The Last Day :(

It's amazing how fast these last two weeks have gone. I can't believe how much I have learned about technology. I feel that I am ready to use what I've learned about social networking, Web 2.0 tools, TPACK and so much more in my own classroom.

I loved watching the digital stories today. I thought it would have been interesting to use TodaysMeet after each story to comment on things that the creator did well using the elements of a digital story. I thought it would have been interesting to use the Promethean board and the clickers to take a quick poll as to the element that we thought was best portrayed in the story. I can't wait to create digital stories in my classroom and post them on a blog for parents to see what we are doing in the classroom.

 A few days ago, Denise told the story about when she was teaching teachers at a school and a male teacher had said that he didn't want to fail in front of his students. I completely understand where he is coming from because many teachers don't want to be wrong in front of their students. With that being said, I think it is important to use technology that might be 'foreign' to a teacher because then the students and the teacher can work together to learn about the technology.

I feel that all future teachers should be required to take this class to help excite them about using technology in the classroom. To be honest, before this class I wasn't all that confident with some technology tools and didn't always use them in my lessons. With my new TPACK mindset and knowledge all I do is think of ways that technology can be innovated in lessons to help enhance the learning.

Blogging!

Like I said in my first post, I have never used blogging before this class. I am so glad that I have taken this class and learned a lot of beneficial information that I can take with me and use in my own classroom. 

One thing I would love to do in my classroom is set up a blog just for the parents. I would use this blog to post school information, what we are doing in the classroom, and even some of the students' work.  I could also use this blog as a classroom wish list for parents to see some of the materials that we could use in the classroom. I think that parent communication is very important and blogging will be a quick way to keep the parents updated about their children. 

There are so many ideas for how blogging could be used in the classroom. I think it would be a great way to set-up pen pals. Instead of sending letters to pen pals in another country, students could blog to their pen pals and get a response in a shorter amount of time. I think that students would love communicating to other children their age that are from a different country. Instead of reading textbooks, this is a way that they can learn about another country and its culture by actually talking to someone from that country. I really like this idea because any age could do this activity. With the younger grades, the teacher could have a class discussion and talk to the students about questions they could ask. After the discussion, the teacher could type the blog. When the pen pal replies, the teacher would read the response to the entire class. When I have some time this summer, I would love to look into finding another classroom to blog with from another country. 

Blogging would be a great way to encourage communication between students. I could use it as a topic starter. With this idea, I would post a blog and then all of the students would comment about that topic, kind of like what we are doing in this class. I think blogging is a great way to see what the students know and how they are progressing without wasting time during the school day. 

I think it would be interesting to create a blog each week in which would post a photo as well as use audio to ask a question about that photo. For instance, in my kindergarten classroom, I could have posted one of the pictures of the chicks and embed audio using Voki or another audio Web 2.0 tool to ask the students questions such as, "What was your favorite part about having the chicks in the classroom? What did you learn about the chicks?" This would be a quick way to get feedback from the students. I post a picture and audio of something that we haven't learned about in the classroom. By asking a question such as," What do you know about TPACK?" The students would have a chance to respond and then I could read the comments to see what the students already know about a particular subject.

You could use a blog to post a famous author's website in which students could explore and comment about their favorite books or books that they might want to read from this author. This blog could develop a discussion about the students' favorite books or it might persuade other students to want to read these books. 

There are so many ideas that you can use a blog for, it just takes a TPACK teacher :) to creatively think of ways to innovate these ideas for his or her students. 

Keyboarding

It was kind of amusing to see how I did on the typing games. I feel that I could have done a lot better on some of the games. Maybe I will even play some of these games to try and get better as a faster and more efficient typer. I wish we applied our keyboarding skills to something more useful rather than just always typing away for drill and practice in middle school. I think that keyboarding would have meant a lot more to me if I were able to apply it to something that I was already working on in the classroom sucha as publishing my work using typing.

I loved the looking at the books that students had published in class on Tuesday. When I have some free time, I would love to try and create the binding for the books. Even I would be more excited and spend more time working on the quality of my writing if I knew that it was going to be published. I thought it was a great idea for the students to literally create their entire book, including the inside creating the inside flaps, in the classroom. I think that the students learn better when they are actually being authors and creating the about the author sleeve as well as a summary of the book.  I am a 'pack rat' when it comes to keeping schoolwork and I know that if I were to create a book like Dr. Schmidt's example, that I would still have the book to this day.

The New Kid on the Block and Keyboarding

I enjoyed reading the poems from The New Kid on the Block software. This program would be nice to have in the classroom to help introduce poetry to the students. I feel that younger grades could use this software as well because this program reads to them and lets them play around with the poem so that they could click on words they might not know.
I had fun creating our own poem, with the help of the template (When ____ went to the _____,) in PowerPoint. It's really amazing how many things you can do using PowerPoint. I am going to keep this poem activity in mind to teach to my future students.

Oh keyboarding... I remember, in fifth grade, we would go to the computer lab and work on typing letters in some typing program. If I remember right, I think there was a runner on the screen and he would run when you typed the letter correctly and fall when you didn't type the correct letter. I also remember that we were able to type a project or two using the computer. To this day I still have a typed paragraph that I created about brown bears. In middle school, I remember that I was bored of typing/keyboarding because for most of the time, at the beginning of the year, all we did was drill and practice.
What I thought was interesting was that I feel that I learned how to type best from AOL Instant Messenger. I feel that learning this way is a pro/con because yes I did learn how to type better but, I typed more 'slang' and abbreviations of words. I don't even want to think about how many times I typed LOL or GTG to my friends when I was on AIM. Even today when I am typing e-mails, I still want to type using abbreviations because it's a habit and often go back changing the words. I know that I might have to use a typing program in the future for my students so I will try to think of an innovative way to use the program so that it still engages the students.

iPads!

I was so excited to take the iPad home for the weekend! Before this weekend, I wasn't very familiar with the iPad, but after exploring it, I would love to purchase one in the future as well as use these in my classroom. I had fun exploring  all of the applications. Here are a few of the applications that I thought would be beneficial for a teacher:

Google Maps - I enjoyed typing in directions while looking at this application. The teacher could give students a starting and an ending point and have them type it in on this Google Maps. Then, the students could zoom in and out, using their fingers, to create directions. When the students were finished, they or the teacher could click on driving directions to see how their directions compared to Google's directions.

Cyberbullying - I thought that this application would be an interesting way to talk to students about this issue. I liked how there was some assessment of this topic after the comic strip in which students would drag and drop answers to the questions about cyberbullying. This application could be used for upper elementary as well as middle school grades.

Dictionary - This would be an easy place for students to type in words for definitions, spelling, and a thesaurus for their writings.

Google Earth - This would be a great tool to help students get a visual of the world as well as be able to see things up close in different locations.

ToyStory - For the younger grades I enjoyed this application because I feel that students would be excited to read this book in class.

TeacherPal - I think this application is awesome! I loved that this one application would allow for a teacher to create a student list, record attendance as well as a place to keep a record of grades. This application would make it easier to create a seating chart. Also, I liked how there was a tab that would allow a teacher to send an e-mail to the parents.

Storyboards - I feel that with practice and knowledge of this application, the use of this application would allow for students to create their own digital stories. Students would have fun being the 'director' of their stories.

I could talk about more applications that I thought were interesting, but the list could go on forever. With my new knowledge of TPACK, I am going to look at applications in a different light to see how they can be innovated into a lesson.

Thompson, a.k.a. Wandering Willie

I loved doing the Wandering Willie activity! I feel that this activity can be used for any age, just that the content might have to be changed for younger students. I love activities in which you have to use clues to figure something out. If we as college students enjoyed this activity, I can only imagine how much fun students would have doing an activity like this. Sometimes I feel that some topics aren't interesting to students. However, if a certain topic was used with this activity, I feel that students would be more engaged and actually learn about that topic. 


I never knew how many things could be taught using PowerPoint. I am definitely going to use PowerPoint more in my classroom. I feel that this is a great as well as easy tool for students to use to create a project. 

Research Article: iPod Therefore I Can

When I went back to visit my first student teaching placement, I was excited to see that they had just gotten an iPad, used particularly for the students with autism in the classroom. Also, one of the parents of a student with autism gave the class a tablet to use. Because iPads are so new, I was excited to see how they would be used with some of the students.  Throughout the day, the students with autism would have the opportunity to use the iPad if they followed his or her own  ‘If/Then’ schedule. When a student finished their work, they were allowed to use the iPad. While visiting the classroom, I observed that one of the students really liked an application that included a monkey and shapes. I am excited to think of TPACK when I visit again to ask more questions about the use of the iPad in preschool.

I was having a little trouble trying to find a research article that talked about the benefits of using an iPad in the classroom, so I found this article that talked about iPods. This article wanted to know if iPods helped facilitate the learning of students with disabilities. I really liked how they created a term called iPodagogy which is the linking of iPods and pedagogy.

View article here

At Barwon Valley School in Australia, teachers had professional development training on how to use iPods in classroom for students. Also, to conduct their research on iPods and how effective they were to students with disabilities, teachers planned, acted, observed and reflected  in a ‘cycle’ and when this ‘cycle’ was over, the teachers met to evaluate the usage of the iPods in the classroom. Because there wasn’t enough iPads in the classroom, the students would take turns using a timetable to use them in the classroom.

Some of the materials that were placed onto the iPods for the students to use were pictorial symbols that helped them with coin recognition, days of the month and week, and the daily schedule and photos and movies. Social stories were also placed on the iPod. I found it really interesting that one student had a social story created for him that included a voice over as he read the story as well as simple pictures that related to his picture schedule. After time, the boy had learned how to correctly wash his hands.

I agree with the article when it talked about that there is little applications made for iPads that are made for educational purposes. We as teachers need to create innovative ways to figure out how other applications can be used on the iPod to help us effectively engage students with the lessons.

Reference:

Marks, G., & Milne, J. (2008). iPod Therefore I Can: Enhancing the Learning of Children with Intellectual Disabilities through Emerging Technologies. Readings in Education and Technology: Proceedings of ICICTE 2008, 165-175. Retrieved May 13, 2011 from

 http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:UcmPNmN8Tq4J:scholar.google.com/+iPads+and+

children+with+autism&hl=en&as_sdt=0,16