Special Note: This week I will be discussing Chapter 4 in my textbook (as I have the older version and I already covered this week's material in a previous blog, #C). This chapter is called "Integrating Technology and Creating Change".
Technology Integration and Educational Change is the topic of my first section. I wanted to begin here because this is really the meat and potatoes of what the class is about in my opinion. It's one thing to know how to check your email or to use a YouTube video in a classroom, but it is another thing entirely to be integrating technology for the purposes of enhancing education. After all, a single chocolate chip falling into a batter does not make the cookies chocolate chip cookies! Like the textbook tells us, we must "make technology a central part of education" (Maloy). With schools in Lee County setting up SmartBoards in so many classrooms, we are already becoming a society of tech-savy educators! Now, we have to embrace that power and use it to its fullest extent. I am already excited to use some of the technology that I discovered while working on my collaborative lesson plan. The one piece of software that I am most excited about is called Google Sketchup. Students can throw away the shoe boxes (finally!) and the glue that never holds things upright in favor of a sophisticated 3D modeling adventure.
Justin Kreule's Youtube Video
Yes, it takes a little practice to work to its fullest, but it is well
worth the investment. And if that particular program does not suit your
classroom, I've discovered that there are dozens more out there! Assigning students interactive and creativity building exercises is how we truly integrate technology. I can't imagine any student being bored with an assignment that allows them to create a world from their own imagination, even if there are some restrictions such as a topic or an architectural time frame they need to work within. To be honest, I never liked the way my dioramas turned out in school. They always looked better in my mind. With tools like Sketchup, they would be more suited to what my imagination created. Using a program like this in a classroom is, to me, very similar to what some teachers are doing with the popular game Minecraft. Sketchup is just a more complex and realistic version of Minecraft, but both of these programs have a unique way of showing students that they are still allowed to play while they learn and it's our job as teachers to show them how to enjoy learning. Change is good, especially if that change connects us with our students in ways we've failed to do in the past!
Mindtools is the next section of the textbook chapter that I want to touch on. I am excited as I read this part because the book talks about how computers used to be used for drills or math facts and not very much else in school. I remember these dark days all too well... I was still completely computer illiterate when I got to high school. I had set up my first email address when I was fifteen and the only social media available was something called LiveJournal; it was similar to a blog really, but if you were particularly talented (or had a friend who was), you could use html to code your text in a variety of different colors. Now, all I need to do is highlight the text I want to change and click a button on my tool bar above. It seems like cheating really, but I don't miss all the work that went into making a single word red or blue. What took me a few seconds there would have taken seven or eight minutes in the "old days". The text goes on to say that we have really begun to use computers for more than just drills and fact practicing, although those are still useful things to do on a computer. We now use computers to push the critical thinking of our students. We ask them to analyze what is and is not a credible source. We ask them to fact check. We ask them to keep up on current affairs in their world and make informed decisions. We teach them how to spot felonious statistics and how to read citations and how to do so many wonderful things. As the text quotes Jonassen from page 10 of his script, they "engage learners in representing, manipulating, and reflecting on what they know, not reproducing what someone tells them"(Maloy). The text goes on to say that it is more crucial to know what sorts of feats can be accomplished with technology than it is to know what springs and cogs make it work. I agree. Although it is useful to know the difference between a power supply and a fan, most people benefit a great deal more from using self-help sites to install dishwashers (I know I did!) and greatly enjoy the satisfaction of having been able to research something and then improve their lives with that knowledge. When I think of Mindtools, I think of more than just computers though. I become nostalgic for a memory game that I was addicted to as a kid called Simon. Simon was a black heavy disk with four pieces of colored plastic that lit up in patterns which the user had to repeat to win. My Simon broke when I was in my mid twenties and although they have been reproduced, it just was not the same. Two weeks ago, my best friend sent me a link to an app that I could put on my phone for Simon. It may seem silly, but I really think that playing that game is great exercise for my brain and I encourage my kids to play it too. Mindtools can really be anything of value that helps a person learn or improve so in a way I agree with our textbook, but in a way I think that the simple things (like toys made in the early 90's) are worth a great deal too.
Strategies for Single and Multiple Computer Classrooms is the next section I wanted to cover. I have been in classrooms that have only a handful of computers, not nearly enough for all the students to use at the same time, as well as classrooms that have individual laptops assigned to each student. In either case, the teacher was able to utilize the technology available to them in wonderful ways. When many computers are accessible, students may be able to work on group projects together, do research at the same time, or work on assignments while the teacher grades papers or begins putting together the opening to a new lesson.When only a single computer or a small amount of computers are available, small groups that take turns using the computers works well. It also helps to have assignments that do not take a great deal of time. A perfect example of a small project that does not take a lot of time is PhotoPeach's images slide show. A great presentation can be created in just a few minutes. Music can be added from a variety of samples, or your own music can be uploaded. For this occasion, I tried PhotoPeach and chose to use old Halloween photos of my kids - just for an added smile as I sat and did my homework.
Halloween Throwback on PhotoPeach by Nicole Weeks
Resources:
Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2011). Transforming Learning with new Technolgies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Digital Blog Post #H
Creating and Sharing Information with Multimedia Technologies, Chapter 9
I wanted to open this week's blog post by discussing PowerPoint, mainly because there are several pages in the textbook that discuss the pros and cons of PowerPoint and I have my own feelings towards this program. The second reason I wanted to highlight PowerPoint is simply because I have had several classes where this program has been used over and over and its mastery is a virtual requirement for success - even if there are better programs available.
While PowerPoint is relatively easy to use, "user-friendly", I find this to be true only because it has very limited creative options. Although there are a number of ready-made templates and ease of uploading images and writing text, there does not seem to be much more to the program. It is crucial, particularly in today's digital age, that technology continues to advance, to grow, to match the creative capabilities of the user. Here is a fairly typical example of what PowerPoint can do and below that is a simple presentation made on PowToon.
PowerPoint presentation by Nicole Weeks 2015
As you can see, there are other options for students to chose from besides PowerPoint, which has, in my opinion, outlived its usefulness by failing to grow and expand. This is not to say that PowerPoint has no place in the classroom. Teachers who need to put together something in a hurry may benefit from it's ease of use, but for engaging students, alternatives are available and more interesting. As the textbook says, "Make visual presentations interactive, varied, and memorable" (Maloy).
The next section I'd like to discuss this week is "Photo Taking ... by Students" (Maloy). As a future educator, I am already very excited at the prospect of asking my students to take a group of pictures on their cameras or phones over the weekend and then upload them to a community site so we can use them as the subject for short essays or creative writing shorts in class. I think that when a student has the "power" to add to a lesson plan, they take much more away from it in the long term. Even as an adult, I would much rather chose to write about a picture I took myself and I identify with, something I have a personal connection to and have memories about, than write about a random prompt someone else has selected for m!. Impromptu writing can still apply with this digital tool because I can ask my students to write a poem about another student's picture instead of their own, or ask them to blindly point at the smartboard as images scroll. This still allows them to have some version of control over their work because they had a hand in there somewhere. Giving the student a bit of power over what they do with their time is a tool we can and should use as educators. After all, educating should not be a power struggle. It should always be a give and receive set of actions.
 |
| Pixabay.com by Coffee |
Resources:
Background Image Credit to John LeMasney on flickr.com uploaded on March 17, 2010
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Digital Blog #G
For this week's blog entry, I have chosen three very exciting concepts from chapter 10 in our textbook. Chapter 10 is titled "Promoting Success for All Students through Technology". Before I get into the meat and potatoes, I want to share some basic facts about students in the U.S., and the rest of the world also...
Now that you've had a chance to look at some statistics on my emaze presentation, let's discuss what a Universal Design for Learning is. Referred to as "UDL", a universal design for learning is a way for schools to give all students, including students with disabilities, individualized options but without taking anything away from their education or from the teacher's lesson plan. While some plans change the amount of questions on classwork or homework in order for disabled students to "keep up" with the rest of the class, a UDL only modifies the work. This means that the students with disabilities do not miss out on anything that is taught. They are given equal work and therefore, given equal ability to learn!
When I was a young person in a classroom, students with disabilities were given shorter tests, less homework, or simplistic assignments. While most of the class felt that the disabled students were being treated fairly, or even a little lucky at times, the truth is that they were being discriminated against (even if it was by ignorance) and they were being cheated out of an equal opportunity for learning!
By using a UDL, students with disabilities are learning much in the same ways as if a teacher were planning out lessons for multiple intelligences... lessons will include verbal, visual, tactile, and technological elements in order to include every single member of the class.
To build your own UDL, visit this web site : http://lessonbuilder.cast.org .
As a person who is hearing impaired (single-sided deaf), I always tried to secure a seat in the front row of my classes. When that was not possible, I had a very difficult time keeping up with my work. In addition to that, even when I was sitting in the front row, if the teacher moved around a lot and did not face me throughout the lesson, I would lose large chunks of his or her instructions. Consequently, I spent a lot of time fidgeting in my seat, trying to gain a better vantage point. I simply refused to wear my bulky hearing aid and at that time, hearing aids did not come in the wonderfully undetectable sizes that they do now. Had I really thought about all of the assistive technologies that I
was already using in my classes, I may have been less concerned with the size of my hearing aid! But these days, we have a wide selection of assistive technologies for both students with disabilities and students without. Everyone can benefit from one form of technology or another, and as we see from the above examples, not every assistive technology is a big machine or even something we think of as such. They are all around us, part of our daily lives.
Lastly, and because when all is said and done I have a strong desire to be a Language Arts teacher, I want to cover the section of chapter 10 about Technology and Writing.
"Students at every grade level say they do not enjoy writing in school..." (Maloy), but this is a battle that I believe educators can win; I believe they can win this battle using technology! As we learned in a previous chapter of the textbook, students today are reading and writing up to 60% more than they have in past decades (Maloy), yet they are saying that they do not like to read and write. This is confusing unless we look at what these modern students are reading and writing. The answer is social media posts, tweets, text messages, blogs, and things of that nature. They are not necessarily writing long stories or essays as we would instruct them to do in school, but they are writing something, and as my favorite language arts teacher once told me in fourth grade, "If you can write something, anything, you can write a novel".
I think that the answer to a student's reluctance to write is to explain to them that they have been writing all along, and then give them permission to continue to write in the same ways that they are used to and comfortable with. If a student is familiar with and happy updating their social media on their phone, let's let them use their phone to "update" their ideas a little bit at a time online. If a student enjoys tweeting, we should allow them to create their essay outlines in a series of tweets. After all, it does not matter if their ideas come to us on paper or online as long as they are producing ideas, right? And with the way technology has advanced recently, there are programs students can use to speak into a microphone and the computer program will transcribe their words for them. Some programs will even transcribe a person's voice in cursive or translate it into another language. There are endless programs for pre-writing, drafting, editing, and even publishing now. The possibilities are endless.
Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Category:Creative Commons - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2015.
"Flickr: Creative Commons." Web. 18 Oct. 2015.
"Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search." Web. 18 Oct. 2015
Now that you've had a chance to look at some statistics on my emaze presentation, let's discuss what a Universal Design for Learning is. Referred to as "UDL", a universal design for learning is a way for schools to give all students, including students with disabilities, individualized options but without taking anything away from their education or from the teacher's lesson plan. While some plans change the amount of questions on classwork or homework in order for disabled students to "keep up" with the rest of the class, a UDL only modifies the work. This means that the students with disabilities do not miss out on anything that is taught. They are given equal work and therefore, given equal ability to learn!
 |
| MDGovpics on Flickr / Creative Commons Google Images |
By using a UDL, students with disabilities are learning much in the same ways as if a teacher were planning out lessons for multiple intelligences... lessons will include verbal, visual, tactile, and technological elements in order to include every single member of the class.
To build your own UDL, visit this web site : http://lessonbuilder.cast.org .
- There is also a set of suggestions on the lesson builder site which include wonderful things like ebooks that you can add hyperlinks into so your students can research more on the subjects of the books they read or learn more about the characters of their favorite books!
As a person who is hearing impaired (single-sided deaf), I always tried to secure a seat in the front row of my classes. When that was not possible, I had a very difficult time keeping up with my work. In addition to that, even when I was sitting in the front row, if the teacher moved around a lot and did not face me throughout the lesson, I would lose large chunks of his or her instructions. Consequently, I spent a lot of time fidgeting in my seat, trying to gain a better vantage point. I simply refused to wear my bulky hearing aid and at that time, hearing aids did not come in the wonderfully undetectable sizes that they do now. Had I really thought about all of the assistive technologies that I
 |
| en.wikipedia.org / creative commons Google image |
was already using in my classes, I may have been less concerned with the size of my hearing aid! But these days, we have a wide selection of assistive technologies for both students with disabilities and students without. Everyone can benefit from one form of technology or another, and as we see from the above examples, not every assistive technology is a big machine or even something we think of as such. They are all around us, part of our daily lives.
Lastly, and because when all is said and done I have a strong desire to be a Language Arts teacher, I want to cover the section of chapter 10 about Technology and Writing.
"Students at every grade level say they do not enjoy writing in school..." (Maloy), but this is a battle that I believe educators can win; I believe they can win this battle using technology! As we learned in a previous chapter of the textbook, students today are reading and writing up to 60% more than they have in past decades (Maloy), yet they are saying that they do not like to read and write. This is confusing unless we look at what these modern students are reading and writing. The answer is social media posts, tweets, text messages, blogs, and things of that nature. They are not necessarily writing long stories or essays as we would instruct them to do in school, but they are writing something, and as my favorite language arts teacher once told me in fourth grade, "If you can write something, anything, you can write a novel".
 |
| Brett Jordan on Flickr.com / creative commons Google |
I think that the answer to a student's reluctance to write is to explain to them that they have been writing all along, and then give them permission to continue to write in the same ways that they are used to and comfortable with. If a student is familiar with and happy updating their social media on their phone, let's let them use their phone to "update" their ideas a little bit at a time online. If a student enjoys tweeting, we should allow them to create their essay outlines in a series of tweets. After all, it does not matter if their ideas come to us on paper or online as long as they are producing ideas, right? And with the way technology has advanced recently, there are programs students can use to speak into a microphone and the computer program will transcribe their words for them. Some programs will even transcribe a person's voice in cursive or translate it into another language. There are endless programs for pre-writing, drafting, editing, and even publishing now. The possibilities are endless.
Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Category:Creative Commons - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2015.
"Flickr: Creative Commons." Web. 18 Oct. 2015.
"Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search." Web. 18 Oct. 2015
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Digital Blog #F
Energizing Student Writing has never been easier! In chapter 8 of our textbook, we see that students have not forfeited writing altogether (as some people might believe), but rather their writing has undergone an evolution. Writing has become another animal, because in the age of technology, it could not possibly have stayed the same and survived. Human beings write text messages daily and because of this, they have created an entirely new language. This is completely contradictory to the idea that writing is dead. Students have begun using sites like Blogger ,in favor of the spiral notebooks of my generation, in order to record their opinions and ideas.
It is the responsibility of teachers to encourage this evolution of writing and to evolve their teaching styles and lesson plans to match the needs of their pupils. Instead of complaining that students don't know how to write or that they don't write, teachers need to recognize that writing is happening in a whole new and exciting way!
Below, you will find a section of my assignment done on emaze. Instead of turning this in on poster board (as I would have done in my middle school career), I have the ability to create a mock newspaper online and share it with you here.
I am very excited to see what my future students will be able to create and convey to me when given the option to use tools that are comfortable, fun, and familiar to them much in the same way that calligraphy pens and magic markers were to me as a student.
Next, let's discuss Websites and Blogs for Teachers and Students. When I read the syllabus for this class and realized that I would be required to create and maintain a blog, I experienced some serious anxiety. I had never created a blog before. The concept was completely new and foreign to me. Sure, I had written tons of papers, essays, poems, and even short books in my time. I had even written online articles. The source of anxiety stemmed solely from the word "Blog" and only because it was a word I was not familiar with. I thought it would be too complicated. I instantly thought I would fail. (I believe that this anxiety is similar to what most students feel when a teacher announces that they have to write a lengthy assignment. The student is not familiar with writing things out longhand. They may have done numerous assignments online, but never with a pen and paper. It is unfamiliar territory, and they are afraid to fail). Now that I have some practice with blogging, I am certain to use it in my career as an educator. Not only do I not have dozens of ink marks all over my hands when I am finished working, but I have the ability to add images and videos and all sorts of learning enhancers where written work would have fallen short.
I also have the ability to look back on my early blog posts and see what areas I have grown in and what areas I should polish. I think that asking a student to keep a blog, particularly because I intend to be a Language Arts teacher, is a wonderful idea. The student will have a record of everything they have worked on without fear of losing older pieces in the bottom of their backpacks or in a messy room. They will be able to received comments from me instantly as well as communicate questions and opinions right away with no fear of forgetting what they needed to say before they step into my classroom next.
For me personally, keeping a blog active is a great way to have an "open door" policy for the parents of my students. Busy parents can access the blog any time of the day or night and because it is vital for parents to be involved with their child's education, this is a wonderful resource!
My thoughts on Wikis as a Collaborative Learning Strategy... Much like how I felt when I found out our class was going to use and maintain a blog, the collaborative Wiki assignment sent chills up my spine. I have never before created a Wiki page or a Wiki space, or done anything with Wiki aside from read some pages created by others. Reading the Wiki section of the text book, I see that there is much more to Wiki than I knew. I was not aware of the WikiTravel, WikiHow, WikiIndex, or Curriki. I am thrilled to see that there is so much more information available for teachers and for students than I ever realized before! Our collaborative wiki project was slow-moving, but not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I think that using Wiki as a place to have students collaborate on projects is a wonderful resource. It was user friendly and there is an option for educators to see who put in work and when they put it in. This will help students to feel relief in knowing that they will be credited for the work they do instead of being penalized for those times when group members do not help enough. I believe that most of my disdain for group projects came from the idea that I was going to receive a lower grade than I deserved if I did not go ahead and fill in all the missing pieces of an assignment that a team member failed to do. With Wiki as a collaborative learning tool, students can be assured that they only need to do their share and will not suffer for the mistakes of others. Another thing I learned when reading the textbook is that Wiki projects can be stand alone, or they can be built upon over time. It had never really occurred to me that, like a blog, a student could continue to add to and improve on their Wiki project over the course of a school year (or longer). I am always in favor of tools that help teachers and students track progress and show a clear comparison of "then and now". How else do we learn if we cannot see where we are and are not developing?
Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Category:Creative Commons - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2015.
"Flickr: Creative Commons." Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
"Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search." Web. 11 Oct. 2015
It is the responsibility of teachers to encourage this evolution of writing and to evolve their teaching styles and lesson plans to match the needs of their pupils. Instead of complaining that students don't know how to write or that they don't write, teachers need to recognize that writing is happening in a whole new and exciting way!
Below, you will find a section of my assignment done on emaze. Instead of turning this in on poster board (as I would have done in my middle school career), I have the ability to create a mock newspaper online and share it with you here.
I am very excited to see what my future students will be able to create and convey to me when given the option to use tools that are comfortable, fun, and familiar to them much in the same way that calligraphy pens and magic markers were to me as a student.
Next, let's discuss Websites and Blogs for Teachers and Students. When I read the syllabus for this class and realized that I would be required to create and maintain a blog, I experienced some serious anxiety. I had never created a blog before. The concept was completely new and foreign to me. Sure, I had written tons of papers, essays, poems, and even short books in my time. I had even written online articles. The source of anxiety stemmed solely from the word "Blog" and only because it was a word I was not familiar with. I thought it would be too complicated. I instantly thought I would fail. (I believe that this anxiety is similar to what most students feel when a teacher announces that they have to write a lengthy assignment. The student is not familiar with writing things out longhand. They may have done numerous assignments online, but never with a pen and paper. It is unfamiliar territory, and they are afraid to fail). Now that I have some practice with blogging, I am certain to use it in my career as an educator. Not only do I not have dozens of ink marks all over my hands when I am finished working, but I have the ability to add images and videos and all sorts of learning enhancers where written work would have fallen short.
I also have the ability to look back on my early blog posts and see what areas I have grown in and what areas I should polish. I think that asking a student to keep a blog, particularly because I intend to be a Language Arts teacher, is a wonderful idea. The student will have a record of everything they have worked on without fear of losing older pieces in the bottom of their backpacks or in a messy room. They will be able to received comments from me instantly as well as communicate questions and opinions right away with no fear of forgetting what they needed to say before they step into my classroom next.
For me personally, keeping a blog active is a great way to have an "open door" policy for the parents of my students. Busy parents can access the blog any time of the day or night and because it is vital for parents to be involved with their child's education, this is a wonderful resource!
My thoughts on Wikis as a Collaborative Learning Strategy... Much like how I felt when I found out our class was going to use and maintain a blog, the collaborative Wiki assignment sent chills up my spine. I have never before created a Wiki page or a Wiki space, or done anything with Wiki aside from read some pages created by others. Reading the Wiki section of the text book, I see that there is much more to Wiki than I knew. I was not aware of the WikiTravel, WikiHow, WikiIndex, or Curriki. I am thrilled to see that there is so much more information available for teachers and for students than I ever realized before! Our collaborative wiki project was slow-moving, but not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I think that using Wiki as a place to have students collaborate on projects is a wonderful resource. It was user friendly and there is an option for educators to see who put in work and when they put it in. This will help students to feel relief in knowing that they will be credited for the work they do instead of being penalized for those times when group members do not help enough. I believe that most of my disdain for group projects came from the idea that I was going to receive a lower grade than I deserved if I did not go ahead and fill in all the missing pieces of an assignment that a team member failed to do. With Wiki as a collaborative learning tool, students can be assured that they only need to do their share and will not suffer for the mistakes of others. Another thing I learned when reading the textbook is that Wiki projects can be stand alone, or they can be built upon over time. It had never really occurred to me that, like a blog, a student could continue to add to and improve on their Wiki project over the course of a school year (or longer). I am always in favor of tools that help teachers and students track progress and show a clear comparison of "then and now". How else do we learn if we cannot see where we are and are not developing?
Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Category:Creative Commons - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2015.
"Flickr: Creative Commons." Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
"Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search." Web. 11 Oct. 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Digital Blog #E
Google Earth is the first big idea that I want to talk about in this post. My best friend introduced me to Google Earth one afternoon as I was trying to understand driving directions... I told her that I thought I knew where I was going, but I really wish I could see a landmark (I'm a very visual learner). Using Google Earth, she showed me the exact street that I needed to travel on, and because I could see it with my own eyes, I knew exactly what to look for when I physically took the trip the next day. I have loved Google Earth ever since. Any time I need to travel somewhere I am not completely familiar with, I search for the location on Google Earth. I have also begun to use Google Earth to look at national landmarks as well as beautiful sites in other countries in the world. As I read our textbook, it occurred to me that Google Earth is a valuable technological tool that teachers have access to. As teachers, we can show our students historical places, astronomy, and now, the ocean. In the following video, a Google Earth representative talks about how Google Earth is now capable of taking people places that very few of us will ever have the chance to see in real life.
found on youtube.com
As I did some exploring of my own on Google Earth, I saw that there are now resources created specifically as educational tools! I can only list a few because they are extensive, but some of my favorites are: oceans, the night sky, the moon, historical imagery, and even Mars! For those who wish to teach Science or History, Google Earth is invaluable, but it can be useful to so many more subjects if you just think outside the box. For instance, in a Literature class students could be assigned a project to seek out the hometowns of their favorite authors and then consider how that may have impacted the books they chose to write. Students would consider things like population, the number of religious structures, the number of schools available, the terrain, and historical landmarks in the area in order to formulate an idea of what the author's life was like growing up and how it influenced their stories. I am very excited to come up with creative ways to incorporate Google Earth into my future classroom.
Visual Thinking and Concept Mapping Software is the second idea I want to touch on. The textbook states that, "Many teachers of writing urge students who feel blocked creatively to begin talking, writing, or drawing whatever comes to mind, without editing, as a way to stimulate their creative imagination. Expressing ideas verbally, in print, or through pictures produces a powerful momentum" (Maloy). As someone who intends to teach Secondary Language Arts, I think that this is a very important realization. Writing down key words or fleeting thoughts on paper is not always effective, however using Kidspiration or Inspiration allows other ways of though-production for students. Having the ability to remove the stigma of "work" from a writing assignment by replacing that work with creating graphics or creating a flow chart of ideas on the computer is a tool that helps people like me to keep the art of writing alive in our children.
In a class that I took two semesters ago, the professor asked us to compare and contrast how great thinkers from history would have fared if computers and the internet had been available to them. I have thought about that assignment a great deal since then and I can say that in my opinion, if great thinkers such as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle had been able to share their ideas and argue their positions instantly via the internet, not only would their ideas have been improved upon by each other, but we would have a wonderful record of their teachings today to reflect on. It has been said that Socrates never wrote down anything that he taught, and historically it is known that Aristotle's vast library of knowledge has nearly all been destroyed. I have to wonder if, through technology, recordings of Socrates and digital copies of Aristotle's work would not have survived for us to have today....
Haikudeck
Lastly, (but my favorite thought of the chapter) is the idea of "Playing Games Together" to solidify learning in the classroom. The textbook talks about after school video game clubs and critiquing the games they played, but when I think of gaming with students, I can think of hundreds of things to do with students that promote learning. At home, I use a wide variety of educational websites for my children to practice their facts. Nearly all of those sites are comprised of games... or at least the ones that my children prefer to use are! And the more challenging the game is, the more my children enjoy and learn from them. This idea of gaming to learn is really what I call a "no-brainer". When we are very young, we are taught songs and rhymes that help us remember key ideas in school. This is a form of play and I'd wager that no kindergartner is aware they are actually doing work while they are singing the song "head, shoulders, knees, and toes". As we grow, we are given opportunities to play dress-up and role play important historical events, or pretend to be lawyers or members of a jury in a classroom, all the while learning how the judicial system works. Again, we play these games and the knowledge solidifies. For some reason, the idea of playing in order to learn becomes too juvenile once we reach middle school. There are teachers and parents that frown on singing songs or playing dress up because they feel it is juvenile or a waste of time. I truly do not understand why anyone would condone dismissing the use of something that has worked for a person's entire life! And dismissing video games as a waste of time is also a grave mistake; One that many educators have been fighting against for years.
If a child who writes only in blue ink receives straight A's when he does so, why in the world would you force that child to write in green ink? If a student retains more material from creating a digital map than he does from reading a list of continents over and over, then why would you prevent him from creating that map digitally? The same train of thought should be used when considering playing games with students. If a student is receiving knowledge from playing an interactive computer game with other students and a teacher than she would from listening to a lecture, why would anyone consider the computer game to be a waste of time?
I am excited to share technological tools with my future students such as Civilization 5 and Language is a Virus in order to engage them as well as entertain them. And of course, I will play along with them!
I have created a short Prezi in order to illustrate the differences (the differences being none at all) between the kinds of play that are beneficial to a child. Please enjoy the Prezi here, or click this link to open it in a new window: PLAYING GAMES PREZI
Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic — CC BY ... (n.d.). Retrieved October 4, 2015.
Category:Creative Commons - Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). Retrieved October 4, 2015.
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