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.