Last Blog Post of the semester!!

This last class in Computer Technology was great! For our final we are to use web 2.0 tools in creating two lesson plans with any part of the curriculum that we could use as a project for our students. I am excited to use creativity and make these lessons something I will be able to use as a future teacher! The best part of this assignment is that technology can be used in any subject area! You can teach history with it by creating an assignment where your students can go on a online field trip. You could teach writing by letters to pen pals in China. You could teach math with Mr. Duey's rap videos. How great is technology?! I have learned so much from this class! Most of which can be summed up in the video below :) The video below describes my feelings exactly on why technology is so important in the classroom! Our students are becoming more and more technologically savvy which is why we as teachers must find ways that our students can use that technology to learn. Web 2.0 is great and I'm so excited to continue going more into depth with it in the education program!

Technology Fear Factor in Education

VIDEO

This is an incredible video on how important technology is for education. It is not a video for students, but for educators. It teaches on how important it is to start using technology in education. I thought it was a great follow-up video for the entire semester of this class because of how it talked of the importance of teachers not fearing what technology can do for students, but how it can help them in incredible ways! We should not be trying to get rid of wikkis and blogs on our school internet, but allowing students to use them for educational purposes! Why not allow students to use facebook, twitter, wikki, blog, and all of the recent web 2.0 tools that will help these students to improve their learning. We must allow them to speak with other students around the world and learn from them! We must allow students to learn in ways that they enjoy and know and are good at! We cannot fear technology, but love it and incorporate it into our teaching!

Tools of Choice

This week, we started on our tools of choice. It was a lot of fun to have the freedom to choose whatever tools we wanted to make brochures, flyers, and a newsletter with. We have used so many different tools in this class that it was hard to decide on a which ones I wanted to use. This activity will be very useful to me in my own classroom because I will always have to be creating flyers and newsletters for different activities in the classroom and outside of the classroom. I will be able to use it to publicize school plays, let parents know what is going on in the classroom, what I plan to do for the school year (like a syllabus to parents), events that we plan to do as a class around the community, or opportunities the students could participate in around the community, field trips, etc. There are tons of ways to use brochures, flyers, and newsletters around the classroom. I'm excited to have so many different sources to create them with. I will be able to find which tools are easiest for me and use them constantly throughout my career.

Video

Schoolhouse rock is AWESOME!!! It is so catchy and was one of my favorite ways to learn while I was in school. I really like the one called "How a bill becomes a law" about how bills are passed. And there are many more videos to teach different subjects with them too. They are simple enough to remember and the songs just stick in your head. I still know some from middle school. Schoolhouse rock can be used to present all kinds of subjects to students. They also repeat themselves so kids can really get it into their heads. It combines visual learning with repetitive and rhyming songs. No matter how old they are, I still think kids love them and they are a great way to teach.

Vidcast

Mr. Duey/Web 2.0 Videos

This week was Thanksgiving Break :) It was a great week and these videos just added to the great week!

Mr. Duey

I found Mr. Duey back during the zamzar assignment. He is AMAZING!!!!!! I went to his website and found some awesome information about him! His website is like really exciting blog with current events, how he came to be, pictures galore for holidays and other things, and so much more! He has more videos on his website and tips for teaching new media in the classroom. What an incredible teacher! He makes learning fun through things the kids like such as rap. His video reminded me even of how to do fractions. He also has one on how to do long division. He has made it so his videos are entertaining and excited yet very easy to understand and learn from. What a cool dude!!! I am so impressed! I could definately use his video in my classroom if my students were struggling with math. I could even use his ideas to create my own videos for my students. The most inspiring part about Mr. Duey is that he used his own dream of becoming a rapper to inspire his students to learn. On his website he tells of how he had always wanted to rap since he was a little boy. Even as he went to college, he wanted to rap. His mechanical engineering teacher inspired him to become a teacher so he went to school for becoming a teacher instead of rapper, yet he still used his own passions in teaching to inspire students to learn. He tells of how he let his students first listen to some of his music and they loved it so he continued with it. His rap songs are so effective that when students took a test without the songs, they struggled, but after memorizing one of his songs and taking the same test after, they all aced it!!! How cool is that?! I am excited to be able to possibly use some of his music in my own classroom one day.

Web 2.0

I talked a lot about web 2.0 last week, and I've seen this video before, but one thing from this video I really liked is that is makes me think of how web 2.0 is so important for the classroom. There are many ways to use blogs, wikkis, tagging, podcasts, R.S.S. Not only does this video explain what all of these great technologies are, but it gives examples of websites that as a teacher, you can go to and figure out how to use these tools, then apply them in your classroom. Web 2.0 is so important and I believe that more and more teachers will begin to implement it into their classrooms so it is important to keep up and learn of these technologies so I know how to use them when I need to and want to in my classroom.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is an INCREDIBLE THING!!!!!!!! It is people! We are using the internet constantly. Web 2.0 allows people to put information through the web and allow others to view it more easily and technologically upgraded. People share, trade, and collaborate information through the internet constantly. It has become so advanced with web 2.0!! Web 2.0 only started in 2004! It is a new phase of the internet to us all. Web 2.0 allows for mass publishing on the internet. But it is important to be careful with copyright and ethics and so forth. It is such a great tool to have so much information from others on the web and ways to get our own information out there so simply. The exact meaning of web 2.0 has not yet been reached, but to me, it seems like it is just newer and better technology that we use on the internet to put our message out there or here others' messages. Blogs, wikki's, podcasts, and you tube are just a few of the new things on the web sprouting from web 2.0.

There are so many new technologies for the classroom because of this incredible new tool! We can more easily communicate with distant areas and those who live there. We can view endless educational videos and listen to podcasts which are great for a variety of classroom uses. We can have our students write in their own blogs which are like online journals. Students can communicate with their teachers and friends easily through places on the web like facebook. How great that people came up with web 2.0. We would not be anywhere close to how advanced we are without it. It is definately being used in the classroom for the good!

VIDEO-Do You Believe In Me?

How inspirational this video was to me! WOW! It most definately confirmed my decision to teach. Teaching is not easy!!! I have observed various teachers in their own classrooms throughout my life and have also worked at an Elementary School for three years now in an after-school program with struggling students. I KNOW it is nowhere near easy. But his inspirational young boy helped me feel so good and confident about my career choice. I learned that I must believe not only in my students abilities to be whatever they want, but in myself to do great things! I must believe that I am making a difference. Sometimes I will be the only one that my students will have to care about them....this itself completely boosts my passion in this career. I KNOW I will make a difference in my students' lives for the better! This adorable young boy was a terrific speaker! He truly inspired me and thousands of other teachers out there to believe in themselves, their colleagues, and their students! GREAT VIDEO!

Powerpoint

This week in class, we learned about powerpoint. It was short and sweet, but great because I already use powerpoint and know how it works. Powerpoint is a learning tool that can be used for many things in the classroom. I've used it for many uses in my own education. Mostly presenting and teaching a class a concept is where I have used it. I like it because it adds the visual concept of learning with words. So if a student is a visual learner, you can add pictures. But if they learn from just reading, they can also learn.

Some uses I found for it in the 50 Quick and Easy Powerpoint Activities Book are to use it for a journal each day for students. Another use it to have students create biographies with pictures on it and present it to a class. You could use it to teach your family history and make a family photo album on it. You could create your own story on it and read it with pictures to the class. You could use it for simple steps on how to complete a math problem. There are countless uses of powerpoint and its a great tool for students to know how to do because it is used in classes all the time.

It is great for teachers because it adds direction so the teacher does not get side tracked as easily. You can also teach a variety of subjects with powerpoint. You can use it to teach math, history, science, etc. And you can easily copy and paste pictures into it. You can be as creative or as simple as you wish. Its so easy to use that students can learn it quickly and teach others with it.

Podcasts/Video

This week in class we learned about podcasts and video in the classroom. Podcasts and videos are electronic technologies that can be used in various ways to teach. Podcasts are an audio way to teach. You record your voice on your i-pod or any recording device and make it available for your students to access by posting it on the web. There are tons of websites that give instruction on how to create a podcast and its free to do! Podcasts can be used in many ways in the classroom. You could use them to give instruction to a substitute or to give instruction to your students if they miss class. You can also use it to create a song that will help students learn better. They can be used for students to create their own audio journal. They could even be used to communicate with parents online and help them to know what you are doing in class each day and what the homework is, etc. Podcasts are not hard and a great teaching tool!

Video is also an awesome way to teach, especially for those visual learners! It isn't hard to record video footage with a digital recorder or a new technology that has come out-a flip video hd. The hardest thing with video is editing it if needed to make it flow. You can even take video footage with the new i-pod nanos! They are coming out with so many new incredible technologies that are easier to take videos with. Videos have so many uses in the classroom! You could use them to show geographical locations to students and take them on a virtual "field trip." You could use an educational video from youtube as an attention getter. You could make a "how to" video to give instruction. My Mother is a teacher and she teaches home ec. so she uses video to teach her middle school students the steps to sewing a project or baking something and then she creates a few dvds on it and when students miss class and need instruction they can refer to them or even if they don't miss class and need that visual of how to do it, the videos come in very handy! She even has a couple of small tvs spread throughout the classroom so students have plenty of room to see it. Videos are easy to publish on youtube! One of my teacher's in high school used a video of himself as a wizard to teach math. He just recorded himself teaching it up on the board. We loved it because it was humorous and taught us exactly the steps so it was like he was still there teaching us without being able to actually be there. Educational videos can be a lot of fun! They don't have to be boring! I found a youtube video where a man named Mr. Duey has come up with an awesome way of rapping to teach math. He has a couple of AMAZING videos!! I think students would eat it up!

There are so many different ways to use podcasts/video in the classroom! Its incredible how much different technology there is out there! Podcasts and videos can be very important accomodations to those students who learn different also. I am excited to create my own video in this class as a teaching tool to use later in my own classroom :)