Assessing Meaningful Learning With Technology

In this section we learned about rubrics, inspiration and clickers. I already knew about rubrics and think that they are the best way to grade a written paper. It helps to eliminate the bias while grading papers. It gives a clear value to each item that is graded. Inspiration is pretty cool also. It helps put ideas into a concept map in an easy way.  his would be a useful tool in any class. But, the tool that I thought would be most fun to use is the clickers. I think that this tool would make assessment of student knowledge quick and easy. It would help give the teacher an accurate start point according to the student understanding from the last lesson. Additionally, it would help the teacher determine how much the students are retaining from the class. A quick review can be given at the end of the class and then the same review at the beginning of the next class. Also this tool would be fun to compare the student’s opinion on certain points and compare them to state or national opinions.

I have found this to be a fun and interesting class. I learned about a lot of tools that are free online and that help give information to students in a fun and different way. I will use many of the items that I learned about in my classes when I'm a teacher. My students will be able to see other countries without leaving the classroom. They will be emerged in technology without even realizing it and I will teach them many things they do not know. I hope to continue learning about the different tools available to teachers. One of my favorite tools we learned about was prezi. Although it was a little difficult to work, it gives a new and interesting way to present information.  Another favorite that I hope to incorporate is wiki sites. I will allow the students to create their own study guides and this will be their daily homework. This way, I will know exactly how is working on the tasks and what they are retaining from the lessons.

Technology Application Standards

Technology Application Standards are important. They outline the basic knowledge and skills that begging teachers should already have on their first year of teaching. Teachers need to have a basic level of knowledge in technology in order to effectively teach all the different learning styles. Technology helps the teacher in providing alternative ways of presenting each lesson, other than simply standing in front of the class talking or having the students write mounds notes. Technology makes the teacher put more thought into her own presentation strategy and this is a good thing. Teachers should look at all the options that are available to her in today’s technological world and figuring out how to use as many of these tools as possible. These tools will aid the teacher in making sure that most of the students learning needs are met. If an item is explained in a spoken, written, visual, and kinetic way the chances that every student will understand this particular item is greatly increased. Teachers should always keep her eyes on the prize and giving the students lasting knowledge is the best reward.

126.33. Computer Science I: This class should provide students with the basic knowledge of computer programming. This class is essential for emerging technology students. They will gain the basic understanding of how computers work. They will learn the basic computer language that is needed to write computer programs. Students that take this class will surely come out of it with more confidence in their computer literacy than any person that has worked with computers for years. It will give them insider knowledge of how a computer works. In a technology driven world this confidence and knowledge will be invaluable. I wish I would have taken this class in high school… well I don’t even know if this class was available way back then. But, it’s a class that I will recommend my kids take.

114.22. Levels I and II - Novice Progress Checkpoint: Is the TEAK that would most apply to the class that I will teach. Language other than English is also referred to as LOTE. This is an important TEAK that applied to foreign languages. It specifies the basic knowledge that the students should know after finishing a Spanish one course. It says that the work should be age appropriate. I think that that statement is implied but they decided to include it in the TEAK. There must be a reason for that I guess. Additionally, they must be able to understand and produce words and short sentences, as well as create lists and recognize the main idea in a paragraph. I will surely teach these skills with technology. I will have power point presentations as well as videos from several sources, and maybe even a guest speaker from a foreign Spanish speaking country. I think that the students would like to see what it’s really like in a country other than their own.

Visualizing with Technologies

Visualizing with technologies is another way to teach. When planning a lesson a teacher should incorporate all kinds of different ways to explain each concept, that way she can cover different leaning styles and feel like she did all she can in teaching the concept. I think that technology is a great way to incorporate visuals into a lesson. There are so many different ways that technology can aid a teacher in class. There are plenty of free online programs designed for specific subjects (especially math and science).

Chapter 9: Visualizing with Technology gives a fun project for a foreign language class; the teacher to have the student’s video tape a favorite place or activity while narrating in the target language. Another variety for this project would be to create a story board using digital photographs. Animoto.com is a great site that teachers can introduce to her students for such a project.

Discovery Education Streaming (discoveryeducation.com) is another web site that teachers can use to create fun activities for her class. One thing that I found fun and interesting on that site is that you can create puzzles using your own vocabulary words.

Podcast

With a podcast one can record video and audio or just audio. This is a useful tool for classes that are not in class lectures. They can also be used as a supplement to a lecture by having someone that is located in another place record their thoughts on the lecture of the day. Additionally, as a Spanish teacher, maybe I can find a prerecorded podcast that would give examples of life in a Spanish speaking country. This would provide the students with another point of view other than your own. I think it is important for the lectures to come from more than one source. I think that sometime when we hear something, we might not fully comprehend it or even believe it until we hear it from more than one person. For this reason I think that will try to find a way to use podcasts in my lectures.

Podcasts can, not only be prerecorded, but also they can be live and interactive. Similar to wikispaces, a podcast can be used as a means to communicate and plan certain activities. The difference is that…well, it is more like a phone call. A podcast can be used as a multiline phone call. One problem that could occur with a podcast is that if there are too many people in on it and many try to talk at the same time, it could become chaotic and annoying. I'm not sure that I would want to even try to ever do a live podcast with a group of students. I do however like my previous idea about getting prerecorded podcast to allow the students to experience life in other countries throw the eyes of another person.

I own an iPhone and I use it for everything. I use it for calls, online searches, YouTube videos, banking, email, music, facebooking, weather, calendar planning, contact storage, notes, GPS, among other things. This is truly the most amazing phone and I would be lost without it. I think that depending on a phone for much is an advantage for the information availability but also a disadvantage if I were to ever lose it or drop it in water (as I have done twice now). I'm sure that there are ways to use an iPhone in a classroom; however, I don’t plan on using mine unless I have no other way to explain my lesson. I don’t think I have seen teacher that does not have online access in her classroom in about ten years, and with so many online resources, I don’t think that I will ever be short of technology and have to resort to using my phone in a lesson.

Web 2.0

This week we learned about web 2.0. Although I’ve known about wiki websites for many years now, I never knew what web 2.0 was. Now I know that it’s a web site that can be commented on or changed in some way by average users, not just the web master. I played around a little with wikispaces and I really like it. I’m excited to implement it into my lessons when I’m a Spanish teacher. I've decided that I'm going to break the students into groups of about five students each and have them make up their own study sheet throughout the semester. I’ll have each student post at least once and make it part of their participation grade. I think that this will make them have to think about what we have learned in class and pick the important parts of the lessons.  Additionally, I think they will enjoy learning to use this site and possibly use it for other applications as well.  

Copyright, Fair Use & Online Safety

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This week’s lesson was extremely informative. I learned a lot about what a teacher is allowed to use in her lessons and what she is not allowed to use. I find it interesting that we will not be able to use a videotaped new cast from more than 10 days ago. However, this lesson has left me with a serious question. I don’t understand where we would get the information we need in order to ask for permission.  Also, the teacher said in class that the school is not allowed to show a movie in that cafeteria unless they pay for the right to show it. I assume that any material in the school library has the required permission to be shown anywhere in that school.  

 Honestly, I think that the 10 day rule is a little silly but I understand that it is because the teacher then would have had enough time to ask for permission (although I’m still confused as to who the permission would come from). From what I understand a teacher can use any last minute information that she finds to supplement her lesson but she cannot use something if she has had a reasonable amount of time to ask for permission to use it. My feeling on this is that it seems impossible to regulate. This law is definitely a good faith law. It is assumed that as teachers we make the right decision and either asks for permission to use copyrighted material if we have had ample time to do so before she uses it or not use copyrighted materials. Using copyrighted material in the right way is more of an ethical responsibility and that as teachers we should teach our students how to use materials properly and not “steel” information.

The following video is very informative. It answered a lot of my original questions. Since so much of the supplemental material that is used in classrooms in multimedia, this video makes it less scary to find what you need and use it.

Additional information:

"Copyright for Educators" at http://www.copyrighteducation.org/ hosted by KOCE-TV. You can find series youtube video clips at YouTube.com

Below is a video clip of "Copyright for Educators (Multimedia Guidelines)"

Week four assigment

This week we learned about a few different websites that give you information on all other specific websites. Before this week’s assignment, I would go to google.com and type in whatever I was searching for. After typing something such as easy kid crafts, I would get a list of websites that I could choose from to visit. This list has a title and a brief description of how this website relates to my search. After visiting a website I could easily leave it and go back to my original google search page and visit another website if I want. I could do this over and over again until I find the website that gave me the best craft. I find this to be a relatively easy and quick way to find what I need.

The assignment was to go to certain websites such as altavista.com, easywhois.com, and archive.org and simply play around with them and see how they would be useful. Originally I thought that this assignment would help me find the information I wanted to find easier on the web, however, I found that these web sites were not really meant to assist in the search for information. What they are helpful for is to find out how reputable the site actually is. I don’t think that I will be using any of these sites on my daily searches at all. As a future teacher however, this assignment will be very important. It will help me ensure that when I send my students to the web for any kind of assignment, that I am sending them to a reputable website.

After doing this week’s assignment I have found that this assignment was not at all what I originally thought it was. This assignment was not to help me find information easier. This assignment is to help me as a future teacher to direct my students to the appropriate web sites. It’s important to know who owns the sites you visit because that tells you if the site is in fact to the place you are searching. I think archive.org was by far the most interesting one of all three. It shows the history of the web site, including how many people have logged on to the specific web site since as far back as 1996. This is a good tool to have when doing research on a certain topic for school. It really gives you a better idea of maybe an event that took place in the recent history, such as the stock market crash.