Newsletter/Flyer Reflection

I am glad that I was forced to come up with a newsletter and flyer as the final project by myself. The other projects during the course have been beneficial, but I have learned more because I was forced to do this on my own. Computer technology has not been a strong area for me since I am not a traditional student and computer technology was more primitive when I was first a student. This class and various projects have forced my out of my comfort zone and have made me more aware of the vast technological world out there and the dire need to utilize what we have available to us. I know that technology is essential in the educational field and am better equipted to use technology in my future classroom and curriculum.

Do You Believe in Me? Video Reflection

I truly got a kick out of this young man, Dalton Sherman, who so bravely inquired of his adult audience if they believed in him and his fellow students. He pleaded to convince his audience that they held in their power to positively influence his generation. He implored that his audience must first believe in themselves and that their most important job was this duty. He insisted that every position within the school system is vitally important. He was very sucessful in his plea as he earned a standing ovation from his audience. I was touhed by his message in that we are so vitally important to all of our future students. They will be relying on us to believe in ourselves first and to then believe in them. We must dedicate our future professions to this calling, after all they, our future students, will need us to.

More on technology

There are so many many tools out there to adapt and use. I especially liked working with power point and putting together an acrostic for my classroom. It not only will help students with learning some basic principles of the importance of exercise and fitness, but can further promote technology. It is imperative that we keep up with our ever changing world in order to provide the most beneficial education for our students. It we don't, we will be left in the dust.

Todays Technology

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Noun: A Person, Place or Thing Video Reflection

At first I felt like this video was more geared to the younger grades because its a cartoon, but then I felt like the content would be a little advanced for the younger grades. It was appropriate for middle to older grades, but maybe a little childish in the presentation. I thought the other video using live actors who were chanting or used more popular music would be more appealing to the older grades. But as I continued, I thought the song became catchy and mostly thought it was appealing overall. It definetely taught and instilled the concept of what a noun is and where we can expect to find them.

Technology Tools in Education

This week we have been further instructed to consider how these tools might benefit our students in future classrooms. I have spent several hours surfing educational tools in the internet and there is a extremely wide selection of wonderful and educational technological tools available to us. It would be a disservice to our students to not use and teach with these tools in order to broaden their minds with what is available to us.

The connected classroom video reflection

This video was similiar to many we have seen this semester, imploring us as educators to keep up the the rapidly growing pace of modern technology. It astounds me the comparison of both
China and India to us here and it scares me the reprecussions of not doing our part to try to keep up. We will obviously never catch up to their population or even their technology, but if we don't educate our students in that direction, we will be squished. It is our duty and our responsibilty to not hold our students back. They are our future leaders and we must strive to push them in that direction and not hold them back. We cannot be old school. We must focus on technology and our future.

Kidspiration/Inspriration Reflection

I was really impressed and excited about the kidspiration and inspiration lesson. I feel that this will be a great tool to use in my future classroom. I realize that there are still many who feel like having real hands on type of activities are more beneficial and I do still feel like they have there place. However, we are in a technological world and having benficial activities that promote creative learning for our students will be necessary. I spent along time with the various activities on there 2 sites and I know that my students will be able to learn from what they have to offer. In our world we need to help our students have access to technological resources, not only for learning but for fun as well.

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.

UEN page with Videos and Technological Articles

By having this page available to my students on my classroom website, I am providing a means by which they can access fun educational videos that will catch and keep their attention. Students today are bombarded with many different possibilities of technology. They have devices at their immediate disposal for communicating and entertainment. If we expect them to learn with the methods of our own education, we will most likely lose them because they may become bored. By offering such videos, and other technological opportunities, we will more likely engage them. They will be able to more effectively collaborate with their peers on various subjects and objectives and thus more effectivley learn what we are hoping to teach them. Students of todays technology will be our future leaders, and we as teachers must do our part to prepare them for their world.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today Reflection

After viewing this video, I am even more convinced that preparing teachers for tomorrow's students of technology is of upmost importance. If we do not keep up with this rising generation of technology, we will surely be holding our students back. It is eye opening to realize how much these young students already use technology. They will most certainly continue to advance in their knowledge and use of it, and we must therefore keep up with them. This is the way they communicate, socialize, relax and collaborate, why not then should it be a way for them to learn and grow. This vision of our future students must lead the way for us to prepare to teach them, and help them reach their full potential.