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 It was outdated and gave so many overly detailed descriptions that I ended up getting fed up with it and not using it at all.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.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, December 3, 2007
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!
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!
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