Blogging: From the End

Blogging always seemed like something for more "tech-savvy" individuals. I no longer feel that way. Blogger was very easy to set-up and maintain the blog. While there are some settings and items which should be reserved for individuals with HTML experience. I did not read my classmates' blogs as much as I would have liked. But adding them to my reader did make it easier to check-in every once and awhile. I enjoyed being able to comment on the week's lesson with no real guidelines as to what had to be discussed. I would like to maintain my blog as I find it is a good resource for myself. While it was not asked, I really enjoyed creating my own website. This is by far the best resource for me. All of my projects from graduate school and resources I have been made aware of thus far are all in one place. I will definitely being using this to save my resources and projects.

Student Lessons

As an early childhood education major, I have created my fair share of lesson plans. The amazing part about this assignment was how open-ended it was. We could create a lesson on anything we discussed during the class and present it as we saw fit. I enjoyed being able to chose a tool I become more familiar with during the class. Blogs were something I was very interested in before the class and I always wondered how people created them. Because of this class, I learned how to create them, use them, and was able to teach other people how to use them. I liked being able to combine what I learned from this class, new tools I learned about, and how to use tools differently than how I knew how to. I also enjoyed reading and commenting on my classmates' lessons. It was interesting how so many people chose PowerPoint to present their tools. I think this shows people's comfort area. Overall, I feel like everyone did a good job using PowerPoint in new ways and making it interactive for their audience.

PowerPoint in the Classroom

I remember using PowerPoint in school starting at the beginning of high school. Most teachers did not use it, but all students were encouraged to use it for presentations. I do not remember being taught how to use PowerPoint but by seeing other people presenting with it, I became more interested. I am a crafty person, so I would have rather done a poster and presented that way. Once I started using PowerPoint, I could not imagine using anything else. My roommate freshman year in college had never used PowerPoint until sophomore or junior year in college. This was surprising to me but I guess it depends on the money available to schools for technology and exposure to the program. I definitely see the educational merit of PowerPoint because I have experienced it as a student and a “teacher-in-training”. I have used PowerPoint numerous times to do presentations in high school, college, and graduate school. There are so many possibilities for the presenter to organize the information and for the audience to pay attention to the presentation. The article I found focused on exactly what I was searching for: using PowerPoint for instruction with students with disabilities. The studies discussed using PowerPoint for: letter-sound recognition using color and narration, reading decoding, social stories, and books. I like how the article provided a lot of useful information and practical applications for PowerPoint. Also, there were examples of slides created during the study for each use. This program gives students a way to interact with new information and have a “tech-savvy”, hands-on approach to learning. I really enjoyed this article since it gives reliable, teacher tested information, practical applications, examples, and step-by-step directions. Coleman, M.B. (2009). "powerpoint" is not just for business presentations and college lectures: using "powerpoint" to enhance instruction for students with disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children PLUS, 6. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.baypath.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ875424&site=ehost-live

Handwriting Without Tears

My aunt, a 1st grade teacher also completing her Master's through Bay Path, informed me about this tool. Since we just completed a week examining Web 2.0 tools I thought this would a great site/tool to share. I do not have my own classroom but I could see this being useful for a "beginning of the school year" assessment. This tool allows every student to perform a handwriting test so the teacher will know what level each student is at. Hoepfully someone will find this helpful and maybe use it in their own classroom. http://www.hwtears.com/screener

Web 2.0 Tools

Classroom teachers were able to function perfectly fine and teach well before the Internet and computers became part of the curriculum. With that said, the web 2.0 tools make teaching a little easier in many ways. Organizing, connecting, sharing, researching, and planning are a lot easier with the use of the Internet. The tool I chose to examine for this weeks Wiki post was Delicious. The program allows its users to import their "Favorites" and then "bookmark" them. The users "bookmarks" will be accessible from any computer with Internet. Some of the educational uses for Delicious are: organizing websites to share with students, parents, other professionals, connect information on topics discussed in class with information from the Internet, create a page for students to work on a project/report together, and create a page for parents to share resources, upcoming events, or important information. Flickr seems like something which, if used in the classroom or school, would have to be monitored carefully. An example of a carefully monitored situation would be if students wanted to post their own pictures with connection to the school. Classrooms could use this to display artwork, group projects, what the classroom looks like, and other things in the classroom. Schools could use this for many uses. One use is posting pictures from school sponsored events such as fundraisers, walk-a-athons, rally days, or random pictures from school days. Of course, every child photographed would need a release signed by their parents. Legally, this is the safest way to share pictures and information on students on the Internet. LibraryThing is a great program for classrooms and for schools. The classroom teacher could use this program to keep an inventory of the books in the classroom. Also, the classroom families can see the types of books the class has and any genres that are lacking. I could also see schools using this program to organize and "display" the books in the school library. Since all of this information would be online, parents can access the information and help their children pick out books from the library. It adds to the home-school collaboration for those parents who are not able to pick their children up from school everyday. I believe someone else mentioned this in the Angel discussion, but I think it is such a great idea. I think this program has both educational and personal uses. I currently use both Twitter and Facebook and struggle with the benefit vs. the risk of their use in education. Twitter would be helpful for classes that use "current events" for social studies/history. CNN, WCVB, NECN, MSNBC, and many other news channels are connected to Twitter. The president and the White House are on Twitter as well, which would be interesting for government and law classes. For younger students, being exposed to news and current events is beneficial and gives them a chance to read. To be honest, I do not think teachers should use Twitter to inform parents of their child's day. That was mentioned somewhere and, for elementary classrooms, it is a hassle to just get out of the classroom. Requiring teachers to update their Twitter status is an unnecessary addition to the transition schedule. I have not mentioned Facebook because I believe there is too much of a risk for students to be lured or click on an inappropriate ad. The educational benefits of Facebook are not apparent to me. In conclusion, I believe Delicious, Flickr, and LibraryThing have many educational benefits while Twitter and Facebook do not. Please leave comments about educational uses of Facebook that I am not aware of.

Microsoft Word Experience

I think Microsoft Word has great potential for use in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. There are so many possibilities with the program and the products that can be made. Book reports with pictures, research papers with citations and footnotes, scientific and mathematical graphs, and story books with pictures. This means all grade levels can use Microsoft Word for classwork and homework. I believe Microsoft Word has a lot of classroom potential. Beginning in the early grades, students can learn how to use the computer and work on projects. One of my biggest concern with the use of computers in primary classrooms is how they are used and when the children are using them. I find a lot of primary classrooms have no computers or have six computers but are only used for busy work. I think Microsoft Word should be used in the classroom with all subjects, with monitored computer time, and effectiveness and learning constantly tested. I can certainly see potential of using this in the classroom. While I have not yet tackled the newsletter, I have completed the flyer in which I tried a few new things. Although I have a lot of experience with Microsoft Word for newsletters, reports, assignments, and projects there are things I learned this week which I never tried. I used some of the AutoShapes and included a text box inside of them. This works great to draw attention to the paper and highlights the important information. Like many people mentioned before, so many flyers get tossed without being looked at. I believe my flyer will attract people's eyes and only include pertinent information.

Design Principles

I believe these principles are great for everyone to use; anyone designing flyers, brochures, or papers distributed to large audiences. These will help companies attract new customers, better advertise their product, and demonstrate professionalism. With my experience using flyers, I believe I have seen the better end of design. The summer camp I worked at the past three summers distributed a newsletter every week. All of the design principles were included in it: contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity. The heading of the newsletter was in a box with bold faced text. Then, each subheading was bold faced. The rest of the text was regular type. There were two pictures on the front of dragonflies; one on each side of the heading. There were also two grids: one on the front and one on the back, where additional notes and unique information could be handwritten in. We couldn't have everything typed because we were in the woods! Right underneath the name of the camp, on the top of the page, was the contact information for the camp, the address, and the camp director's name. I think an educator should definitely know about this information. For some families, this will be the only mode of communication you have with them other than phone calls and conferences. As the educator, you want to portray professionalism and the importance of the information you are sending home. Colored paper and text will attract the parents eyes to the page but the information must be displayed on the page in a way which will allow them to follow along and read all the information. For students, it is important for them to learn how to use the computer and word processing tools. Learning the design principles will allow them to practice. And as the old wives tale goes: practice makes perfect.

Google Sites: Frustrating or Downright Irritating?

Disclaimer: I could work on my Google Site all day, everyday! It is so much fun! I created a website when I was in middle school using Angelfire. (It was the cool think to do then!) This site creator is rather simple and lacks the quality that exists today. When I was a sophomore in college I took a class in which we had to create a classroom website for our "class." We had to use a program for creating websites. Now, I used Google Site to create a website and I am addicted! It was a lot of fun. I am someone who would much rather search through options and explore on my own instead of looking towards a help book. I thought Google Sites was pretty easy to use with the few tips provided in our syllabus. I am still a little stumped about how to get rid of the picture on the sidebar on the left. That is NOT me and my two children. The other picture in the middle of the page is me and my boyfriend. Can anyone else change that? I believe websites are very useful for special education teachers. They can certainly use it to connect to parents, students, teachers and administrators, and other individuals in the community. Teachers are also able to post, share, and learn from websites they visit and articles they read. The teacher can then post these resources for others to use and learn from. For special education teachers this is a great way to organize student's work and keep in constant contact with all parents/guardians. Lastly, the teacher can use their website as a secondary or other way to present information for students. PowerPoints can be posted after they are presented and articles that were handed out can also be posted. This ensures that students who may not be the most organized or who need to read things more than once will learn just as well as their peers. Here is a link to my website: https://sites.google.com/a/baypath.edu/ms-sarah-s-classroom/

This is an article I found while searching for blogging in the classroom. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/45/8c/d8.pdf Just thinking about all of the possibilities for technology use in the classroom and all of the "kinks" that still need to be figured out.

Web Search

How easy do you think it is to get lost in the World Wide Web? It is a lot easier than you would think. Even the most experienced people fall into it and are grabbing for something to help them out. I enjoy searching the web to find information for work, school, and personal information. For all of these purposes, I have become lost. Unit 2 was fairly easy for me since I use the Internet to search multiple times during the day. But, I did learn new websites to use, the different types of searching, and strategies to use while searching. I think searching on the Internet is incredibly easy, but sometimes it is mind-boggling. Compared to databases, the web search produces 10,000 more results and 9,000 irrelevant results. I believe the PowerPoint will help some people with searching on the Internet; the strategies will help direct people to more useful and reliable information. I am a little reluctant to praise classrooms for using web searches for a few reasons. First, many classroom teachers assume students Internet use is being monitored at home so they feel comfortable assigning Internet projects. Likewise, parents assume their child's teacher has taught them how to search on the Internet safely. In some schools, there is a disconnect here which the student ultimately suffers from. They do not know how to search properly and sometimes they come upon some inappropriate sites. Second, some students are not instructed on how to search for topics and therefore they either never learn it or always let someone else do it for them. Sadly, students are suffering and not learning how educational the Internet is until later in life. I am not saying that students should not use the Internet, but they should have some instruction on how to use the Internet, Internet safety, search strategies, and how to learn from the Internet. Procedures should be in place at every grade level at every school.

Databases

Thinking back to how I first learned about databases, it is rather humorous. Databases are something I used in college and I learned how to use on my own. Now, elementary school students are learning how to use databases and probably can do a better search than most of us. I think they are very easy to use, even with little technology experience. To be honest, you can type almost anything into the search area and some results will come up. Or, you can type a specific search term in and receive relevant results and some results you would never expect. I think this is a great, positive feature of databases. Students are able to search for what they want to in a more protected environment. If students were to do this on the Internet, some results would most likely not be useful and may even be inappropriate. Therefore, I believe they are very useful in the classroom and they have endless opportunities. Students are able to research information for a paper, a presentation, or what they would like to search for. This is a great way to expose young students to the Internet and becoming familiar with the computer while protecting what they can search for and the results they will find. For older students, it allows them to find reputable resources and limit their search to find more of what they are looking for. My experience in Unit One was an easier experience than some people had. I have had experience with databases in the past, but some ideas were new. I discovered new ways to search and strategies that provide more relevant results. Thanks for the strategies and happy searching!

First Post

Well...here goes nothing. This is my first blog and I am very excited about it. I always wanted to start a blog as a way to write about everything that is happening in my life and relieve stress by writing instead of doing other things. I look forward to hearing and learning from other people and I hope to continue using this blog after this class is complete.