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.