Final Reflection

Throughout this semester I have acquired many new tools that I cannot wait to use in my classroom in the future. I have learned more than I could have ever imagined and this course truly made it easy to apply these skills into real everyday lessons. 

Facebook was a great way to keep in touch with not only my classmates but the professor as well. Its nice to see what people do outside of the classroom and chose to share within their page. I also enjoyed looking at our group page and reading or watching links that were posted related to educational technology. Some of these new findings were really interesting and things I would not have accessed without this aspect of the class. Facebook was also a great tool to contact my classmates to ask questions related to class and receive and immediate response rather than waiting for an email.

Overall this course was one that I will not forget. Learning the foundations of technology has set me up for a future of success with furthering my education and continuing down the road to getting my Masters in Educational Technology. I cannot wait to see what I learn next it truly is an exciting field to be apart of!

Shapes and Candy...What else is the world made up of?

For my presentation I decided to focus on a topic that my Pre-Kindergarten class seems to struggle with, Math. Many of my students are still struggling with identifying shapes, so I decided I would do this lesson on shape recognition and counting the number of sides on each shape to help us identify the shape. As a class we are going to count the sides of a triangle, square, and circle together. I plan to have volunteers come up and help trace the sides of the shapes for me.

There is a quick song to help us remember how many sides these shapes has. It also explains that shapes are all around us; at home, in school, and in our environment. I am going to test your knowledge of shapes by playing a game of "I spy this shape" with the class. After our shapes are identified in the objects on the smart board we will continue to our final activity.

I wanted to make learning about shapes fun and exciting, so our students will sort out a bag of Hershey's, M&M's and Starburst onto a document with a circle, triangle and square on it. Recognizing which shape each candy is, and which shape it belongs in on their worksheet.
I hope you enjoy this presentation!

SmartBoard's

I can remember being in high school and SmartBoard's being installed into our classroom's and library. At the time, I remember thinking that they were intriguing, but I never understood how much of an impact they would have on education in the future. Little did I know that SmartBoard's would soon be installed into classrooms everywhere at all grade levels. I had no idea all of the functions that the SmartBoard offered, or how it could change learning.

Upon playing around with Smart Notebook I can see now why they were incorporated into learning at all levels. They are extremely useful for the teachers, and extremely engaging for the students. Smart Notebook was easy to use, and fun to play with. The function that I really liked was the activity function. Being able to click on certain objects and allow them to function in a specific way (for example a sorting task) allows the teacher to step back and allows the students to take a more hands-on, independent approach to learning.

Smart Notebook is a great for management as well. You can use it to take attendance and give responsibility to the students by asking them to drag their name onto the "in" side. You can also ask the students to use it to order lunch for the day, or give the weather forecast. The possibilities are endless. The interactivity of the SmartBoard is what makes it so unique, and so fun to use as a teacher as well as for the students.

Educational Apps Evaluation Forms

When playing around with new apps for the iPad in the classroom, I found that there were many different apps for similar topics. Exploring further, I found that some apps seemed to be much more beneficial than others. I also found that some apps that I seemed to enjoy or find the most intriguing and useful were not necessarily apps that I would want to incorporate into my classroom.

When looking at the two different evaluation forms, I found that one was more of a chart rubric (which I am used to seeing when looking at my own grades), and the other was a little bit more in depth about what it was looking for.

In the end, I believe that the critical evaluation of content-based mobile app evaluation is better rounded and overall a better evaluation of an educational app. The Evaluation Rubric for iPod Apps did not ask for a title of the app, a creator,  grade level, or even the content area. So basically, you don't know what you are looking at the evaluation for. Also the critical evaluation asked for 10 different components rather than the 6 asked in the other evaluation rubric. This made a huge difference because the critical evaluation questions asked for components to be evaluated that are more geared toward how they affect the learner (reporting, sound, instructions and support). I also loved how the critical evaluation asked for which topics of Bloom's Taxonomy were covered within the app.

After looking at the evaluations side by side decided to total up what the same app would have scored on both apps. On the evaluation rubric the app I evaluated scored a 54%, where as when I calculated the score on the critical evaluation it only scored a 40%. This difference is because of the amount of questions asked, as well as what was asked for on the form. The critical evaluation I believe will better weed out the most useful apps from others simply by asking more questions about how they will impact the student.

Websites

This week when beginning to think about making a website I have to admit that I initially thought it would be much harder. Google Sites made making a website incredibly easy. I loved how user friendly it was and how much freedom you had to create the website exactly how you wanted it to be. I decided to create my website as a Classroom website. Click here if you want to view it!

I really wanted my website to be free and fun when viewing it, but also visually appealing. Since I work in Early Childhood currently, freedom and exploration just made sense for my classroom site. I included what I thought were the most important pages: about me. assignments, calendar, and schedule. This way the parents would be able to get to know a little bit more about me and my background, as well as my teaching philosophy and beliefs. Assignments were more for parents as well. This page is intended to keep families engaged in their child's learning and to help them continue learning and practice at home. The calendar page is simply to keep families updated on current themes of the week or open house days. And lastly the schedule page is to give families a brief outline of our day. This way families are aware of what their child is doing an expected to be learning, and when.

Overall creating a website was incredibly fun and easy to do. I know I am going to be making more and I can honestly say that I am excited to do so!

The Use of Technology in the Classroom

When beginning research for this paper I wanted to find out where technology started in the classroom, where it was headed, and how it had impacted learning thus far. What I found were more questions. Of all the journals that I read, nothing was black and white. Although I understand that this topic is broad I still thought that there would be more back and forth on the issue. It seems that the general consensus is that we are still trying to explore technology and figure out not if it is beneficial but more, how can we use it so that it is beneficial.

Technology started as far back as the 1800's when the chalkboard was introduced into the classroom. From there it has obviously grown into something much more. The latest technology tool in education is the interactive mobile apps that we discussed a few weeks back. No one anticipated technology in education advancing this far this fast. I began to question where we would be in another 20 years from now, and I realized that since we have opened this door of wonder and exploration that we call technology, there is no way we are ever going back. I do believe that formal practice in schooling is still important because it holds the infrastructure of the idea of school together, as well as the relationship between teacher and student. However, there is no doubt in my mind that technology should also be incorporated into the classroom and will be in the future. Technology should be used as a tool not only to aid students with special needs, but also to guide diverse learners into engaging in the type of learning that best suits them as individuals. We have the access to knowledge all over the world and the capability to talk to anyone about it at any time. It is a miracle that we can even say that. What I found after all my research was that since the internet was launched (mainly Web 2.0) we have jump-started a new type of education process altogether. Since we are still in this "technology revolution" that is growing rapidly, it is hard to say how it will impact learning or where it will go next. I do feel that it will positively impact learners but to say how is impossible at this point because we haven't used it long enough to truly see. Technology is being updated more and more quickly so to try and guess where it will head next is nearly impossible. Ten years ago no one thought we would be where we are now,  it was unfathomable.

I am interested to continue to monitor the use of technology in schools and see how it does impact learning. I believe that we need to focus on educating teachers on how to properly incorporate technology into their classroom as a form of supplemental instruction because the longer we wait the further we will be behind. Technology is here to stay and understanding how to use technology in education so that it continues to remain beneficial needs to be explored further.

Learning Disabilities

When watching the F.A.T City Workshop video there were countless times that I sat back and felt empathy for children. It is so hard to understand what a child goes through in a day of schooling, let alone a child with a learning disability. After watching the video you realize what you are personally guilty of doing and it makes you reconsider how you talk, think, and act as an educator.

What really stuck me was the section about anxiety. Being the person standing in the front of the room it is easy to tell which children are struggling with nerves. I loved how he mentioned the "sudden interest in your shoes", it really is true and we are all guilty of doing it. When a teacher makes a child feel rushed or nervous they immediately shut down and feel incapable of doing the task. I will always reconsider how I am asking children to answer me after seeing this, it made me feel so sad that children are suffering and it is being blamed on laziness or lack of motivation.

The other main point that really struck my attention was the visual perception piece. When staring at that photograph I was confident that it was a little girl in a jacket looking at another child's shadow. When he showed the camera that it was the face of a cow I was shocked. Things truly are not as they seem or as simple as black or white. Sometimes there are children who need a little extra to feel comfortable and at ease in their classrooms, and it is the teacher's duty to find each and every one of them and help them to be successful.