EDST 220: Reflection

1. Have your opinions about technology integration in education changed since the beginning of the term? Why or why not?

 Through this class I have realized how beneficial technology can be in the classroom. Throughout my experience in the classroom technology has only been an award or a distraction in the classroom. I think this was because the teacher's didn't have a lot of resources of educational technology. I now have a lot of resources of educational technology that supplements learning rather than hindering it.

2. Identify one or more programs/web apps introduced this term you believe you'll use in your future classroom. Why will you use these programs/apps?

I will be creating a classroom blog when I get a classroom. While working at my field experience and with my teacher, we created a classroom blog to connect students, teachers, and parents. This has become a huge success. The teacher can send out reminders to the students, parents can stay informed on what is going on in the classroom, and students can upload documents and assignments. Through the blog we have also added a resource page that allows us to pick educational websites and on-line activities that we think would supplement our student's learning. This blog has been very successful!

I also really enjoyed StoryJumper, I think that this is a great tool for younger students to use. With this program you are able to put images to your creative story. While talking with my teacher she wants to create a book for her 1 year old daughter using pictures of things she would recognize like her bed, her dog, etc to expand her vocabulary. With this program you can create a story and then print it out, but also have a hard cover made! Genius!  Print Page in IE

Students Using Technology

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Wordle

"Changes that must take place in K-12 schools before educators can fully integrate and utilize technology."

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Integrating Websites into the Classroom

Ricci Adams: MusicTheory.net

This website includes a very extensive list of lesson plans based on music theory. This lesson plans are completely interactive, allowing the use to see the notes being written and displayed as well as listen to the note for note identification. The interactive lessons would be a great way for the students to independently start exploring music. This website allows so many visuals, I think it can really compliment the teacher's instruction. 

This website also has exercises, which are like interactive worksheets, where the students complete certain tasks based on the lesson. What I like about these exercises is that you can use the template already available or you can make your own, focusing on the specific skills, notes, etc that you are learning during that lesson. 

 

This website also has an interactive piano that plays the note of the key when you click on it. This allows students to experience playing a piano without having one of their own. 

How could you use this website in the classroom?

This website is a very useful tool for independent exploration. Because of the engaging and interactive lesson plans students are able to actively visualize and listen to the notes and their duration, placement, and pitch. 

Once the students independently explore this website, the teacher can then bring them back together to give their own lesson on the subject matter of their choice. Then this website offers the neat feature of giving the students practice with key, scale, note, and pitch identification. This is great for General Education Classroom teachers who want to integrate music into their classroom without have the proper instruments. 

The teacher can also customize an exercise to use as a assessment tool  to see if the student was able to retain the knowledge presented in the lesson. 

How could this site be used to extend learning beyond the classroom?

One of the cool features of this website is that it has a staff paper generator where you can print your own staff paper, either blank or piano. Students can then use the interactive piano to create a score which they can then record on their staff paper. This would allow students to create music using the sounds of the piano without actually having one. This site enables a very independent style of learning making it easily accessible to any student outside of the classroom. With the interactive nature of the site students can start to experience the wonders of music, and hopefully lead to an interest that will last a lifetime.

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Project-Based Learning: Hiking the Appalachian Trail

1. I chose this project for many reasons. First and  foremost, the subject matter they will learn through this project is directly related to experience they will encounter throughout their life. Maybe not hiking, but traveling by road or even by air. This project encourages students to plan ahead and prepare for all possible outcomes. This activity involves the environment which is important to me, and also promotes physical activity in a fun and exciting way. The layout of the website was easily navigated and the descriptions of the project were easy to understand and follow. 
2. I think that this project is using all of the higher level thinking skills. I'll start backwards: Evaluate - students are not only going to be evaluating their peers' contributions but they have to evaluate all of their gathered information. To do this they need to compare data from their multiple resources, increasing their evaluation skills. They also need to evaluate whether or not their plan would work in the real world. This project requires students to create a presentation at the end explaining their findings and their plan for The Hike. Additional higher level thinking skills include: analyzing and synthesizing. They need to breakdown each aspect of the hike into manageable parts - what to wear, what to bring, where to go etc. Researching this will require them to sort through the information and find the best and most applicable information to their specific hike. They also need to put everything they researched individually into a collective whole, making sure all participants understand all aspects of the project. I think this project develops a lot of skills including team building, communication, collaboration, and life skills. 
3. The only thing I would change about the project is that I would want to get the students some real life experiences of what it means to plan a hike. I think it would be fun to plan a day trip (even if its just hiking around the playground) and involve scenarios like "it's suddenly raining and there is no shelter nearby to keep dry... What should you do?" and this would require students to evaluate if they prepared for all scenarios. While it is unrealistic that every group will remember to prepare for every scenario I think that putting them through a simulation would allow them to get a more real life understanding. 

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Middle School Project-Based Learning: Hiking the Appalachian Trail Print Page in IE

Bloom's Taxonomy & Telecollaborative Projects

I believe the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy you are referring to is Analysis (even though synthesis and evaluation are up there as well). Analysis is: Distinguishing, classifying, relating, analyzing, and hypothesizing. Telecollaborative projects do all of this in multiple ways. The first is obviously through the information learned during the project. Students are often asked to research something and make a conclusion or a final project. This ensures that they are distinguishing between good and bad sources, sorting through the information and analyzing what is valuable and what is not. They are also relating the topic to their lives through working with their peers to create a good project that reflects their personalities as well as the information researched.

Telecollaborative projects also ensure that students are working together. This is such an important skill to be learned at an early age. This requires students to listen and communicate effectively. As a group they combine their multiple ideas into a final project, they develop and create things as a team. They are then asked to evaluate themselves, their projects, and their peers. This requires them to both judge and justify their work and the work of others. Grading both the final project as a group grade, and grading individuals based on their score and the scores from others ensures learning of the information as well as developing collaborative communication and teamwork skills. It teaches students how to hold themselves and others accountable.  Telecollaborative projects requires students to work on all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy in order to complete the project effectively.

Bloom's Taxonimy

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Assignment - Reading Response #1

1. Technology Past - As a student my use of computers was fairly limited until high school. In grade school we did have computer class once a week for 30 min. I remember learning how to use Paint and playing the Oregon Trail. As a middle school student I hardly used computers during school, at that time my family had a computer and I would use that to type the occasional paper. In high school I took a typing class where we played typing games but also worked a lot in Microsoft Word and Excel. One of my high school teachers also wrote a technology grant and was awarded a classroom Mac Lab so we did a lot of presentations with PowerPoint, smart boards, and video.

2. Technology Present - I'm not sure what grade I will be teaching yet but I think it will be elementary. I think that it is important to teach children how to use computers because more often than not Middle School and High School's are requiring papers to be typed rather than hand written. Many students can not afford to have a household computer and therefore have no prior training in computers. While I think it is important that we teach students at a young age to use computers I am nervous about the short amount of time that we have students in our classroom. In an ideal world I would have something like a Mac Lab where I would work with students twice a week on simple computer skills like typing, working with a mouse, Paint, and so fourth. As the students get older the more technology integration the better as long as it is used educationally and not just to play games. PowerPoint and other visuals for presentations are good skills to have, as well as a blackboard/blog site where they can communicate homework questions with each other and the teacher, as well as retrieve any handouts needed. It is also great to have a classroom site to keep the parents in tune to what is going on in the classroom.


3. Technology Future - The main concerns I have were briefly stated before but relate to time and money. I want to be able to integrate technology into the classroom in an effective way that enhances the curriculum rather than taking away from it. This can be hard to do unless you are well versed in technology yourself. I am more than willing to write a technology grant to receive a Mac Lab for my classroom (it was great in high school for those students who didn't have access to be able to check out a computer over night). I am glad I am taking a class like this now learning how to use Blogger because that can potentially enable me to set up a classroom blog where my students and their parents can have constant access to what is going on in the classroom. Print Page in IE

Avatars in Education

How can avatars be used to support education? 
There are many ways that you can use avatars within the classroom. First of all, I think that learning needs to be fun and for elementary children I think that avatars can bring in an element of fun into your classroom.  A good way to use them is to have them greet your class every morning giving that day's announcements including things like: the schedule, the vocabulary word of the day, birthdays etc. It could parallel the announcements heard over the loud speaker in the classroom but show them another form of technology. 

Additional Uses for a Voki...

1. To hide student identity on the Internet
2. For a presentation for shy students
3. For digital storytelling
4. For repetitive directions
5. Creative writing about their Avatars story 
6. Write directions on how to create their avatar and then switch with parents 
7. To recreate novel characters to help with visual learners in a story 

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