Week Five

Week five has opened my eyes to many different resources that are available to reach out to the students and parents.  You have different layouts that are coming popular, such as the community layout like Facebook, or the blog layout, or recording yourself for the students to open and listen to.  With the various methods that I have been introduced to this week, I feel that you should be able to reach a large variety of students with any learning style and help them to understand the material from their point of view.  The ways of online communication are limitless and we have talked about just a few such as: email, chat, blogs, wikis, communities, and much more. 

The things that I have learned this week that were totally new to me was the site edmodo.  It is great, and the site is safe for the students to use for communication with classmates and the instructor.  Also, I never realized the all the details included in my school’s AUP policy.  I knew of many of the details, but had never sit down and fully read this, I am sorry to admit.  I have a better understanding of what is expected with online communication in my district.  Also, I use YouTube a lot in my class, but I did not know they had an educational YouTube and I was pumped to find this out and I’m sure it will get some great use from me.  I have already watched the Lego Story and thought of tons of lessons for it, because my students love learning with Legos.

The informational I have learned during week five will help me to appeal to more students in my classroom and it will help me to be able to reach out to many more students in various ways.  Each student learns in a different way and hopefully through the use of many of these tools I will be able to reach these students that were struggling before in my class.  I will also make sure my students have a better understanding and knowledge about internet safety and correct use of online communication.  Bottom-line, I feel these resources will help me to reinforce the skills the students already have in a more modern way and one they are happy to share.

Week 3

This week word processing as came at me not only in class, but at school with my students.  My class is over the school newspaper and they were not excited in the least little bit when I said, we are WRITING the school newspaper.  However, we made our way down to the computer lab, and they were able to get on and TYPE their stories, or create on photoshop the pictures, they loved it.  They did not want to leave and ask to work on the newspaper everyday.  Being able to work on the computer has let me see a different and more confident side to many of my student that I am so excited about. 

During this time I was also able to work on the beginning steps of computer skills with my students such as:

-typing correctly

-copy/paste

-aligning text, selecting

-search and replacing words with dictionary

-and the extra things to make it appealing and eye catching

Having word processing and desktop publisher skills are something that is taken for granted in the world today.  Every career basically requires that individuals have computer skills.  The work force is in a new age and technology is booming.  The youth of today have to come out not only with the skill to accomplish the task before them, but to be able to do it digitally.

Below, you will see one of the flyer/programs that my students and I designed to hand out to the parents on the night of our afterschool enrichment program. 



With this flyer we tried to make it appealing to the eye by adding artistic flair and colors that would reach out and grab you.  We tried to make everything themed with the overall theme of the night with the Wizard of Oz.  By having the background and text formats to fit.  With all this however, the various colors can distract from what the event is about and what is going on at the event.

Looking upon this flyer in a new light, I will tone down all the various forms of text art and highlight one to keep consistency.  Also, make sure the messager of what the night is about is being displayed.

Week Two

Week two has grown upon week one, expanding into the world of WIKI.  We started off with understanding that the old boring thoughts of spreadsheets and databases can be used for so much more.  I will take the thoughts of the 3D charts during the classroom for my younger kids.  Such as drawing our the graph on the gym floor with painters tape or classroom floor and then using something like their shoes to represent the bars.  The visual would be a beginning to graphing and spread sheeting before starting the technology version. 

          Watching the clip “The Machine that Goes Ping”  had me confused at first as to why I was watching it and then as I watched it I found myself asking the same questions we had to answer.  Technology does seem to be more important in our ever-changing world than people.  We put so much attention on the newest thing, the most expensive thing that we become blind to the kids and why we even have the technology to begin with.  It is a great eye opener that I would love to use for our next meeting.

          Through our Technological Explorations this week I have learned about two more systems to use in my classroom, such as: making videos and digital brainstorming.  Both are great and provide another source for learning and getting through to students.  I’m excited to use the videos especially with my students for fun and for expressing the lessons we are covering.

          On Alice Christie’s website she shows many pictures of how her classroom is using spreadsheets to understand things in their classroom.  She not only uses it with math, but with a little bit of everything.  She has examples for grades K-12.  It really gets my mind going on what all you can really do to make it fun and interactive for the kids.  The link to her site is: http://www.alicechristie.org/edtech/ss/

It surprised me that you can make spreadsheets fun.  You do them in a way that makes the kids start to think outside the box and they start brainstorming about all the things that can spreadsheet in the room.  In the past I have used spreadsheets with students to graph favorite sports, favorite teams, eye color, what hand they write with, mostly characteristics about them.  We have mostly performed this on the computer, graph paper, regular paper by drawing it out, or most recently on the iPads.

          My task for the week ahead is to find a new way to make a spreadsheet without the items I listed above.

         

Week One

This week has been interesting to say the least.  With class just starting up I feel that everything has been so fast and just thrown into my brain to be looked at for another time.  At the same time this week has made my love for technology open again and had me reexamine with the lessons from Week one what I can change or make better for my students. 

          At the beginning of this week I learned that technology is not just a computer, iPad, or some device we use now.  That technology was around in different forms even when they built the 7 wonders of the world.  The pyramids required technology to be built.  They may not have had a laptop to bring up a program to lay out the structure for them, but they needed to know how to lay it out, what would stand, and why it needed to be built a certain way.  Technology has changed over the years and it will continue to change for future generations.  I’m sure they will look back at us one day and think the laptop was crazy to use.

          In the classroom I am going to start having my kids take pride in the times we use technology, not just take advantage of it without even thinking, but to understand what they are doing and to respect digital citizenship.  I want them to be able to accomplish various task with technology, but not rely on it to do things for them.

          I feel the main challenge that I as well as other classes will face with technology will be the students letting the technology do it for them.  We need to stress that the students are in charge of understanding the concepts, but technology is another tool for them to use.  Technology is not a quick way of getting the answer without them understanding for themselves.  To overcome this I will use technology as a reward after the skill is mastered, or an advanced way for them upon understanding of the skill.

          With the Technology Explorations, I fell in love with Tumblebooks and with Tikatok.  My students love to read and write if it is not the tradition sense.  They love the imagination running wild and creating a story to share with others, tikatok will help me to make this happen for them in a different sense and show great pride in their work.  Tumblebooks is another great source I can use with them to encourage reading!!