Final Thoughts on CEP 416

Throughout the course of the semester, I have been introduced to many different kinds of technology, that I can potentially use in my future classroom, and I can thank CEP 416 for this! I really enjoyed this course and playing around with many different types of technology. One of my favorite technologies that I have learned about this semester is Weebly, which I used to create my online portfolio. Weebly is an awesome, and easy to use tool that you can use to create a website. There are some advanced features that you have to pay for, but most of the features are free! This is definitely a tool that I will use in my classroom. 


Another technology that I found very useful was Delicious. Before this course, I did not know what Delicious was, but I think that it can be very useful when teaching, especially if you team teach. Next year, in my student teaching placement, I know I will be working very closely with another third grade teacher, and another intern, because my CT team teaches with her. I think this will be a great way to incorporate technology into our lesson planning because your Delicious bookmarks can easily be shared with others! I have been using Delicious all semester, not only to bookmark educational sites, but sites for my other classes, wedding planning, scholarships, and my study abroad resources. I think that I will be using this technology next year and into my teaching career!


Aside from my favorite technologies that I have learned about throughout this course, I really like the way that CEP 416 is set up, where you have tasks to complete each week, and you are able to view your classmate's work. I thought that this was very helpful, especially early on in the course, when I was unsure of what to do. I also think that the Facebook group and Twitter hashtag was useful because not only was it another way that I could see my classmate's work, but it was a way to get a hold of Sara, my instructor. Normally, with an online course, you communicate with your teacher through email, and that's it. But with CEP 416, Sara was available though email, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype! It was great to just be able to Tweet Sara when I had a quick question, rather than write an email, and wait for a response! Overall, I really enjoyed the course, learned a lot, and plan on incorporating many elements of the course into my own teaching! 

Jessica's Highlight Showcase

First off, I really liked how Jessica used Jing as her screenshot technology. I tried using Jing once during the semester, but got frustrated with it, and gave up on using it. It was really great to see someone use Jing, and successfully use it! I also really like how Jing shows a bigger preview of what you are showing, rather than VoiceThread, which shows a very small preview. I really liked how Jessica concentrated on showing her three favorite technologies that she has learned about throughout the semester. It was nice to see how she included her portfolio in these technologies because I thought her portfolio was really well put together, and it is a Google Site! I used Weebly with for my portfolio, but after seeing other Google Site portfolios, I will definitely have to look into Google Sites! I thought that Jessica's highlight showcase was very well put together and I really enjoyed watching! Maybe I will try to use Jing again, after seeing Jessica's video! Nice work Jessica!

Courtney's Portfolio Showcase

I really liked how Courtney used VoiceThread because it allowed her to show previews of her portfolio that we have worked on during our class, and then she was able to talk about the specific elements of her portfolio. I really liked how she went through each page of her portfolio because it allowed me to not only see the pages of her portfolio, but allowed me to hear her thoughts or her comments on these elements, which is not always known from reading a person's portfolio. I also thought that it was great to see that she used Google Sites, which I have not really had much experience with. If Google Sites is easy to use like Google Docs, I will definitely look into using this resource in my classroom. It was great to see each piece of her portfolio that she has created throughout the semester and the picture that she used at the end was very cute! Good work Courtney! 

Bethany's Portfolio Showcase

I thought Bethany's portfolio was really unique because she showed many different technologies that she had used and learned about throughout the semester, not just one. I really liked how she showed each technology and described how she used it and how it can be useful to use in the classroom. I especially enjoyed learning about Artisan Cam because I think that an online picture book maker can be a great tool to use in the classroom. During CEP 416 I found another online picture book maker, but it was not as good as Artisan Cam, so I will definitely take note of that resource to use in my classroom! I also really like VoiceThread as well, and this is the first time I had actually seen a VoiceThread video. I think that VoiceThread can also be a really great resource to use with your students in the classroom because it seems like it is easy to use, and students could make their own presentations using their own voice. Very cool! I also found most of the technologies that she mentioned useful and some of my favorites, so I was glad to see that she included these in her showcase! Nice job!

Portfolio Showcase

Here is my portfolio showcase! Check it out!

Thoughts about technology integration

I think that with the growing dependency on technology, the use of technology is almost necessary in education Technology is becoming more prevalent in our student's lives with computers, internet, Smartphones, iPods, iPads, interactive video games, etc., so why not integrate technology to enrich our lesson plans and engage our students in creative and thoughtful lessons? Technology can really be a great tool to use in the classroom because it can be so interactive and versatile. I believe that technology not only benefits students, but it also engages the teacher into the lesson and allows for learning for both the students and the teacher. I hope that as I develop into a more experienced educator, I can learn how to integrate many types of technology into many of my lesson plans! 

Wikis

I think a Wiki is a great resource to have in the classroom! Wikis are versatile because unlike a standard website or a blog, a wiki can be edited by all members. This could be a great way for students to create their own pages, add content to them, and have other students in the class view them. I have used Wikis in the past, for some of my teaching classes, and they are a really great tool for sharing lesson plans, digistories, etc. I think that I would be able to use this in the same way in my classroom.

I also think that a Wiki would be a great tool for parents of my students. Parents could have access to the Wiki and post questions or comments that they have for me, view their student's work, or even use it to sign up for parent teacher conferences, holiday parties, you name it. I think that a Wiki could be a very beneficial tool that could be used for ultimately anything in the classroom!

I have started a Wiki for my own use! You can find it here

Google Docs

Google Docs is a great resource that can be easily used in the classroom. I can see myself using Google Docs in a variety, both with students directly and indirectly. In the classroom, Google Docs or Google Spreadsheet can be used to write stories, write science reports, enter data, etc. and then it can be shared with the entire class. You can also use Google Docs on any computer that has internet, which is good for classrooms that only have one or two computers.

Google documents can be a great way to collaborate with other teachers or parents, very easily. You can share Google Docs with other teachers for planning lessons, sharing student data, important dates, etc. For parents, you can share student work, parent teacher conference times, weekly or monthly newsletters. There are really endless ways that you could use Google Docs in your classroom. The great thing about Google Docs is that you can share your documents with any email address. This is definitely a resource that I will be sure to use in my classroom!

Here is a link to a Google Form that I created on my website!

My take on Social Literacy

This is a video I created for one of my teaching classes. In the video, you will learn what social literacy is, the components of social literacy, and how to use social literacy in your classroom! There are also screenshot videos of examples of things you could do in your classroom! Take a look :)

Bullying

A few weeks ago, I came across this video when a friend posted it on my Facebook. (You should watch the video before reading further). I am studying abroad this summer in Australia, so he just sent it to me as a "ha ha, look at what you're going to have to deal with" kind of thing, but this video really struck me. 


The first time I watched this video, I was shocked. I watched it a second time, and I just could not believe what I was seeing. I have seen cases of bullying in my placement classrooms from name calling and arguments, to yelling and hitting, but I have never seen one child pick up another child and slam him on the ground. I think this is appalling, especially for middle schoolers! 


I understand worse things can happen, but this makes me think...What can we do as educators to prevent bullying from going this far? If bullying is starting at such a young age, I feel that there are things that teachers can do to prevent the amount of bullying in school and preventing it from getting this far. If this were to happen, maybe bullying would begin to diminish once children started getting older. I know that we can't live in a perfect world, but I wonder what would happen if steps were taken and bullying was addressed to kids at an earlier age, I wonder if it would decrease or if it would just introduce the issue at an earlier age and make things worse? 

Tikatok

The new technology that I chose to explore this week is called Tikatok. This is a website that allows you to create your own book, completely online, and when you are finished, you can view online, email, embed, or even get a hard copy of your book printed. When I was exploring with this resource, I found that it is very easy to use and could be very kid friendly. The creation process is very outlined and you can just click to add text or a picture. It is also very easy to customize the look of the book and gives you color, font, alignment and style customization options. 

Here is a screenshot of the main screen on the webpage. 

One thing that I really liked about this application is that it could be used in many elementary level grades. I think that this would be a great alternative resource to use when students are creating books because it is all online and the customization and editing process would be a lot easier, compared to creating a book on paper. If I were to use this in my classroom, I would have my students compose drafts of their story, and we would edit them until they would come up with a final draft of their story and a final outline of what they want their book to look like. That way, when we begin using the program, students will just have to copy what they have on their draft and put it right on the website, to create their final product.


When you create a book on this website, there are three book options that you can choose from. You can choose from a Memory Book (students write about a memory or are creating the book to give as a gift), StorySpark (students choose from a topic and writing prompts to help them create their story) or you can start from scratch. I think this is a great way for teachers to decide which option is right for their lesson, or their students' age levels. 

The book choices that the user can make.

Different categories that students can choose from in a StorySparks book. 

Screenshot of the editing and customization process. 

Frontline - Digital Nation

Check out this video through the link below! It brings up issues of our society and education, and how we are all affected by technology (good and bad!) Since we all surround and use technology in our daily lives, I think that this would be a great video for anyone to watch!


Link to the Frontline Video

Blogging About Students?

Last week, I found this article, which explains one teacher's experience with blogging. This article explains how a teacher referred to her students as being "lazy" and "whiney" and her frustrations with teaching these students. However, she never used her name, student's names, information about the school or any other personal information to her blog readers. About a year and a half after she started her blog, officials in her school district found out about the blog and suspended this teacher with pay. In the school's defense, they said that these topics were very inappropriate to write about on a public blog, even if she never used student's names. In the teacher's defense, she said that she just used the blog as a way to let out her frustrations and draw attention to the question of why today's youth is so lazy?


In my opinion, this teacher walked some fine lines when posting things about specific students on a public blog, even if no names were used. As an educator myself, I can understand these frustrations that this teacher was experiencing, and this was a way for her to get all of these frustrations out. But was it right to do it in the public eye? School officials still ended up finding out about this blog, even if she didn't use any identifiable factors when writing, but that didn't seem to stop administrators from displaying this issue on national news. (The article I found is on MSNBC.)


As a teacher, I do not think that I would ever do something like this because I think there are better and more effective ways to removing your frustrations, rather than blogging about it. I understand that there are going to be students that just do not have motivation to succeed in school, or lack the drive to complete an assignment or participate in class, but I think these issues should be brought up IN the classroom, not through a blog. Blogging can be an effective tool, but when you misuse it, there can be extreme consequences. The bottom line is that as a teacher, you are going to have great teaching days, and other days are going to be frustrating, but that is just what comes with the profession.


What do you think? Do you think this teacher acted inappropriately and crossed the line? Or do you think that students need "tough love" and these issues needed to be addressed?

Technology Integration

I chose to update a lesson plan that I had for last semester and integrate technology into the plan. The lesson plan that I chose to update is a social studies lesson plan about teaching truth and honesty to first grade students. I chose to use Pinocchio as my base for teaching these concepts. The part of the lesson that I chose to transform into technology was the book. I think that if I were to make the actual book into something that the students can watch will allow for higher comprehension levels, especially for visual learners, since the students will be able to watch the story as well as listen to it at the same time. Although I have not used this type of technology integration in the classroom before, I really think that students will benefit from this.

The other piece of technology that I chose to use was the ELMO. This technology was already included in my lesson plan, before editing, because my CT uses the ELMO quite frequently. I think that this is a great tool because you can put just about anything up on the board, so that all students can see, whereas when you have an overhead, you have to make special sheets in order for them to work. As I learn more throughout this course, I hope to learn of more ways that I can improve this lesson plan and include more types of technology. 

Here's a link to my website to check out my lesson plan:

Social Studies Lesson Plan

Slideroll

For this week, I chose to explore Slideroll as my way of telling a story with technology. I chose to show a short video of my trip to Paris, that I took this past summer. I chose to use Slideroll because I haven't ever used it before, so I thought I would give it a try. It was pretty easy to use and I think it would be a great tool to use in the classroom. I think students could easily make videos using this program because it is completely drag and drop, and you can easily add your own text. The only thing I didn't like was that once you added an image, you couldn't remove that image from your project, so you had to start a whole new project. If I gave my students the opportunity to use this tool to tell a story in my classroom, I think they could come up with some pretty creative things!

I tried to get the video to upload, but it wasn't working. Here is a screenshot for now!

Integrated Technology Lesson Plan Idea

Michigan First Grade GLCE'S


W.GN.01.03 write an informational piece that addresses a focus question (e.g., What is 
a family?) using descriptive, enumerative, or sequence patterns that may include headings, 
titles, labels, photographs, or illustrations to enhance the understanding of central idea



 W.GN.01.01 write a personal narrative using illustrations and transitional words such 
as before, after, now, or finally to indicate a sequence of events, sense of story (beginning, 
middle, and end), and physical descriptions


Technology Choice: Slideroll, Scrapblog, or other online slideshow tool


When thinking about my final project, I would like to incorporate some writing GLCE's into my lesson plans and technology usage. I think it would be beneficial for my students to write a story and then transform it into something digital. It is important that my students understand that they will have to incorporate a beginning, middle and end to their story, along with supporting details that add details to their story. The images and illustrations that they will incorporate will be thoughtful and will make sense to match the content of their story. I believe that using Slideroll, Scrapblog or another online slideshow tool will be beneficial to this assignment because it will be easy for them to use (with an adult's help) and they can choose their own design and template to show their story. 

Online Education?

The other day when I was checking my email, an ad at the top of my Gmail account said "Tired of mediocre K-12 education?" and next to it there was a link for k12.com. I clicked on the link (because I couldn't believe that this ad said this!) and it took me to a website that is an online public or private school for students in grades K-12. Parents can sign their kids up, and can pay a fee, for their students to receive schooling that has an "interactive curriculum" and "interactive online and offline hands-on learning."  Parents have the choice to select what they want their students to learn, and when they want them to learn it. I really couldn't believe that this existed! 


But this made me wonder...with the growing dependency on technology that we all have, will this be a threat to our jobs some years down the road? I know that this could be another way that parents could homeschool students, but with the technology age growing, it makes me wonder if more "schools" like this will appear and if they will be a threat. What do you think? 

Integrating Technology

While thinking about ways to integrate technology into specific lessons, and also integrating TPACK, I think using Google Earth Lit Trips would be a great way to use technology in the classroom. I learned about these last year in my TE 401 class, where we explored the book Fever 1793. Lit trips allow you to take a journey through the setting of a certain book, where you get to see what a certain town or village looks like. Lit trips can also be very helpful to use as an overview or review of a book because at each stop in the trip, you can have students answer questions that pertain to the book. 


In regards to TPACK, I think Google Earth Lit Trips are very useful for this model. When you use a lit trip in the classroom, students are able to use what they have learned from the book and apply it while using the lit trip, whether it be answering questions during the trip, identifying certain aspects of the setting of the book, or even making their own trip. You can even make a lit trip to be specific to one city or town mentioned in the book. Google Earth Lit Trips are very versatile, easy to use, and can be used for books at any grade level. I think that I will definitely use this resource in my own classroom!


Check out this video to see an example of a Google Earth Lit Trip for the picture book Make Way For Ducklings!

Thoughts on Twitter, so far

Since we have been using Twitter a little more within the last few weeks, I think I am getting the hang of some things. My friends who use Twitter frequently have definitely helped me learn some things about Twitter that I probably wouldn't have known before. I think Twitter can be helpful if you follow the right people. Some very informational things are tweeted and can be very helpful with keeping up with current events! However, I am still not quite sure of how I would be able to use this in the classroom. I could maybe see how we could have a class Twitter where we could follow certain people or news groups and look at their tweets everyday, but I don't think that I would benefit from having a class hashtag (like we do for CEP416) and having my students tweet with that hashtag. This could possibly be useful for teaching in high school, but for elementary school, I'm not so sure yet. Hopefully within the next few weeks I will come up with some more creative ways of how to use Twitter in the classroom!

Photoshop.com Album: Image Slideshow

Here is a slideshow I created using my edited images. Check it out! 

Photoshop Express

I just learned about this amazing (and free) tool called Photoshop Express! You can edit and customize your own photos!

Here is a photo that I edited using Photoshop Express

Copyright

Copyright is a very important and can be a very useful resource, especially for students. However, copyrighting can also be a huge pain to deal with, at the same time. As a student, I am aware of how citing something can be a huge pain, especially at 3 in the morning when you have your paper done, and you just want to get it printed. But at the same time, I understand why we need to copyright things. If there weren't copyrights, anyone could say that someone else's work was theirs, and there would be no argument. People should have the right to their own work and be proud to claim their work. However, even though there are copyright laws, there are some people who break these laws and do steal other people's work and claim it as their own. But just like any other law, there are consequences to breaking these laws. I think that copyright laws are very useful and should be monitored by everyone. I know that I wouldn't want someone taking my work, so why would you take someone else's? 

Licensing

IMG_0052, originally uploaded by wellma19.

This is a photo I licensed with Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Below is an image that I think would be a great resource to use in my classroom. The picture is an ariel view of Michigan's great lakes, which would be a great tool to use when teaching a lesson on Michigan. This image is an actual photograph of all five of the great lakes, which is unique because most pictures in textbooks only show Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. This picture is also a great tool for teaching students about other attributes of Michigan and the great lakes, such as identifying the major cities and most populated areas in Michigan, major highways and roads, the depth of the great lakes, etc. I think that this picture is really a great picture and shows a view of Michigan that many of us have not ever seen!

Copyright © NASA Images 2010

By NASA Goddard Photo and Video

CC Photo

Great Lakes, No Clouds

Fonts

An assignment for one of my classes is to redesign the lyrics to a song by reformatting the text of the words. We can only use text, no pictures and no color, so it is a bit challenging, but pretty interesting. Through this assignment, I found a great resource that could be useful in the classroom. The resource is called dafont.com, which is a website that has hundreds of free fonts that you can download and use in Word documents. I think that this would be a really great resource to use in the classroom when creating newsletters, posters, name cards or anything that involves text! It is really easy to use and install fonts on your computer and you can use them in any application. I am really glad that I found this resource and I plan to use it in my classroom!!


I also tagged this website on my Delicious account if you would like to browse there too!

Delicious

With regards to my last post, I can really see how I could use Delicious as a resource for my classroom! I am really glad that I learned about this because it really is a very useful tool. I think that the two greatest things about it are that you can easily tag something (in your own lingo, or way that you remember things) and that you can share your tags and saved webpages with other people. This would be a great thing to use if you were team teaching or had to work with other teachers on a unit. I am definitely going to keep this in mind next year and years to come so that I can save time when I am planning!

Learning to use technology

This is just a short blurb of what I am thinking thus far about technology we are using in this class... I am excited to learn how to incorporate technology in the classroom so that I can use it in the future. I have not seen much technology being used in the classrooms that I have been in during my time at MSU, so I am interested to learn how to use a variety of resources. The only technology that I have seen is the use of the Elmo projector. which is just an advancement of the overhead projector. Right now, I am really unsure of how I will use Twitter and blogging for my classroom, but I am sure it is a great resource. Another thing that I hope to gain from this class is learning how to use all of these different technologies simultaneously and not feeling overwhelmed because right now, I feel very overwhelmed with all of these different technologies!!! As of right now, I am having the hardest time with Twitter because I am very new to it, but I'm sure within time, I'll be a pro!


This is an article I found about the use of Twitter in the classroom. Even though I wouldn't be able to use Twitter in this way in my elementary classroom, it gave me an idea of how Twitter can be used in a classroom.


http://mashable.com/2010/03/01/twitter-classroom/

ESL Teaching

This week, I began co-teaching an ESL class on campus. The students that I teach are students who have just came over to the U.S. and they want to study at MSU, but have to pass the TOEFL test before they can be admitted. I also have students who are very close to passing the TOEFL test, and have been conditionally accepted to MSU, but they have to be enrolled in this class because they need to get their test scores up. These two groups of students are the majority of my students. There are also students who are the husbands or wives of MSU professors, who have came over to live in the U.S. and want to learn English. There are only a few of these students in my classes, but it is so interesting to see the wide variety of students that I have. Through all of my students, 10 countries are represented, so I'm sure you can imagine the variety of languages that are in the classroom. So far, I am really enjoying these students and this opportunity because I haven't ever had experience with teaching English as a second language before.


In this class, the students use a program called DynEd, which is a program that is entirely computer based. The nice thing about it is that when planning lessons, there are so many things you can do with DynEd, unlike some other computer based programs that only have one way that you can teach the lesson. I have not had too much experience with it yet because their classes actually started this week, but as I become more familiar with the program, I'm sure I will post some more about this wonderful program.


Here is a short (and boring) video that introduces you to the program, if you're interested. This was the best one that I could find!

Hello!

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Heather and I am using this blog as a place to reflect on education, teaching, and technology. I am very excited to learn about new technologies that will be helpful tools in my classroom. I would consider myself to be very savvy when it comes to technology, however I have not used much technology while in the classroom. The only technology that I have used in the classroom is an overhead projector and an Elmo projector. So basically, I have used two of the same technologies, but one is updated. 


At the end of the semester, I hope to have a wide range of tools and resources that I will be able to use during my student teaching internship year and in my future classroom. Since technology is growing rapidly in the classroom, it will be very useful to be aware of all of the different resources that are available to me, and how I can use them effectively. I am very excited to learn and engage in new technologies throughout this semester!