Incorporating Technology

Incorporating technology into the classroom is very important to students as well as teachers. It is important because both students and teachers can use different technological devices in ordinary teaching lessons or assessments. It engages students more and it is something teachers can learn more about when incorporating technology.
Some benefits include being able to include students in the lesson rather than just teaching them. For example, using a smartboard can help get students active in a lesson rather than just sitting at their desk. Another benefit from technology is that students and teachers can stay up to date with all the new devices coming out. If we constantly use technology we wont fall behind in our 21st century life styles. Students can also use technology devices, like blogging, in a classroom for teacher/peer grading and assessment. It can be used to help one another, rather than your typical interview fashion assessment. These are just a few benefits, but the list can go for pages.
There are many important lessons that I will take with me from this class. Such lessons would be the new information learned about the different Microsoft programs and the tools in them I did not know about. They make papers and organizers so much neater and organized. Also, the different programs I had never heard of like Inspiration. Many of these programs can make a teachers life so much easier and I will be sure to keep these programs when making papers and such. The smartboard lessons are very useful and I will take them with me if I have a smartboard in my classroom because I would like to keep students engaged in the lesson. Using the different technological devices like the smartboard will keep students interested in what I am teaching. Many, if not all the skills I have learned this semester are very important to me, and I hope that my school will one day allow me to use these type of ideas and devices to have a wonderful, technological classroom.

Copyright Laws

Copyright laws are very interesting to examine and have a great array of information that people may not know about. After reading some articles and viewing our in class powerpoint I realized I learned so much more on copyrighting.

I feel like the law that surprised me the most was reading the article online that dealt with material that can not be protected by copyright. I had no idea that certain things can and can not be copyright. I learned that works from a public domain, works from federal government employees, short phrases or slogans, and ideas, methods, or procedures are things that can not be copyright or protected by copyright laws. This was surprising to me because I thought anything regardless of it being a slogan or an idea could be protected by these laws.

I believe it is the responsibility as a teacher to teach students the respect for copyright. Students need to learn at a young age what it is, because I am a college student and I did not realize how much more information is out there on copyright laws. Teachers need to pay attention to these laws because teaching these morals is something a student will need in life. People take copyrighting seriously and if a student plagiarizes or does not cite something in an assignment there are definently consequences. When I am a teacher I will be sure to teach copyright ethics in my class. I will be sure do model these laws in a number of ways. First, I think I would educate the students with a brief powerpoint like the one in class; it gave me a lot of useful knowledge I did not know. I will make sure to tell them when they do assignments such a papers or powerpoint slides with pictures and information they need to put from who and where they go that information from. It is morally right to educate them on "asking permission" before taking or borrowing something and how copyright relates to that. These are just a few ways of how I will educate students about copyright laws in my class.

Interactive Whiteboards

Interactive whiteboards are starting to show up more commonly in classrooms now. I feel that these smart boards give students and teachers more of a positive feeling on teaching and technology. I think that interactive smart boards can enhance teaching and learning in many ways. For the student the interactive whiteboard will engage them in the lesson more. Students who can be active and enjoy a lesson rather than sitting and be lectured are more likely to participate and receive better grades on something. Having the students participate and come up to the board to do stuff is a great way for them to interact more. For teachers, I feel the interactive whiteboard allows them to use more technology in the classroom to advance their technology use. Again, students love the interactions with technology instead of a boring lecture. With teachers using technology and getting more involved they'll be able to learn better teaching techniques for their lessons.

The technology we used was not too difficult. It was a matter of learning what most of the program does, then just playing around with different settings. It became really easy once you were able to manage the basic tools needed to create slides on a smart board. There are many pros to having a smart board that include, being able to use more technology, getting students more involved, the teacher them self learning more about technology, and so on. This technological tool allows for greater improvements on lessons by teachers and work by students. However, with everything in life there are a few cons. Unfortunately, with technology sometimes it doesn't always work. Teachers may even get too fancy with their work and the students get too distracted from the real lesson. Another con is the maintenance and care for a white board.

A lesson that I have previously written is about math and geometric shapes. I could use the smart board in many ways in this lesson, such as having interactive slides. I can have students do a worksheet telling me the names of different figures and I can have a slide that shows the figures and students can come up to the board and write the name of figure below it that they wrote on their paper. Others things can include drawing different figures that may have been talked about in the chapter. There are many more ways, but I feel I could have added such activities into my lesson to make it better.

There are a variety of ways to use a smart board, and I feel like having one in the classroom is very effective for both the students and the teachers in many ways.

Digital Video Project

Digital video projects can be very useful in a classroom setting. The projects can be difficult but they are definitely intriguing to children.

Title: Whale Hunt
Age: 4th-5th grade
Content Area: Social Studies

Materials: "Tale of a Whale" book, worksheets, video camera, computers and research, Moviemaker program

Description:
Students will read the story "Tale of a Whale" with their teacher as a whole class. The students will then break up into groups and each group will research a part of whale hunting. Each group will compile their information on their topic and put together a storyboard. The students will make a poster board with their information and record a video of them presenting the information. They will also produce a short skit to visualize what part of the hunting they have.

Preparations/Challenges:
Before the students would start this project I would have to make sure that there are video cameras that the school has for these types of projects. Once we could get the video cameras I would have to set aside time to show students the movie maker program and how we would be using it to put together their video. In preparation for the actual project I would have to make sure I can get computer time for the students so they have time to gather their research and data on their particular part of whale hunting. I would also send home a consent form for parents to sign and make sure it is alright with them that their students videos will be put up on my youtube account so the entire class can see each groups videos when through with the project. Some challenges are that the students may need more help with the movie making part. Students may not easily grasp the movie maker program and may need more help. Another challenge may be that a parent does not what their student in a film on youtube and therefore the student may not be able to be in the video.

Timeline:
Day 1: Read story with class and discuss the different parts of whale hunting.
Day 2: Select groups and discuss topic. Begin researching information.
Day 3: Spend full class period with more researching.
Day 4: Make storyboard to go with skit. Have cleared by teacher.
Day 5: Go over how the video camera works/ start explaining movie maker.
Day 6: Continue working in movie maker and how it works and sound clips.
Day 7: Let students film their skit.
Day 8: Edit videos/sound clips.
Day 9: Presentations
Day 10: Presentations

Software Skills

In learning about the different software programs recently I feel like I learned a lot more program skills. I feel that learning these software programs helped me and were very beneficial to my future teaching career.

The program I think will be most beneficial for me would be Microsoft Word. I can use the program for essentially anything I need in class, and with the tables and different formattings I was taught word is much more useful. Though any of these programs would make teaching so much better.

The new techniques I've recently learned in Word would be useful for making any type of quiz, test, or study guides I would give the students. With the different alignments and tables it would make the paper look very professional. I can also use Word for making posters or flyers to hang up within the classroom or school. Inspiration, I think I would use a lot because of the concept maps. With these maps I could use them to help make writing easier for students and their planning. I would definitely be able to incorporate Microsoft Publisher too by sending home weekly or monthly newsletters to my students parents to keep them up to date on what is going in our classroom.

All of these programs that we used for our software lab provide us will great skills that will definitely benefit us. As a teacher I would use these programs quite frequently.

Favorite Web Resources

In the last couple weeks of instructional tech I have learned about many different web browsers. There are many different resources I can see myself using in the classroom because of how good they are.

First off, I really enjoy the site 4teachers. It has so many different helpful resources in preparing lessons and general aids for the classroom. I probably would use this site the most because of the many different resources it has on this one site. Such features include a design of your classroom. It can help with how I would like to rearrange my room with every piece of furniture I might have, and I can even type in the dimensions of room to see how things will fit to scale. This can be very useful, because a lot of times teachers are unsure of how to arrange their room that is good for positive learning. Another resource on this website is the note to parents section where it gives you outlines of how to write a letter that needs to be sent home. Such examples include field trip forms or notes going home about behavior. This can be extremely useful because it will help save time when you need to write letters to parents about things. This site is also interactive with students because of the available activities that are used to enforce learning. Another important tool on this site is the rubistar application. This can be very helpful when grading projects or papers or any type of assignment in class for the students. I can make the rubric to whatever type of assignment it is that I have given and give each student one. This way they will have exactly what I'm looking for on any one assignment given.

This website would probably be the site that I use the most for many of my classroom tools. There is so much on this site that it can help in many ways. Every way that I just explained would be a major help in organizing my classroom.

Inspiration

The program Inspiration would definitely be something I would invest in for my classroom. This is such a great program to make lessons easier and more fun for students. I would recommend this program to any teacher for their classroom.

This program can be virtually used in any subject you teach. Some content where it would be extremely useful would be in language arts with reading and writing, and other subjects such as science or social studies. During the language arts content if students are reading a book you can design a web or diagram that has the main characters then you can branch off and talk about their characteristics and traits. With this web it can help students write their own stories with characters and how their characters act. In social studies or history this program can be incorporated by using a web that can help organize different events that might have been discussed in class. With this web it will be easier for students to understand the main idea behind an event, and help organize people and the dates that occurred within the event.

This program is very useful for many content areas. The two mentioned are just some examples of how you can incorporate this program into the classroom. There are many other ways out there to make learning more exciting for students.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a very useful tool. I believe it has a very important application in any classroom whether it be elementary up through college.

In an elementary class I can see social bookmarking as a huge benefit to me as the teacher as well as the students. In the classroom I can use social bookmarking websites to enhance lessons or activities that were taught. As a teacher I can tag and save these websites that might be good for following up on a lesson for the students. The websites I can bookmark can easily be located on my computer from home or school and I can have access to these links wherever. The students can also look at these sites if they have problems or any questions on things we might have already covered in a lesson. As for the students not only are they able to further their knowledge on these sites, but they can also share this information with other students. For example, if a student finds a website with good information about a topic they are studying they can share with their friends if they are working on a project together. And, if these sites are all book marked the students have a ready bibliography or list of resources to give a teacher already organized.

As for an Albright student I believe social bookmarking can help me. I believe this because many professors give students different websites to find information on and if they have a diigo page or some sort of social bookmarking page it is easier for the student to find web links rather than just searching for them via internet browser. I feel like if the professor can tag and organize the links on a social bookmarking page it would save the student and professor a lot of time that both parties can use from every year on.

Evaluating Websites

Evaluating websites before using them in a classroom or to do research is very important for many reasons. The first and foremost important reason to evaluate them before research or in the classroom is to make sure the website even works. It is also very important to check a website before research or for the use in a classroom because you want to make sure you are getting accurate information. Many websites out there are fake, or do not give accurate information, so you want to make sure when you are using a website for research you can get proper credit for correct information.

I think most people do not understand or apply the evaluating techniques when looking at websites. Like the example in class where professional journalist were were misinformed of the landing on the moon by Americans. These journalist proved they did not do their full research on the topic. These techniques are important and should always be in the back of someone's mind using the internet because there are a lot of fake websites out there. Student need to make sure their information is accurate because if you wrote a research project based off Wikipedia, a site where people can add and change information, all your research could be wrong and you fail a grade.

You can incorporate the evaluation techniques into a classroom by many different technology lessons. One example could be having my kids use their computer time looking at a list of websites I have given them. They can look up the website and tell me why they think it is reliable and a good source of information or not. I can even give them a chart with the different techniques on it and they can choose some websites of their own, or ones I have picked out and they can fill in each spot on the chart to make sure the website has every one of the techniques and can answer questions like, who is the author, when was it last updated, what is the content about and the perspective of the writer, etc.

Evaluating websites is very critical to classroom use as well as research. If students as well as parents understand these techniques it will greatly improve the research and information they retain and find.

Blogs in the Classroom

Incorporating blogs into your classroom can be an excellent tool in helping students to learn. However, like many things there is a disadvantage to using technology like blogs in the classroom as well.

Some advantages of blogging in a classroom is that students can use them to improve reading and writing skills. For instance, students can receive writing instructions from their teacher and go ahead and write their paper or thoughts on the topic in a blog. This will help students improve their skills by having a teacher be able to give feedback on the blog that was written. Students can than go in and easily correct or add anything they like to it. This also gives good instruction to peer editing where students can comment on each others blog and thoughts. Another advantage for online blogs for students is that their parents can go online and see what they are writing about and learning in the classroom. This gives the parents more up to date information on what their students are doing.

Some disadvantages of using this technology in your classroom is the possible concern for the safety of the children. For instance, like in a regular classroom setting teachers are to do a prevention plan on bullying. If you are online and blogging there is such a thing called cyber bullying that can occur. For instance, a rude or mean comment to another student about ones writing. The other comments are to be positive and constructive, and not making fun of or picking on someone because of their skill ability. Another disadvantage is in schools with lower economic standings they may not have the accessibility of computers like other schools. This is unfortunate because students and teachers would not be able to do lessons online, such as blogging.

First Blog

Hello and Goooood Morning!

This is my first blog.