Week 11 - Educational Blog

I read the blog Free Technology For Teachers. My comment on the blog is waiting to be approved by the blogger, so I copied my comment below in the mean time:

I really enjoyed reading about all of this free technology for teachers. I think a lot of these programs and applications would be very useful, helpful, and enjoyable in the classroom. There are a lot of creative sites on here that I could definitely see myself using in my classroom. The U.S. mint website would be fun to explore, and I like the statement about kids being interested in money. Although I have never thought of that, it makes sense. I also explored the sistine chapel tour, I really enjoyed that and would look for an opportunity to show it to my students. I also explored the wealth puzzle, out of my own curiosity. And I found it helpful for my own self!

Questions for Panel

1. Is there any technology that you see a lot of teachers use but you have chosen not to use it?

2. What stands out to you as the greatest benefit of technology in your classroom?

3. Is there any technology that students do not prefer working with?

Assignment #4 Tech Project part 1

For my technology project I would like to create a website that is useful for both teachers and students. My subject area is English as a Second Language at the high school level. For the students, I would like to have links to online activities to help them practice their English as well as my own activities and other helpful tidbits. For teachers, I would like to include lesson ideas and smartboard lessons, since the smartboard is something that I really wish to incorporate. Basically, this is a website to help ESL teachers teach and to help ESL students learn.

Podcast

Assignment #3 - Resources for Teachers

I worked through the website Delicious to create a toolbox of websites that will be very resourceful for me as a teacher. I chose websites that I could either use as a teacher to help create activities for my students or websites that I could actually send my students to for information, learning, and fun learning activities.

My toolbox mainly consists of resources for learning English as a Second Language. I believe it would be very helpful for other teachers to get ideas from my toolbox for activities and games in their classroom through online resources.

My first and favorite website is livemocha. It is an online resource to FREE language learning. It is very similar to the Rosetta Stone programs. There are many languages to choose from and it does not matter what your native language is. The website adapts to your personal settings. You select your native language and the language you wish to learn, and then you begin an online tutorial. I highly recommend this website for any students wishing to practice another language.

Another website that I was very impressed with is Free Rice. Free Rice is a fun website that quizzes you on vocabulary words, and for every word you answer correctly 10 grains of rice are donated to the World Food Program to help end hunger. I believe this online game would get students excited about learning. I found myself hooked into playing as I began to fill up my bowl with rice grains to be donated.

This final site, lingro, has been a favorite of mine since I learned of it a few months ago. This website will be useful for me as a teacher, for students, and for parents. This website allows you to access any website with the ability to translate it into any language that you need. This will allow the teacher to communicate technologically with all students.

Week #9 - "Caught on Video"

This article was very interesting and gave me a lot of ideas to think about and consider. Bob Spankle presents many ways to use video in the classroom. I think he presents many good points but also brings up ideas that I am not sure I would do myself. For a teacher who is very tech savy, I suppose they could use video successfully in just about every way and context within the classroom. But for myself, some of the ideas presented here, would be much more well done if I was to communicate the ideas myself, and not through video. One aspect that I have never considered that he emphasized was video taping the students so that you can actually show the parents footage of their students in action. This is a good idea but I am not sure if I would do it.

One thing I do agree with, and will definitely use in my classroom, is incorporating videos into students' projects. I would like to teach ESL and Spanish, and I remember in my high school Spanish classes we made many videos. Videos are a fun way to learn and get students engaged.

Classmate Comments

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Reflection #1

What? ... A little over a week ago Dr. Kress used the SMARTboard in my Educational Psychology class. We used the little hand held tools that each student had so that we could anonymously answer questions.

So What? ... This was a very fun time in class and because everyone had to participate (but it was anonymous) the entire class was really into it. Dr. Kress was unfamiliar with the technology so it was sort of a once in a lifetime chance for us students to actually do something that he could not (haha). It gave us the challenge then to step up a little and figure it out for ourselves.

Now What? ... Now that we discovered this technologies' usefulness in this particular classroom, it would be beneficial to learn more about the other applications so that we can continue to involve it more in the future.

Week 8 - Promethean ActivBoard

http://www.prometheanworld.com/server.php?show=nav.16053

Promethean ActivBoard has shown to be a very successful tool in engaging students in the classroom. It reaches out to students in a modern way that better suits their generation. It draws their attention and excites them to learn and participate.

For the teacher, the Promethean ActivBoard provides an endless amount of access to new ideas for the classroom. It gives teachers the opportunity to share and benefit from each others work and creativity. It allows teachers to go above and beyond normal lesson plans and they can explore the capacity of so much more.