Post #1

I think that computers and new technologies are very important to education and help the educational experience because they just expand our ability to teach and to get teaching materials to give to our students. It is very important that the students can use all the resources around them to gain a greater knowledge and understanding of the world, history, and to learn things for themselves. I think that there can be some issues with using technology because it can be used improperly or for the wrong reasons. Also for younger students some of it might be too advanced for them to use and for older students, it might be too easy and not challenging enough. I agree with Chapter one though. Computers are great tools to teach with and it's important to learn computational skills at an early age because it will just benefit later in life.

I will use computers in my classroom to make things easier for my students because I know that I felt like it was easier when the teachers would teach from a powerpoint or from an outline. I think that the ability to see images and video clips when learning and gaining knowledge also helped me too because I could hear what the teacher was saying and visually see it as well which would always help me out during testing time.

I would love to be a first grade teacher. I think first graders are great and I used to be a student assistant for a first grade teacher for three years. It was then when I realized that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to teach children how to read and see their huge smiles when they finally got it! I so admired how the teacher would cater to each of the students differently and help them out so that they could read on their own paces. She was such a wonderful teacher and you could just see how much the students adored her. I would hope to be even half as great a teacher as she was one day.
· A paragraph on anything you would like to share/discuss with your classmates, especially if it applies to this course, technology in general, or your future career. Just have fun!

Post #10

I have definitely learned a lot from this class in this semester. My computer skills were less than mediocre and I wasn't too familiar with any programs except MS Word and Powerpoint. I learned a lot about excel and inspiration and even more things about the internet that I never knew and probably would have never learned had I not taken this class. I enjoyed this class.

I think that the project was a good idea. I liked combining everything that I learned this semester and using it in the end to create one final project. I think that it was good working with a group and getting to know other classmates too. I didn't understand much of the whole wiki thing but it seemed like a good idea to use when working with a bunch of people in a group.

I will most definitely be using many of the skills I picked up in this class during a teaching career in my future. I will use MS Word to create flyers and bulletins and also newsletters to keep the parents updated on classroom activities and progress. I will use Powerpoint to make presentations to my students when I want to explain something and would rather use images and give bulleted points so that my students can stay on track and keep up with me in the lecture. I will use excel for grades because of the advantages it gives with the math and how nice and easy it makes things. I will also use excel and word combined to send out letters to parents because I think that was so cool and I really thought that was a very useful skill to have because it would just make the teachers life easier.

I thought it was interesting to read other students blogs because it gave me cool ideas about how to use different programs for different things. Everyone had great ideas and thought of different things than I had and it was interesting to read them and get inspired by what they thought too and see how they saw things differently than I did and see their different approaches to the same situations.

Post #9

I think that the project is a pretty cool idea. I like how it kind of pulls together everything that we have done this semester and tries to get us to use all of it. I was really excited to do it until I got swine flu but I still think that this project is a good way to combine all of our new skills and use it to teach others. I also like the idea of collaborating with a teacher.

My group chose to do a storybook for the circuit and make a crossword puzzle at first. I made the crossword puzzle but when my members met with the teacher, she wanted us to have more of a review for her students and not just a crossword puzzle. We decided that a quiz would be a good review and that we could do it on MS Word. I made the quiz too.

I wasnt able to attend class the previous week so I'm not too familiar with wikis and also how to use them. I remember learning about them before and thinking they were really cool and also a great way to communicate with a large number of people.

Post #8

I would use a webquest in a middle school history class when you're assigning a project. To start, you can explain the background of a time or an era to the students so that they understand the period of which they have a project on. Then you can give examples of a project for them to do. To make it exciting, you can have them go out on an adventure to look up things about that period or have them interview people. Then you can use the webquest to give them resources and explain exactly what you want or expect out of the students, or their task at hand. You can help give them tips and ideas to do. Then at the end you can put the credits.

A really cool webquest I saw was about the weather. It was cool because it gave information on how to understand the weather and how to decide for yourself how the weather will be by watching it and understanding weather patterns. It was aimed at elementary level school children and I think it is a fun and useful webquest. It takes advantage of the web while also teaching the students about the weather in an interesting way.

I learned more about excel lately than I ever knew before. I am not a huge excel person because I've generally only used it when dealing with math and numbers which i am not a big fan of doing. I thought it was cool though all the different things that you can do on excel and I had no idea that it was so versatile. I think these skills will help me later on when logging grades or even when making crossword puzzles.

Post #7

http://www.education-world.com/

This is a great website because it has almost everything a teacher could need! Ideas for lesson plans, tips on how to develop as a teacher, how to integrate technology into daily lessons, how to be a leader and instill leadership skills in your students, etc. I think that this is probably a good website for any teacher because it has so many things to see and read. It offers many tips and exciting improvements and gives alternative ideas of how to do certain things.

I am certain that I will probably use excel to organize my grade book. I also think that if it's convenient and I am able to be by a computer when I'm taking attendance, that I will use it for that as well. I think that excel is a great program to help teachers stay organzied and on top of their things. It also helps people like me who are not very talented in math and can keep track of grades and can calculate grades at the end of a term instead of doing it out by hand which I would surely mess up. I think it also saves time because if you have over a hundred students, thats over a hundred scores and grades you have to average. If you have the computer doing it for you, then it saves time.

Blog #6

My powerpoint presentation is pretty basic. I did a presentation on "How to Play Hearts." I kept the background colors all simple and they all correlate with a theme so that it doesn't get too confusing and so that it's easy to follow. I made the important ideas or rules in a larger text than the other ones to stress the importance and also so they would pop out at the reader. I used pictures of cards or hearts for visual imaging and some are animated on the screen to get the readers excited about the game!

I would incorporate peripherals and non-computer visuals into my room by having colorful posters all over that catch the students attention and also having games out that they could play to help them learn more things. If I am able to, I will have my students watch movies and listen to music that pertains to what I am teaching. When I took history classes, they always kept me interested because I could watch a movie or hear people speaking and learn through the lyrics of a song.

I learned how to use the symbols to make a slide go to the next. I think that that would be useful in my future because if I am trying to create a game or something exciting for my students, then having to click the button allows them to stay on track and they dont have to worry about hitting something and they are moved onto the next slide before they are ready.

Post #5

I have critiqued the FSU web site. I thought that it was a good website to choose because it was everything that I was looking for when I was critiquing a website. It was easy to navigate. The design made it easy to find things and it was obvious that they were updated frequently.

I like the idea of using presentation software in my classroom. I think it can have many advantages to children K-12. I think that for visual learners, it is one of the greatest things possible. I also think that using presentation software allows students to visualize what they are hearing because it can show examples. It holds the students focuses as well because it is intriguing. I think a teacher can make it hands-on too and get the classroom involved in it as well. Sometimes, when a teacher just lectures, they seem to drone on to the students and what they are saying becomes tedious. When teachers use interactive software, it allows them to stay visually connected to what the teacher is saying!

Powerpoint is a great way to involve students. It is good for visual learners because the colors and movements can be associated with the slides content. Also, teachers can put images and videos on the slides to help the students better grasp what they are learning about.

Post #4

I would very much encourage my students to outline their thoughts. I think outlines are a great way of getting started on essays or projects or also just a way of combining your ideas and kind of appropriately placing them where they belong. I have always been a big fan of outlines.

I also would encourage my students to use a storyboard as well though. I am not as familiar with a storyboard and although I dont think it would personally work on me, I would encourage all of my students to try to make a storyboard to help with an essay as well. I think that encouraging students to utilize such skills will only help them later.

Students can also use an idea map to kind of put together their ideas and the things that they can use. It can help them to see what is relevant and what is not in writing their essay or perhaps in preparing a project.

To make any of the three things, students can use MS Word, Inspiration, and Powerpoint. I think that they are useful when students have time to do them. I think that they help with essays and projects but wouldnt necessarily help with mundane classroom activities or various other things that students arent allotted a lot of time to use.

I have acquired inspiration skills that I believe will be very useful to me and will help out very much in the long term so that I can teach them to my students.