Final Reflection

This semester, I’ve learned a lot about technology in general, as well as many ways to incorporate technology into my classroom. Technology can be used to make ordinary activities much more engaging or it can be used to facilitate completely new activities. It’s all available to us if we can figure out how to use it effectively. The technology inventory was especially helpful to me, because I discovered all the different types of technology available to me at Matoaka, which is a lot. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how to incorporate those technologies into my curriculum. Completing the projects has given me a few ideas and observing in the classroom has given me a few others.

Through this course, I discovered several types of technology I didn’t even realize existed. I think WebQuests are a very cool idea and I hope I can find a way to use them in my own classroom. I was also impressed with what kids could do with moviemaking software and podcasts. These kids really were brought up with all these technologies, so it’s important for their teachers to become comfortable enough with them to use them intelligently. It is interesting that Matoaka has so much technology available, but I see few teachers using any of it beyond the laptops and document cameras. It might be difficult for me, in my first few years of teaching, to use technology as much as I should because I will be worried about so many new things at once. I hope, as I get increasingly more comfortable with teaching, I will get increasingly more comfortable with having technology in my classroom. After this course, technology isn’t as scary as it used to be. It certainly can still be frustrating from time to time, but if I keep using it, I’m sure it will become more natural.

educational games

The Houghton Mifflin Education Place has several interactive games that I thought were fun. There is an underwater spelling game in which you have to match two parts of a word together to form one whole word. For example: thr___ and ____ow.  There is a section where you can create mad libs, which has a link to follow if you have trouble with the parts of speech. There is also a proofreading game, a definition guessing game, and brain teasers, appropriate for every grade level.

At FunBrain, there is a game that is pretty clever once you figure it out, which I couldn’t really do at first. It’s a car race against the computer. There is a grid of math facts and you are given a row of them to choose from. The answer to the math fact you choose is how far you go. The computer then chooses a math fact from the same column as the one you chose, so you race around the track. It is probably to complex for some students but for an enrichment activity, I thought it was a good option.

Edutopia

I liked the article and video about the Geo-Literacy Project. http://www.edutopia.org/geo-literacy-forging-new-ground  I thought it was an impressive way for an elementary school teacher to integrate several different subject areas using so much classroom technology. The part I liked best was that the third-grade students were really leading the project. They chose what they wanted to study, they interviewed the workers at Rush Ranch, and they took the pictures. Judging from the video, the students really seemed to have a handle on the technology, but the project also included members of the high school technology club to help with the more advanced technology. As their teacher, Eva La Mar, said, the high schoolers were the experts with the technology and the third graders were the experts on the artifacts. The students also get practice with a variety of technologies. Besides working with the cameras, the students also get practice with things like Alpha Smart keyboards, which they used to type up their research. It really seemed like the third graders were genuinely interested in the project and learning a lot from it. I’m sure it’s exciting for them to see their own work up on the internet. It is also much more engaging and memorable for the students to go on field trips and conduct interviews, rather than read about it in a book or on a computer. Overall, I was very impressed with the time and effort Eva La Mar must have put into the planning and implementation of this project. It looks like a very effective and interesting teaching technique.

Observing a Technology Class

Today, after I talked to the technology teacher at my school, I observed her teaching a class to kindergarteners. It was really fun to watch them, and also really impressive how adept they were at using the technology. They used a program called Brain Pop to learn about rhyming. Brain Pop looks like a really useful program, and the teacher gave us the login for the school, so I plan on looking around at it to see how I can use it in the future.

The kids could use the program to watch a video and take a quiz about rhyming words. If they held the mouse over the question, the computer read it out loud to them. It was kind of funny to see all the five-year olds in their headsets with microphones. Afterwords, each of the kids had to use Brain Pop to draw a picture of a word that rhymes with sail. Then they could print it out and take it with them. I was really just impressed in general with the amount of technology at Matoaka. I remember the huge old computers at my elementary school, and they were a far cry from all of the things available to these kids. It seems like the teachers are still getting used to it, and there are still some bugs with things like broadcasting the morning announcements, but I think when they get it all together it should be really impressive.

Dreaming of Millions? Webquest

Last Friday I asked my cooperating teacher about the next science units they would be doing, so I decided to search for a webquest relating to one of those. One unit the class will be doing is about resources (SOL 3.10 and 3.11) and they are also doing a unit on soil (SOL 3.7). The webquest Dreaming of Millions provides an integration of these two topics.

I liked the way the webquest is presented as a story: the student finds out that he or she has inherited a farm from a distant relative and has to grow corn on it. There are lots of links throughout the story; some are informative and some are fun. The student works with a partner to research the area they plan to have their farm and plan a road trip to the farm. The team then researches corn, its benefits, and ways to grow it. Third, the team researches ethanol and completes a project that supporting its use. Finally, each team figures out how wealthy they will be from their farms. In addition to these tasks, the students are to write an email to their partner at the beginning of the project, so they also get practice with emailing skills.

This webquest is very well put together, well organized and interesting to look at without being too busy. All of the links worked that I tried, and the ones that I looked at seemed to be useful for the project. I can see however, that this webquest may be difficult for my third grade class, even though it relates to the subjects they are studying. It really seems to be aimed at slightly older students, but I believe they could work through most of it with some assistance. The other issue with this webquest is that it is quite long – I can see it taking a few weeks to complete. It might be beneficial to only complete certain tasks if in a time crunch.

Website Critiques

I really liked the “Teach-nology” website because it’s one of the most comprehensive teacher resource websites that I have found so far. It has lesson plans divided by subject, worksheets to print out, and a variety of rubric generators. There is an arts and crafts section and a section that provides ideas for holiday-themed lessons. You can also browse by subject to find background sites, games, printables, and interactive sites for students. Most things are free, but to get access to everything you must create an account and pay a monthly fee. However, it seems like you can access most things you need to without registering; you only need to pay if you want to download workbooks or something like that. The website seems both credible and up to date. It says it is maintained by a team of professional educators. It is organized, easy to access and looks professional.

I also looked at a webquest titled “An Aquatic Advendure.” The goal was for the kids to create an salt water or fresh water habitat that included three animals. I liked it because it combined several different mediums for learning: it asked the kids to research in the library and on the internet, and the final product could be a poster, a diorama, a real-life version, or a Kid Pix drawing. The site is easy to use and the directions are at a fairly simple reading level. Some of the links to background information would require a higher reading level though. The site is bright and colorful but not distracting. The only problem I had with this site is that it doesn’t seem to have been updated recently, so a few of the links no longer work. You also would have to be careful because it seems to have some pop-ups and quite a few ads. All in all though, it seems like this would be a useful site for a unit about aquatic habitats and a fun educational project for the students.

Classroom Blog Example

I was really impressed with Mrs. Cassidy’s classroom blog. It seemed like she really made the website a useful tool. In each blog entry, she described what the class did that day. All of the entries are accompanied by either a picture or a video. I really liked the videos because a student filmed each one, and the kids were impressively skilled with the camera.

It seems like videotaping the kids is a good way for them to display what they have learned because it’s exciting and fun for them. They seem to get into it - they all have their lines prepared and it seems like they must practice. I liked how interactive her lesson was the day it was too cold for most of the class to come to school. She asked the class what they would like to learn about and they picked snakes. The final product of the day was a video with all of the kids sharing a fact about snakes they had learned while holding the snakes they had made. It was a very cute video!

I also watched a “Sketchcast” made by a student at the University of Regina. She explained the uses of uppercase and lowercase letters while the video drew along with her. I thought it was kind of cool that each of the college students had a “blogging buddy” in the first grade class. Each student in Mrs. Cassidy’s class shared his or her blog with their college buddy. Mrs. Cassidy commented that having this audience pushed her students to be better writers.

 Also, on another classroom blog, there was a video showing how to make a construction paper snowflake. make a construction paper snowflake. I love arts and crafts, so I decided to try. As it turned out, the snowflake needed six pieces of paper and turned out to be HUGE. So now I have a gigantic paper snowflake, but it really is the coolest snowflake I’ve ever made.

Technology Autobiography

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