almost finished!

I'm five hours away from being finished with the semester! Woo Hoo!
Check out this blog of a friend of a friend who is a first grade teacher in SLC: http://kristisorenson.blogspot.com/. Her stories of her students are hysterical.

Technology Research Article #2 Dabbleboard

Dabble board is an online white board. It has very basic functions but would work well for making graphic organizers, or simple handouts. If your school doesn't have graphic software you could edit photos in FotoFlex, upload them to Dabble board and create organizers, timelines, and photo stories. Your creations are stored on line and you can share them through email or simply give the url to anyone you want to view it. To view a simple organizer I created click here: http://www.dabbleboard.com/?b=rebeckawright&i=0&c=70bc246df42b0d27a83c8cbfcc4b0c5b337f2b13.

Dabble board also has a good help page. I used it as a quick tutorial and there wasn't anything I wanted to try that the help page didn't cover. This resources is good for all student ages. It is simple enough that a first grader could use it but useful enough that fifth and sixth graders would enjoy using it.

Technology Research Article #1 FotoFlexer

I was at the lab working on our webquest when I wanted to edit a photo. At home I use paint shop pro. I knew this wasn't on the computers in the Loft computer lab. I googled online photo editor and found this great tool. You can find it at http://fotoflexer.com/. You can upload photos from your computer or from several different online albums such as Picasa, Photo Bucket, or Flickr. FotoFlex has an easy to use interface, good basic effects, and some fun and funky things too. For our web quest we wanted to change the contrast of a photo so it would make a better background for text. We were able to do this easily. I also played around with a couple photos to make some interesting photos/graphics that could be used in student online or print work.

Here is our pyramid photo before and after it was turned into a cartoon.

And here are several variations of a photo of my son.

This is a great online tool that I'm excited to use with my students; easy to use with great results.

Ancient Egypt Webquest

Visit my "Teacher" web site to find a webquest on Ancient Egypt.
http://my.uen.org/206243
Look under My Documents, Click on egypt web quest.

My Beliefs

I believe that technology is a vital part of an elementary education. Technology is at the center of the way students live today. Integrating it throughout the curriculum helps them learn and create now and prepares them for the technologies of the future. Technology is also a valuable differentiation tool. Students who struggle academically can produce more work of a higher quality if they are provided technology supports. Finally the use of technology in the classroom is a strong motivator. When students use technology they are more excited about classroom work and learning.

Although I believe technology should be a component of elementary school learning, I believe that teachers must use caution. Students need scaffolding to ensure that technology is not abused and content is appropriate. The other area that teachers need to be aware of is that students need to learn skills and strategies for when technology is not available. Technology is a fabulous tool but should not become a crutch. I believe that an important way to achieve this balance is through arts integration. If drama, movement, music, and visual arts are integrated to the same extent that technology is integrated this balance is much easier to achieve.

Lessons Learned

It was interesting to learn and reflect on how students view technology. They view technology as such an integral part of their lives. This is mirrored in our society where technology is so key. The articles highlight permeation. I am a fan of technology. I love when it saves time, makes tasks easier, helps create excellent products, and makes it easier to connect with others.
I attended the arts infused conference at UVU. Dr. Johnson’s keynote address on teaching iBrains was provoking. This and some of the PDP articles make me concerned with just how much time students spend plugged i

The PDP articles made clear how advantageous technology integration can be. I was interested to see some technologies, such as iPhones and social networking websites, highlighted as educational that I hadn't previously viewed this way. I was also excited to see some advancements that may be coming soon to schools such as digital textbooks and portable student devices.

Strengths & Weaknesses

According to the UNI survey and the NETS standards my technology strength is that I am comfortable using a wide range of technology. I have designed instruction where students utilize technology they already know how to use. However, I have not designed instruction for teaching students how to use technology.

Two Technology skills I would like to develop are creating data bases and using spread sheets. A goal I would like to accomplish as a beginning teacher is design instruction and develop strategies for teaching students to use technology.

I could use this tutorial to help me prepare to teach my students how to use Microsoft Excel (http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/excel/), and this list of student spread sheet activities and lessons(http://www.teach-nology.com/themes/comp/spreadsheets/). This tutorial (http://www.geekgirls.com/menu_databases.htm) would be helpful in learning how to create and use databases. And this lesson plan (http://www.norman.k12.ok.us/092/techscope/languagearts/detectives.htm) could help me teach my students data base skills.

More web quest

I've been reviewing the sample web quests and how to put the web quest together seems pretty easy because we already know how to use power point. The difficult part will be making a cohesive experience and task, which are aligned to standards. Our group seems to be a little out of focus, or maybe it's just me that is out of focus. It is becoming more clear the steps we will have to take to finish the project. When we did digital stories you encouraged us to design the story in a story board first so We're taking the same approach with the web quest and designing a backwards design unit before we begin the actual web quest.

Web Quest

A web quest is much more involved than I expected. The research and planning we are doing rivals the research we did for our backward design lesson plans for field. The good thing about this project is we have lots more people to help get it done. Our group chose the topic immigration in post civil war US. This topic is very interesting. We are going to have the grasp assessment be that the students create a scrap book that they might have kept if they had immigrated to the us during that time period. I'm really excited to learn the process for putting the web quest together.

End of Field Experience

Before when people would ask me what grade I wanted to teach I would say, "Anything but sixth grade." Mostly that's because sixth grade girls can be so snotty and that makes me feel snotty. And lots of times before I've been dissatisfied with how I handled situations like that. So guess where my field experience assignment was. That's right, sixth grade. Well This experience may have changed my mind about sixth grade. Our class was fabulous. On our last day they had a "surprise" party for us and they made speeches :) Here are photos of some of the cards they made for Brittany and I.

Technology Interview Reflection

This interview assignment highlighted how electronic networking is key to the way people communicate in our society. We asked our cooperating instructor, Mr. Soto, to introduce us to the technology specialist at our school. Mr. Soto sent him a quick email asking when and how we could contact him. Mr. Welch responded to his e-mail within ten minutes and asked him to have us contact the student teachers in Mrs. B’s room for his responses to the interview questions. We looked them up on face book, asked if they would help us out. They forwarded to us Mr. Welch’s responses to their questions. The interview showed that there are many resources available in the school that our co-operating teacher does not utilize. I assume that he is not the only teacher who isn’t aware, or chooses not to utilize the resources available. This realization has led me to set a goal for myself to make myself aware of the technologies available in my school, learn to use them and let them benefit my students. I am beginning to see how necessary it is for students to use technology frequently and well. I’m glad for the things we are learning and the difficulties we are overcoming now. This will help us be in the right place, so to speak, for the difficulties we will have to overcome later as we strive to give our students the skills that are essential in our eWorld.

Technology in elementary schools

Some things I learned during field:

Many schools have a lot of Apples or Macs because that company gives computers to schools to encourage parents to buy the same. I was lost on the mac and had to ask a student to guide me....Might want to learn some things about macs.

There are codes and unwritten rules in schools that pertain to computer and lab use. Our cooperating teacher dosn't use computers in his clasroom (although he has personal technology and his own classroom technology). So he wasn't familliar with the rules and codes at our school. Our first boo-boo was not understanding the procudures for the lap top labs. Each lab has 16-22 lap tops. There were 28 students in our class so we thought we would need both lap top labs. I think this irritated other teachers. And then when we got to actually use the laptops the students told us that they have a lap top number, always use the same laptap, some of them share--So we only needed one lap top lab. The first day we had the laptops our co-operating teacher had arranged for the teachers who had them last to drop them off at his room. One of them was brought to us locked and the other unlocked. When we returned them I couldn't remember which was which so left them both unlocked because I was afraid if I locked the wrong one someone would have forgotten the combo and been irritated with me. Well the teacher who always locks it made a point of locking it when we returned it and the teacher who brought it to us unlocked seemed unconcerned to have it returned the same way. I think our cooperating teacher just decided that generally this is to much to navigate and dosn't use the lap top labs.

Reflection

We taught our first lesson today in our field experience. It went pretty well. Our supervisor was there to observe us. The trickiest thing was that we reserved the lap top labs so the students could type their paragraph in the word processor, but the lesson took so much longer than we thought it would. We have to finish the lesson in the AM but we don't have the lab reserved so the students will have to write on paper and HOPEFULLY type the next time we've reserved the lab. We might have to squish things together. I don't want to delete things from our plan --ugh-- because we worked so hard to meet the requirements for all of our classes, so we can't leave out any technology, creative arts, or primary sources. But our teacher is a language arts/math teacher so we need our reading and writing activities too. Well we'll see.
Our cooperating teacher is wonderful. He's very helpful and flexible. We haven't started our interviews yet, and are hoping to be able to work on them after we teach our last lesson.

Reflection

Our cooperating teacher never uses the laptop lab in their school. He has a personal amplification system. I don't know what they are called, it's like a mike that hangs around his neck. He plays DVDs through his laptop to the giant TV in his classroom. He communicates through e-mail with us and with parents. We had the laptop lab in his classroom preparing for our lesson. we couldn't find the word processor on the student laptop. The laptops are Apples and my partner and I have only ever used PC. So the teacher called one of the students over to show us how to use it. :)

It's sometimes frustrating that no matter how much time you spend testing your technology and trying to plan for every contingency, something is bound to go wrong and the technology will keep you troubleshooting rather than teaching. Or it will get left in the dust for paper and pencil even though you spent most of your planning time trying to placate your technology. Well such is the time we teach in........You can't live with out it and living with it brings you Ulcers. :)

Lots of stuff

Wow! I can hardly keep track of everything I need to be working on. The two things I'm focusing on for instructional media are the technology rich lesson plan and the technology interview. We were having trouble with our lesson plan because we were thinking of technologies that would be good in our lessons but they worked best through out our unit plan not squished all into one lesson. Thankfully, Dr. Waters said that this was okay. We are going to begin the unit with a video clip, the students are doing two writing assignments in a word processor, they are doing a web quest and downloading a photo to illustrate their writing assignment, and they are going to use a digital camera to capture the performance assessment. I'm really excited about the way technology is supporting our learning out comes.
I haven't begun anything for the technology interview. This afternoon I'm going to take a look at it and make a plan for completing it.

More Google Sites!?

This week in class we worked on another Google sites assignment. In a previous reflection I told the world how I felt about Google Sites. All of the things we have to do for this assignment can be done on my UEN and I think UEN lookes nicer and is already organized well for this purpose. So maybe I will want a classroom website on Google sites if I'm unfortunate enough not to have access to UEN. Like, if I end up teaching at a privare school. I don't know if you have to teach at a public school to use my UEN?

On a HAPPY note, our digital story is finished. I'm getting ready to burn it to a CD, but it is also published here for all to see.

Our Digital Story

Photo Story

I love this program. It does have a few limitations, like not letting you animate titles and not letting you overlap imported sound files. Overall you get a great looking project with a lot of ease. I can see my 5th or 6th graders using this program easily. I'm looking forward to seeing how easy it is to upload it to my blogg. I would like to create a personal movie for my familly blogg. Can't wait for you to see how great our digital story is.

More about digital stories

In Class this week we learned a little about Audacity. I'm excited about this software. For some time I've wondered how Students could record themselves at a station in the class room. I think having them answer assessment questions orally would be a good way to asses content knowledge. But an oral quiz given individually by the teacher is time consuming. If they could record themselves during a station this could give the teacher added insight into thier understanding. This could be a good pre-writing tool. Students could record themselves telling the story or giving free association ideas about a subject. This would be helpful because many children find it cumbersome to write all of their thoughts or to keep up with their thoughts with pencil and paper. The draw back to this idea is transcribing their recording. Maybe a parent volunteer. A CD of students stories in their own voice, poem recitations and songs would be a fabulous addition to their portfolio.

Our digital story is coming along nicely. We just need to record our narration and find some music we like then we are ready to plug it all in. I can't wait to get started on photo story.

Digital Story

This week in class we went learned more about digital stories. I partnered with Brittany. We are excited about our topic: Child labor in late 1800's early 1900's. We found some great photo's and quotes. So far I think what we've worked on influences and touches. I'm going to be extra aware to make sure it informs. This seems tricky right now because we want to avoid describing or narrating the images. I'm looking forward to learning the new software, photo story. I'm most excited to learn how to pan across an image.

What Our Snowmen are Doing

In class yesterday our teacher, Mary Sowder, was modeling cooperative learning. She read us a story about snowmen and in groups we made our own.

Reflection

This week in class we made our own web site on Google. I'm not super excited about this tool. I think my blog and my UEN site are better for my needs so far, but I really like that we are getting a good survey of online tools. Who knows maybe a Google site is something I will want to use later and be so glad I was introduced to that tool. I'm amazed at how many things Google offers that I've never explored before.
I'm really looking forward to the digital story. A project like this is daunting at first; choosing a topic, writing a script, manipulating many variables to work smoothly together... So, like many things in my life I'm looking forward to the finished product, to the pride I'll feel when it's done and the growth I will have experienced.

Wow!

This week we did a lot that I was already familiar with and several things that are new to me. I already use gmail and love how it tracks conversations and displays my contacts on each screen.

I love Google Docs. To think that I've been looking at that link on my email page for ever and didn't know what I was missing. This is a great tool for collaboration in our classes now but could also be useful later when we want to collaborate with our team teachers.

I've been keeping a family blog since this summer and am excited about the idea of a classroom blog. I'm wondering about issues of privacy with a classroom blog. I wonder if a lot of parents will object to class pictures on a private blog.

I already have a my space account so at first I thought a face book account would be superfluous, but there were a lot of people in my contacts list who are on face book who are not on my space. I haven't found where you can blog on face book an that is something I like about my space. However, my space doesn't offer chat and I think this is a great way to make yourself available to parents. I think parents will hesitate to call or not find time. But if they are your face book friend and they are at the computer anyway they may be more likely to send a message or chat with you and that could be a big asset.