Last Class!

It's our last class of Educational Technology (tear...)

The things that I really enjoyed about the class were some of the programs we were shown. My favorite one, hands down, is Pageflakes, because I still use it every day as my homepage. I have my facebook, email, TV guide, news reports, and weather all on the homepage, and I find it extremely useful. Ask my roomates..I'm addicted. My other favorites are Picnik, & SnagIt, because I'm always looking for new ways to edit photos (and I can't afford PhotoShop). I also really love Education World. It's probably the best resource for education articles, lesson plan ideas, and overall teaching tips that I've found so far. I will definitely be using it as a resource for any ideas I need for teaching. Another thing I enjoyed about the class was the Vyew conference. This was a really cool way to make class interactive, and we learned a lot about what looks like a really promising program. I don't know if I'll personally use it in the education field, but I think it must be amazing for any businesses or other companies who want to do group presentations.

While I haven't started it yet, I'm really excited about the class website. I've said so in my other blogs, so I won't elaborate too much, but I can't wait to do this project. I definitely want to be a teacher that has students visit their web page for their homework assignments, and parents can check it to find out information about their kids' class and teacher (I think parent involvement is very important). This will give me great practice for creating my own webpage for my own real class someday.

In my evaluation, I noted some things that I think should be changed. First of all, we've already been informed that the book won't be used next semester, which I think is a really good decision. The book really didn't help my learning at all. It was outdated and gave so many overly detailed descriptions that I ended up getting fed up with it and not using it at all. Besides, most of the information we needed was given during class and in research for our projects, not in the book. I'm glad to hear it won't be bothered with next semester. I also think that class time would have been better if it had been a little more hands-on. The Vyew conference was probably my favorite class because it was interactive and we were able to participate a lot more. Sitting and watching while we were shown a bunch of programs, some of which we didn't feel we were ever going to use, got boring after a while. It wasn't a waste of time because we did become familiar with a lot of really useful programs, but perhaps our exploration of the programs could have been a little more interactive.

Overall, I think I learned more from the class than I had expected to. I don't know if I agree when I'm told that I'll know more about technology than the tech person at my school, but I know that I know more than a lot of teachers right now do. I've realized through this class how important using technology in education can be. Not only does it make life easier for the students and the teacher, but students become so much more excited about their education when technology is used. Standing from a podium and lecturing has never been an effective way of teaching, especially for middle school and high school students. Using visual, audio and interactive aids like PowerPoint, Podcasts, overheads, videos, blogs, etc make students excited about what they're learning and hold their short attention spans much longer. One of the things I was warned about in my methods class is that "if you're bored, they're DEFINITELY bored." I intend to use technology to keep my students interested and excited about their educational experience.

12/9 - last Sunday blog!

Sorry, I thought that since we were doing a blog in class Wednesday we didn't need one for this Sunday.

The presentations we saw in class last week were very well-done. I liked Jeff's incorporation of the videos even though they didn't work, they would have illustrated his point really well. His take on Second Life was particularly interesting for me because Kristen and I had included Second Life in our presentation on New Technologies in the Classroom. His findings were pretty much the same as ours; despite the criticism that so many people have, the teachers and students who are actually using them as a virtual learning environment have seen extremely positive results. The students love them because they're interactive and fun, and the teachers are finding that kids are learning more because class has an interesting twist to it. I also really liked his example of the virtual world that one of the teachers set up..I think it was about dinosaurs. It's a very constructivist principle to allow students to simply explore the environment and learn for themselves, and I think kids can learn a lot better this way when given the opportunity. It makes learning so much more fun for students, to the point where sometimes they don't even realize they're learning. I would love to try it.

The other presentation done by Amanda and Emily was great too, and was interesting for me because I have taken a Special Learners in the Regular Classroom course here at Fairfield. We talked a little about assistive technology used to help special learners in the classroom, such as hearing aids and magnifiers for the hearing or seeing impaired. This technology is a huge advancement in allowing students to learn in the "least restrictive environment," which is the goal of special education. Since I have some background in the area, I liked this presentation a lot.

I received positive feedback on my school visit paper, so I'm glad my work was appreciated. I thought Fairfield did a pretty good job with their efforts in incorporating technology in the classroom. The teachers I observed were especially persistent in using it every day, and I have a lot of respect for how much time it must take to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for every single lesson, especially considering that they meet with multiple classes each day. I will definitely use their example as a guideline for how I want to teach. Maybe not every day, but I will definitely use PowerPoint to give my students the visul element that has proven so helpful to me and most other students.

12/2

Sorry the blog is late, finals are already starting to beat me up!

The class in which we downloaded and tried out SnagIt was a good one. It may not have been necessary to bring our laptops to class, but now that I have the program on my computer I can use it at will. The program reminds me of a program I used to have on my PC when I was in middle school that my parents had added, called Screen Thief. It's basically the same concept of "stealing" images from whatever windows you have open, including the internet. This is useful because many websites have great graphic images that they don't allow users to copy & paste or save to their hard drive. If I wanted to use certain images for an academic project or paper, I would be unable to without explicit permission from either the owner of the website or the owner of the photograph. Programs like Screen Thief and SnagIt allows users to obtain these pictures. However, since ScreenThief is a late-90s program, SnagIt obviously is much more advanced with many more features. Screen Thief allowed you to take the picture, crop it, and save it to your hard drive, but did not include any other editing features. SnagIt has very similar features to photo editing programs such as Picnik and Picassa, so that you can resize, recolor, add text, etc to any picture you "snag." It's a great advancement and I will most likely use it at some point. I enjoyed the demonstration of Camtasia too, which, from my understanding was basically the video version of SnagIt. I would love to have some of my favorite YouTube videos saved to my hard drive, and Camtasia sounds like the best way to do it.

I thought the editing of our portfolios during class was really helpful. Since I had set my links up incorrectly, it gave me an opportunity to fix them with feedback from my peers and professor. I now have a fully working website complete with files that are both linked and downloadable. I also enjoyed discussing my lesson plan with the others in my class. Everyone else had some really interesting ideas for how to integrate technology into a daily lesson, and they liked mine as well. Bouncing ideas off of your colleagues can help you tremendously in the teaching world, which is why we've spent so much time on websites that have lesson ideas posted for us to see. Teachers are great at sharing their information with each other, because their main objective is to help students learn the best way possible, whether it's their own students or not. I find that teachers don't worry about whose idea is whose nearly as much as people in the business or science world, as long as kids are getting the education they deserve.

I'm also glad that we got the final date and last class date straightened out. I will most likely be submitting my final website early, because I have a break of a few days inbetween finals. I'm excited for creating my own website. I might have to do this for an actual class someday and it'll be great practice. Plus, I get to pretend I'm a teacher, which gets me excited for actually being one soon!

11/18

I just now realized that I already blogged on Chapter 7 last week....woops! I guess I won't repeat myself.

What I can talk about is the Weebly site that we worked on during the first half of class Wednesday. I like the layout of the site and the tools it gives you to easily incorporate any elements you want into your website. It's extremely easy to use, but still maintains a professional appearance. Website builders with elements that have such a basic click, drag, type setup to them usually end up looking like they're intended for a younger audience (one that is just learning to become familiar with website building). However, the final outcome of the website ends up looking very professional and well put-together. The options for the backgrounds are not the best, but they're sufficient for a basic professional web page. It would be better if we could change the images in the headings. There may be a way to do this but it doesn't seem to be obvious. I still can't figure out why the web page seems to be so constricted to the center of the page. It doesn't allow you to make use of the ample amount of room on either side of the central work area in which you post all of your material. This was pretty frustrating because the layout of the page would look a lot better if it were spread out width-wise much more.

I like the idea of a professional portfolio because we could use them later for job interviews and as an addition to our resumes. Employers who are looking for someone who is well-acquainted with technology and intends on using it in their classroom would be very impressed with this addition to their resume/portfolio. Unfortunately, I feel that not ALL employers would see this as a strong asset, and it might go unappreciated in some cases. However, better safe than sorry, and if anything it's a good way to organize your own materials, files, and personal information. Most employers ARE looking for new ways to incorporate technology, and teachers who are willing to do so, since so many teachers are reluctant to explore its uses and resources.

I also think I will enjoy building the classroom website. There is a good chance that I may have to do this in my future job, since almost every school's website I have visited has personal websites for each teacher. Some of these are very uniform and obviously school-mandated, but there are many that have clearly been created, designed, and updated frequently by the teachers themselves. Even if the school doesn't use a program such as Edline, Blackboard, or GradeConnect, personal classroom websites can serve this function also if they are frequently updated by the teacher. I think this project will give us a great resource for the possibility of having to do this in the future, and I honestly think I'll have fun creating it!

11/11

As I was not in class last week, I cannot comment on the Powerpoint presentations that were given. However, I know from my own presentation that a lot of work must go into the final product, and I'm sure they were well-done.

Chapter 6 talked a lot about "hypermedia," and tools that assist students in things like graphic design, music recordings, videos, etc. Something I didn't realize was that simple graphics such as wordart and clipart fall under this category. Presentation software was also included this, and "electronic slideshows" such as PowerPoint was mentioned. More simplistic types of hypermedia such as PowerPoint and basic Word graphics are things I can see myself using in my classroom. Although the graphic design aspect didn't apply to me and my idea of what I will be doing with my students, there are other hypermedia tools I can incorporate. For example, several language teachers I have observed have assigned video projects for their students, conducted in the target language. Learning the technology basics of video-editing software may be essential to these types of projects, and refraining from using such a valuable learning tool because one is not familiar with this type of hypermedia would be a shame. The same could be done with an audio piece. Instead of performing dialogues in front of the class (a popular in-class assignment for foreign language teachers), a long-term project could be to record one in an audio file. Again, knowledge of this software is necessary, although an alternative to contemporary and potentially confusing software would be to use the basic sound recorder device built-in to most computers.

PowerPoint presentations are also great tools for research projects. In previous language classes, I have had to do research on countries that speak the target language, and PowerPoint is a great way to visually present information. Going along with this idea, the book also mentioned interactive research tools such as encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, newspapers, etc which are available through software as well as online. A common misconception about foreign language classes is that writing, researching, and presentation skills are not applicable because the students are simply learning vocabulary grammar and pronunciation. However, the cultural aspects of the course are just as important as the language portion, which is where the research and project skills definitely come into play. Tools to assist with these aspects of language learning could be really beneficial.

10/4

I enjoyed the Vyew teleconference much more than I enjoyed the "babycakes" conference. The president was much more personable and explained things much more easily. I also feel that his product is MUCH more useful, particularly in the field of education. While I can't see myself subscribing to "babycakes," I definitely can see myself using Vyew for a group project with my class or for an online presentation. The man we spoke with did a great job of explaining and describing his product, while we were expected to already know most of the information about "babycakes." He took the time to specifically explain the educational uses of Vyew, which is most applicable to the class with whom he was speaking. I really enjoyed the medical example he gave, asking us to diagnose the patient based on the pictures and sound waves. I could see how this would be really useful for any type of class. I also noticed how during this part of the tutorial, he addressed some of us individually, inviting us to give our opinions. I compared this to calling on someone in class. This adds a very real element to the conference, making it extremely similar to being in an actual classroom presentation. He also gave us the quiz at the end to demonstrate how assessment could be administered through Vyew as well. We have looked at numerous products and online sources in this class, and with some of them I have definitely questioned their relevance to education. However, most likely because it was developed by a University, this product can definitely add a lot to an educational experience, and be very useful to both students and teachers.

Of the lesson plan websites shown in class, I was VERY disappointed to find that only 2 out of the 6 sites had a foreign language section for lesson plans. Of these two sites, Thinkfinity and Educator's Reference Guide, the lesson plans for French were extremely limited and not very useful. I looked through each one thoroughly and found only a few that were usable. The most useful website I have found on my own searches for French lesson plans has been Education World. Altogether, the resources for French lesson plans are unfortunately rather limited, but they are available if you look hard enough.

Chapter 6 was interesting, but personally not very relevant. I liked the explanations of how graphic design, screen design, audio and video can be programmed and used. I have many friends in the film and music areas, and have seen some of the software they use to complete projects. Programs such as Final Cut and Photoshop are interesting and fun to play around with. However, the actual authoring of programs and products that do these things is way over my head. I don't see myself personally writing any programs in the near future! Overall, however, it was at least interesting, and a nice change from the over-detailed explanations about things I already know.

10/28

Class Wednesday was probably one of the most interesting ones we have had this semester. The Vyew conference was absolutely amazing. I loved how simple it was and how quick and responsive it was to everyone's actions. This system would be great for any kind of group projects at a long-distance, and seems very college student-oriented. I can definitely see myself using this product for class during group work. This product also seemed very business-oriented, since that is the field in which most long distance projects take place. When college students conduct group projects, they are usually with people on campus. However, for a large university and for a large group, it is difficult to arrange a meeting time and place around several busy college student's schedules. Making this available from everyone's home computer makes a group project much less of a hassle, and gets the information out immediately.

The conference call website was also a very interesting feature. I for one have no idea how to three-way call on my cell phone, and I definitely could not create a conference call with it, involving 15 people such as our class did. This is a great thing to even incorporate into our casual conversations with multiple people, and obviously has advantages for businesses and for education. Teachers often conference with each other to plan cooperative lessons, or to discuss program, departmental, or curriculum changes. Parent-teacher conferences could also be conducted through this program, as well as PTA meetings, or any other kind of group discussion in an academic or business setting. I can definitely see myself using this product in whatever situations my future holds.

10/17

I was very happy with the decision to push back the deadline on the research project, and even happier with the decision, although tentative, to make the project our final exam. This will give all of us more time to do a thorough job on our project, and eliminates the need for an exam that I don't think is entirely necessary. In my opinion, a comprehensive project such as a presentation on a topic involving technology's role in education is much more of a reflection on our understanding of the class than an exam would be. It involves all aspects of the class and covers virtually all areas, if not in our own projects then by watching others' presentations for the final. I think this will be much more beneficial.

I thought the BrainyBetty.com website was a very useful download site for powerpoint templates. Being a college student, I would most likely not use the Crystal Graphics site that I have to subscribe to, simply because my future profession does not call for a need for extras like that. Someone in marketing or sales would find this very beneficial, but I can make do with what's free! I will definitely be downloading some of the free templates on Brainy Betty for my powerpoint presentation. I can later use these in powerpoints with my students, and can also share the site with them so that they may use them for projects.

Another website I found helpful was the citation website that Colin shared with us. While the official one originally shown was definitely more comprehensive and better quality, I can't see myself paying for it...especially since I'm so used to doing it manually that it isn't too much of an inconvenience anymore. However, knightcite.com was a great and simple way to create my works cited page in a matter of seconds, and I can certainly see myself using it in the future.

conference call + pageflakes

The conference call we held in class yesterday was something I've never been a part of before. It was a little weird to feel like I was a part
of the business world, on a conference call with the president of a
major corporation. That aside, it was a really interesting experience.
The president, "the baker," seemed very interested in what we had to
say, but also made it clear that his main focus was economically
driven...simply put, to make money. Since his business is still looking
to expand and gather more customers, this is completely understandable.
However, as we discussed afterward in class, he is looking to target
individuals as consumers when he should be marketing toward
universities, corporations, and places that will pay to give others
free access. After all, especially with college students, we are FAR
more reluctant to become users of a resource if we need to pay for it.
There are so many resources available that are free. "Babycakes" seemed
like a company that would target places that would need such a
comprehensive resource to all those programs. I was actually surprised
that they were targeting education at all, but in the context of this
class it makes sense. Individuals, even teachers, are only going to use
a few relevant programs. Especially since my subject is French, I don't
think I'll even have much use for programs such as Excel in my
classroom, even though they are so beneficial to other classes.
Teachers will only use what is specifically pertinent to their subject
and their lesson plans. If babycakes was marketed toward a school
however, and the school could have that resource available for all its
teachers, it would be much more useful. An entire school full of
teachers will need a much wider range of programs to learn about, as
opposed to an individual teacher who may only need 2 or 3. To learn how
to use 2 or 3 programs, a monthly subscription to a program that taught
you so many would just not be worth it.

This past class was the first time I was really awe-struck at one of the sites we were shown. The pageflakes site was the one I thought was best. Since I have just "converted" to firefox, I love the fact that I can set 4 different tabs as my homepage. Building on a similar concept, this site has it all on one page. I love that at a single glance you can get all the information you'd like, customized to what you want to know each time you open the browser. This is something I would use personally not only as a teacher, but for my internet use in general. Great idea.

United Streaming and Education World

The United Streaming site is probably the first teaching tool I've discovered through this class that I can see myself regularly using with my students. In my French classes throughout high school, my teachers used a video series called "French in Action" to illustrate certain concepts, vocabulary, syntax, etc. The videos were always pretty cheesy and I can't say they helped much. Looking at some of the French videos, they aren't any less cheesy or over-acted, but they are made this way purposely. Over-acting and exaggerating words and actions make students well-aware of what is happening on the screen. Students can learn vocabulary words because the actors say certain words while they are doing an exaggerated action. The students may laugh at how ridiculous it seems, but there is no mistake as to what the word means based on the actions.

There are full-length videos and shorter clips available on United Streaming. This was my favorite thing about it, because I think the reason we as French students did not learn much from French in Action is because we were made to watch 15-30 minute long videos, and most of us would drift off and not pay attention. With short 3 minute clips, the video gets its point across and is much more likely to keep the students' attention. These also work well with homework assignments, because students can log onto the site and watch a short clip and answer questions on it for homework. This is not generally reasonable to expect with a full-length video.

Another site that we were shown in class that I think I will definitely take advantage of while teaching is Education World. The resources on this site are plentiful, for advice, lesson plans, activities, articles, etc. I particularly enjoyed the section on mini-lessons, which were basic 5-minute fillers when you have extra time in class. I think this is important because down time in class is generally not a good thing. You lose students' attention very easily and it's hard to bring them back once they start having their own conversations. There is also a section that applies resources to your state's standards, which will be especially important during student teaching. In direct relation to my subject, I searched "French" within Education World. I found links to French newspapers such as Le Monde and Lyon Capitole, and links to French television and radio. This would be very beneficial if I choose to teach advanced classes. I also found a list of 200 quizzes to take, from easy to very difficult. Below these links there was a Lesson Plans section, which gave several links to French sites designed to help teachers create fun and imaginative lesson plans for various areas of French. I think I will definitely be using this website as a resource in the future.

9/30

The website www.atomiclearning.com was very interesting. First of all, it's really cool that a website even exists like that. That could be really helpful when trying to figure out a specific feature of a program, or even just wanting to explore all the programs' features to their fullest potential. When I am not sure how to work a certain feature, or not sure if there is a way to perform a certain function, the only aid I was aware of before now was the "Help" option, which I usually find to be completely useless. This website is a great resource for learning the ins and outs of programs, whether they are programs you already use but are unaware of some of the capabilities, or learning a program from scratch that you have never seen before.

One of the programs I explored was PhotoShop. I do not own PhotoShop but one of my hobbies is photography, so I am always interested in new ways to tweak photos to improve them or do other artistic things with them. There is currently a free Google program called Picasa that I use for this, but it has very limited abilities. I noticed that it gave you the basic how-to of each individual feature. The objection I had to to it, however, was that it didn't show you how these features would look on an actual photograph. They demonstrated the functions on a small graphic in the center of the screen and the tutorial seemed more like Microsoft Paint than a supposedly advanced system. I think I would have learned more simply playing around with the program hands-on than learning step-by-step how to use each tool. However, I recognize that this is one complaint for a visual program such as Photoshop. When I looked at the features for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access, it worked much better and the tutorials were much more informative. With processing tools such as these, a step-by-step tutorial is much more helpful.

During class, one of the topics that interested me was when we brought up the science tools that had functions such as taking temperature, that would then load the information onto your computer and form a chart or graph for you immediately. An excellent point was brought up that with tools such as these, kids never learn how to make the charts or graphs themselves! Not only should the kids learn how to do it on Excel or Word, they should learn how to draw them and manually map them out. Even if more efficient ways are available, kids should be learning the basics as well.

In class last week, one of the things that was mentioned is the online magazine Edutopia. I have looked through this magazine and browsed some of the articles. The one that I found particularly interesting as well as personally helpful was the "Ask Ellen" article, giving advice to a first-year teacher beginning in an urban school. She advised things such as taking extra time to familiarize yourself with the school's curriculum and standards, seeking out help and ideas from fellow colleagues, and reaching out to the families of students to share your plans, hopes, and anticipations for the upcoming school year. I found this article very re-assuring, particularly the fact that the person who asked for the advice in the first place seemed just as anxious about beginning teaching as I am!

In Chapter 3 of the textbook, five different "categories" of educational software was explained (in an obscene amount of depth), including a detailed explanation of how the programs worked, how to best use them in the classroom, their benefits and drawbacks, and how to select the best ones to use in teaching. The category that I focused most on was drill-and-practice, because as a foreign language teacher I feel that this type of programming will prove most helpful/effective in vocabulary building, verb conjugation, etc. I definitely intend to use this type of program in my future classroom. In fact, I have already found online quiz sites that allow teachers to make up quizzes for their students to take either during class or for homework. They then allow the teacher to see the results which allows for the option of counting it as a grade. The book explained that the immediate feedback a student receives from these types of programs is much better than the feedback they receive from homework, which can take days or weeks for teachers to grade and return. By that point, they may have thought they were doing something correctly for an entire week, and then get the homework back and realize they have no grasp whatsoever of the concept. I have definitely experienced this problem in high school, and I would have benefitted greatly from this type of software.

Simulations is something I remember using in elemetary school: mainly SimCity and Oregon Trail. I don't know if there are any programs available for foreign language education that include simulations like these, but you never know. This is another type of program that I think could prove very useful, should it exist.

Chapter 2

While reading Chapter 2, the part that struck me the most was the list of ways that technology can aid learning. The book mentioned so many different advantages that technology can have in the classroom to meet each individual student's needs. What was most interesting was the range of ways in which this was possible. It could be beneficial to a student who is having a lot of difficulty keeping up with a class, as well as a student who is so far above the level that they feel bored with a class. It facilitates group work as well as facilitating each individual's intelligences and personal strengths. It is useful for introducing new concepts as well as reviewing previous concepts. Virtually any aspect of the classroom can use technology, and its versatility is what makes it so beneficial no matter what subject, group of students, teacher, or school system it is incorporated into. In my Teaching Methods class I have been researching web lessons to begin to formulate ideas for creating my own lesson plans. The lesson plans that teachers have recently posted on the web almost always include technology in some way, because it is such a useful tool.

First day of MD300

The topic we discussed in class today that most interested me was the fact that we would be going on school visits to see first-hand what technology integrated into education looks like and how it can help students in their learning. I came from a high school where we often took trips to the computer lab for papers, presentations, research, etc., and just as I was leaving they began to incorporate laptops into the classroom. As of now, they are used in the classroom and returned at the end of the period, rather than remaining in the students' possession. I would love to see how laptops provided by the school for the students for an entire year can aid the learning process. I also found it interesting how young the children were that Professor Grignano worked with in the technology field. 3rd graders using the internet, Powerpoint, and other technology to aid their learning is extremely interesting.