Technology Class Overall Reflection

Overall I felt the class was really great. It took me a little time getting started at the beginning because I am not very good with technology to begin with. One of the suggestions that I would have is that you might offer to do the first lesson with participants when you meet with them for the first time to set up the class. Once I got the hang of it I really moved through the lessons, but it just took me a little time to get there. I really thought that the lessons were well thought out and you asked us to be very reflective about how we would use them in our classrooms. I particulary loved learning about wikis and blogging and plan to do more with these next year in my classroom. In terms of the structure of the class, I liked that I could complete the lessons as my own pace with suggested deadlines. It was great to also hear from other participants about how they were going to use the ideas in their classroom. That gave me inspiration as well for my own classroom. I would recommend this course to anyone who thinks they want to learn more about technology in the classroom.

Reflection 3

In general, I am going to try to use technology more for sharing student work. Before every unit we do I am thinking about how I can incorporate the use of technology within my lessons or projects. I think that students love to use technology and it gives them a purpose for actually doing a lot of our projects. I feel like I learned a lot from this class. I am now more aware of different ways in which technology can be used in the classroom. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by not knowing what to do, I feel excited. I am much more technology savvy now than I was before.

School 2.0

What strikes me most about this map are all the things that you can do to incorporate technology. All the little comments in the middle of the map are what interest me the most. I love the idea of having ebooks and computer programs to help kids with reading. I think that having students communicate with each other online is a wonderful way to immerse them in technology and education. I think technology can help kids become life-long learners. I would definitely keep the parent involvement piece of this map. I love the idea of having parents be able to be a part of online activities and also having them be able to access their child's grade from home. This would save the district a lot of time and money because they wouldn't have to worry about progress reports and report cards. I guess I wouldn't change anything,. In a perfect world I would wish that we had unlimited funds to do what we needed to do for kids to help them learn better.

Reflection on Dr. Zhao's Podcasts

It is overwhelming to think of all the changes that need to be made to our educational system in order to keep up with the pace of things. I think the change really needs to begin in colleges where teachers are educated. Classes need to be devoloped for teachers that will help them meet the technology needs of our students. Also, nationally we need to look at how we can provide access to technology in the classroom. We all know that technology is a priority, but it also has taken a hit through budget cuts. Maybe eventually we will have a computer for each student, but that would be a tremendous cost to school districts/parents. I'm not sure that is feasible. I guess what we do is try to infuse these things slowly. I worry that we are not moving fast enough in comparison to other countries and I know that is a concern for many other people as well.

Collaborative Project

I am thinking abou how I can have students do a collaborative project using some of the ideas from this presentation. I think that this would work well with The Giver. I could put students in groups and have them create their own virtual community. We would look at the problems in our world now and talk about how we can do away with those problems. They would do research and look at some communities in our world now that are structured differently and also the community in which Jonas lives. I would have them create their own government, education, housing, laws, ect. for their community. I have seen other teachers do a similar project, but it was more pen and paper or draw a poster kind of a project. What if we had each group create their own website for their community? Other students could then spend time looking at the ideas of their peers and evaluate the different communities. Would these changed communities create new problems to be faced? This is a great starting point for me to look into for next year.

Reflection 2

I like the idea of using a wiki to post information about books or to share writing that students have done in school. The librarian at my school and I are actually doing something with my community of students. We are having them read some new books that we have in the library from the ORCA series. They are lower level texts that focus mainly on plot and action without all the fluff. The students are reading these and then we are going to co-teach a lesson on how to write a review of the book and how to use the wiki to post the information for other poeple to read about. This is actually going to be really helpful for my Young Adult Literature class that I am taking where we are reading and giving our opinion about the books. This way we get student feedback and we even get to teach them about a new type of technology that they can use to publish their ideas. Right now the students are just reading the books and then in January they will begin working on the reviews. I am excited to see how this turns out.

Impressions of Wikis

I think this is a really great idea. I am really excited about all the new technology I am learning. I like that with a wiki you can see everything all at once when people post. You don't have to click on the comments in order to see what people say. I am doing a Young Adult Literature class where we are reading novels and posting our comments about the books to a wiki. Then all participants can go on and look at what everyone has said about their books. I never really knew what Wikipedia really was. I guess a site like that could be beneficial, but I think about all the times my students have asked me to use information from that to do research and it makes me cringe to think that basically anyone can post information on the site. I think we really need to educate our students about finding appropriate sources and Wikipedia probably isn't a good one to choose for our kind of research. I think if students are looking for social perceptions about differnt people or concepts then that might be a time to use Wikipedia. I was thinking I might try to use a wiki in my classroom later in the year. I would like to have kids create summaries and comments about their books. Kind of like an online booktalk to help other kids find interesting books to read for Literature Circles. I also could see using a wiki to publish writing pieces or poems.