Reflective Blog #8

One Aha moment that I had was that if I would have taken this class first, Integrating Technology into the Curriculum would have been a breeze. LOL. On a more serious note I see that learning these different technological skills effectively has an enormous impact on how well our students can comprehend what we are teaching them. This is especially true for students who are in low economic areas where their only exposure to technology is what they get at school. I think we owe it to them to prepare them with as much as possible while they are at school. How can we prepare them them as much as possible while being at school? We can better prepare ourselves by getting as much out of training as possible and by taking courses such as this one and integrating the information we learn every chance we get. Thanks for the opportunity to being exposed to such valuable instruction.

Reflective Blog #4

The tenet that I focused on for assessing learning was Learners should receive constructive guidance about how to improve. I focused on this one because all to often we as educators are given one day of training on how to implement IFL strategies or new math programs and are expected to implement it perfectly to our students. This is nearly impossible if you still have questions about the subject that your teaching or if the person who is demostrating the new program has never taught with it themselves. This is something that is all to common in some districts and is a practice that needs to be changed.

The portfolio will allow me to examine where I started at to the point of where I am going. The development of the portfolio is a vehicle in which one can use to gain understanding about the progress one has made throughout an ordeal. It allows you to go back and look at what you initially accomplished as a result of instruction and analyze the improvements that can be made overtime. Also it will motivate me to be more creative with my use of technology with my students.

Reflective Blog #7

The learning objective that I developed pertained to students using Our Story to create a timeline using photos about some element of their lives. Once the students have added all the photos that they wanted to the timeline, they would then upload the timeline to their very own blog . Then they would need to comment specifically about some of the pictures featured in their timeline. My rationale for selecting the technologies that I did was because I felt that students need to be able to write daily. In order to accomplish this the writing has to be meaningful to them in order for them to be engaged in writing. The Blog assists with this task. Also the earlier that students become acquainted with writing the better they will be at doing it when they become our age. Furthermore, by them compiling their memories into a timeline the students can always have a record of their lives that can be shielded from lost, theft, or natural disasters.
My expectations for the learning outcome is that each student will take the knowledge from the activity and build on it. Use these sites to incorporate them into their lives daily not just to meet the course requirements.
I feel that the objective that I have created has the ability to span across all age groups and can change how some even view the use of technology.

Reflective Blog #6

I believe that we live in a society that is going to face implications in technology on a daily basis. Technology has changed so much since I was a little girl growing up to now it's just amazing just watching the changes that have taken place in this global society. I'm thirty one years old and I remember in elementary school being called up to the chalkboard to solve a math problem with chalk. Today, a student can walk up to an promethean board and they can use an interactive wand to answer their math problem interactively on the board. During my studies this week I discovered how teachers can create learning communities using distance learning. Twenty years ago I wasn't able to take such a course online, I had to attend class every day. I believe that technology has changed so much that some people are afraid to try new ways of presenting materials and distributing technology based curriculum over to faculty and students. I think that was preventing some people to change their habits of thinking it's because their having difficulty to change, they want to keep teaching the same way they did fifteen years ago and it's not going to work for our students. As teachers we are competing with nintendo, ds's, WII, and other game systems, we have to come up with creative ways for students to learn in the classroom. We need to face the facts we live in a microwave society and we want to retain the knowledge in our heads in fast pace way through creativity interactively through high technology. If I could wave a magic wand around I would make it mandatory that teachers receive twelve hours of technology instruction a year and that they would have to implement technology in their daily plans. We are faced every day with a variety of ways to enhance students learning on a daily basis daily. The decision is up to the teachers and administrators to make a choice to stand for implementing technology. The reason for implementing such a plan is to introduce the learner with vast variety of resources for learning so that it would keep the interest for learning alive and not make the learner bored about the information their retaining. In 2010 we have to stay abreast of the new methods of learning for our students.

Reflective Blog #5

When creating my wiki I wanted it to be beneficial to teachers that are trying to expose their students to technology. I decided to have a wiki that compiled websites for students and teachers to utilize for curriculum I feel this is essential because I know that I am always looking for new ways to incorporate the use technology into my students' learning. Also the students themselves look forward to seeing what new sites Ms. Jackson has found for them to explore this week.
The advantages of compiling a wiki for this purpose is that teachers don't have to go through and search through lists of sites that are not age appropriate or that my not be content specific enough to address their students needs. Another advantage is that if the location of the site has changed recently one can always update the information immediately. Furthermore with the wiki you can upload the site to the wiki so that those viewing the site are no more than a click away from access.

Reflective Blog #2

Eductional technology is defined as basically using technology in the classroom to advance/enhance a students method of learning. In a sense it is getting the learner off of his/her seat and on their feet to stimulate higher thinking processes. Technology forces the learner to be multi-faceted in how they are able to process the information that is presented to them at a given time. By exposing students to technology it enables them to begin receiving the training that they will need in order to operate and compute systems on a global level.
I feel that the YouTube video was synonomous with what I have been telling my students for the longest. They have to have a different mind set about their own education. We can want it for them and give them the tools that they need, but unless they make up in their mind that they want something different it doesn't really matter what we do. The other thought that came to me after watching the first YouTube video was relating to the whole digital divide debate. This is going to forever be a challenge to schools that are in low income areas. That's why I think that I should show this video to my students so that they can be better informed with what life's going to be like for them. This video needs to be shown to the parents as well. I don't think that non-educated parents sometimes realize the demand that will be placed upon their children in the near future and that if they don't begin to make sure that their children are well equipped with the skills to compete with the rest of the industrialized world, then they will find themselves worse off than the generations that were before them.
The second YouTube video "Pay Attention" presented various ways in which one could
incorporate the use of technology into their classroom. The problem I found with some of these are the mentality that the school board has towards the possession of such devices let alone the use of them on campus. In order for said devices to be used in the implementation of curricula the powers that be must change their perceptions about them first. I am all for using technology in classroom, but I must also comply with the laws of the school districts as well. If some if the manufacturers of this products would demonstrate the educational value that these products could/do have this would speed up the implimentation of the technologies that were mentioned in the video.