Week Six

IN CLASS
The teacher sites for today were:

• http://www.tech4learning.com/

This website provided trial downloads for various software programs including: Frames, ImageBlender, MediaBlender, Pixie, WebBlender, Twist, Wixie, and Recipes4Success. I honestly will probably never consult this webpage again since all of these programs are more geared towards the elementary level.

• http://www.teach42.com/

This website is actually an educational technology blog. In this respect, it is a bit difficult to navigate unless you are looking for a particular topic. This blog could definitely be useful to my career if I was looking for a teacher perspective concerning technology in education. For example, one entry that I found interesting chronicled the top 10 Web 2.0 programs that could be used by teachers. Noted programs included many of those that we have actually covered in class such as Wordle, VoiceThread, and Delicious.

• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

This website was yet another educational technology blog. I would most definitely consult this site when I am a teacher to see the new, everchanging innovations that I could possibly utilize in my classroom. When browsing this blog during class, one entry struck me as something I could use: Awesome Highlighter. This website allows students to navigate various webpages and highlight useful text and even add their own notes to a large quantity of information through an Awesome Highlighter account. I see this as being a great tool for my high schoolers to use when conducting research projects where they would be navigating innumerable webpages in search of relevant information.

POST CLASS

The selection of readings for this week focused on Web 2.0 applications and their benefits for education. Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as "web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them."

The first article that I read was Robert Bell's Twittering 2nd-Graders. This article chronicled a partnership of second grade teachers who use the mini-blogging site Twitter to connect their students together while also developing essential writing skills. This is a fantastic example of how social technologies can be utilized for education!

The second article that I read was Chris Riedel's Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners. The article presented ten websites that an education technology consultant, Gail Lovely, gathered that could be used in the classroom for collaborative and active learning majorly for elementary students. The ten websites were:

1. Kerpoof
2. Voki
3. Create-a-Graph
4. Yack Pack
5. Animoto
6. Skype
7. Glogster
8. Voicethread
9. Blogs
10. Wikis

Week Five

IN CLASS
Today in class we explored four teacher sites:

• http://it.coe.uga.edu/wwild/pptgames/index.html
• http://techlearning.com/
• http://www.eduhound.com/
• http://www.teachertube.com/

I would most definitely use the WWILD, EduHound, and TeacherTube websites. WWILD provided PowerPoint games for teachers of various age groups and content areas. EduHound is a database of educational webpages organized by popular topics (e.g.: Anne Frank, black history, etc.). TeacherTube is an educator's YouTube; it provides access to videos that can supplement lessons. I was not interested in the Tech&Learning website because it was too weighed down with advertisements. I could not easily navigate the pages for any information without being bombarded with an ad. The website itself is used to provide articles, resources, blogs, webinars, and other forums devoted to the advocacy of educational technologies.

POST CLASS

Our readings for Week Four centered on the broad topic of "technology in learning":

The first article was written by an individual associated with ASU. She concentrated on expostulating the everchanging innovations in technology that have occurred in a short ten years. The majority of the article chronicled the different ways that a group of teachers incorporated technology in facilitating student learning.

The second article focused on the important characteristics of technology in respects to education. The author, Lemke, cited three major ways that technology has an influence on education: development of 21st century skills, help high academic achievement, and build problem-solving ability and accountability (Lemke, 1). The rest of the article went through how technology helps to develop higher cognitive thinking skills (i.e.: Bloom's taxonomy), as well.

Our readings for Week Five centered on the topic of how to effectively change classrooms to support digital learners:

The first article I read was Connecting the Digital Dots by Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan. The entire piece focused on how the way people learn has changed with the onslaught of different technologies and that complete literacy is not valid until technology is involved. The bi-line says the point of the article perfectly: "[l]iteracy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively" (Jones-Kavalier & Flannigan, 8).

The second article that I read was Constructing Learning by Sherman and Kurshan. This article was interesting because it focused in on how just using technology in the classroom was not enough. Technology can only be made relevent when teachers take a constructivist approach to instruction. In short, the students need to be able to actively participate in their own technological education.

Week Four

IN CLASS

We looked at the IDEAL website (http://www.ideal.azed.gov/) which is provided to every public school in Arizona for free. I most definitely will be using this teacher site in my future career. The website had two major characteristics that I found extremely helpful. First, it had an announcements page which listed education-based activities and events around the state (i.e.: the Declaration of Independence will be at the State Capitol Building next week!). Second, it provided access to a great deal of resources for teachers both for classroom and professional development. Examples of the resources include: assessments, primary sources, lesson plans, examples/explanations of performance objectives, and professional resources.

POST CLASS
There were no assigned readings for this week; we completed the first part of the copyright module on BlackBoard in its stead.

Week Three

IN CLASS

We looked at another teacher site this week called http://www.thinkfinity.org/. This website listed potential resources for educators in all subjects taking into consideration state standards and effective technology incorporation in the classroom.

Personally, I would most definitely use this site post-graduation. I looked at the various resources that they have posted just for Black History Month and was excited to see all the options that they have open. Also, the content can be greatly geared to the secondary classroom which is the level at which I am planning to teach at.

POST CLASS

Our readings this week focused on the educational philosophy of constructivism. Constructivism was defined as “relating new experienced to prior knowledge”; in this respect, we learn new material via the foundation of our previous understandings (Sherman, 10). This approach revolves around student centered teaching where students are expected to communicate their thoughts through questions, discussions, and overall engagement in a lesson (Sprague & Dede, 7). There were eight principles that characterize the constructivist approach (Sherman, 11):

1) Learner-centered
2) Interesting
3) Real life
4) Social
5) Active
6) Time
7) Feedback
8) Supportive

In all, it was interesting to learn about this approach. I thought that these were all pretty “common sense” practices when it comes to being an effective teacher. A teacher must be enthusiastic and engage their students throughout their lesson, while simultaneously encouraging their students to take responsibility for their own learning through high expectations and supportive facilitation during independent practice.