Twitter Reflection

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.

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.

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.

My Wow Moment

My "Wow, lightbulb!" moment this semester was when I learned to use Delicious.  I don't know how many times in my college career I would be working on a computer and say to myself, 'What was the name of that website again?' or, 'I can't remember that stupid URL!'  Then here in class, we learned about how Delicious was a bookmarking website.  After I learned how to use it, I could feel the wheels in my brain begin to work a little bit faster, and it surprised me that I hadn't thought of using this kind of bookmarking before.  I knew that I could use this website for myself to keep track of websites that I could use as a future teacher.

Podcast favorites

My favorite Podcasts came from Driving Questions 2010.  Two of my favorite podcasts from Kevin Honeycutt were "iPad in the classroom," and "Facebook Talk."  The first iPad podcast made me thin about how useful iPads will be for my future students as opposed to just using computers at the school, or the lack their of.  Students would be able to work on class projects and assignments that they specifically need school applications at home.  This would allow for projects and work assignments to be done sooner instead of having to wait for class time to work on it, which will in turn allow you to move on to other projects and assignments.

The other podcast I really found interesting was the discussion of Facebook and how it is being used as an outlet for bullying of some students.  Cyberbullying has increased over the last few years with the growth of technology.  Many kids don't realize that once you post something on the internet, it can be viewed by just about anyone, and it is nearly impossible to get rid of.  Students are having to deal with hurtful things other students are posting about them, and more often than not many other students join in.  The best thing to do is to try to show the bullies that what they are doing is wrong and hurtful, but doing it in a way so they also understand that these kind of things can come back to haunt you.

Semester favorites

This semester, my two favorite things we explored in class are the Delicious website and Animoto.  The reason I really enjoyed Delicious was because it never occurred to me to bookmark all of the websites that I found useful or thought would be useful in the future.  It is really great to be able to go to a website and have the power to pull up so many different websites that I have used before, and use them to create lesson plans or come up with fun projects for my students to work on.

The reason that I chose Animoto as one of my favorite things I learned in this class is because I had a lot of fun designing and creating the slideshow that showed a concept I wanted to teach to my future students.  It was much more exciting to watch as opposed to a Powerpoint presentation, and it is incredibly simple to operate because it does most of the work, all you do is place the images or text in order and it creates all of the transitions for you.

 

 

Podcast Reflection #7 - Using a cell phone supporting 3 way calling to record audio interviews

Particularly for creating digital stories, this idea is very good. Simply by using a phone capable of completing 3-way phone calls, you can record the entire conversation at a website called iPadio.com.  After you create an account on the website, select the iPadio app from your phone, and once you input the 4-digit number you received from the website, it will begin recording.  Once it starts recording, you can place your calls and begin to have your conversation that you want to record.  Make sure you let the people you are talking to know that they are being recorded, and that you have their permission to be recorded.  Once you end the call, the recording is captured by the iPadio site, and will be placed on your website that you created through iPadio.  From here you can play back and listen to your conversation!  I think this is a fantastic application that is great for having interviews and gathering information from other people.

Podcast Reflection #6 - Collaborize Classroom

The Collaborize Classroom discussion  really intrigued me, because I didn't think that online discussions would be as helpful as a hands on approach. But Catlin makes the point that students would are much more comfortable posting their opinions online first, which really does make sense.  Also, the students will be able to see what their fellow classmates are saying, and can compare and contrast their own responses and reform them while taking their time, in stead of having to come up with an answer on the spot. Another great thing about online discussions is that it can be done outside of the classroom, particularly if your classroom doesn't have a wide variety of technology, if any at all besides the teacher's computer.  You can easily incorporate what the students are doing outside of class on their own by setting your lessons around those discussions and building on them during class.  This will rely on the students actually doing the work, but most students will do it.  Using things like layered questions, interesting discussion titles, and multimedia from the internet can really keep your students engaged in the curriculum.  I would definitely try to use this kind of teaching often if I can once I graduate.

Podcast Reflection #5 - Top 10 Free Discovery Education Resources

When I was first watching this podcast, I was curious about what the exact definition of Discovery Education was.  But luckily Porter defined it from the get-go exactly how I thought it was, which was a group of educators who work together to come up with many different resources and colaborating on strategies and networking.  In this particular podcast, Porter gives us her Top 10 resources.  My favorite ones were Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators because it has many different content areas and each loaded with tons of information, and the Toyota Teen Driver because of its interactive game, and how it talks about the serious matter of teen driver deaths in the United States.  Personally, I feel like the idea of Discovery Education can be extremely helpful to all educators, because it is something that doesn't really take up a lot of your time, and the amount of input you can get from other educators as well as the number of resources you can find are very high.

Podcast Reflection #4 - Facebook Talk

When you talk about students and their use of Facebook, it seems like most kids in the school population have one nowadays.  And it seems that Facebook is a sort of a double-edged sword.  On one hand, it can be a great social networking site that can keep kids and students involved with one another.  But on the other hand, it can be something that can blow things out of proportion, and is a large factor in cyber-bullying in today's times.  Kevin made a great point by discussing how even when you don't mean for something to become popular and truly hurtful, all it takes is someone to post it, and once it's on the web, it can blow up and start a "brush fire".  When these type of things happen, I think the best thing to do is try to get the issue resolved between the main protagonist and the victim, if you can narrow it down.  I like how Jaime said that you must combat the evil with good.  If you have a student who is truly hurt by what is happening on Facebook, for example, you have to build them back up, and give them a channel to deal with what they are going through, whether its merely talking with you, or a professional, or other students who are dealing with the same thing.  On the reverse side of this, it is important to let the students who are bullying other students through Facebook are in the wrong, and that it is something they really shouldn't do.  Granted, there is only so much you can do, and you can't let it get ugly and out of control, but just get your point across that what they are doing is wrong, and that once they post these things on the web, its out there for everyone to see, and that can certainly come back to you in a bad way.

Podcast Reflection #3 - iPad in the Classroom

After listening to Lisa, Donna, and Kevin talk about the iPad, it seems that it has a vast amount of uses in the classroom.  For example, the number of programs and applications that are available through the iPad are numerous, and these apps that the teachers are using have been helping the students with things like spelling, speech, and reading, which are key at that young age in elementary education.  Also, it allows the kids and teachers to get a hands on experience, as opposed to the teacher using the technology only and the students merely watching them use it.  I think a great point was made that this technology is new to both teachers and students, so the teachers are learning about new applications and programs too.  I feel like at first it may be difficult or even slightly frightening to use, but after you play around with it and become more adjusted to it, you will see how great and useful it can be for you as an educator.

Pixton comics

Pixton is one of the most fun websites I have used in a long time! This site allows you to create a comic strip using many different characters, backgrounds, and colors that you will choose or create on your own.  For education, this would be a great lesson for the students because it allows them a lot of freedom to use a lot of creativity.  It is very diverse in its options, and besides being free, is very simple to use. I hope I can come up with a lesson plan that will incorporate this into my business classes in the future!

The Reflection Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0 is a social networking site for people involved in education to have discussions with other educators about websites, resources, and just connecting and chatting with other teachers.  Most people think all social networking sites are the same, and considering how popular they are now, its slightly understandable. But classroom 2.0 has a much more professional feel to it than other networks, such as Facebook.  After digging around the site, I found many different discussions on technology in the classroom, and it seems very helpful having so many different people to give their perspectives and ideas.  If you are a new teacher, you could use this network as a place to bounce off ideas on other educators, look for new resources, even find new lesson plans for your students.  Also, there are actual recordings of different teachers talking about using online technology in the classroom, different media tools, and other projects that can be used to enhance your students education as well as your own knowledge of tools.  All in all, this website is something I will want to be using once I get a teaching job, and will pass along to my colleagues as well.