Reflective Essay

Starting this class I was a bit apprehensive, I barley knew how to work Microsoft word, let alone take a technology class. I was fearful that I had signed up for the wrong class after the first day when professor said we were making a website. Thankfully I continued to attend the class, the amount of skills I have collected throughout the semester. These skills are some I am very excited to share in my classroom one day.

One of the first assignments we did in the class was to make a rubric; I took away a lot from this. I use the rubric that is made for all of my assignments, so when asked to make one, I thought it would be a simple task. I was surprised at how difficult it really was to put one together. Not so much with the assembly of the rubric, but with the content of the rubric. It was a great learning experience to see what effort teachers put into each rubric for every assignment.

Moving ahead in the semester you’d think that designing a web-quest, making a lesson plan, organize a wiki and creating a teacher webpage eportfolio would be quite a difficult task for me considering my struggle with just the rubric. Hey even I was nervous about even starting most of them. The funny thing is, they turned out to be my favorite assignments, and yes I actually had a great time building them!

While at first the Web-quest and lesson plans were a tackle, it was arduous to come up with a subject matter, to teach the children. Once the subject was decided, the assignments were easily finished, and I realized I was concerned for nothing. The teacher website had to be my favorite assignment during this semester, I got the most from it; it was fun and an educational experience.

Another assignment that I found to be helpful is the discussion. This was good for us as students to research information, share it with one another, and get to comment and reflect of each other’s posts. I always found that I learned a lot from the content of the discussions. Not only was the content a benefit to me, throughout the semester, we were introduced to multiple web tools. My all time favorite is Google Docs; I found it to be a helpful form of communication and collaboration to use when our lives were got too busy for meeting.

Our blog posts were a great way to explore and use new web tools. Prezi, Canva, Piktochart, and Powtoon, are all tools I will return to and use for my classroom. And although I never designed one, after using it in class I know how fun Kahoot is and cant wait to make learning fun for my students. And how do I remember all these great sites? Well that’s another wonder I was introduced to, called Delicious, it’s like an online bookmark! Seeing how it helped me throughout the semester, I know don’t know how I could ever go without it!

Even though this semester caused a great deal of stress, I wouldn’t have changed anything. From learning classroom skills playing kahoot, to

learning geography with GeoGesser. This class has taught me that technology is not only growing but also has opened my eyes to the abundance of ways technology can help educators and students in any grade level. 

Resources: 

 Why is technology important in education? (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMi13DoDBAM 

Digital Post L. Chapter 12.

Chapter twelve is all about integrating technology and creating change as teacher leaders. The book defines inclusion as computers and information technologies that are mainly used for transferring information and practicing skills.  This is not something that is used on a daily basis, and is something that would be scheduled maybe once a week for a certain amount of time. Infusion is technically the opposite, computers and other informational technologies are used more often in the classroom, with teaching and learning in all grade levels. The range of computers that can either be in a classroom are a couple to just one. Sine this is more of a day-to-day thing, the hope is that the students will learn how to search things for research, use word processing and game-based learning activities. Overall the teacher has the control over to choose how much to incorporate technology and how it will be used in the classroom.




Cooperative learning and group-work, this is something that i've learned a lot about through this course. And with technology it is made even easier! This past week in we were asked to make lesson plans and in my group we were all very busy and were only able to meet twice. Since we were limited with the amount of times we could meet we connected and worked on the project cooperatively through GoogleDocs. This is a site where we all share the same word document on different devices, this way we could all work on the project at our own times and also be able to see what the other members of the group are doing, or have done. 

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Post K. Chapter 4.

Chapter four was about designing lessons and developing curriculum with technology. At the very beginning it give a great example of how technology can help in just picking out a topic to teach, the internet give a large selection of curriculum resources and information. From internet search engines to resources and information, electronic databases, online encyclopedias, blogs, and wikis. These are great ways to tie technology into teaching, and allows the students to have gain great information.

Electronic grading software is becoming more and more popular in our world today. This system is for virtual record-keeping, with this a teacher can calculate and record the student grades all on the computer. The book provides some good advantages to this system, such as, the efficiency to calculate and store numerous amounts of students work. Electronic grading also comes in handy when you don't have a lot of time, I can only imagine the time crunch a teacher would have, this is why this system would be beneficial to a teacher, it is a very easy and quick way of storing and grading the work the students have done. However, with every good thing there are some cons, like it talks about in the book " the academic performance of young learners is more nuanced than test assessments fully measure." (2013, Maloy) This is the main reason i'm against electronic grading systems, because I want to teach at a elementary level, this system would not be something I would use on a daily basis. If my students were to take a test, work hard to learn about the required information, I would feel like there was a responsibility to me as a teacher to go through their work and grade it myself. When doing so, If a student were to get something so wrong and be totally off track, instead of just grading it wrong, you could go over that problem with the student, see where they got confused and help them get through it.


Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Blog Post J. Chapter 11.

Chapter eleven introduced lots of new ideas to me, one I found to be very interesting "are places where students and teachers together make substantive decisions about important aspects of educational operations, from the academic curriculum to school climate and rules."(Maloy, 2013) This is called a democratic schools and classrooms. If teachers were to allow the students the decision of making the calls in the classroom there would be a lot more free time and less time actually learning. For this reason I think that this concept is really cool. The curriculum, and what is being taught is still the job of the teacher, however, how the materiel is going to be taught will be decided by the classroom " through honest dialogue, debate, and discussion making between students and teacher." (Maloy, 2013)


PowToon Digital Portfolios Pros & Cons 

Another great thing I took from chapter eleven is student participation systems. This is a wireless tool that allows interactive learning benefit for teachers and students. After my reeding I cant help but think its something like KaHoot.it where the students have to answer the questions that are being asked on the big screen on their own computer or tablet. The only difference is with the student participation systems, you have an actually clicker or "remote". I think that this idea is a great to get the students to think and play together as a classroom.


Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

 Montgomery, Mary Audrey. "Digital Portfolios." Digital Portfolios Pros & Cons. 4 Nov. 2015. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

Blog Post I. Chapter 6.

Chapter six was filled with great information, it was crazy to see how it related to what we have been learning through the semester and just this past week. One thing that we have been using this semester is a social Bookmarking, we are using a site called Delicious this has become one of my favorite tools to use. I am big on writing things down to save them, but I often lose them because of the amount of books and scraps of paper I write them on, this tool allows me to bookmark all of the websites I may need to go back to, without losing them. And with social bookmarking you are able to also find other sties that are saved through tags that other teachers may have posted. This is probably my favorite tool because this is a social thing, you often find other great sites to use, from other educators.

Felt flower bookmark. By Teresa DownUnder. Uploaded on October 5th, 2014

WebQuest is what our assignment was this week. The definition of a WebQuest is an inquiry - oriented activity in which some or all of the information that students interact with comes from resources on the internet. The WebQuest I created this week was directed towards second graders, they were asked to chose a State, from a recourse provided, then draw out the State chosen, then with further searching they were instructed to find the State bird, flower, and flag, along with three fun fact they found on their own. At the end of the three days given to them for this Quest they will show their drawing to the classmates and share the three fun facts they discovered. The book has described as an online tour, I also think of it as a scavenger hunt.

Direction, By Ram Karthik, taken on September, 19th 2009 

Videoconferencing, is a new concept for me. I am familiar with Skype, and FaceTime, they are both a great way to communicate with someone. I usually kept the conversations on these communication tools strictly for socialization. Although that is what this is for, I never thought about using it for an educational use. I think that using this for online classes could give a similar experience for the involved and interested feeling between student and teacher.

VideoConferencing works for dogs, too. By Amber Case. Taken on February 26th 2010 

Resources: 

VideoConferencing works for dogs, too. By Amber Case. Taken on February 26th 2010 

Direction, By Ram Karthik, taken on September, 19th 2009 

Felt flower bookmark. By Teresa DownUnder. Uploaded on October 5th, 2014

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Blog Post H. Chapter 9.

After reading chapter nine, I feel that my knowledge has been expanded, on what types of technologies can be used to help students in a classroom. Whether its ways for teaching them or helping them learn with the technology.

One of my all time favorite tools is the Power Point; with this tool a teacher is able to display questions or comments for short writing assignments. For elementary students this tool could be used as a way to give direction to the students on what the assignment may be. Or could even be used as a way to help a child learn a subject, with pictures and videos this could be a fun way to get their attention and learn in the process. Another great way to incorporate power points in a classroom is make them into games for the kids to enjoy and learn.

YouTube is also on of my favorites; I don’t think I would be comfortable letting my elementary students use this without supervision, so I found this site to be more so directed as a teacher tool. There are educational channels that teacher can connect through and get ideas from, for their classroom.

It’s a great site to share different videos of what the class might be learning that week. For older students, it’s a great site to go and find information and insight on subjects.

         I often look back and remember a middle school teacher I had, who shared videos with us weekly sometimes daily. Her strategy was something like what I read from the book this week. The book gives great examples on how to teach and help the students retain the information viewed from the videos. The first step is to rewind when there’s something important the students need to know, or pause often when you have extra information you want to share with the students. Pausing the video will also give them time to take the notes they need. Second step is to ask the students to write the responses, if the video is asking questions. Pausing then again will come in handy so they have time to think about the question being asked and can come up with a intelligent response. The last thing I found to be very interesting is; turning off the volume or the picture, this allows the student to think critically either way. If the picture is gone the student can then imagine what the visual is that is not being shown, or vice versa, the student can then use their imagination as to what the visuals is portraying.

Resources:

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Blog Post G Chapter 10.

Early on in this chapter there were three questions that we were asked to focus on. These questions really caught my attention, and while reading through the chapter I reflected on them. First is how can technology engage and inspire learning for diverse students? With all the different types of learning styles there are in the classroom, technology can be an easier approach to interact and connect diverse students. Technology can give students varieties of learning techniques for the different styles of learning that a teacher could experience in a classroom. Second question asked is, how can assistive technologies be incorporated into instruction to support teaching all learners? After reading, I found so many great assistive technologies that can help direct students with disabilities. One technology that can be used in a classroom, a student could be provided with an E-reader, this will allow the student to be able to answer the questions asked by a voice adaptive software, this keeps the child with a learning disability caught up with the rest of the class. I've often heard that technology skills come easier to children with learning disadvantages, and that they are drawn to computers and gadgets. A good thing about assistive technology is it doesn’t only have to be used with students with a learning disability but also students, who just need a little motivation, academic skills, and social development. Last question is, how does technology promote learning success for young writers? With technology there are tons of ways to help with such as, “Prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing stages of the writing process. Technology openers for prewriting/brainstorming include: interactive electronic storybooks, storybook apps, web materials, or audio and videotapes.” (Maloy, 2013) This not only helps the students with the work, but also the teacher’s benefit from it as well, because they cant be at three places at once, these technology devices help them out. 

Resources:  

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.