, demonstrate how different programs work in different situations, even be willing to meet with them outside of class time and teach them how to use the programs that they may have difficulty understanding.
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