Reflection

What is one way in which you grew as an educator from this class and how will you continue it?

One way I grew as an educator would be in using technology to make my life, of keeping parents informed, easier. In the Fall I will have a flyer for them to go to my website to keep updated instead of emailing me 400 times a day. I sometimes really find this annoying especially when I send a newsletter home each week with the information.  I also found some really cool apps to add to my centers. Apps that my students love and will keep them interested in learning. I found ways to really integrate technology in my classroom and that is what I really wanted from this class.

Free Day

Given a free day... How are you using it.?.. Ive been garage saling and now in hour two at the gym. Enjoy the sunshine.

I used my day to finish stuff and run errands. I also took a nap because I am exhausted! :) Thank you for the free day!

ISTE for Students in Social Networking

All of the standards on the ISTE page all work together. Parents just need to be aware of what children are looking at. Schools already have these websites blocked so it should not be as big of a problem there. Parents also need to create and lock privacy settings so that their children do not accidentally go to a sketchy website. Children can type in something as simple as the white house when doing research and if they use .com or .org wrong they get a compromising website. Children use creativity and innovation with social networking in many ways. A lot of classes have students create original works as a means of personal or group expression. Sometimes they use it to collaborate and learn about projects they are doing in class. They can use a program like the wiki and create a group project where they can all add their content to it. They can also talk to each other or message each other using facebook. Not only are they creating original works of expressions, but they are also contributing to project teams to produce original works to solve problems.

Students do need to learn and understand technology systems, if not by their parents then at school so that they understand the risks that go with using the technology. That way they can use the technology in a safe, legal, and responsible way. When students understand the risks they can exhibit a positive attitude toward using the technology. I believe that most of the time if they are equipped with the knowledge they will be able to try and protect themselves from compromising websites and predators.

Reflection

Did you learn about your teaching style in the OR project? - Discuss your teaching strengths and weaknesses from this on blog.

I learned that I try to have my students do too much when learning a new center. I need to slowly introduce the apps, let them play with them, then have them start using them for assessments. I also learned how much this generation likes and learns with technology. I love technology, but I mainly use it for convenience or fun. My students and that whole generation use technology to learn EVERYTHING. From playing games to learn how to read to math. If it's not an app they don't know much about it. My students even wanted me to write down the apps so that their rents could download them for them to use.
A strength for me I feel like is that I am good at finding games/centers that are fun. My students loved these apps. They were engaged the entire time and never bored.

Class Post

Share one of your Personal Professional Development goals by 3/28 - respond to someone else's by 4/2 with suggestions

One of my main personal professional development goals is to make a website. The website will help in parent communication and have educational games on it for extra practice. I took part of my idea from my wiki project. The only difference will be they (parents/students) will not be able to comment or make feedback. It's purely for me to give out information about our class and resources to help parents help their students. I think it will help me not get asked the same questions 400 times too. I know that my weekly newsletter is not read so now I'll be able to say check the website if you have any questions. Teachers in my district are suppose to have a website for parents to get information so this will help me as well. I know it will have spelling words each week, a snack calendar, upcoming events, and educational resources. Even if parents don't get on the website the students can to play games that will help them with their reading and math.
This will be good for me for professional development because I will always have to be on top of finding new games and keeping the website updated for spelling words and school news. I will have to collaborate with other educators so I will be learning too. This is a great plan for me because it will be something that I will use until I retire and hopefully it will be fairly low maintenance in keeping it up to date each week.

Reflection

What is your status on your technology teaching projects -update me on your blog - What has suprised you so far?

My status is that I haven't gotten very far. Between doing DRAs and grades I haven't had a lot of time to look at it. My goal is to really hit it during this week, which is Spring Break. Honestly the whole thing stresses me out. Not so much the actual project as the writing about it. I have found that this semester half the time I sit down to write anything my brain is so fried I just sit there and stare at the screen. Kind of frustrating.  I'm really hoping to get a massive chunk of it done this week. I think I've gotten most of my stuff for school done so I can concentrate on my project this week. I'm planning on emailing you next week to set up a time to talk about it the week you get back from your vaca.

Ertmer & Leftwich Reading

This article talks about how important technology is in the life of a student. It also talks about how teachers need to be equipped to know and teach the technology. While I believe that technology is awesome and needs to be learned I believe in my 1^st grade classroom you have to have the building blocks of learning first. For example I believe you need to be able to add before you just use a calculator to give you the answers. With that said you can learn to read with technology and that is amazing. This past week I hung out with my three year old niece and taught her how to play on the website starfall.com. She was able to click on letters and watch a little video explaining what sound each letter makes and words that start with that letter. What is awesome about this is that she loved it and she was learning some basic reading skills, at three that will help her to learn how to read. Sadly, when I started this year I got students from three different schools. Some of my students didn’t know their letters or their sounds and they were six.  These are two very important aspects of reading that they should have learned in Kindergarten, if really not before.

            The article says that “the more content-specific the example, the more likely the teacher will see value and learn it.” This quote is very true. If I can’t see where I would use something specifically in my day-to-day routine it is kind of a waste of my time and the person trying to teach it to me. I’ve got to be able to go in the next day and plug it in or it isn’t very useful to me.

            Part of me truly thinks it depends on what grade you teach as to whether technology is all that important. I like it and use it, but I know a few teachers who don’t. Last year I was in a Pre-K class as the assistant. The morning teacher was older and didn’t like technology and rarely, if ever, used it. The afternoon teacher was younger and used it just to do the calendar and message. Both classes learned about the calendar, were able to count on it, do the days of the week, see patterns, and the months of the year. I don ‘t really think the morning class missed out on anything because they didn’t use as much technology as the afternoon class. I don’t know that I would agree had the classes been older, but for Pre-K it didn’t make a difference.