The Role of Technology in Education and Learning

I was suprised at how big of a role that technology is starting to play in the classroom. While I would agree that many classrooms are still operating on slim budgets and do not have access to the tools that wealthier districts have, technology is available in some form for every class and is here to stay. Students, who have been raised with technological toys, are natives to our electronic age. Before this class, I had never considered how a teacher could integrate technology into the classroom. Recently though, I had my students take a virtual field trip to the ancient city of Alexandria. It was the quietest I had ever seen them in class! They love learning through the medium of technology. Over the semester, my eyes have been opened to the advantages that technology can offer the education process. In addition, there are many tools available for teachers to use, and best of all, they are free! I now believe that if we are to truly be teachers, than we need to relate to our students by using the language that they understand - the language of technology. So, technology does have its place in the education process. While I do not believe that it will ever take the place of a teacher, it is a vital tool to use if we are to teach our students to compete in the global, technical world.

Final Thoughts about the Technology Class

Well, the semester has finally ended. When I look back over the last fifteen weeks, it is hard to believe all of the things that I learned about the technology available to teachers today. Some of my favorite parts of the class were as follows:

1. All of the free software available to use on the Internet.
- It is hard to believe all of the free goodies out there that teachers can use. My favorites were box.net, Flickr, classtools.net, AssignADay, Google docs, and blogger.com.

2. Building my own classroom website.
- I really enjoyed this assignment and I love the website I created. I hope that I can use it when I get my own classroom.

3. SmartBoards
- These are fun tools to use. They do have a couple of downsides, such as not working if you forget to orientate them, but over all, they would be fun to use in the classroom.

4. Inspiration software
- This is a must for teachers. I loved the way you could create timelines and organizational charts. I am going to purchase this software.

5. The Technology Project
- I really learned a lot about PowerPoint that I did not know. I feel that I will able to use this tool more effectively in the future and that I will be able to intelligently answer my students' questions about it.

As I said, it is hard to believe the amount that I learned. I'm really thankful to have taken this course and I can see the benefits paying off for years to come.

A Fun Project for Social Studies

One of the best things that I have gotten to do this semester is teach Social Studies. I absolutely love history. At the beginning of the semester, I was privileged to teach a unit on Ancient Rome and Israel. This was a lot of fun. For this quarter, my kids are studying Ancient Egypt. I found the neatest project for them to do. It is called SimMummies. Over the course of five weeks, the students get to make a pharaoh out of an apple and an orange and mummify it. Our class has done all of the different steps. We had a mummification day, and prepared our pharaohs for drying in natron. Natron is made from equal parts of baking soda and salt. Then over the last four weeks, while the pharaohs were drying, the students have made amulets, shabtis, coffins, and canopic jars from clay and paper mache. We had a day for wrapping the dried pharaohs in linen cloths and coating them with resin (glue). The students also learned to read and write in hieroglyphs for creating cartouches for their pharaohs. In addition, the students got to make death masks for their pharaohs and books of the dead and senet boards to put in their pharaoh's tomb. The finished project is put into a tomb that the students build out of shoeboxes and decorate. Next week, we will be having a funeral with food, music, and games, all done in the ancient Egyptian style.

The Downside of Teaching

Today I got to see the downside of being a teacher. My cooperating teacher and I have a student in class who has an extremely overprotective mother. Unfortunately, there was an incident between her son and another boy in our class early this year. Ever since then, she has shown up to make demands for her son. Her latest demand is that absolutely no discipline be done unless she and the principal are there in the room. This is impossible to accomplish. Her son likes to act up in class or on the playground, and unfortunately, he knows there is little that we can do about it. Today, we had another incident between him and the other boy from earlier in the year. All my cooperating teacher did was ask a question about what happened on the playground. No accusations were made, and no discipline was ordered. It was a simple question. The boy's mother came storming in after class and screamed at my cooperating teacher about her breaking the rules and how my cooperating teacher is not to speak to her son ever unless she is present. Needless to say, it was not a pretty scene. This whole incident brings up the question: what would I do in a situation like this? I am not sure. The boy's mother dictates what homework he will and will not do, no discipline is allowed at all, keeps him out of school for any reason at all, and then expects us to turn her son into a genius. This lady is the ultimate helicopter mother. How do you teach a child like this?

Amazing Things that Happen in a Classroom

I have been blessed this semester with my cooperating teacher. She and I work very well together and have shared so many ideas and possibilities for teaching the students. The only way that we differ is in our use of technology. I tend to incorporate it into my lessons. She does not. However, now at the end of the semester, she has gotten very excited about the possibilities of building PowerPoint presentations and virtual fields to use when teaching next year. The overwhelming positive response that we have had from the students to the use of technology in the lessons has convinced her to start integrating some technology into her lesson plans. Her willingness to try new things has taught me to never close my mind off to new ideas or tried-and-true standards.

Assignment #5 - Technology Project

Link to my Technology project.

This was a fun project to do. I have only used PowerPoint a few times in the past, and the only presentations that I have ever built were extremely basic. I started out by studying the various tools on the PowerPoint toolbar. Then, I took a tutorial and started playing around with the different features. The PowerPoint presentation that I built is aimed at elementary students in the 4th - 6th grade, who would be learning the software for the first time. The presentation starts out very basic. As it moves on, the slides become more elaborate and include the features that I have talked about. I tried to keep the slides within the parameters of what elementary students would need to learn. However, I used most of the features of PowerPoint as I was learning the tool.

Included in the presentation are the following tools in PowerPoint:
Different slide layouts
Shapes
Color fills
Clip Art
Word Art
Smart Art
Animations - for both text and slides. I have include sound options, transition speeds, and automatic slide show options.
Video Clips
Audio Clips
How to print notes with slides


I never knew how many features were possible in PowerPoint. While building the slide show, I experimented with all of the different text and graphics possibilities. I also tried adding charts and shapes with animation. I think my favorite feature that I learned was how to publish the presentation. I loved the option that allows you to convert the presentation into a Word document. The options of text only or mini-slides, with an area for your notes or blank lines for people to take notes on, would be extremely handy for creating documents for students to take lecture notes on. I also learned how to do a print screen. All of the pictures in the slide show were created by me.

I think I have learned some valuable tools for the next time I use PowerPoint. Without having to do this project, I would probably have never explored the possibilities of the program. I feel much more confident about using the program the next time I have a presentation to build.

What will the classrooms of the future have?

In the classrooms of the future, I think that all textbooks will be eliminated. Instead, I think that we will have online textbooks and the every student will be required to have a laptop. Also, I think that all communication will be done completely on the internet. All grades and parent-teacher communication will be done through email and online grade books. Library books will probably also be eliminated and all research will be done through online encyclopedias. Smart boards will become common, and students will be building podcasts, powerpoints, and websites as a standard part of their classroom projects.

What are the Internet Safety Issues for Children?

Children today need to be very careful when searching the web. General search engines do not have safety filters unless a parent or school has set it up. A harmless request can bring up sites that people do not need to be seeing. Teachers need to either set up a website with links to safe websites for children to use or set up a way to monitor what sites the students are accessing. Children also need to be taught not to give out personal information. Online predators are out there and they can find children even if they use an online name.

Inspiration and Kidspiration

Link to my project.

Inspiration software is an interesting tool. It can be used by students to create timelines, organizational charts, mind webs, etc. I think this would be a handy tool for students to use, especially for special needs students. The only downside is this tool costs money, and to be truly practical, you would need to have a computer for each student. However, if a teacher had access to this software, I think that students could become very adept at building brainstorming sheets, mind maps, and various other organizational tools. This tool would probably be appreciated by those students with a strong Logical/Mathematical intelligence.

K-12 Online Conference

There are two things that are difficult about technology: trying to find out what's out there and finding someone who can teach you how to use it. The K-12 Online Conference does both. I watched a video podcast called "I Wish All My Classes Did This ..." by Wendy Wolfe. She talks about several interesting free features available on the web. Here is link to her class: If_All_Classes.mp4. She discusses two cartoon makers: ToonDoo and ComicCreator. In ToonDoo, you can create a three-panel color cartoon that is uploadable to the web. In ComicCreator, you can create a six-panel cartoon, but it comes only in black and white and you can only print it. Some other tools that she talked about are Gliffy, which is a graphic organizer program and Zoho, which is a web-based PowerPoint tool. GCast was the final tool she presented. GCast allows any user to upload a podcast over the phone. All of these tools are free and I think they would be fun to use for the classroom.

Students Can Suprise You

I love teaching. It is both frustrating and extremely rewarding. You can spend hours preparing for a new project or subject and the kids will all take naps when you present it. However, the day will come when all your hard work pays off and they will suprise you. My 5th/6th grade students love to question everything and they are very good at looking bored about anything to do with school. But this week, I got their attention. They are all fired up to learn about Ancient Egypt and they loved the mummy project I put together. My reward, however, came after class. One of my students came up to me and THANKED me for teaching the lesson. She was really excited about the subject matter and told me she appreciated the new information she had learned. WOW! This is why I teach. When even just one child's eyes light up because he or she finally understand the information that you are trying to impart - it is the greatest feeling in the world!

Assignment #4: Technology Integration

Link to lesson plan: History of Rome and Israel

As most of my lesson plans include basic technology, I added the use of the Smart Board to this one. The lesson called for showing a DVD film and using a PowerPoint presentation to introduce the history of Israel and Rome. I think that using a Smart Board could add some interesting interactive features to the lesson. During the introduction of the lesson, the students could create a KWL list about both Rome and Israel on the board. I could add some interactive games such as putting dates correctly on a timeline to let the students have more of an opportunity to interact with the new ideas. The PowerPoint presentation would be done on the board and I would add some interactive pieces to keep the students' attention and hopefully, some assessment games that could be used to check for understanding. The final project would change from a poster for their oral reports to a PowerPoint presentation that the students would create to back up their reports.

To begin, the tools that I would need would include PowerPoint, enough computers for each student to work on, and a Smart Board. All of this is available at my co-operating school with the exception of the Smart Board. The rest is available in the computer lab and we have access to the lab two times a week. In addition, we have five computers in the classroom that the children can work on. I would have to have a few lessons on building a PowerPoint in computer class a few weeks prior to giving the assignment. Aside from adding in some computer lessons to the planning stages, I do not see any challenges with adding the Smart Board to the lesson.

This lesson would now cover Nets standards one, two, and six.

Smart Boards Part 2

Smart Boards are the coolest tools! Tonight, we got to see all sorts of different programs that a teacher could use on the Smart Board. Some, like the one I presented, did not work quite as well as they could have. However, there are a lot of possibilities for using this tool. The fact that students can interact with it is a big plus. Students can work in groups or as a class and create timelines, write out definitions, play online learning games - the possibilities are really endless. The only thing that I do not like about the board is writing on it. The pen does not keep up, slants the writing, or leaves imprints of your hand on the board. One of the main points about using the board that I came away with was that the usage of this tool would need to be taught to the class before you could really implement it into teaching. Also, I think that it needs to be integrated into a lesson versus just using a fancy presentation for entertainment purposes. On the other hand, the presentations that you can create really would keep your students awake and you can implement most of the multiple intelligences into your lessons on it. This tool will be fun to use if the school that I end up at is lucky enough to have them.

Assignment #3: Smart Board Feature Presentation Plan

Link to activity site: AD/BC

NETS Standards: 1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Elaboration

Activity Plan:

Description of the activity:
This activity is an interactive site describing the usage of the terms AD and BC. The slides allow students to use the Smart Board capabilities in the following ways:
1. Students will write possible answers to Chronology question on the Smart Board. I will then slide back the box cover to reveal the correct answer.
2. We will discuss slide 2 information.
3. The students will come up to the board and move the corresponding date to the correct event.
4. The students will move the dates to the correct marks on the timeline.
5. I will use the online calculator to demonstate the first answer on the list. The students will then come up and use the calculator to discover the answer. The screen shade will be utilized to hide each question until it is needed.

I will prepare for the activity by making minor changes to the site, mostly just correcting dates to current information. I will also practice using the Smart Board technology at my practice session.

The class will participate in the activity by fulfilling the students' roles described above.

In an actual class, learning would be assessed by the number of correct answers in a full-class format. In today's session, learning will be assessed by how each student handles using the board's capabilities. For example, did student x use a pen to write in the box. Did student y tap and drag the answer to the correct place on the timeline.

Changes to the lesson:

The only changes that I am making is to add the screen shade in the final box. This was done as it will keep students together in the full class activity. I also added using the online calculator as it has better visibility for the students.

Personal Note:
I really liked this particular activity as it utilized not only many of the Smart Board capabilities in one presentation, but that, in an actual classroom scenario, this activity used 6 of the 7 multiple intelligences. This site is also one that would be very easy to edit for other Social Study subjects.

Blogs for Educators

Today I read through an interesting site entitled "Creating Lifelong Learners." This site has posts from a teacher that is very open to learning new ideas for use in the classroom. He has information on classroom management, teaching techniques, lesson plan ideas, and using technology in the classroom. While I found his information on creating videos and video editing to be very informative, it is his blogs on classroom management that I found to be the most usable. Here is a link to one of the entries under management: Finding Inspiration where you can. His ideas on how today's teachers are really salesmen for education is so true. We as teachers can turn students either on or off of education. If you read this blog, please click on the link that he has for his friend, Speaker Sue, who also writes about finding inspiration for teaching ideas in unusual places. I definitely will be using some of his ideas on voice control from his blog, Classroom Management: The Teacher's Voice. I have noticed that when I am stressed, I can go into my upper octaves very easily. The key, as Mathew Needleman says, is control. I also like his ideas on how to find inspiration in the world around you. His blog on Mario Brothers is so true - how do we inspire kids to keep trying even when they fail in the real world, just like they do when playing a video game? I really enjoyed his posts and I am subscribing to his blog. This is information that can be instantly utilized when I am coming up with lessons for my students.

The WASL

We had an interesting discussion in my methods class today. I had asked a question regarding how to build in time to do Writer's Workshops in an already overloaded class day. The answer I received was disturbing. My professor told us that we are going to have to try and work writing in through integration. There is no longer time in the curriculum to do some of these lessons with the focus being on raising math scores in the state of Washington. I wonder if the politicians in Washington realize that 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day of math instruction does not leave time to cover all of the other subjects. One wonders if, in one to two years, the cry is going to change to, "We must raise our writing scores!" Education still needs to consist of every subject and not just the ones on the test. Writing is a skill that takes TIME to develop. Time that apparently no longer exists. I wonder when the government will realize this fact.

Words of Wisdom

Here are some encouraging words for teachers:

"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well." - Alexander the Great

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher." - Maria Montessori

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." - William Arthur Ward

Integration

Life as a teacher isn't easy. There always seems to be more to teach than you have time for in a day or a week or a month. This is where a new word comes into play - integration. I have discovered that the only way to try and cover every subject is to combine topics. Social Study lessons are now combined with reading and writing. Language Arts is a part of Science. The only topic that still seems to stand alone is math.

Why integration you may ask? The answer comes in two parts. The first is that is the only way you as a teacher have a prayer of covering all the topics. The second is that studies have shown that is how children learn best. I have to agree with the second point. Life does not come in compartments. So here's to integration!

A Science Experiment for the Record Books

Over the last four weeks, we have been doing a fascinating experiment on nutrition. Through the Washington State Dairy Council, you can get four baby white lab rats. They call it the Great Grow Along program. It only costs $30.00. The experiment goes as follows:

1. You set up two seperate cages and put two rats in each cage.
2. You label one set, treatment and the other set, control.
3. You weigh both sets of rats and measure their tails for a starting point.
4. Then the experiment starts. You will measure the tails and weigh of both sets of rats at the end of each week.
5. During week one, the both sets of rats get oatmeal. The control rats get milk and the treatment rats get sugar water.
6. Week two, you add fruits to their diet. Both sets get the same amount of food and the same type except for the drinks. The control rats continue to get milk and the treatment rats get sugar water.
7. Week three, you add vegetables on top of the other food.
8. Week four, you add protein to their diets.
9. Week five, you switch the drinks. The treatment rats will receive the milk and the control rats will receive the sugar water.

The results are astonishing. By week four, the control rats will be considerably larger than the treatment rats and their temperaments will be very different too. When you change the drinks in the final week, you will see the treatment rats start to catch up in size and their temperaments will change. Whichever rat has the sugar water will be extremely hyper and will eat very little. The milk rats will eat very well and be very mellow.

This experiment shows the children the difference that their diet can make. This is a great experiment and one that I would recommend using in your classroom. The rats are gentle and make good class pets and the maintenance is not very hard for the class to do.

Here is a link to the website from the Dairy Council :
The Great Grow Along

Field Trips

My co-operating classroom goes on a fun and interesting field trip each month. We are a part of the adopt-a-grandparent program at Marymoor Assisted Living. Over the course of this year, we have done many different activities with the folks there. One day, we just visited and played board games. The trip at Christmas include making gingerbread houses out of milk cartons and graham crackers. That trip was extremely fun. I was suprised to see one of the boys in my class, who is a bit of trouble-maker and has no patience with any of his classmates, very patiently helping one of the residents break up her crackers and then he frosted them and helped her to put her house together. In January, we had the children interview the residents. This was extremely fun for the kids and they learned all sorts of history. The students then wrote up their interviews into 5-paragragh essays. Today, my students read their essays to the residents who laugh and applauded. This has been a great learning experience. The kids constantly ask when we are going back and the residents love us to come.

Web 2.0 Tools

The web has come a long way from the days of Web 1.0. Interactive tools are now available for free if you just know where to look. I think some of the tools would be fun to use in the classroom. One example is podcasts. I can see how recording class sessions online would be helpful for students who are absent. I also think that this would be fun for students to do a mini-radio show for their parents to listen too. Additionally, I think that having the students create a class website would be an interesting learning experience. They could design the pages and include tools such as a map (mapbuilder.net) that shows the location of their classroom in regards to the world and interactive photographs (Flickr). We then could share this website maybe with some penpals on the other side of the world. The possibilities are really endless.

Assignment #2 Age/Subject Resources

This week, I have added links to various teacher resources that are available on the web. The five categories that I chose were Kid-Friendly History Sites, Lesson Plan Ideas, Smart Board Ideas , Teacher Resources, and Templates for Forms and Games.

1. Kid-friendly History Sites

There is nothing worse than planning to assign your students a research project and then spending hours on the web trying to find kid-friendly sites. While there are kid-friendly search engines (you can see a list of them at Search Engine Watch), I came up with this list of historical information sites for my students to use when researching their history projects.

Kidpede: While this site unfortunately has a lot of advertising, the information is very kid-friendly, with simpler text and multiple illustrations. I am using the Egypt page for a project that my students are doing in Social Studies.

This Day in History: This site which is sponsored by the History Channel shows children all of the important historical things that happened on a specific day. This site is fun to use if you are having the students write about their birthdays and want them to make connections with history.


2. Lesson Plan Ideas

There are numerous sites with lesson plan ideas that are available for teachers to access. If you need an idea for a creative lesson, it is sometimes helpful to see what your colleagues across the nation are doing.

Lesson Planet: This website has literally thousands of lesson plan ideas. I used it to get ideas on Native American art for an assignment in my classroom. The cost is $29.95 a year.

The Educator's Reference Desk: This is an online guide to building lesson plans, choosing curriculum, classroom management, and more. The best part is it's free. They also have pre-made lesson plans if you need ideas.

3. Smart Board Ideas

I chose this category because Smart Boards (or interactive white boards) are starting to show up in classrooms across the state. This is a fun and useful tool for teachers who wish to integrate technology with learning the basic three R's in their classrooms. As I do not know a great deal about all of the things a Smart Board can do, I included websites that have both training and presentation ideas for the board.

Educational Technology Training Center: This website has links to other websites with ideas for a variety of presentations for the board. I especially liked the ones that taught kids how to build graphs for example.

Scholastic.com: This site has over 800 possible interactive lessons for your students to try. It also has a guide that teaches you how to build your own activities.

4. Teacher Resources

One of the ideas that I have learned at school is that a classroom is part of the learning experience. You need to know how to lay out a classroom in ways that will facilitate learning and you need to know how to decorate it to do the same thing. This category that I created includes sites that have bulletin board, calendar, learning resources, art supplies, and more at teacher-friendly pricing.

Teacher Storehouse: Need bulletin board supplies? This site has terrific sets priced affordably. I got a 40-piece set for Ancient Egypt for only $9.99. The shipping was inexpensive too.

Teacher Paradise: This site has classroom supplies, but it also has free resources that allow for students to use interactive flash cards for math. Their pricing is reasonable too.

5. Templates for Forms and Games

I chose this final category as the worksheets that come provided with the textbooks in a classroom do not always cover information in interesting ways. Interactive games that promote learning are good rewards for children that finish their work early. Pre-created worksheets, or better yet, templates for a teacher to create their own, are valuable time-savers.

Rubistar: This was a website that my cooperating teacher showed me. It allows a teacher to create rubrics for both written and verbal assignments. The nice thing about it is you can use either the pre-created options for a rubric or you can create your own categories. You can also save the rubrics for future use. I used this site when I needed a rubric for an oral report that I had my students do. Best of all, the site is free!

Enchanted Learning: My cooperating teacher for Practicum I showed me this website. It has worksheets, both pre-made and creatable, plus activities and fact pages that kids can learn from. The activities and information cover all ages of elementary students. It only costs $20.00 for a one year subscription but the value is priceless.

SmartBoards Part 1

There is a new technology now available for classroom teachers. It is a Smart Board! This is a fascinating tool. You can run any type of computer program through the board via a computer hookup. One of the fascinating things about the Smart Board is that you can write on it and then save the writing. This will be a handy tool for brainstorming sessions with students in writing workshops. Instead of losing the information as soon as I erase the board, I can instead save it. I also can use this tool for presentations and interactive math problems. I know there are other uses for this tool, but I am still learning the endless possibilities.

Assignment #1 Technology Literacy

1. My current technology knowledge is both high and low. It is high in terms of software knowledge. I have learned to use MS FrontPage, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook, Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, and I know the basics of Adobe Acrobat in regards to creating PDF files. I have built a website for my company and I play on the Internet with a myspace account. As far as hardware goes, I am not very knowledgeable. I do not use technology in my cooperating classroom at all, unless you count the copy machine. I have only used a Smart Board one time for a classroom presentation at the University.

This semester, I would like to learn how to fully use the Smart Board. I would also like to learn how to do Virtual Field trips, and how to use the Docu-cam.

2. I believe that technology should play a role in today's classrooms. However, it does need to be utilized correctly. For example, having computer in the classrooms is a good thing. Students should be able to look up information, working on keyboarding skills, and play educational games. Conversely, the computers should not be used only for a reward to play on when a child finishes his or her work. Technology, when used correctly, can aid in learning. I love the Smart Board technology. This tool allows teachers and students to interact with the material being presented. It is fun, and helps children to learn as they teach to their peers.

3. I would like to help my students to achieve the NETS standards for their grade level. I can think of three possible project ideas that would help them to achieve these goals:
1. Using the standards of (1.) Creativity and Innovation and (2.)Communication and Collaboration, I would like to see students create Virtual Fields to countries that we are studying.
2. In order to fulfill requirement (3.) Research and Information Fluency, I would like to have students create research papers by using only electronic documents. We would go over how to access online periodicals and books We would also go over how to determine if a website gives reliable information and how to properly document these resources for papers.
3. Using the standard of Digital Citizenship, I would like to create opportunities for children to build online relationships with other classrooms in other worlds and to share information on customs, and school projects.

Integrating Successfully

This week's article to read was interesting as it represented a real-life scenario. Hall Memorial, a little, rural school in Connecticut, had received a grant that allowed them to purchase technology for their school. After a great deal of thought, the school opted to purchase one smart board to test the concept. The results were phenomenal! They soon purchased enough for every classroom and bought laptops for each teacher. Instead of having a computer class, the teachers integrate technology lessons within the basic reading, writing, and math classes. Students are excited about the different ways that they can use technology to communicate and the teachers are no longer having discipline problems because the students are excited to learn. This is what technology integration should be about. The teachers share ideas, the students share ideas, and everyone learns. Kudos to Hall Memorial for showing the rest of us what a global community is all about.

My Web Page

Creating web pages is easy and fun with all of the tools available now. The most basic beginner can easily create a web page with free software. The web pages can be simple or complex. This is a handy skill to have as most teachers now have websites, and many parents log into them in order to get classroom news and homework assignments for their children.

Check out my website at the link before. It is a teacher's site with dates, homework, etc. that a parent might want to know.

Link to my website

My Cooperating School's Webpage

I am currently teaching at KSDA or the Kirkland Seventh Day Adventist school. Their website is pretty basic. There are links to access the school's calendar, and forms for registration. The pages are basic with information on the teachers and their classrooms. The school's newsletter is also available online here. It is adequate for the school's needs. I do think that the way a person navigates to the various classroom sites is awkward, and could be changed. A link is attached for your viewing.

http://www.ksdaschool.org/KSDA/Home.html

Technology Standards that I Would Like to Learn

I would like to learn more about the concept of digital citizenship and technology operations and concepts. Many students today know how to creatively use technology. They can build interesting powerpoints, websites, and MySpace home pages. They know how to communicate through cell phones, text messages, and email. Students also know how to surf the web and collect information to use in reports and speeches. What they do not seen to know is how to use the information that they have access to in a responsible fashion. Easy access to immense amounts of information requires that teachers help students to understand the moral obligations they are under when they use another persons research. I also would like to gain a better understanding of how to use a smart board, how to do pod-casts, and how to do a blog. I need to understand how to use the interesting new tools that are now available to teachers if I hope to teach the usage of them to students.

Emerging Technologies for Learning

You know, there is an old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. However, in todays ever-changing world of technologies, teachers need to be constantly learning new skills. Technology is here and it is here to stay. We, as teachers, need to able to teach the proper usage of the technology available to students. Or rather, we need to be able to teach the proper etiquette of using the technology available. Students need to learn when it is okay to text friends. They also need to learn how to research a paper and exactly what is plagiarism. These ideas are a part of the article by Marc Prensky, "How to Teach with Technology." He advises teachers to use what the students know about technology to create new ways of teaching old subjects. He thinks that Wikipedia, podcasting, instant messaging, and mobile phone cameras all have a place in today's classroom.

I agree with him for the most part. Technology does have its place in today's world, and teachers do need to be able to teach the proper usage and etiquette of using it. However, I am not sure that every piece of software out there has a place in the classroom. Also, I am not sure that I want to assign students projects that require them to have access to computers, cell phones, etc. when not every student has these items available in their homes. Does technology need to be taught? I would have to answer, yes. Should it be in every lesson plan a teacher presents? This I would have to answer, no.

Why I want to be a teacher

I have wanted to be a teacher since I was five years old. I started out my career by teaching my dolls, my stuffed animals, and eventually, my baby brother, everything I was learning in school. I like to learn new things and to share what I have learned with others. I think that the best thing in the world is to see a child's eyes light up when he or she finally understands a new concept or idea. Education is really necessary for our children's future. I love the idea of being a part of such a vital industry.

Ultimately, I would like to teach 3rd or 4th grade. They are a fun age group. These grades are just starting to really discover history and science as something to discover for themselves. However, they are still young enough to be open to games and unique styles of learning.