Course Reflection

This course has been incredibly helpful in my journey to becoming a technology savvy teacher. I feel much more equipped to teach any and every teacher with more than just a powerpoint slide. I was very scared coming into this class as to how much I actually knew about technology. I actually knew much more than I thought that I did. The thing that probably held me back the most was my reluctance to learn new things. I was a member of the "You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks" team. I figured I was past my prime of learning these fancy new things about computers and machines and other kinds of shenanigans. However, I wanted to get a good grade, so I did the work. This made me learn the stuff whether I wanted to or not. I learned so much without even trying that I feel 100 times more equipped to teach a class using technology that can benefit kids in several ways. These things not only make me a better teacher, but they help the kids learn a lot easier and much quicker. It is amazing how much one can learn when they open their mind up even slightly. I learned this first hand, and I am very happy that I did. I cannot imagine someone going into a classroom not knowing most of this stuff. My class will be filled with all sorts of fun computer and technology based activities that will make learning easier and much more fun. If a kid is having fun, they won't even know they are learning. Even as a teacher, this is something I am learning each and every day.

How to Tell Stories...Digitally!!!

Digital Storytelling is a great way to get kids involved and keep them engaged in learning and even listening. It is a pretty basic way of telling a story or conveying a message to students. The University of Houston made a website to explain the ins and outs of Digital Storytelling. Not only does the website give the background of the tool, but it also gives a brief explanation of how to create them, use them, implement them, and learn from them. even after all the explanations, the most useful part of the website was the example stories tab. It gave some great examples of educational and useful digital stories. They are stories that can be used to teach different topics and subjects in classrooms, and they can simply be used as a basis for making your own digital stories. The website is all about how teachers and students alike can use these to learn and to teach and to keep students engaged and invested in learning. The site is easy to navigate with its large tabs (top and side of the screen) and its pictures and explanations. It does a great job of conveying what it means to convey and is a helpful resource in teaching how to use these wonderful tools.

Interactive Whiteboards and You

Interactive Whiteboards are a wonderful tool for learning, especially for smaller children. I have experienced their usefulness numerous times in school settings as a student teacher, observer, and as a student myself in high school. They are a really cool new thing that kids will try their hardest to be able to use. They improve participation, they can be used as a reward, and they help improve learning. They are very clean and fairly easy to use. However, that is one issue that I have seen with interactive whiteboards. I am pretty tech illiterate and I have seem some teachers that are basically the same way. Without the proper training, they can actually be difficult to use. And frustration with technology that one does not know how to use can grow quickly among teachers and students. But if schools invest in the boards, and in training for their teachers, they are an awesome tool that kids love. Even many, many years ago when I was in high school, our brand new school put in some of these boards. I always loved getting to use them, and most of my classmates felt the same way. It made learning fun for awhile. And in all of my placements, the kids feel the same way today, so they have not worn off their novelty yet. That is another problem I could see with them, but these are not things that everyone has at home, therefore this should not be a major problem for quite some time. They also seem to be expensive to place in every class of every school. Some poorer schools might be at a disadvantage here. regardless of all the negative talk, I think interactive whiteboards are awesome and great for schools.

Mid-Semester Status

So far, I am doing much better than I would have expected. I came into this class a little scared that I didn't know anything about technology. This class has helped me a lot and I feel good about the pacing and the material. I have missed only one assignment due to an absence, and I had to redo an assignment due to carelessness and forgetting to do almost half of it. Other than that, I feel great and I look forward to being able to learn much more about computers, videos, and technology as a whole.

How Do I Even Wiki?

For this blog, I browsed an interesting website about teachers using wikis. It explained wikis, how to use them, and how they can be useful in the real world and in the classroom. Below is a link to the website:
http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/

This website was useful for so many different reasons. For real beginners, it started off talking about what exactly wikis are, and how to use them. Wikis are like a learning community that can be accessed and changed by anyone (or whoever the creator wants it to be available to). They are a great way for students (and teachers too!) to collaborate and work together on any given project or just to study. The website elaborates a lot on how to use them most effectively and how they can be useful for anyone and everyone. However, because the site is called TeachersFirst, it mostly focuses on how teachers and students use them for collaborative learning experiences and sharing teaching advice and ideas. It goes subject to subject and gives specific examples of how a teacher would facilitate a wiki in many different ways for each. It then goes through many different topics that pertain specifically and solely to the teacher. This entire site is a fantastic resource for people like myself that feel like they are reading a different language when they encounter anything remotely technological. Even though this class has helped a lot, technology still scares me, and this site walks through wikis almost like it is for 5 year olds. This is 100% ok with me, because technology makes me feel likes 5 year old. I would recommend this site to almost anyone using wiki for any reason. Not only does it tremendously help beginners like me, but it also gives great ideas for seasoned veterans that know wikis like the back of their hand! This site was awesome to read.

Website Evaluation

This activity was quite useful in helping me learn to evaluate websites more effectively. I now have a checklist and know what to look for in websites for my students. In the past I would have been rather reckless in finding websites for students. I had no idea what to look for in a good website and how to know if a website was even remotely reliable or just trying to sell me a product or look good and flashy. It took me awhile to find the author, and start date, and last revised date, and other important things like that. I had no idea these were so vital in a good website. How can I trust a site that hasn't been revised in 5 years? In the future I will be much more careful when looking for valid websites, especially when it pertains to my students.

Technology and History!?

There's this stigma with History classes that you can simply give lecture after lecture and powerpoint after powerpoint and that will suffice for the kids. This simply will not do. Many classes have been implementing technological advances rather easily for quite some time. Computers and iPads have been used for module type activities in math. Reading and English (as well as Math) lend themselves easily to using SmartBoards and other interactive boards. Students can come to the board and write their answers and erase correct each other and it can be fun. History, however, seems to be stuck in the Stone Age. It is so refreshing to see Blogs like HistoryTech by Glenn Wiebe which chronicles all kinds of technology he uses in his History classes.

 

Wiebe uses tools such as Google Classroom to digitally share and upload information for his whole classroom. He is able to share YouTube videos and resources as well as have students collaborate together as a class. He uses podcasts to make the information less dull and Tumblr to encourage more collaboration and interaction with ease. My favorite piece of technology that Wiebe used is something called Zaption. I had never heard of Zaption before reading this blog, but it is fascinating. Basically, Zaption is a way to take a YouTube clip, or other video clip of some sort, and add interactive pieces to it. You can add multiple choice questions, text boxes, drawings, and many more things I’m sure he didn't even think of. The students will be much more engaged while watching these informational videos. From my experience, when a teacher assigns a video to watch for class, I immediately go brain-dead. My head shuts off and my mind wanders. These interactive pieces would keep me interested and awake for a lot longer, and can even be kind of fun if done right.

Again, I find it very refreshing to see someone successfully incorporating technology into a class like History, which many students find extremely boring. This helped me realize that even I can find a way to integrate technology into my classroom, as tech-illiterate as I am.