I have always believed that we should be educated on the newest forms of technology. Obviously it's here to stay and there will only be more improvements made in the future. We are starting to see technology everywhere: the workplace, homes, and also schools. I am a firm believer that we need to educate our student on real world experience and knowledge, including technology.
I think using technology in the classroom is essential. For one, I think it is eye catching for students and it helps hold their attention. It can also be relatively easy to use, especially for kids because most of them have been exposed to technology at home. For those who haven't, it allows them to try something new and have the opportunity to use technology they would have otherwise never seen. I also think using technology can be very time effective for teachers. It is much quicker to do things on the computer rather than doing them by hand.
I think as educators, it is our responsibility to prepare our students for the real world. By teaching them the basics of using technology and how to use "the spirit of discovery" when they learn something new, we will help them to become productive citizens. Technology truly is the wave of the future and it is important the we recognize this.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Lessons Learned
Whenever I'm dealing with new technology, I always learn a few things by trial and error. I have never made my own videos before and the idea of creating a digital story was completely foreign to me. It took a lot of practice to figure out how to arrange things properly and make sure the music looped well. It also took a lot of patience to make the digital story because it is a lengthy process to plan and then create.
The main thing I had to remember throughout this process was not to get frustrated when something didn't work. Often times, we had to adjust the music settings or fix the pixelation on some of our pictures and it was difficult to be patient and try to figure it out. It really helps to remember to have "the spirit of discovery" and look at making mistakes on a project like this as a learning experience.
It was extremely helpful for me to partner with Trevor on this project because he has a lot of knowledge about making videos and using YouTube. I think it is always helpful to have someone who knows more than you help you learn about something new, especially when it comes to technology. It was really nice to be able to have him help when I messed up on something and needed to fix it or when I was totally clueless.
The main thing I had to remember throughout this process was not to get frustrated when something didn't work. Often times, we had to adjust the music settings or fix the pixelation on some of our pictures and it was difficult to be patient and try to figure it out. It really helps to remember to have "the spirit of discovery" and look at making mistakes on a project like this as a learning experience.
It was extremely helpful for me to partner with Trevor on this project because he has a lot of knowledge about making videos and using YouTube. I think it is always helpful to have someone who knows more than you help you learn about something new, especially when it comes to technology. It was really nice to be able to have him help when I messed up on something and needed to fix it or when I was totally clueless.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Strengths & Weaknesses
I have always felt as if I am rather knowledgeable when it comes to technology. I enjoy learning about what's out there and educating those who are less informed. I think this can definitely apply to my abilities as an educator. It is important to continue evaluating and increasing your knowledge when it comes to technology.
It was really interesting to read through the NET standards and decide which of the described statements applied to me. There were several that I immediately recognized as describing my ability when it comes to technology such as applying technology to increase productivity and identifying or locating technology resources and evaluating them for accuracy and suitability. However, with technology being such an ever-changing part of our lives, there are always areas that need more attention or improvement. Learning to manage students while they are participating in technology integrated activities is an area that I would love to learn more about. UEN's Professional Development link shows many technology related courses that could assist in educating teachers about these important points. Two of the offered classes that I think would be extremely helpful to me as an educator include "Internet Safety for Educators" and "Use Technology to Teach". By reading the course descriptions, you can tell that though these classes provide a lot of basic information about teaching with technology and also about how to help your students navigate the technological world.
It was really interesting to read through the NET standards and decide which of the described statements applied to me. There were several that I immediately recognized as describing my ability when it comes to technology such as applying technology to increase productivity and identifying or locating technology resources and evaluating them for accuracy and suitability. However, with technology being such an ever-changing part of our lives, there are always areas that need more attention or improvement. Learning to manage students while they are participating in technology integrated activities is an area that I would love to learn more about. UEN's Professional Development link shows many technology related courses that could assist in educating teachers about these important points. Two of the offered classes that I think would be extremely helpful to me as an educator include "Internet Safety for Educators" and "Use Technology to Teach". By reading the course descriptions, you can tell that though these classes provide a lot of basic information about teaching with technology and also about how to help your students navigate the technological world.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Service Learning Project
Our field assignment was to teach with Ms. Hunter in her 4th grade classroom, at Legacy Elementary in American Fork. We will be working with Ms. Hunter from 11:45-3:30 every day of the week. During these times the students work on writing, journals, read aloud, social studies, and reading. The school is an extended day school, we have 35 students in our class, and our classroom is located in a small trailer outside the school. The students are all very well off, money is not an issue for any of the families of the children in our classroom. The classroom has one computer which is the teacher’s laptop that the children do not have access to, there is also one TV, with an attached DVD player that is shared between the two teachers that teach in this small trailer.
We have forged a very good relationship with Ms. Hunter, she seems to trust us and will often times just have us teach all of her lessons. Ms. Hunter has a lot of things going on right now, it is also her first year in 4th grade so a lot of the time she puts her lessons together the day of the lesson. We are very glad that she trust us though, because so many teachers would not trust us with their lessons, so many other teachers just treat UVU interns as if they were children.
Ms. Hunter loved our digital story, she requested the DVD so that she can use it in other years. She liked that we used the students to narrate the piece, she agreed with me that by having the students narrate the piece the students would be more interested in the content material. Having them narrate the digital story also provided me a great opportunity to teach an individual voice lesson to every student.
Ms. Hunter really enjoyed our lesson. The object of our lesson was to get the kids to think about the mountain men, to get them excited about the mountain men rendezvous that they would be having the next day. I think the kids got really excited when they heard their own voices to the music and pictures. The digital story also opened up a discussion about mountain men after the video. The kids came up with so many questions that the wanted to ask the mountain man. It was great the next day when the mountain man was there to see the students asking the questions that they had posed the day before.
Our training session was changed multiple times, as Ms. Hunter came down with a cold, and missed two days in a row when we had planned the training. We decided to take that time to teach some of my students about why we were narrating the story, and to teach them a little about imovie. Many of them have Mac’s at home, and were really excited when we showed them how easy it was for them to create a movie of their own, and how easy it was for them to put it on YouTube. They loved it because they know that if you’re on YouTube everyone in the world can see your work. We have not gotten a chance to teach Ms. Hunter how to make a digital story, and at this point it does not look good. She has to many other things she is doing. After we presented the the digital story lesson though she was very interested in how she could use her mac to teach a voice lesson. So we had a very short lesson where I showed her how she could use the digital recorder on imovie, and how she could save it as a mp3 file and use it on either a cd, or a video.
This service-learning experience was hopefully beneficial to all of those involved. Being a member of Americore has shown me how important it is to not only learn while I am in school, but to teach people along the way. I would have loved to have had more time to work with my cooperating teacher, I believe she could have gotten a lot of great knowledge that she could combine with her teaching skills to really make some amazing vidcast, and podcasts.
We hope that our cooperating teacher gained the knowledge to successfully incorporate using imovie to teach about voice. We hope that she will use that knowledge to make the class room more exciting, to get the children more excited about reading, and to publish voice works that her students will create in the future.
We gained a lot of different things from this experience, the most glaring would be flexibility. We found out that no matter how well you think you have planned that things always change. People get sick, technology does not work, fire alarms, birthday parties, mountain men rendezvous, thanksgiving parties, all of these things we have found out are going to affect your teaching. It was a great experience to learn that sometimes things do not work out how you plan them, it has better prepared us to teach our own class.
We truly believe that this service learning project was worth it, even though we did not get to teach everything to our cooperating teacher, I think we showed her enough things that she is now excited to learn more about how she can use technology in her classroom. She knows that if she ever has any questions about digital stories, vidcasts, or podcasts that she is more than welcome to email or call us. I hope that our presence in her classroom was a positive one for her, and showed her some of the new technologies that are out there, and how she can utilize them in her everyday teaching routine.
We have forged a very good relationship with Ms. Hunter, she seems to trust us and will often times just have us teach all of her lessons. Ms. Hunter has a lot of things going on right now, it is also her first year in 4th grade so a lot of the time she puts her lessons together the day of the lesson. We are very glad that she trust us though, because so many teachers would not trust us with their lessons, so many other teachers just treat UVU interns as if they were children.
Ms. Hunter loved our digital story, she requested the DVD so that she can use it in other years. She liked that we used the students to narrate the piece, she agreed with me that by having the students narrate the piece the students would be more interested in the content material. Having them narrate the digital story also provided me a great opportunity to teach an individual voice lesson to every student.
Ms. Hunter really enjoyed our lesson. The object of our lesson was to get the kids to think about the mountain men, to get them excited about the mountain men rendezvous that they would be having the next day. I think the kids got really excited when they heard their own voices to the music and pictures. The digital story also opened up a discussion about mountain men after the video. The kids came up with so many questions that the wanted to ask the mountain man. It was great the next day when the mountain man was there to see the students asking the questions that they had posed the day before.
Our training session was changed multiple times, as Ms. Hunter came down with a cold, and missed two days in a row when we had planned the training. We decided to take that time to teach some of my students about why we were narrating the story, and to teach them a little about imovie. Many of them have Mac’s at home, and were really excited when we showed them how easy it was for them to create a movie of their own, and how easy it was for them to put it on YouTube. They loved it because they know that if you’re on YouTube everyone in the world can see your work. We have not gotten a chance to teach Ms. Hunter how to make a digital story, and at this point it does not look good. She has to many other things she is doing. After we presented the the digital story lesson though she was very interested in how she could use her mac to teach a voice lesson. So we had a very short lesson where I showed her how she could use the digital recorder on imovie, and how she could save it as a mp3 file and use it on either a cd, or a video.
This service-learning experience was hopefully beneficial to all of those involved. Being a member of Americore has shown me how important it is to not only learn while I am in school, but to teach people along the way. I would have loved to have had more time to work with my cooperating teacher, I believe she could have gotten a lot of great knowledge that she could combine with her teaching skills to really make some amazing vidcast, and podcasts.
We hope that our cooperating teacher gained the knowledge to successfully incorporate using imovie to teach about voice. We hope that she will use that knowledge to make the class room more exciting, to get the children more excited about reading, and to publish voice works that her students will create in the future.
We gained a lot of different things from this experience, the most glaring would be flexibility. We found out that no matter how well you think you have planned that things always change. People get sick, technology does not work, fire alarms, birthday parties, mountain men rendezvous, thanksgiving parties, all of these things we have found out are going to affect your teaching. It was a great experience to learn that sometimes things do not work out how you plan them, it has better prepared us to teach our own class.
We truly believe that this service learning project was worth it, even though we did not get to teach everything to our cooperating teacher, I think we showed her enough things that she is now excited to learn more about how she can use technology in her classroom. She knows that if she ever has any questions about digital stories, vidcasts, or podcasts that she is more than welcome to email or call us. I hope that our presence in her classroom was a positive one for her, and showed her some of the new technologies that are out there, and how she can utilize them in her everyday teaching routine.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Field Experience #2
What: It has been really interesting to enter the typical classroom and see what type of technology is available to students and the teacher. I always imagined each class as having at least minimal technology such as a television, DVD player, or VCR. However, this class was different. Though it was a more wealthy area, there really was not much technology available in the classroom. The technology that was present was shared between several classes so the teachers often had to work out a schedule for using it.
So What: It's difficult to plan to use technology in the classroom when you aren't sure that the school you will be teaching at will have a wide array of technology available for your use. I am assuming that technology should be becoming more readily available with all of the advancements being made, but it seems as if schools are often one of the last places affected by this. I am hoping that by the time I begin teaching, there will be more opportunity to use technology in the classroom. I think regardless of what you are able to use in your classroom, it is still our responsibility to make sure students know how to safely and responsibly use technology. With the internet becoming so easy to access and more students having it at home, it's important that we address this in a classroom setting, even if it is not something used in class.
Now What: The biggest thing I have come to realize is that you have to be prepared to deal with whatever kind of technology you are handed as an educator. Sometimes you have grand ideas for what you can do with computers in your classroom, but if those computers aren't available, you have to change your plan. This comes with learning to be flexible, something I think is really important for teachers.
So What: It's difficult to plan to use technology in the classroom when you aren't sure that the school you will be teaching at will have a wide array of technology available for your use. I am assuming that technology should be becoming more readily available with all of the advancements being made, but it seems as if schools are often one of the last places affected by this. I am hoping that by the time I begin teaching, there will be more opportunity to use technology in the classroom. I think regardless of what you are able to use in your classroom, it is still our responsibility to make sure students know how to safely and responsibly use technology. With the internet becoming so easy to access and more students having it at home, it's important that we address this in a classroom setting, even if it is not something used in class.
Now What: The biggest thing I have come to realize is that you have to be prepared to deal with whatever kind of technology you are handed as an educator. Sometimes you have grand ideas for what you can do with computers in your classroom, but if those computers aren't available, you have to change your plan. This comes with learning to be flexible, something I think is really important for teachers.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Field Experience #1
What: This week, Trevor and I started our field experience at Legacy Elementary School in American Fork. We have mostly been observing the classroom and have also taught several lessons so far.
So What: We have been spending a lot of time in the classroom and because of this class, I was really interested to see what kind of technology is present in the classroom as well as the entire school. Our class is actually in one of the extension buildings off the back of the school. I think this makes it difficult for the teacher to use a lot of technology. She does have a standard overhead projector and several tape/CD players used for reading, but that seems to be the extent. I haven't really been able to see how she uses any other technology yet. It would be interesting to see just how much experience these particular fourth graders have with any kind of technology.
Now What: I am excited to introduce the use of technology in education (i.e. digital stories) to our cooperating teacher. I think the class size and transition time are both big reasons as to why she doesn't use a lot of technology. I do think using computers or captivating videos would be a great management technique for her, especially with a class of thirty five kids. It will be interesting to see how using technology will impact the students.
So What: We have been spending a lot of time in the classroom and because of this class, I was really interested to see what kind of technology is present in the classroom as well as the entire school. Our class is actually in one of the extension buildings off the back of the school. I think this makes it difficult for the teacher to use a lot of technology. She does have a standard overhead projector and several tape/CD players used for reading, but that seems to be the extent. I haven't really been able to see how she uses any other technology yet. It would be interesting to see just how much experience these particular fourth graders have with any kind of technology.
Now What: I am excited to introduce the use of technology in education (i.e. digital stories) to our cooperating teacher. I think the class size and transition time are both big reasons as to why she doesn't use a lot of technology. I do think using computers or captivating videos would be a great management technique for her, especially with a class of thirty five kids. It will be interesting to see how using technology will impact the students.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Digital Story Reflection - Work Day
What: Today we were given a work day to put together information for our digital stories. Trevor and I worked on compiling some facts and pictures. Since we are doing our field experience in fourth grade, we have decided to use mountain men as the subject for our digital story.
So What: I spent a lot of time looking for pictures of mountain men in action as well as portraits of famous mountain men such as Jim Bridger and Jedidiah Smith. While doing this, I was reminded of when we learned about mountain men in fourth grade. I am really excited that we will get to participate in a mountain man rendezvous at our school.
Now What: I really like that we have been able to learn about using digital stories in the classroom. It's such a great way to introduce a new subject or topic. I think it's something that can really help get kids excited about learning. I am really interested to see how the kids in our fourth grade field experience classroom will react to the digital story.
So What: I spent a lot of time looking for pictures of mountain men in action as well as portraits of famous mountain men such as Jim Bridger and Jedidiah Smith. While doing this, I was reminded of when we learned about mountain men in fourth grade. I am really excited that we will get to participate in a mountain man rendezvous at our school.
Now What: I really like that we have been able to learn about using digital stories in the classroom. It's such a great way to introduce a new subject or topic. I think it's something that can really help get kids excited about learning. I am really interested to see how the kids in our fourth grade field experience classroom will react to the digital story.
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