Sept. 3rd, 2009

Differentiation in Practice Part 1: 

There were a lot of choices in this reading that appealed to me. (I am going to list them in bullet form) 

* Teach in ways that will help each learner bridge gaps comprehension and skills to help them grow at a successful speed. I feel this is important because there are so many students that go through school without understand what they are doing and it doesn't help them for their future. Ever child understand differently so it is important as a teacher to make sure you are teaching to each level of comprehension and taking extra time with those who need the help. 

* Backtracking I feel is a must because how is a student expected to learn if they don't have all the back ground information or got lost somewhere down that road. 

* Find space/time in your curriculum in areas where your students show great amounts of interest. If a student is interested they are learning more then what the teacher is even teaching. They are able to discover and learn with excitement which makes learn fun and memorable for each student. 

*Assessing really appeals to me because I want to become better at it. It is so important to assess because it shows the students growths and struggles. With assessment you as a teacher can find the time to help them were they are struggling so by the time the student is assessed again they will be caught up.  It also helps with the lesson plan that you are teaching, if no one is understanding it then it is time for the teacher to come up with a different approach to teaching it that will better suit the students. 

* "These are strategies that guide the teacher in looking at students in small groups or individually rather than only as a whole class." (p. 11) I never thought of it this way but it is such a great way of looking at it. What i took from this is that you can teach the same way to each student because of their differences so teach differently to each student. I really like this way of thinking and teaching. 

Morning Meeting Packet on Blackboard:

Some of the steps that helped me to understand morning meetings a little more were;

1- Greeting- a variety of greeting activities to help each student gain a sense of belonging

                    - Provides opportunities for students to verbally and non-verbally communication skills and to build relationships

2- Sharing- "Face-to-Face" conversation. The ability to have each student share news about themselves.

3- Group Activity- "Game" Helps students to work on there general skills

Morning meeting should be around 15 minute long. And another thing that I thought was interesting was the research they did on how much parents, teachers, and students enjoy morning meetings. I think it is most important to have the student enjoy and love being apart of and building a strong community for the class.

It also showed a lot of fun games and activities that you can do with your students to help them build relationships with each other. 

Reflection of Article and Lesson Plan

Summary of Effective and Appropriate Uses of Educational Technology in Science Classrooms

Reading the article “Effective and Appropriate Uses of Educational Technology in Science Classrooms” really opened by eyes up to what technology is all about? This article tells how technology is a part of science and how you can integrate it with in the classroom in all aspect. It also talks about how as an educator you don’t have to choose between technology and others types of education. A teacher should use both and help enrich the information that they are trying to teach. There is a pre-service teacher named Amy that the article talks about how she intergraded tech into her biology class, I really like what the article says about Amy, “Amy understood the power of images to involve her students in these inquiry projects to study the often hidden processes of nature”. A teacher needs to understand what works for her students and the subject she is teaching.

Karen Irving says in her article, “information presentation needs to support student meaning-making, students are active participants in the learning process, the teacher serves as a facilitator to student sense-making.” It is important for the teacher use useful information that is intriguing and gets the students wanting to be involved.

How our lesson relates to the Article

In our technology rich lesson plan we had the students do a webquest. In the article it talks about how an educator show using technology and other sources of learning, and that is what we did. Before we did any technology we had the students evaluate the picture and write down things that they saw in the picture and what they learned from the picture. After talk and learning about the picture we asked the students were we can go to find more information, they all said that the internet would be a good place, so we took them to the computer lab and had them work through a webquest. After the webquest we took the students back to the classroom and had them write a one minute paper about what they learned.

So we used what the article said, we integrated technology, reading and writing into one lesson plan.

Click here for webquest



How our lesson fits with the NETS*T

Standard 2 Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experience and Assessments
(Teacher) For your lesson plan we created a webquest on The Civil Rights Movement. We reserved a computer lab so that all the students were able to have their own computer to work on. We created the page for them to click on the different links and browse the sites to find information. We gave them a work sheet that they need to fill out with ten different things that they discovered about the Civil Right Movements. We used this lesson plan as an introduction to our unit and this way they got to learn through discovery.

Standard 3 Research and Information Fluency
(Student) We had the students get on the webquest and search for interesting facts that they found on The Civil Rights Movement. They had to come up with ten facts that they didn’t already know about. After they were done with this there was a game on the webquest that they were allowed to play. When we were all done we went back to our class and had some students share some of the information that they had discovered. This was a great way for them to come up with the information on their own and be actively participating.

How we will change when teaching technology?

After reading the article and implementing the lesson plan, we have learned that it is very important to use more than technology, to try to integrate all the areas of learning to enhance the students learning. At first we did not really like using technology in the classroom because we did not know how to use it in the classroom. But now we know that technology can really enhance your lessons. We have learned that it is very important to use information that will catch the student’s eye and that will really teach them something important.

Our goal is that we can learn how to use technology in more than one aspect. We want to learn how to use more than just the internet; we want to use digital cameras and PowerPoint and digital stories. We hope to be able to make the information entertaining and informative.

Technology Interview Reflection

Well my partner and I had trouble with the interview. We gave it to the computer lab teacher and let him fill it out on his own time because we didn't want to interrupt his class and he was only here part of the days that he worked. So we went in the next day to get it from him and he told us he didn't want to fill it out because it was a waste of his time. So we awkwardly took it and just left him a lone. The next day we went to the Principal and asked if he would fill it out because we were required to have it done for our class and he said that he would do it for us, and we were so relieved and grateful.

1) What did you learn from this interview?

I learned that there was a lot more technology that i didn't know schools had. I know some schools have more technology then others but i think that no matter what the technology is it is important to take advantage of it. Students are growing up in a life where technology is everywhere and it is important that we as teachers are showing and teaching the students about it as much as we can.

2) How will this experience affect you as a teacher?

This will help me as a teacher be aware of all the different types of technology i can use in my lesson plans. I would be able to create webquests and not have my students get bored because they will be able to discover topics and read at their own pace and let's be honest they love using computers. This will help me create more of a variety with my lesson plans so i don't lose the focus of my students.

3) How did this experience change your thinking about the use of technology?

It got me to think why are we not using more technology in classrooms. I know it can be hard to fund these but if at all possible i think it would make such a great impact in my lessons as a teacher. i feel that it would make my lesson a lot more memorable. It also introduces the students to technology and help them become computer smart which is nice jump start for the real world.

Webquest

Our webquest is all about Nurition and excersise. It teaches you ways to eat healthy and to have a balanced diet. It goes over some fast food restaurants and how to eat heathly there instead of eating the regular burger and fries. It has different links that will take you to different sites to explore all the fun ways of eating healthy. It doesn't cover a ton on what or how your workouts should be but it does go over the time period of how long you should be working out and how many times a week.
We created it on the power point and divided the topic among our group and we all had a page or two to create. we added links on it were you can click on it and it will take you to other websites. It was a little difficult to get it started but the more we created the easier it got. It is important to know how to create a webquest because it is such a helpful way to get the children to learn a certian topic while learning more about computers. it also introduces the to the internet in a safe way.
I would really like to use webquests in my class room because it is such a fun and different way of learning that children will love. It gets them more invovled in the lesson and it targets children with a variety of learning methods. This has taught me that there are so many ways that you can teach a lesson that can be fun. I never knew about webquest until this class and i really like them because it teaches children in so many ways. So computer things that i need to work on is how to creat and design different types of media. I want to learn everything that a computer can do to help me out as a teacher. I was to be better at and comfortable with computers and how to use all the different types.

posting google docs

post a google doc, click share and then publish as web page on your documment. publish it and then copy the web address. post it in here.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dck4pmk7_6djw9msgn

How i can use igoogle in the classroom

What we learned with igoogle will help us in the classroom with communication just by being organized. igoogle has so many ways to keep your events on order and can help you remind yourself what is coming up.  So many time i am planning on doing something and then when it comes to do it there are a lot of times i forget and with this website you can program it to remind you. Another nice thing about it is the calendar that we posted on our blog. This calendar it a good way of letting other students, teachers, and even parents know what is coming up and they are able to check it whenever they want. This is such a good way to keep organized.

Goals!

I have been thinking of some goals that I want for this class and the ones that I came up with are;

~Learn more about blogging and feel comfortable with it.

~Be better at creating charts and the different formats on Word.

~Learn the web cam.

~To use the computer to organize all my school work and to access it easily.