How Not to Use Powerpoint Reflection

It made my chuckle to watch this video, because I am not alone in admitting I have been subjected to long and boring PowerPoint presentations, such as the video was referring to. I still feel like power point has a valuable place in education, but its important to limit the information to essentials. In the elementary setting, students would quickly be tuned out if the information were too lengthy and monotonous. I feel like if I were to include more creative fonts, pictures and graphs, and keep the information to a minimum, the presentation could still be beneficial and interesting.

Powerpoint and Google Presentation Reflection

It still amazes me just how much technology is available to us, if we just know how to access it. I have learned something new everytime I have come to class that will benefit me in my future classrooms. I have been aware of power point, and have attended lectures which use this feature, but I have not actually used it myself until class this week. I feel like in my future classes, I could use this avenue to create interesting slide shows for my students, and I could educate my students to use it as well. Then, when we created a similiar assignment, using google presentation, I was even more impressed. This was much more effective when using in a group collarboration setting. I am excited to offer this to my future students who will be able to work together on projects and utilize this technology.

Mashup video Reflection

When we first watched this video in class, I didn't realize it was a mash up of many different youtube videos. I just thought they were coming together to put together their music. It was interesting to see all the many different videos and how they were put together. I felt that it was well done and amazed how for the most part it seemed to flow into one production. It just goes to show that we are all unique, and when can collarborate to make one big thing better and more entertaining than if we were all by ourselves. We can teach our students that by mashing up, we can put all of our ideas together and make one big idea better.

Digital Cameras Reflection

I have a digital camera and wonder often how I ever lived with out it. They offer so much to us and the click of a button. In education I feel like it will be very beneficial in my classroom. I plan to use it in various situations. I feel like students can benefit from using digital technology when they are putting together projects. They can collaborate with their fellow students to be creative in assignments. When we put pictures to our words, it comes alive. There will always be a place for imaginations without pictures, but in many instances, they can be free to express themselves with pictures. While there here is still a place for self expression, I still feel like they can also accomplish this sometimes with the help of a camera.

We Didn't Start the Fire Video Reflection

I have heard this song before on the radio, but had not ever really paid attention to it. It was enlightning to see this video depicting many important evets in history to which the song pays tribute to. I feel like these types of videos can provide a mini history lesson to our students today. They tend to relate more to music and videos that teach in this format than to a docutmentary type. If anything, it can show them the cronological order of many important events and people in our more recent history, that have all played a role in shaping who we are as a nation and even a global community. I think that these types of videos can contribute to our students appreciation for history as well as other subjects.

Internet Use Reflection

I strongly agree that we should use the internet in our educational experiences. I feel like with out it, we would be putting our students at a disadvantage in todays technological world. There is a vast amount of information available to us as educators and to our students at the click of a button. We would be doing ourselves and our students an injustice to not provide this as an avenue of learning. However, we need to be extremely careful about making sure our students are aware of the many dangers that they could be exposed to. When necessary precautions are practiced, the internet can be a very safe and valuable tool. We must educate our students about these internet hazards and provide an avenue of learning what they should and should not do while surfing the internet.
When we as educators explore the internet, we must be mindful of the sites we visit. Since there is no premisis for checking the credentials of authors who provide information, we must protect ourselves by doing some homework. Some important questions to ask ourselves when visiting various websites is:

1. Who wrote the information and what are their credentials?
2. What is the purpose of the website, does it seem to be informational in nature?
3. Is the information credible for teaching or learning?
4. Is the information biased, or does it present various viewpoints?
5. How recently was the information written, is it up to date?
6. Why should I consider using the information, does is seem reliable and have back-up sources?

When we help our students to learn about internet credibility, we must also have them research these question as well with our help.

Web 2.0 Reflection

Many of the communication devices available for use on the internet are still perplexing and unfamiliar to me. I am familiear with blogging, but the others are somewhat vague to me. I do see the benefit of some in an educational setting to enhance the learning experience, but I feel for some I would need more experience to utilize them. As I have mentioned several times before, I feel a strong need to educate myself with respect to technology in order to provide a foundation for my students to suceed in our modern society. Since I can understand blogging, I will address it. I feel like most students would benefit if they were able to more effectively commnunicate with their peers in many circumstances. When they are assinged projects and assingments, they could greatly benefit from a collarboration effort. If they could make comments on a blogger account, they could help others and themselves while away from the school setting. Their blogging would need to be monitored by teachers to make sure that it is kept appropriate and no cheating takes place. I feel like some of the other options could also be beneficial such as wiki spaces and podcasts. It is liberating to see so much available to todays students, but we need to act fast to keep up with our changing world.

Did You Know 3.0 Video Reflection

Everytime I watch one of these types of videos about the ever fastly technological advancing society we are living in, it humbles me. For so many years I have lived only thinking we were of such a powerful country. One of the points that this video makes is just how insignificant the United States really is. China and India are 2 countries that are rapidly passing us up on a technical scale and will soon leave us far in the dust. We owe it to the children we will be teaching to do our part to prepare them for this world. We will only hold them back if we don't do our part. From a very young age, we need to teach technology to them and not hold them back. This generation will benefit in everyway if we do what we can to keep them on task of advancing, the world will certainly be advancing and will leave us in the dust if we don't keep up.

Surface Computing Video Reflection

This weeks video seemed a little out of place for me in this class. Although it pertained to computer technology, I didn't feel like it particularly pertained to education. It was interesting how you can paricipate in a chess game via a computer screen with someone across the world, or that you could both similtaniously draw a picture on your screen, or even drive computer cars on anothers persons computer course, it just didn't fit the curriculum or objective for this course. I did however further impress me that the type of technology available to us it vast and very quickly moving forward at a very constant and fast pace. I hope and will constantly strive to keep up.

UEN Reflection

UEN Reflection
I was at first apprehensive about this week’s assignment, but after getting started, I became increasingly curious and excited about the UEN experience. I had no idea that there was such an informational and unique site available to teachers and students.
I felt like the pioneer library offered students and teachers exceptional information to be utilized for many various activities and projects. For younger students, the “searchasaurus” provided many fun facts and activities. For both younger and older students, there are pages full of information for reports, projects, and for just plain fun. In my future classroom, I will have my students use this site for both their personal time to learn and explore as well as for providing valuable information for projects.
As I explored the main UEN page, I was fascinated at all the great interactive activities available for me to incorporate in my classroom. I feel like when my students are involved with either a report or other various projects, they will have multiple wonderful information they can access though this site. The themepark area has wonderful “hands on” activities, rich with ideas and experience. I could have groups of students work together on a particular virtual field trip and then report their experience to the rest of the class.
I also was very intrigued with the core curriculum link with the attached lessons plans offered. I thought it contained many very well written lessons plans that will offer me as an educator many enriching activities and lessons for my students. I spent quite a bit of times exploring these curriculum ideas, and lesson plans. I feel like they provide me many wonderful ideas to teach my students.
I particularly liked the “culturegram” link about students of other countries. I feel like my students can learn a lot by reading about other students around the world. This website offers them information with the touch of a button. I feel like by having them find information about students from another particular country, they can broaden their own social abilities. They will also be able to explore history in a different way by reading about many different times in our history as well as history of the world when they are able the “surf help of this site. I will most definitely utilize UEN in my future classroom because I feel like the ages” in this website. I spent some time here learning about some interesting facts in history that I wasn’t aware of. I also felt that the “world book” offered many very interesting facts about what happened on a particular day as well as other great information that could be so easily found with the it greatly help my students.