Digital Stories

Here we are continuing with our digital stories assignment and I'm asking myself, "Why can't all homework be this fun?" It seriously is a blast, at least our presentation is a blast. We have been finding lots of photos and screening them, and I have found the perfect music for our presentation. It is basically just a ice breaker for teaching about the American poet Robert Frost.

I have been listening to the other groups and they all seem pretty excited about it themselves. I think this is a technology that is going to become more available and more advanced very quickly. That means it will be easier to use and easier for us to integrate into our class rooms. Like power point. It started out as really neat and got easier and more available and now it's everywhere. I expect to use it, even as just a hobby, I showed some of the preliminary work on our project to my family members and they all loved it. Hopefully I can get some sort of similar response from my students.

The great thing about this technology and me is that I whole heartedly believe in oral readings. Especially of poems or loved lines from stories and novels. But a lot of class rooms have gotten away from that. These digital stories might create a new way to bring those oral readings back into the spot light. It will continue to be great fun for me to make these videos, and to assign students to make them for poems we are studying. As I save these up I may be able to lend them to other teachers when they are teaching a similar topic.

Movie
Did You Know 3.0

In all honesty I felt like 3.0 was less streamined than it's predecessors. It felt alot more like a smattering of statistics than a call to arms about technilogoically arming our students with skills and knowledge. I understood it's point, especially having see the previous, but I don't think it made it very well.
It still means we need to be quick on our feet as teachers. We need to be aware of what is going on in the world, and in the laboratory. We need to be up to date on how to equip our students with the knowledge that will help them succeed. This seems a little difficult for me as an English teacher. I'm not going to be teaching them about how to use technology, necessarily. But I will try to continue the age old tradition in English, of creating critical thinkers and empathetic citizens. Hopefully I can do this through the use of technology so that the students will acquire the information in mediums that they like, and are used to using.

Power Point

We "learned" about power point this week. I quote learned because there wasn't much teaching about it because we already know it pretty well. Not amazingly well but its pretty easy to pick up as you go. And so here we are making wonderful power point activities.

It seems to me that power point is becoming the place to turn for direct instruction. Maybe I'm wrong but most classes I go to that have a projector regularly use power point slides to convey and organize their direct instruction. The problem I see is that the slides and presentations are often quickly compiled and sometimes lack cohesion.

Now I need to learn how to make my slides not bland, and my presentation more than just a presentation of information. There is a lot of ideas out there on how to make power point presentations actual learning tools. So it is going to be incumbent upon me to spend some time on my presentations, use a little backward design. Make sure they align with what I am teaching and what I want my students to learn. There is huge potential for differentiation I need make sure I am using that potential.

Webquests

We are learning about Webquests right now. The assignment is for our content groups to create a webquest that centers around one of the core standards or objectives. I'm pretty excited about the webquest my group is doing.

I think webquests are pretty cool but I don't think they are amazing teaching tools. I feel like high school students will think they are pretty boring. Maybe that can be fixed in the design of the webquest, I don't know. Yet. (and I stress yet!) So I think that I will keep some on hand that get me excited for catch-up, or assembly, or snow days. Good assignments that teach something that I can have my classes do while the other classes catch upon missed material.

Maybe I need to give webquests more of a chance. I can see possibilities for higher level thinking, I just don't think most of the webquests I've seen and done do encourage higher level thinking. I think one of the strengths of the idea is in collaboration. It seems to me that you could make group webquests pretty easily, pass along webquests like a relay race or something like that.

I cannot find the video. There doesn't seem to be a Three Steps video on TeacherTube.

Internet Safety and video

1. We should use the internet in our classrooms because our students are going to get onto the internet anyway, so why not use it as resource. Most students also enjoy spending time on the internet so I as a teacher can use that as a resource it might help them get invovled in the lesson.

2. Teachers should evalutate the sites they use for lessons and in webquest for a few reasons. First to help be an example to the students on how to use the internet properly. Two, so that we protect our students from any harmful information or contacts (and thus save our own behind from law suites). And D, so that we are sure the information we are providing is viable and up-to-date.

3.

1. Is the information appropriate?

2. Is the Information age appropriate?

3. Is the Information relevant to the lesson/unit?

4. Does the site have a bibliography?

5. Does the site have a date started and date updated?

6. Is the site un-biased

4. There are a few ways that I know of that will help keep my students safe while surfing. First is to teach them about internet safety find. Find an age appropriate internet saftey test for them to take. Another way is to be in the media lab with them while they are on the internet. Move around the room, ask questions, offer tips, and keep you eyes peeled.

VIDEO

I really enjoyed this video. One reason is I have never really been able to tell what William Joel is saying. But It is also awesome to see that history condensed and illustrated. As a student now I appreciate the pop culture being listed along side the real history, because pop culture is an extension of the politicla climate of the time it is made in. As a future teacher this is an important principle to show my creative writers, they can both illustrate and help shape the ideas of the time to help others understand them better or in a different light.

UEN Reflection

I haven't finished my UEN assignment so I am going to do a basic reflection. In all honesty the UEN website didn't get me nearly as fired up as the google implements did. I am happy for the resources it provides for me, but I didn't find it as applicable for my students. I am really excited to pour over the lesson plans and tweak them to my style, I think that will be a huge benefit for me. I honestly don't know if I plan on using it in the future. I think I will if my district's network won't allow me to use Google.

Video Response
These videos were really interesting. It's a huge question. "How can we prepare our students for a world that is constatnly changing?" Unfortunatley for these videos I don't think that technology is the only solution. I believe that technology is a huge part of it, but using all the technology in the world is not going to help some teachers accomplish the goal. We need teachers who care about their students lives not just their grades. We need students with energy stridind around the class room waking kids up to the wonderful material they have. Technology is awesome but lets get real, everyone knows of a teacher that shows a video every chance they get, and hey, videos are technology so they're doing great right? I plan on using technology very often but it will not be the basis for my instruction.

Reflections Week 3

Class:
I am excited to use a class website. I think it could have a lot of applications. For one it makes information even more accessible then just handing them a paper. In my creative writing course it would be fun to have each student start a website, then they have to post each finished product on their site. Or each tab is a new writing in which they post each step of revision.
Video:
Crap! No it wasn't crap it was quite good. In all honestly I don't see any benefit in trying to use cell phones for class. How do you know if everyone has a phone, or an i pod? I know they are everywhere but does everyone really have them? But beyond that I am really excited to bring in as much technology as I can in to the class room and that video got me excited to do it.