Reflection...

Throughout this course I have written about many things that will help me in teaching technology to any future students I have. Not only will I be better at teaching students about technology but I have learned new things that I can use to create new assignments for students, so what I have learned has helped me and will one day hopefully help my future students.

 I have learned to use spreadsheets, word processing, and databases to further help me throughout my career and all three will help me in creating assignments and teaching students. Most of my blogging experience is centered on specific concerns relating to educational technology.

 I believe most of my post will help anyone needed information on these related concerns; they also help me as I go through them and re-read them. I like that my post are educational and interesting. At first I didn’t know if I would like blogging but I have actually come to really enjoy it, it’s a place where I can express how I truly feel about certain topics and actually teach myself new things threw different research for any new topics that I can currently writing about.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets can be used in the classroom for many different task/assignments: making calculations, organizing data, making charts, averaging grades, and so much more. Both teachers and students can use spreadsheets. Teachers can use it to create assignments for their students and to average student’s grades. Students can use it to develop higher order thinking skills by using spreadsheets in assignments making charts and calculations.

            Some advantages of spreadsheets are that they are normally easy to use and create. Sometimes they can be hard to following depending on how they are created though. Spreadsheets can be used for many different grades levels. They also allow students to be creative with the many different choice they have in creating charts. A great advantage of spreadsheets is using functions, which calculates the sum, mean, product, or anything else you can think of for the columns and rows of numbers.

            Spreadsheets achieve the Nets for Students standards because they allow students to be creative and to communicate throughout the process of creating a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are great for research projects and collecting information. Students also use technology affectivity and productively when using spreadsheets.

Databases

Databases can be used in the classroom for easily accessing old information. Teacher can use it to store information from older assignments to be found easily and used for another class later on down the road. Students can use it to save work from assignments that they are previously working on so when they return to the assignment they can easily find it and finish their work. Databases are very useful for the classroom in the way that teachers and students can always come back to their previous works and easily finish or reuse or add to that certain assignment. I believe everything about a database can be an advantage for the classroom. There are no real disadvantages to being able to save information in a virtual “card catalog.”

Databases achieve the standards for Nets for students by allowing students to conduct research and use different information. It also allows students to use technology effectively and productively.

Word Processing

Word Processing can be great for the classroom for both teachers and students.  Word processing allows teacher to create hand outs and worksheets for students. It also allows students the chance to work on the computer to compose different text. Teachers can easily organize information for the classroom about any projects they want to assign, new learning material, or anything to do with tables and graphics for the class. Students can also learn more about inserting objects such as graphs, tables, or photos into their text.

Advantages:

·         Great Learning Experience

·         Organizes documents

·         Helps with assignments

Disadvantages:

·         Can be overwhelming to new users

·         A lot of information to learn

This program can achieve the standards of NETS for students because it allows students to be creative. Students can also communicate with one another and their teacher using the word processing, by asking questions or working together on assignments. Word processing is also useful for research projects, because it gives teachers and students a place to work on their assignments.

Pinky Dinky Doo

Pinky Dinky Doo’s website can easily be added into any lesson plan, because it involves helping children learn. You can use this website in helping your students remember names, characters, and roles of people in stories. It teaches about dialogue, sequence of events, and details. You can engage your students in language and help them to interact with their surroundings and with one another.  Pinky Dinky Doo can help children learn to listen, think, and learn. Children can learn to focus on the meaning of different words and interact in fun activities.

Children will enjoy using this tool in class because of the fun activities and the bright colors of the web page. Because Pinky Dinky Doo is a popular cartoon that a lot of children enjoy watching you may have problems that every child will want to play at the same time and they may fight over the computer.  One way to fix this problem is to have a chart of who gets to play on the computer every day, that way every one gets a chance to play and students will not fight over it.

Algebrator

Alegebrator is software used for teaching students math, or helping them in the area of Algebra. The version I reviewed was the 4.0 which cost around $49.95. It can be used for a PC having any version of Windows including: Windows 7. It can also be used for a Mac having any version of OS X. The operating system is WinVista and WinXP. It takes up 25 MB.  It can be used for grades 4-6.

I believe this software to be very helping in the learning process for students. They can actually go to this application and type in any given problem and have help with solving the equation; it even shows them the steps in solving the problem. Teachers can use this application for lessons, practice, testing, and problem-solving.

The content of Algebrator is educational and reliable. It is clear and easily understood. Students can work together using the application or work alone. It is easy to install and set-up. This software can be very useful in the classroom and it can help teachers and students in the teaching/learning process.

Mobile Computing

Advantages & disadvantages of mobile computing devices in the classroom:

Advantages:

·         Highly Motivating for Students

·         Teaching Apps

·         Students get assignments done faster

·         Assignments are easier for Students

·         Constance internet connection

·         Students are writing more

·         Increases students engagement in classroom activities

·         More time spent on classroom assignments

·         Better quality in work

Disadvantages:

—  Text Bullying

—  Theft

—  Unrestricted Internet Access

—  Cost

—  Time Consuming

—  More technical support and maintenance needed

—  Some students may play on personal websites instead of classroom work.

I believe using mobile computing devices in the classroom can be a good thing. Students like to use these types of devices so why not teach them by using the things they love. If any of the disadvantages were to arise then address the situation at that time.   I think you shouldn’t use these devices for the entire teaching time because students will be using them for their personal pleasure instead of paying attention to their teachers, but using them for certain assignments and activities can be helpful for students.

Creativity and Innovation

This week learning to be more creative and innovative was a fun process for me. Generating new ideas for projects and other classes is important. I liked that this week’s assignments helped me learn more for this class and a few others that I taking.  I love looking at websites to create my own ideas and develop my own plans for assignments.

For assignments I am currently working on I have used the following cities:Human Body Printables, Lessons, & References (K-12) - TeacherVision.com and Teaching Body Parts Through Play - Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes... - Toddlers Articles - Toddlers Today. These are just two examples that have helped me create my own plans for future assignments. I also love all the ideas that can used in the classroom for students.

Learning to be more creative is fun and great for any teacher. Learning to apply old information to new information and relate certain things to new things.  (Does that make sense to you?) LOL It’s like you can learn to find information about anything you want to teach and change it to fit into your classroom.

I believe learning to be creative and innovative can help teacher create lessons that their students are actually interested in and that they can learn well from. It helps you as the teacher to stay current with trends that are popular at the time.  

Delicious

I enjoyed learning how to use Delicious! I was very thankful that it wasn't too hard to learn how to use, although I'm sure there is more about this site that I will need to learn. I like having a place to save all my resources so that I could come back and find them easily when I needed them.

I kind of think this place is just using the Favorites link though, besides that you can find popular bookmarks and share your with others.

It could be a good website for group projects so that you and your group members can share certain websites with each others. It’s helpful for students that don't live close to each other so you can still stay on board and know what’s going on with your project.

For the most part Delicious is a good website that can be helpful to more than just students. And I like the name Lol.

Teaching Your Toddler Body Parts Through Play

Website Evaluation Checklist

Student Name: Erica Morton              Date of Evaluation: 2/11/2011

Name of the Website:  iParenting

URL of the Website: http://www.toddlerstoday.com/articles/toddlers/teaching-body-parts-through-play-1978/

Accuracy of the Web Page	Yes	No	Notes
1.  Can you find the author of the page? Hint:  Scroll to the bottom of the page.  It may be an institution.	X		Author Name: Carma Haley Shoemaker
2.  Can the author be contacted: Hint:  Look for an “About Us” or “Contact Link”		X	Author email:
3.  Do you think this person or institution is qualified to publish this webpage?	X		Why or why not? iParenting is a legit website that contains information to help parents answers all kinds of different questions.
Authority of the Web Page
1.  Check the domain of the URL, particularly the extension.       Is this a commercial site?   The URL can give clues to the authority.	X		What does the extension tell you? The extension tells you about the information contained in the website. It’s an article about teaching toddlers about body parts through play.
2.       Are there credentials listed for the author(s)? If not, try Googling the name of the author or the institution.		X	What did you find? I found another website about Ms. Shoemaker. It states her current and past careers, her education, her experience, recommendations, and other websites you can find her on. There is also a short summary about her
Purpose of the Web Page
1.  Read over the information on this website carefully.  Can you determine the purpose of this web page?	X		Why is this web page on-line?  Think critically about possible opinions or bias? This webpage was created to answers many different questions for parents. There’s pregnancy information, learning or teaching your children different things, health & nutrition information
Currency of the Web Page
1.  Can you find a publishing date?		X	When was it published?
2.  Can you find the date it was last updated?		X	When was it updated?
3.  Are the links working and current? Click on some of the links to check.	X		What do you think about the links? There are many different links and they all work. There are links to: different articles, Q&A information, recipes, links to Disney, and much more.
Looking at your answers, do you think this website would be a reliable, credible source of information?	X		Why or Why not?  This website contains great information for my topic that is reliable and I can easily add a resource for it.

Identifying Lesson Topics

When choosing lesson topics for your instructions makes sure you consider the intended learning outcomes. Lessons should contain information that is related to the standards or benchmarks of the school. The teacher and students outcomes should be clearly defined. Always provide a focus to the lesson. There should be a clear style for teaching, learning, and the assessment. Have a way to show what the students will learn and what they have learned at the end of every lesson.

Meeting the Needs of All Students

With thinking of what needs your students have you should think about your planning process. Are you planning the right amount of activities for the amount of time you have in class? Does your planning involve to much information or work for the time you have? Can your students stayed focused or will they become bored or confused with the assignments you have given them?

Each question needs to be carefully considered and the right actions need to be taken. When planning for your students make sure that you do not give them to much or to little work, both can be harmful to the students learning. Make sure the information is useful and relevant to the current class assignments.

Instructional Cycle

The three stages of the instructional cycle:

Stage 1: Intended Instructional Outcomes

You start off by identifying the content standards and benchmarks that every lesson will address. Then each standard is translated into measures learning outcomes. You should have a clear idea of what each student needs to know, understand, and be able to do to meet the standards based curriculum.

Stage 2: Planning

Second you should plan effective teaching strategies and instructional activities. Planning should include both standardized tests and teacher-made test. To carry out the planned instructions you must plan for the learning outcomes, instructions, and assessments.

Stage 3: Assessment

Finally you will implement your planned assessments to show if students have met the intended learning outcomes. Assessments should be planned when thinking of the intended outcomes, and not just created at the end of you unit.

Components of Good Assessment

Any good assessment should:

1.      Provide relevant evidence

2.      Measure the skills, knowledge, or abilities the teacher holds important

3.      Match purpose with the skills assessed

All of these help you in your goals and the outcome you want for yourself and your students. They will help you measure the success of each assessment.

Adapting Instruction

Adapting instructions are used to make changes to instruction to allow children an equal access to the curriculum and to give them the opportunity to process and demonstrate what has been taught. Adapting instructions are important for students because it addresses their individual needs.

One why to adapt your instructions would be to address the accommodations. This will support a child’s disability to help him/her fully access the subject and to show their knowledge in the assignment or test given. Another way to help is to make modifications to the services given to students. This will fundamentally alter the standard of the assignment or test given.

Information-Processing Model

The information processing model of learning is divided into three stages: receiving information, connecting the information to prior knowledge, and using the information. Receiving information involves the short term memory. It means when students are paying attention the information they are learning will go into their short term memory and will stay there for them to work on, but will only remain there for a limited time. However this information can be transferred into the long term memory.

A strategy for moving information from short term to long term memory is connecting the information to prior knowledge. Teacher can help students transfer information into long term memory by: organizing information into easily recognizable categories, repeating the information, or grouping the information.

It is believed that once information is placed into the long term memory that is will always be there. Just because the information is there though doesn’t mean that it will be easily retrieved. To easily use information from the long term memory it is important to organize the information so that your students are able to easily get to that information and remember it. It is a good idea to teach students things that interest them, this way they can easily retrieve that information when later asked about it.

Learning Characteristics

Before any teacher develops instructions for their students they should identify the students learning characteristic for receiving information. It is very important for teachers to understand that if students aren’t paying attention the information being given will quickly be forgotten. Students use their short-term memory for information that they are paying attention to. Short-term memory is known as the working memory, because information here can be attended to and worked on consciously.

It is important for teachers to understand how students are receiving information, because it is how they can learn to send out the information to students. If a teacher can learn how to get students to learn for their short term memory then he/she can better understand how to help students transfer that information to their long term memory.

Content Standards

Content standards define the depth of knowledge, skills, and processes that are to be taught within any given subject. Content standards create an outline of knowledge, skills, and understanding that all children need to master in all subject areas. The content areas of content standards include: mathematics, science, reading, history, and language arts.

Content standards include instructional goals that are set for a two to three year period. Benchmarks explain the expected understanding and skills needed for content standards by each grade level and are meant to be tracked in time intervals. Benchmarks are used to determine whether progress is made to the content standard. There are testing used to assess each area.

GROUP COLLABORATION AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

I don't really have much to say under this post because I did not enjoy the assignment or learn much from the assignment. I may have learned more about social networking but that's really it. I did not enjoy being in a group. I asked my team members to help me out and only got a respond from one out of the four of them.

I feel like I could have done way better on this assignment on my own. Feeling frustrated with my group I have to admit that I just kind of gave up on the assignment, and I feel really bad for doing that because I usually always try my best at every assignment I can, because I want the best grade possible.

Problem-solving techniques I learned this week have to be that I don’t like group projects but I need to get the work done in a timely manner no matter what any of the other members have done. Is that a problem solving technique?

Difficulties!!!

           This week I have had some bad experiences in my EDU 271 Educational Technology class. I feel like this class is an information overload at the moment. I do not understand the whole wiki thing. On top of having to deal with some information that I have never experienced before, I have to be put in a group to work on it.

            Now that I go that off my chest, I can express what I can learn from this experience. First I am learning how to work with wiki. I also understand my teacher’s instructions a little better. I also am learning how to communicate with my group members a little more. (Well 1 group member anyway)

            I believe what made this week kind of difficult for me was first my lack of interest in wiki. I understand it’s important, but not understand the site made me kind of shy away from it. Something else that contributed to my difficult week was the group assignment. I, like many others, don’t like group assignments. I feel there is always that one (or more) person that doesn’t pull his/her own weight. They solely rely on their team members to pull them through the assignment.

            I hope this was just my one bad week for the semester and that the rest will fly by like so many have before. Thanks for letting me get some of my difficulties off my chest. It’s kind of a stress releaser, to blog about my bad week. Thinking about my problems also helps me figure out how I can go back and try to fix the things I didn’t understand before.

My Teaching Philosophy

           My role as a teacher is to become a role model for my students. I would like to be the teacher that students remembers as being caring, and someone they could come to for help. Being a role model for my students will help me in the classroom, because I feel like students respect teachers that they look up to. Being a role model will also help me to relate information easier to my students. I can help them develop thinking skills, prepare them for future careers, and help students in their personal growth. I believe all teachers should be role models to all students.

I see my classroom as being student-centered. I wouldn’t like for my classroom to be about me and just filling my students heads with information that they may or may not remember a few days later. I want to engage in activities with my students. I want to create lessons that students can enjoy and learn from at the same time. I want to ask them questions and I would like for them to ask me questions as well. Having my student’s feel comfortable coming to me about problems they have makes me feel like I really am a good teacher. I would like to include: puzzles, projects, group activities, Web learning, and inquiry learning in my classroom, integrating technology into the class as much as I can.

My classroom organization would include students working in both small group and whole group activities. I believe students need to work alone and in groups, so depending on the project we may work one-on-one, in small groups, or in opened ended discussions including the entire class. I see the use of technology in my class as an ad to students. Teaching students to use technology in any ways that are incorporated in the classroom is important. Technology is a big part of the world so it’s something that should be included in every classroom. Technology will help me in my goals and visions because my number one goal is to become a great teacher, and teaching my students everything they need to know.

How People Learn

A learner-centered instructor should have some basic knowledge of their student’s backgrounds, they should have an interest in their students and what they are teaching, and they should have social and cultural values for their own culture and the culture of others. A learner-centered activity for young children could be an alphabet show-n-tell for the class. This activity can give the children a chance to speak in front of the class about something that they have interest in and it will also be teaching students many things, for example:

·         The alphabet

·         Speaking to peers

·         Patience’s

·         Listening skills

A knowledge-centered instructor should provide rigorous content to their students and should also help students understand rather than just simply memorizing. An assessment-centered instructor should included two types of assessment:

·         High Standards

·         Frequent opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision, in order to enhance the quality of learning.

Community- centeredness is important to students because it fosters norms where “learning of the highest order” is encouraged, and people are respected and connected to a variety of resources. A community-centered activity could be a local PTA, which is community-centered because it involves parents and students from the community of their local school to get together with caregivers/teachers from that school to discuss and encourage the students in their school activities.

To evaluate my own instructions I would go through the process of creating activities for students with the help or aid from other caregivers/teacher around me and by just going through the process of using the instructions on students and seeing how they respond to them and correcting whatever steps I may need to change. To determine if students are becoming self-evaluative I believe you must watch them work and get involved with them in what they are doing. By observing your students you can further enhance their learning by seeing what skills they do or don’t posses, which mean you now, have a better understanding of how to teach them.

A helpful link in the process of Learner-Centered Teaching: http://turkey.usembassy.gov/uploads/images/ZbaUSsGax99x5BCBjYkntQ/Learner_Centered_Teaching.pdf
This link helped me better understand what learner-centered teaching is all about. I hope it can help some of you also.

My Goals for EDU 271

My name is Erica Morton I am a military wife going on 6 yrs now. I have a 3 yr old daughter. I'm from AL. & just moved from NC. to GA. This is my last semester at FTCC, I graduate in May with my associates degree in Early Childhood Education. My goals for this class are to learn more about:

• PowerPoint
• Creating Graphics & Web Pages
• Photo Shop Programs
• Music and Video Programs

All of which I hope to incorporate into the classroom one day. I also hope to learn about things that I didn't even know about in technology that I should know. Creating this blog proves that I will  be doing just that. I have never created a blog but I do enjoy it. To measure my success in my goals I will look at my skills throughout the semester. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will know how to create better PowerPoint's, which I love to do for almost any class. I look forward to learning about photo enhancement programs and any new communication programs also.