Takeaway message 04/14

After looking at voice thread and exploring the site a little, I think that students at the high school level could create some interesting presentations about a topic of their choice.  The site makes it easy to upload photos, to draw, and to incorporate your voice onto whatever presentation you are doing.  Using your voice in a presentation makes it more appealing because you can explain the image or text that is being presented, and this would hold people's attention better rather than just seeing a series of images or text.  I could see breaking students into groups and having them create a voicethread on a topic so that their classmates can learn about it being a valuable use of this resource.  What I found to be a cool feature is that the site has access to the digital photos of the New York public library.  There were over 700 photos to choose from if you were exploring a particular topic that related to their archives.  Over all, I can see it being a valuable tool once you get the hang of it.

Chapters 8 & 9

Chapters 8 and 9 demonstrated to me the various ways that teachers can use technology to get their students actively involved in learning.   Additionally, technology has changed the way that teachers can reach their students even when they are not in the classroom.  Hosting an online discussion about a particular topic allows a teacher to respond in real time to their students commentary.  Using a website or a blog can allow a teacher to communicate changes in assignments, hold online office hours (which I thought was a great idea), publish student work so that they can share it with everyone, and even share information for parents about assignments their children are doing.

Use of e-mail has changed the ways teachers interact with their students as well.  Teachers can now be reached via e-mail if a student has a question about a specific assignment, if they are going to be late handing in an assignment, etc.  E-mail is also a way in which teachers can have online office hours.  However, while reading the chapter I couldn't help but think to myself that there needs to a be a limit somewhere.  Teachers should not be expected to be able to respond to e-mails at every hour of the day and on weekends.  Therefore, the teacher needs to set limits on when they will answer e-mails.  For instance, I teacher can say that they will answer student e-mails at five o'clock on Monday and Wednesday, and any night before exams.  This way, students have a clear idea as to when they should expect their questions to be answered.  Otherwise, they will have to ask them in class.

Reading in chapter 9 about how video is a popular and effective multimedia teaching tool of course made me think of the video I made for this class.  I like the idea of making videos with iMovie and posting them on a teacher website so that my students can get primers on various topics.  Perhaps that is something I will try in my classroom at some point in my career.  I think that video is a great medium for students because it can appeal to both visual and auditory learners depending on how the video is made.  The more students you can reach, the better, and technology can help us teachers do that in an effective way.

I also like the section on PowerPoint because it gave some good ideas on how to make a presentation more interesting.  Instead of just putting what you would write on the board in a PowerPoint format, you can use the program as an additive to your teaching.  That is, simply reading off of a PowerPoint may cause students to tune out.  However, if you use slides as a guideline and use anecdotes and insightful information to add to them, you are more likely to reach your students.

Two questions arose from the readings:

1.  How would you limit the amount of time you spend answering questions online so that you could "leave work at work?"

2.  Do you see yourself using PowerPoint in the future?  Why or why not?

Takeaway message 04/07/2014

Learning about the importance of a digital portfolio made me more enthusiastic about making one.  I think a technologically savvy future employer might be interested in seeing some of the work and progress I have made during my education to become a teacher.  I never thought of a portfolio as an opportunity to reflect on the work we have done as well.  I am getting more and more comfortable with digication as a tool to create an e-portfolio and I think that by the time I graduate I will have on that is thorough and useful.  Seeing Rebecca's e-portfolio was useful for me because I saw what a complete one looked like.  I will look at some of my other classmate's portfolios as well to get an even better idea of what mine should look like.

Takeaway 03/31/2014

Tonight we met with our groups for our group video project and I'm excited by the prospects of where we can go with the video.  I think everyone was very helpful with giving each other ideas which was really nice to see.  I think our topic of internet safety is an important one, but it doesn't mean humor can't be used in our video!  We plan on directing it towards high school aged students, because they will be able to understand the humor and nuances of the video.  We already have several skits in mind, so we have to spend some time fine tuning our ideas. 

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 offers a lot of information about educational software.  I found the section on educational games to be the most interesting, due to the fact that video games are extremely popular and I think students could benefit greatly by playing these games.  I grew up playing video games.  While I loved being outside, when it got dark I would come inside and play video games for several hours.  Educational video games were not very commonplace back when I was young, but I can only imagine how involved I would have become if I had the opportunity to play a game that would help me with math, or science, or English.

If we as future teachers are honest with ourselves, we will realize that holding a student's attention can become quite difficult at times.  Students often have other things on their mind, and their attention my wander to things outside of the classroom.  However, I feel that if students had an opportunity during a portion of the school day to play an interactive game that helped them to learn a certain skill or set of skills, they would benefit from it greatly because their attention would be focused on the game.  They would actually be learning without feeling like they were putting in immense effort.

The game that we covered in class the other day offers a good example of this.  Students will spend a lot of time playing it and having fun, without realizing that they are increasing their knowledge or reasoning skills.  A lot of teaching has to do with how we present the information being learned.  As we know, a teacher who is enthusiastic and comes up with creative ways to teach their students will engage more of their students than a teacher who uses "chalk and talk."  Games take on the role of (but of course do not replace) an educator who uses fun and innovative ways of teaching.  I think the possibilities for this are nearly limitless, and the future will reveal where educational games progress to.

Questions:

1.  How can teachers persuade parents that a video game might actually be helping their child learn something?

2.  Who should be responsible for "vetting" a video game (i.e. making sure it is appropriate).  Can you foresee some parents having problems with video game content, such as killing monsters like we saw in the video game in class?

Takeaway message 03/24/2014

Tonight's class led to some very interesting discussions.  One particular topic was the videogame "minecraft."  Minecraft was touted by its creators as a game that is fun but which also helps kids learn.  What they weren't exactly clear on is, well, what does it help them learn?  We interviewed one of our classmate's siblings and they said that the game really doesn't help them learn all that much, but that it is certainly fun.  What is the role of these videogames in classrooms?  If they indeed are teaching our students, what is the limit on how much they should use or rely on them?  These are questions that will have to be examined and answered in the years to come.