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

Journal Due 10/10

Last week, we basically wrapped up any loose ends about the spreadsheet assignment that my peers may or may not have had. Additionally, we came together as a class to discuss how we felt about this assignment (specifically what we got out of it). For me, I thought this was a great assignment because it allowed me to become familiar with a program that is going to have such a big impact on my future teaching career. By doing this assignment, I now know shortcuts that will make working with this program to records grades in the future much more faster, easier, and efficient overall.

Unless I am mistaken, concluding this spreadsheet assignment was the only thing we discussed for last weeks class, and, once again, I felt it was a great assignment.

Journal Due 10/3

Last week, we dealt with microsoft excel for the spreadsheet assignment that I just finished for tonight's class. I learned a great deal about using this program between when we first began talking about excel 2 weeks ago, working with it last week, and using it for the spreadsheet assignment. I definitely feel a lot more comfortable using this program in the future for my teaching career ahead.

As for the spreadsheet assignment itself, it is was a lot easier and took less time than I thought. I guess that was because I felt overwhelmed at first while learning how to use the program but once I got started, things ran smoothly. Its not that hard of a program to work with and when you get the hang of it, it is a piece of cake.   I learned a great deal upon analyzing the results of the assignment but I will not go into that as I have already written about that in my "reflection" aspect of the assignment. Overall, I think this was a great assignment for me and my peers in getting familiar with the microsoft excel program.

Journal due 9/26

This past class, we spent the majority of the class on copyright and fair use issues. I feel that this was really good for me because I need to know what I can and cannot use in terms of videos and other forms of technology that I might be borrowing from someone else. Our country's Judaical system is very complicated so if possible, I would like to NOT get fined, sued, or thrown in prison for showing something to my students that I was legally not allowed to. For my online quiz that I took, I think I got a 60% so I might want to expand on this issue as there is still much for me to learn about this topic.

The other topic we discussed during this class had to due with spreadsheets. I especially benefited from this lesson as literally the following day, I had to work with the spreadsheet for the archives of the Independence Seaport Museum on my first day of my internship there, so this lesson paid dividends for me almost immediately. In addition, it will help me organize my grade book in my future career in education so I definitely gained something from this lesson.  

Journal Due 9/19 (Sorry for being late!)

For this class, I felt it was good to read the "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" document, watch the two educational Youtube clips, and then come together as a class to discuss everything because it allowed me to get a clear picture of how important it is for technology to be utilized into today's classrooms. As mentioned in an earlier blog, the whole schooling experience has been changing more and more over the past few decades simply by the fact that the world overall is changing at the same time. New technologies are not only being introduced at a fast rate, but many of these technological advances are having such an affect on the way people live and function in our society that it is almost mind-blowing to think about. Besides the fact that classrooms are changing through the introduction of tools like powerpoint presenations, the internet, and smart boards, teachers need to realize that the students themselves are changing as well. With the fact that students gain so much information from around the world through the internet, they are used to obtaining information in a very short period of time. Since the students are changing, the teachers have to compensate this change by altering the teaching methods that were widely practiced in previous decades. For example, lectures are becoming more and more a thing of the past as teachers are using other methods that engage each student more than a simple lecture. I feel that is going to be important for me to learn about as a future educator but I do not feel as it will be as much of a problem to "change my teaching methods to adapt to this digital natives" as it will be for a digital immigrant teacher because 1) I have not taught before so I do not need to change anything and 2) I myself was in grade school during the rise of the digital natives.

Advice for Digital Immigrants.

To the whom it may concern,

Human society has made more technological advances in the past 100 years than in the previous 2,000 years, so keeping up with the times can be, and has been an issue for many people. The advances in computers, the internet, and other revolutionary technologies in the past few decades alone has created a wide gap between the baby-booming generation to the next generation that people refer to as "digital immigrants vs. digital natives". In this digital age, the older generation that is used to performing many tasks, such as research, depend on doing work without the usage of some of the technologies that they may have at their disposal. Meanwhile, the younger digital native generation has been born into a lifestyle that is generally promoting everyone to depend on computers and other technological devices to help them make their lives as quick, simple, and efficient as possible.

As for digital immigrants who are struggling to keep up with the times, the main point they should realize about the digital natives is that they have grown to receive information as quickly as possible. The old way of teaching, teaching one thing at a time and constant lectures, are not entirely effective in teaching this digital native generation because these students are used to having a multi-task, parallel form of learning. Instead of teaching students through the course's text books, and only by reading the text books, the students of today will generally not be as efficient learners as they could be. This generation would be much better off if the teacher introduces more ways for their students to learn the content of the class, such as creating an online blog, much like this one, to discuss/debate a certain topic that really engages the student rather than having the students read the text book, listen to the teacher's lectures, and memorize the content for a test. Another way for teachers to reach out to the digital native students is by having them use computer programs that are based on the content of the class. There are so many other examples of how educators can reach out to the digital natives, but the main point is that much of the success of teaching these students depends on the teachers themselves. Even if the teacher is not a digital native, they still need to flexible and accept the new digital way of teaching otherwise the students will not be as interested in learning as they could be.

20th vs 21st Century Classrooms

The "Characteristics of the 21st Century Classroom"document does a fairly excellent job at painting a picture of what the current 21st century way of teaching is, or what it should be by comparing it to older teaching methods that were practiced throughout the previous century. For me, the point about teachers needing to prepare their students for work in the 21st century sums the whole thing up in a very simplistic but accurate way. Back in the 20th century, teachers generally lectured their students and only taught one subject at a time. Now students are being taught multiple things at a time, such as reading a passage for an English class that is about a country that is being studied in a social studies class. Students are also able to absorb more content as the lecture-like classroom setting is less common which means that students have more time actually engaging the content presented to them instead of trying to memorize it. With the teachers being more of a coach that assists the students during school as opposed to the old lecture who simply forces the students to memorize and recall the information, now students are now being taught in a way that promotes them not only asking questions, but asking the correct questions. These changes in teaching methods has a lot to due with the fact the there has been so many breakthrough technological advances that make it easier for people to access a wider range of information. Back when my parents were in college in the mid 70's, the main way that they did their research for their classes was by going to the library and read books about whatever topic they were reseacrching. Now, people can access information on any topic from virtually anywhere that a computer is. The internet and various other computer programs makes it possible for teachers to be able to reach a much wider group of students as well as making their classrooms more efficiently run overall.