Loose Ends

Today in class we tied up any loose ends. We were able to finish our inquiry based lessons or any other assignments we hadn't finished.

We also tried to do the science sim, but it wasn't working very well. We tried logging out and logging back in but that didn't work either. From today I learned that it's always good to have a backup plan when the technology doesn't work. Teachers always need to have backup plans for glitches in technology.

Overall this class gave me some ideas on how to include technology in the classroom. My favorite class session was at Edith Bowen when we were able to see one example of a classroom that uses technology frequently. That gave me the motivation to use technology in my future classroom.

Edith Bowen and website evaluations

We went to Edith Bowen today and saw an example of a classroom where technology is used very well. The teacher's name was Mr. Johnson. He has 6 computers in the back of the classroom that the kids use for spelling and math and probably other subjects. Mr. Johnson also has ipods for each of the kids in his classroom where they can watch educational videos, listen to books, or there are pictures of fun activities they have done. The ipods are for classroom use only. They did a simulation of the winter olympics at their school and Mr. Johnson had a WII set up in his room and they played games on it and he taught them about decimals with it. He says that he applies for grants frequently and asks the parents of his students to donate things that they may not be using, like old ipods or nintendo games.

I was very impressed with the use of technology he had in his classroom. He also has a website that he used to communicate with parents and provide the educational links for his students. He says that next year he is thinking of setting up a system where he communicates with parents via text messages. Pretty cool stuff! He says that he is able to have a lot of the technology that he does by applying for grants all the time and by reading magazines, skimming for grants or teacher awards.

I think he is a great example of gathering resources to use in the classroom that some other teachers haven't. I could see the extra effort he has gone to to use technology in his classroom, and it was all in the best interest of his students. Some technology that I would like to have in my classroom one day is a dot cam and computers. I will probably have to apply for grants but it will be worth the extra effort.

We also did website evaluations today. The forms that we used to evaluate weren't my favorite. I have used a different form for one of my other classes to evaluate websites that I liked a lot better. It's important to look at websites with a critical eye and analyze the value for your students. There are so many out there that it's important to pick the best ones.

Instructional Architect

Today we had a guest come and show us how to use instructional architect. This is similar to the web quests we did last week. I personally had a hard time finding things that I could use for my lesson plan, so I don't know that I would use this resource very much. However, by the sounds coming from other people's computers, they were finding some fun games. Our guest gave the example of addition games and those looked pretty fun and like something kids could use independently. In one of my other classes, we did a software evaluation. Some of the criteria were about the graphics, how realistic and proportional were the graphics, could the kids use it independently, was the game focused on just getting the right answer or did it teach the process. These were things I hadn't considered before when looking at software. These are definitely good questions to ask because there is so much software out there, this helps teachers find the best learning resources available.

Inquiry learning and web quest

Today we watched some video clips about inquiry based learning. The main idea between inquiry based learning is that the students come up with their own questions and then try to answer them. We talked about how this makes learning meaningful for the students because they will hopefully ask questions they really want to know the answer to. I would like to learn more about this type of learning.

The other main topic today was web quests. These were pretty fun. The website was gardenquest.com. We split into groups or worked independently to review a web quest. The one I reviewed was about seasons. There was a worksheet that asked what kind of clothing they should wear, what months are included in the season, what kind of weather there is, what the plants are doing, etc. At the end the students were supposed to create a vod-cast, but no instructions were included on how to do that. If I were having my class do this, I would have to skip the part about vod casts because I don't know how to do that. I think this is a great tool for teachers! There were lots of links to songs, pictures, games etc. I think this would really help the kids be excited about learning.

Avatar

Today we learned how to do avatar simulations. It was pretty cool to do this little simulation. We had a guest teacher, Peter Blair. Some ways he suggested that we could use this were to take the class on a field trip. He mentioned a museum that we could take our kids to or he also suggested that we could use it to talk about other cultures and take them to a different land. Another idea was to take them to a castle. That could make for a fun history lesson. I think kids would enjoy this and think it was pretty neat.

Survey link

Today in class we learned how to create surveys and we sent them to three other people. This could be useful at the beginning of the school year to help me get to know my students. It would save on paper and would be help them use technology. This is a pretty cool tool! Here's the link to my first survey ever!



https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGZqX0JzX1NEVzdEUGxwdmVRTEVNelE6MA

More teacher resources

Here's a great teacher website! curriki.org The resources are free and there are resources for teachers K-12. One of the groups that presented shared this website with us.

We learned how to use Excel spreadsheets. This will be useful for making a gradebook. Computers sure can save a lot of time! I can't imagine how long it would take for teachers to calculate grades by hand-crazy! It was a little confusing, but a friend sitting next to me was very helpful. She's pretty good at this technology stuff. Knowing how to use a spreadsheet will be useful for grades but also if there was any kind of research I wanted to do on an informal basis, this could help me organize the information.

The last thing we did was check out a website polleverywhere.com It was pretty cool to see everyone's response come up on the computer screen. Our teacher says she has used this with her classes before. I think students would love to whip out their phones to text in an answer to a few questions. Most of the time texting is so off limits, so I think students would think it's fun. That's about it for today!