Blog #6

      I went onto Raa Middle School's website. The website includes pertinent information like a list of the teachers and their departments, as well as a list of all athletics activities. Once you click on a specific department you can see all of the teachers with a link to their own websites. Each website is different and unique to the teacher themselves. On these websites you can expect to see what is expected of your child and how their teacher is. Ms. Langston, teaches all language arts for all of the grades.

      It is almost impossible to have a technology free classroom today. With all of this readily available technology to use at our finger tips, I think teachers should be excited and should use every resource available to them. Certain word processing features like spell check, mail merge, and desktop publishing can be very helpful for teachers and students to learn at such an early age! In my classroom I plan to incorporate things like Twitter or TopHat that way students have a comfortable and easy way to interact with one another. I would also plan to use google apps for education quite a lot as well. Through google I have learned about blogger, google docs, google slides, and much more. They have all been very useful to me so I know it would be useful to my students as well!
     
       I'm not going to lie the last assignment was difficult to me. I have never used Wiki before or anything like it. I had trouble navigating the website and figuring out how it all worked. I cannot see myself using this much in the future because I had such a difficult learning curve. Maybe if someone sat down and took me through it, I would like it but as of now I am not a fan. I liked that you could invite others to collaborate on it, though. I do feel like this potentially could be a useful tool to use in my future career, but again I would need a lot more assistance with it.

Blog #5

     The podcast explains that Web 2.0 allow users to interact and share with one another. These uses include blogs or youtube.  I think blogs and Wiki can be useful for the classroom because they allow for a fun and interactive way for students to interact with each other. Twitter however, can become very easily distracting and does not have a filter for unwanted content.

       A peripheral is a device that is connected to a computer system for its operation. They can be easily added through the use of USB and help increase versatility in the classroom (Technology in the Classroom 120). For a computer, it is imperative that there is an output device (monitor or printer/scanner), an input (keyboard and mouse), some storage (hard disk drive or optical drive) and a system unit (containing the CPU and RAM). Once you have all of the components for your computer you can begin to effectively use some of the tools described above!

      The classroom will also need an effective network. Most schools operate by a server that connected all of the computers on one network. So basically the way computers and the internet works is: the internet goes to web server which then goes to the server, which goes to the network, and then the network branches out to all the individual computers. Got it?

       I found Popplet to be really interesting! I personally am a very visual learner. Anytime that I am studying for a test or trying to understand a topic I always have to write it out with some sort of visual aid. I guess I didn't really realize it but I've been making concept maps all along! My study sheets don't necessarily look like the traditional concept maps but they are closely related.

        One thing that I find very innovative about Popplet is that it is an app and not just a website. So, it has easy to access and use capabilities. Most young children are visual learners. { I guess I never grew out of this ;) } So I think this would be a great outlet for kids to get their thoughts together. This way kids can concretely see how certain things are connected and related to each other.

        If we did a class project on the states, each kid could get their own state and draw connections. For example if a child had Florida they could say "the sunshine state" and oranges. I like all the cool colors, fonts, and shapes Popplet offers!

http://popplet.com

      I have never mad a concept map on my own before. I have seen many of them and used them to study but never actually created one of my own. Webspiration gave me some trouble in the beginning but I figured it out after a while. I like that I could make my own map form scratch. I did't use a template. It's cool how I could pick the shape bubbles I wanted and make them any size and any color. The only thing I didn't like was Webspiration itself because it was a little slow and troublesome at times. I will definitely be using concept maps in the future and I will show my students how to create their own. Sometimes students learn better when they create something on their own.

Blog #4

        I choose a standard under English Language Arts for Grade 2. This particular standard addresses how to display what a child has learned through some sort of excersize. For example I have listed the link below to a game that teaching children how to make compounds words with the help of pictures. I thought it was pretty cool and I would love to show this to the elementary class that I help mentor!  Standard: Cluster 3 LAFS.2.W.3: Research to Build and Present Knowledge                    

Link to website: http://www.fcrr.org/studentactivities/V_009b.pdf
This tool is an educational game. I plan to use this in my classroom because most children are visual learners just like myself, and pictures can really help. Also, what kid doesn't like to play games? Showing children that learning can be fun and educational at the same time makes them more eager to learn. I would teach a lesson on what compound words are and let them give me a few examples and then I would introduce them to this really fun game.

Before this class, if I was doing a project or just wanted to google a question, I would often times just go with the first source that came up. As we all know that is not always the best way to go about research. Just about anyone can post just about anything they want on the internet so we need to be careful about what sources we use. I found the acronym ABCDT very useful, I have never heard of it before.

Author: Credentials?

Bias: Resource neutral?

Content: Accurate & Current?

Design: Clear?

Technical Elements: Function properly? 

      I never considered things such as stability. I never paid attention to the URL or domain names. It's super important to pay attention to the URL and do some research to make sure the sites are okay to view before showing them to my students. I would hate for something like the "White house" site described in the podcast to happen to me or my students!! 

    

      From the web hunt assignment I learned just how easy it is to find information on a certain standard. I google so many things a day and I take for granted how great google is! Just typing 4 words alone can bring me to over 50+ websites on content that I am looking for. 

WEB HUNT
*You want to teach multiplication to your students. Can you find a site that teaches cool tricks or games in how to do so?
________________________________________________________________________________
* You want to teach about the about the seven contents. Can you find a cool video or worksheet to do so?
________________________________________________________________________________

      

      

Blog #3 2.1.16

      I feel most confident with RL.7 "Multimedia:" Literature & informational text. Throughout my K-12 schooling experience, all of my teachers have displayed the use of these standards. In middle and high school my classmates and I had a lot of assignments that had to do with acting and displaying our take on the topic assigned to us. Thankfully, we did more than just read a bunch of novels and essays. Our teachers put and emphasize on student exploration of the topics being discussed. I duel enrolled at my high school and in my ENC1101 class we read the classics like Odysseus,Oedipus, and death of a salesman. Once we where done reading and discussing the plays, when then watched the movie and compared and contrasted it to the text version. So I believe I have the most knowledge about those particular standards.
        I would say I need more preparation on standard W/WHST.8 "Use multiple sources". I would like more clarification on what the difference is between a primary and secondary source. I also would like to know how to find the differences between a credible and an unreliable source. And most importantly, a better understanding on how to avoid plagiarism.
     As I have said before, most children now-a-days have some sort of technology that they use everyday. Most of the kids I know today have an iPad or and iPod touch or some sort of electronic device that they use. Some kindergartens are even giving iPads to children for them to use--I know it is crazy. I believe technology use can be very beneficial in the classroom, but to an extent. I think that 3rd grade and up could probably handle things like discussion groups online or chats with their fellow classmates. The World Wide Web is another story however. This is all different kinds of crazy things posted on the internet, and as an educator in charge of a classroom of young students it is my job to monitor their computer use and make sure they don't see anything they should not be seeing at such a young age. Digital citizenship guidelines are super important when teaching students how to use the internet. These guidelines help point students in the right direction when using the internet for the first time. By the end of elementary school I believe students should be aware of copy right laws, know how to be responsible and respectful online, and navigate their way around basic websites.
      I have never created my own newsletter or classroom document from scratch before, so this was both a exciting and challenging experience for me. Figuring out to how to type on different columns gave me a little bit of trouble, along with a few aspects of Word I have never used before. I get really excited when I get to make things like this for "my classroom" so I put a lot of time into it because I wanted it to be just perfect. This assignment had me navigating around Word and finding cool things I can do with this document that I have never done before, like word art and cool graphic banners. It was a little frustrating and time consuming but I am glad I have experience with creating newsletters now! I didn't like how tricky some of the formatting was or how when I change the font or color of a word it would sometimes change to whole document from that point on. I know newsletters are super important because they help communicate with the parents, what their child is learning and what is expected of them. So with the experience I gained from this assignment I feel like I already have a great start with learning how to create my own documents for the classroom.