Saturday, December 11, 2010

Presentation

Presentation

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11151334/TE401digitalstory.ppt

Wiki

For this assignment, I created a wiki that would be used in conjunction with a high school lesson on writing. I absolutely loved using this as a form of communication and an outlet for creativity in the classroom. This is definitely something that I would use in the classroom!

I think that wikis are great places for students to collaborate on assignments and it allows them space outside of the classroom to work. Students can be as creative and verbose as they like or as short as they like and a wiki allows them complete freedom to do so. I love that this is as much a student's space as it is the teachers, where they can modify and edit their own page. It will take some explicit teaching as to how to use a wiki, but I feel that students will pick it up quickly and use it well.

Most Important thing I learned

Throughout this semester I have learned about myriad technologies and ways to use them. From website creation to Google Documents and digital presentations, I feel confident using technology in the classroom.

No single one of these, however, is the most important piece that I have learned. The most important thing that I have learned through this class is how to find these things out on my own. Although it was not a subject in this course, I have learned how to use Google Earth. I am now able to manipulate the map into what I need for a lesson, record a lesson with voice-over, and upload it to the internet so that I can link it to my website. This is something that I never would have been able to accomplish before this course, however the course did not explicitly teach me how to do it.

As a direct result of this class, I feel much more confident using technology and seeing how I can manipulate it to work for me and my classroom! I know that I can and will use these tools to help me make lessons interesting and meaningful for my students.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The R.O.W.

One of my favorite comedians frequently refers to Americans' lack of interest or understanding in the R.O.W., or the Rest Of the World. As I was reading through the GLCEs for social studies tonight, I think I have figured out a possible explanation.

We don't teach it.

I searched through the document several times searching for something...anything, that discussed the culture or geography of another place independent of the U.S.A. I found plenty of topics about how resources abroad affect our economy and similar geopolitics, but very little about even where other countries are located.

Given the amount of technology that we have available to us in modern times, I think it is absolutely obvious that we should be using this to connect students to the "R.O.W".
We live in a global world that children should be learning about. With skype, blogs, youtube, google earth, email, facebook, and myriad other tools at our disposal, why are we still not focusing on global understanding?

IEPs

Being a special education major, I hear a lot about IEPs, and in theory, they're great! In practice, however, I fear they are not quite so magical.
IEPs work when they fulfill their title, "individualized". It seems, however, that many IEP planning sessions try to fit the student to the IEP as opposed to fitting the IEP to the student. Through the grapevine, I have heard of a student with a physical impairment given more time on tests because... well? I don't know why. It seems that IEPs tend to have a general script that people follow when writing them, and the students are expected to fit into this script.

What happened to the individualized bit? The IEP should be designed to meet the needs of the student, not the "special ed." needs or the "autistic student" needs, because every student is different whether he/she has special needs or not.

Homework vs. Busywork

When I think back on the homework I was required to complete during elementary and secondary school, there are very few that stand out to me as being very beneficial. I remember a lot of textbook reading and worksheets, and simple regurgitation.

If homework is not helping students to learn... what's the point? I am not saying that I don't think there is a point to homework, because I most certainly do. I am simply saying that we need to be more judicial about the homework we give out. Assignments that get children thinking and interacting in the community are great ways to help them learn! For instance, an assignment requiring students to learn about the economic system by interviewing their family about what why they buy the things they do at the grocery store may be much more beneficial than reading about cost-benefit ratios in a textbook.

Homework should be something that pushes children's thinking further, not finishing up whatever you ran out of time for in class or filling the formula for the amount of time a student should spend on homework every night.

It should also play upon the 'home' part of homework. Children's families can be a great resource for information on cultures, businesses, families, etc. Use these resources to your advantage through homework!

Technology based lesson

For my technology based lesson, I plan to teach geography aided by social conferencing software and google earth. Since geography has generally been something that is hard for students to relate to because they historically have not been able to experience the other areas in the content, I wanted to bring geography to life for my students.

I plan to use Google Earth to show the students where another region is on the earth in relation to our region. This will allow the students a three dimensional view of the geography that they can move and manipulate to explore. Instead of simply looking at a flat map, this gives students a better visual perspective to relate the two areas together.

I then plan to use Skype to make another region real to the students. I am in touch with classrooms in England that may be willing to Skype with a class here in the United States to have structured discussion about physical and human characteristics of the region. This will give the students faces to relate to the places they are learning about, a visual representation of the clothing, an aural representation of the language and dialects, and other children to talk to.

This would, of course, have to be flanked in discussion so as to guide the students' thinking toward similarities and differences between regions and what this means for us socially.

Digital Stories

While I find that digital stories can be extremely useful in classrooms when used correctly, I fear that they run the risk of boring students because they have no human to human interaction.

A great way to use this technology may be to introduce a lesson, perhaps by exploring a museum that the students wouldn't otherwise be able to see. It can get the students interest with stimulating visuals and informational voice-overs and lead in to a lesson well! I don't think, however, that it should be used as a means to teach a lesson. Digital stories are unidirectional, the information travels from the screen to the students, who then have no way to interact with the material. In my experience, many children internalize content when they are provided the opportunity to ask questions and interact with the lesson

Another way to use a digital story may be as a review or back up to a lesson so that students can reference the digital story while reviewing. The story in this case could encompass the main points from the lesson or unit and provide a quick, fun way to review.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Thanksgiving

Non-fiction and Thanksgiving

Speaking of non-fiction, how about that Thanksgiving story? The general trend in education is to teach children a fictional story as non-fiction. I personally have a hard time with the idea of telling children about this happy gathering between Pilgrims and Indians where they shared food and talked about how thankful they are for everything when in reality, the Pilgrims killed the Native Americans. How then do we handle Thanksgiving in the classroom? I'm quite sure I would upset some parents if I began telling kindergartners about the true story; you know, that one where the settlers gave the Native Americans disease infested blankets, killing of thousands of them. But, I'm also not sure I like the idea of teaching my students falsities.

How should we handle the holiday then? The students, their families, and our school will expect us to address Thanksgiving in some manner or another. Do we teach the youngest kids the traditional story and change their misconceptions as they get older?

For young students, I have decided that instead of teaching the students a false story or scarring children at a young age, I will focus on the giving thanks part of Thanksgiving in my classroom and leave the story up to the parents. I will, however, make literature available for both "sides of the story." Older students, however, I believe should be taught the story as accurately as we know how.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

CEP 452 Final Project

Google Calendar.

For this project, I was searching for technology that would allow students and teachers to communicate about assignments and projects in an organized manner. When I was in high school, busy with school, sports, and friends, I had a difficult time keeping track of due dates and assignments. Through this project, I found something that would have helped me greatly throughout my own high school years; Google Calendar.

Google calendar is an online tool that allows its users to fill in a digital calendar with personal events. The general format of calendar can be changed to view events by day, week, month, 4 days, or agenda. This calendar has several benefits over a paper planner. Google Calendar can be viewed anywhere internet is available, and it can be edited endlessly. It is possible to set reminders and alarms so that you do not forget important information or events. Just about everything you can do on a portable planner, you can also do with this online calendar.

The most intriguing and useful aspect to this calendar is the fact that you can share it! A teacher could set up a calendar for the semester or school year with assignments, due dates, lessons, activities, subjects, etc. included so that the students can organize their time effectively and when the plans change (as they inevitably will) this calendar can be immediately updated. It is also possible for students to make changes to the calendar (depending on the settings that the teacher has used). This means that students can share interesting events with the class, in addition to organizing their own time with a personal calendar.

To view more about this calendar click here.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Choice Week 12

For class this week I investigated a website designed to aid students with studying. The website can be found at www.smartfm.com.

This site has some pre-made study topics, but it also allows you to put your own topic and information into a template. Once you have selected/created a topic, the website will take you through a preview of what you will learn, then display the information, then quiz you on the information. I find this website extremely beneficial! I would definitely take the time in a high school classroom to explicitly teach students how to use this website because it helps students study. This is particularly helpful to students who do not have parents at home available to help them study. It not only helps the students learn the material, but it helps them learn how to study.

Choice week 11

For this week, I explored an online argument mapping system called Amap. This can be found at http://www.amap.org.uk.

This website allows the user to create a visual representation of an argument with prompts for supportive statements and reasoning for the argument. This is a great way to scaffold students for creating arguments, but it only allows students to add one side of an argument. It is also important for students to be able to predict statements for the opposing arguments. In a classroom, I would not explicitly teach students about this technology, but I would provide them with the URL so that they might explore it on their own time. While I see this as an interesting tool to use, I do not think it would greatly benefit the majority of the students in a class.

I have included an example of an argument map created by this site below.



Saturday, November 27, 2010

Choice Week 9

For this week, I explored an online writing tool that I heard about through a different class. This website, called "novlet", can be found at http://www.novlet.com/.
The site is intended to allow people to build off of each other's stories, branching off at any point in the story that they would like to change. If you have ever played the game where one person begins a story then passes it along for another person to continue, it is very similar to that.

The good: This is a great way to foster motivation for writing! This is an entertaining way to change the course of stories and practice writing skills. It can also motivate students to read more than they usually might because they need to read the story and it's branches to figure out where they want to add their own pieces.

The bad: While this is a cool tool to use, it is not monitored. There are sections of the website that would not be appropriate for school aged students and there is no way, as far as I can tell, for teachers to censor the website. The tone of the website is also very relaxed, therefore the writing style that it elicits is also very relaxed, also with poor grammar and language usage.

The ugly: The website itself is also very difficult to navigate. Searching for the story that you are interested in becomes difficult and it is easily frustrating.

All in all, I would not use this tool in a classroom, especially with younger students. I may suggest it to older students who are interested in writing as an extracurricular activity.

Google Docs

I absolutely love Google Docs for several reasons.
First, It makes collaboration between busy members of a group much much easier. When I have been in group projects, Google Docs. has allowed me to work on the project with other members of my group at the same time, while communicating with them about the project. I have also used Google Docs to submit assignments for classes. Aside from saving paper, this makes it much easier to get feedback from instructors and edit my work to the corrections provided.
I do not, however, think that using googledocs for the sake of using cool technology is beneficial. I have also used googledocs in classes simply to use it. When no editing, revising, or collaboration will take place, I think it is just as easy to email the document.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Skype

During our last class, I was afforded the opportunity to skype with a man who has grown up in our education system with asperger's syndrome. This was incredibly beneficial to me as a future teacher because I was allowed some insight into what worked, what didn't work, and what would have helped this specific individual. Obviously I understand that this is one individual and what works for him may completely useless for another person, with Asperger's or not, but it gave me some great ideas nonetheless.

The primary thing that was highlighted for me was the importance of talking to your students about what they need. Students often know what they need and what helps them learn while teachers have to figure it out with each new student. In the future, I can either ask the class as a whole, ask individuals, or have anonymous suggestions as to what I can do to help. Some students may do better with a lot of time on their own, some do better with groups, some may appreciate having the day mapped out down to the minute while others may need to focus on what is happening at the time.

Also, providing students with any possible method for accessing the content is very important. The traditional methods do not always work!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Digital Story


Create a Free Slideshow




This slideshow displays several different types of flowers. I would use this in an elementary science classroom when discussing how plants have adapted to their environments. For instance, The flat shaped flowers with wide petals have evolved as such so as to provide a landing pad for insects that can spread pollen. The spherically shaped flowers are also usually very sticky so that insects that fly around these plants pick up pollen easily.
This tool was very simple, but did not allow for much manipulation of the final product. I would have enjoyed to be able to change the amount of time on each photo and include narration alongside.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Censorship in the Classroom

Personally, I don't think censorship is a good idea in general, I think it is even worse in a classroom. Are classrooms not supposed to teach children to think, instead of merely become clones of their parents?

If you give a student a book to read, then have adequate discussion about both the book and the student's thoughts about it, then no book should be off limits. This is not to say, however, that I think having the students read a controversial book merely because it is controversial is a good idea. The literature must have some purpose and give the student a better understanding of the world around them for it to be worthwhile. If a book is thought-provoking, enriching, and fun to read and children are interested in reading it we should be encouraging children to read it! If it contains something we disagree with then we should talk about these topics after the student has had a chance to experience one point of view.

In all likelihood, if a topic has made it into children's literature, it has also made onto t.v., video games, the internet, and public conversation. In my mind, it is better to address these topics, be it through literature or not, so that children can get multiple points of view, instead of simply those they find in popular culture.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Slideshow

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54403154@N05/sets/72157624990877239/show/

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Copyright

In today's technological world, I think copyright is becoming obsolete. I still believe that it is important to give credit to the creators of works, but it is becoming more and more difficult to keep the copyright information with the works with which they belong. It is increasingly easy to "save image as" without even noticing to whom the image belongs.
The question then is what do we do about it now? Do we just give up rights to any image we put on the internet (like we do with facebook)? Who monitors the images and copyrights? I personally just choose to be wary of what I post on the internet as I do not know who can take, edit, and use the information.

Copyright Lab


As always, technology and I had a bit of a struggle with this, but I believe I have obtained this image correctly. The copyright information is located underneath the photo.

I would use this image to teach children about the different types of clouds. Pictured here are cumulus clouds.





http://www.freestockphotos.biz/photos.php?c=all&o=popular&s=0&lic=cc&a=all&set=all

This is a photo I licensed with Creative Commons.



Creative Commons License
Stream by Alison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.flickr.com.

Field Placement

I have recently begun my field placement for the year in a kindergarten classroom. For those of you who do not know, a field placement is time that MSU students in the college of education spend in a classroom every week. The purpose of our field placements is it give us hands on experience and to help us become better teachers. This semester I will be giving two full lessons, one in science and one in social studies. Each lesson will consist of two 30 minute parts and will span over two days. I will also be acting as an aid in the classroom, helping with day to day activities, working with students, and helping with behind the scene activities like paperwork and meetings. I am extremely excited to get involved with this classroom, and I am also happy that I will be there for the entire year instead of only one semester!

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Technology in the Classroom

We live in a technological world, so I am by no means disputing the importance of teaching children how to use technology. It is without a doubt a skill that students need in order to be successful in our society. I can't help but wonder, however, about the students who have no access to computers and other technologies. Assignments that either focus on technology or use technology as a tool are great for students who either have enough money at home to own a computer or live in an area that has easy access to computers. What about the students that have no access to computers at home or at school? Not only do these children get left behind on assignments that involve technology, but they do not learn the skills necessary to function in today's society.

The question, then, is how do we balance our response to the need for technology and the lack of technological resources? In a perfect world, of course, we could find some funding somewhere to provide everyone with a computer that has the basic capabilities. Sadly, this is not a perfect world. Perhaps we teach abstractly, having children memorize steps in order for using computers. Maybe they take turns using a single computer.
I don't mean to solely rant here, I am actually looking for input as I will most likely be working in areas with few technological resources. If anyone has ideas, please share!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Voxfox text-to-speech

As my quest to understand technology continues, I have been wrestling with the text-to-speech capabilities of the internet. Foxvox is an "add-on" for Firefox that can be used to change any text on a website into an orated mp3 document. Well, if you are at all like myself, I will have lost you at the term add-on. Allow me to explain. An add on is a product designed to act as a counterpart to another product. In this case, Voxfox is designed to enhance Mozilla Firefox.

The purpose of the add-on is to read aloud any text found on the internet. In order to use it, you need to download the add-on, which you can do here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9759/. Voxfox is ideal for students with impairments that prohibit reading, text such as loss of eyesight or dyslexia. It allows teachers to continue using online resources while allowing students with reading disabilities access to the same resources. It opens up a world of opportunity for people that would otherwise be left out of the technological, text-heavy world.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Hello World!

Hello!
My name is Alison Inwood and I am in my final year at Michigan State University preparing for a career in special education. Part of my preparation involves becoming proficient in technological resources to use in the classroom.
Technology and I have had a rather tumultuous relationship. I have enough knowledge to get by in a technological world, but sadly not enough to be proficient or to add anything of substance to the web world. Thus the reason I am in the class "Technology in the classroom." I would like to learn how to harness the beast that is technology and use it as a tool to educate children in a personalized manner. I would also like to be able to teach my students how to use technology to enhance their own learning and to experience the world outside of their immediate environment.