post for 12/5/11

All we did last week was present web 2.0 projects and podcasts, so they was really any new material to discuss for this journal. However, we did have our lesson plan assignment due today so that will be the focus of today's blog. For my assignment, I created a lesson about the French-Indian War and the British laws that were enforced after the war. The way that I choose to utilize technology in my lesson was by having the students complete an online scavenger hunt. This is a good alternative from the regular classrooms that our digital native students will likely enjoy. However, one of the main points about this assignment was that we write a plan that accommodates a student with some kind of disability. For this assignment, I wrote about a student who had visual impairment (if I remember correctly, the actual term is hyperopic- which is the inability to see things close up). To Accommodate for this student, I choose to use the computer magnifying program that we talked about last week, as well a dictation program so the student can talk his way into doing his work instead of struggling to read the keys on the keyboard.

Journal for 11/28/11

Last week's class was split into 2 different halves: the presentation about the various technological accomodations for students with various physical or mental disabilities and the web 2.0 presentations. The primary focus for this journal will be on the first half as accommodating students with suitabilities is something that I am going to be dealing with in the future as a teacher.  I myself was considered "disabled" and had my own IEP since I am epileptic so I am well aware of that fact that some kids need extra help in order to learn. Some of the tools discussed by the professor, whom I cannot recall her name at this moment, appear to be great a way for disabled students overcome the obstacles prevent them from learning at a "normal" pace. For example, I really liked that one program were you basically install an electronic overhead projector into the computer via the USB drive. Through this program, it can digitally project any image it is focused on, such as a page in a course textbook, and that is a great way for students who have difficulty reading due to visual problems. There seemed to be some kind of technological accommodation for nearly every kind of student with a disability ranging from smaller, more portable keyboards for people in wheel chairs to bigger, more simple keyboards for student with low motor-skill abilities.  It is great to know that many of these technologies can be at my disposal when assisting students with disabilities.

Journal for 11/21/11

For last week's class, all we did was work on our podcast project pretty much the entire time. Working with garage band for this project was nice because it is not that complicated of a program to deal with. While the program was easy to work with, I will say that making a good podcast is rather time consuming between writing a script, recording the podcast, and editing it so that the everything flows smoothly for the listeners. It took up pretty much the whole class and we ended up doing more work outside of class afterwards to finish it up. When it comes to using a podcast for my future career in teaching, it is a great idea for kids to show off what they learned but I have to keep in mind that the students will need plenty of time in order to record one. This probably should not be an in-class assignment that the teacher expects them to finish in one day. The teacher should give them a couple of days or so to allow them to spend more time on bringing their podcast together.

Journal for 11/14/11

Last week, we first discussed some housekeeping issues regarding confusion about the due dates for the previous two assignments. I myself handed in the two assignment in reverse order by accident (handed in the assignment due last week the week before and the assignment due the week before I handed in last week).

Once that was taken care of, we discussed how to use garage band. I myself had very little experience with this program so I thought it was a very helpful lesson since garage band can be used to create classroom podcasts. For the assignment due at the end of tonight's class, my parents and I are doing a podcast about how to be a successfull student at college.I have been placed in charge of coming up with ideas regarding student health so I have just been brainstorming a couple of ideas over the past week. I won't really know how this project turns out until next week's blog since we are finishing this blog in class, so I guess I will have to wait and see. But it does sound like an excellent project for us future teachers to become familiar with making podcasts so we can use this skill to help the digital native students of the future learn more efficiently.

Journal for 11/7/11

When I finished last week's journal right around 4:30 or 5, I was under the impression that we were going to have class that day. However, I missed the memo from the week before that we were not going to have class because I was sick. Therefore, I do not really have anything to report from last week other than I handed in last week's assignment (which I talked about in last week's post) and the online quiz. As for the online quiz, I thought the questions were both good in fair in terms of going over the material that we have learned as well a great way for us students to be engaged in the material.

For today, we had the newsletter/brochure assignment due. I felt that this was a good assignment as it was a good way to practice how to make a newsletter and brochures. I will definitely need to know how to write newsletter with being a teacher in the future, and knowing how to make brochures is helpful too Newsletters are a great way for teachers, as well as the school overall, to communicate to the parents, saying what exactly is going on in the school. As for the brochure, I believe I have already talked about the benefits of knowing how to make one of these in a pervious post. There were a couple of issues with the format of the newsletter that I dealt with but I was able to solve them on my own over time. Overall, I felt this was a pretty good lesson.

Jounral for 10/31

First of all, I would like to say that I missed last week's class because I had either a bad case of food poisoning or some other bad bug that cause me to feel really sick. With that said, this journal is going to be a combination of the last two weeks because I was not able to attend last week's class and could not type a journal at that time.

Anyways, from what I remember two weeks ago, we talked about making brochures for the project that I believe will be for a project due a week from today. Knowing how to make a brochure as a teacher is an important skill to know because you can have your students create brochures themselves about the content that they are learning. Also, you can show them an example of what a "good" brochure looks like by making one yourself. However, I would not necessarily say I learned this great skill from this class because I have already dealt with making brochures on a number of occassions during my academic career, so this was not new to me.

The other thing about two weeks ago is that I presented my web 2.0 project to the class during the first week of presentations for this assignment. After doing the research and making the powerpoint presentation about my site, Wikispaces, I feel that I have become somewhat of an expert on the program. Additionally, I feel that I did at least fairly well on my presentation. I have to admit I was a little nervous and wanted to "just get it over with already" prior to my presentation, but once I got up there, the presentation just seemed to flow naturally. I think I "sold the product" to the audience by giving them a basic idea of Wikispaces so I feel that it went pretty good.

I am guessing that we spent a large part of last week's class on the Google sites assignment that is due today. I myself have completed most of the assignment but I have run into an issue over the part about "inserting a calendar". I have been tried emailing you, toying with it in many different times and different ways, and watching youtube videos, but I am not sure if the issue I am dealing with is an easy, quick fix. I guess I will just have to ask you prior to our class in 45 minutes. The point is I wish was able to make it to class last week so that I would not have this problem about how to insert a calendar into my Google site.

Journal for 10/17/11

Last week, we began discussing the web 2.0 project, and I choose to present mine in this first week later on today. I just finished my Power Point presentation on Wikispaces, and now I feel confident to stand in front of my class and give a 10-15 minute speech about what the program is. Since I have done a countless number of Power Points in my academic career before, this was much simpler for me to do than the spreadsheet assignment. Most of the time I spent on this project had to do with research for Wikispaces rather than the construction of the Power Point presentation. As for the Wikispaces application, I have learned that this a simply a collaborative tool in which students can greatly benefit from as most students today are digital natives. What I am really looking forward to is hearing some of the other student's presentations because I am unfamiliar with many of these other web 2.0 programs