Digital Blog Post #L

Credit: TedxTalks on Youtube.com

I wanted to open this week's blog post up with this wonderful video about technology. This video is fun and has a few laughs to offer, but more importantly, it gives a great timeline for technology and how it has been used in schools.
This all leads into my thoughts about how we need to include students in technology and change in our classrooms. According to John Dewey, students enjoy the idea that people care what they think. It is such a common sense concept, yet one that a lot of us probably fail to recognize. Students want to be involved in things that are happening in their classrooms. They want to be considered when decisions are about to be made. They want to feel as if the place where they spend six hours a day working, is a place where they get a voice and are included.
I don't think that this is unreasonable to remind ourselves of once in a while. I think that is is very important to understand that as adults, we want to be informed of changes that are happening in our workplace. Better yet, we'd like to have a say in what those changes are and how they will affect us. Students are no different. When we include a student in the technology of the classroom and the changes that are being made, we are telling them that they have that voice they desire. We are telling them that they matter. We are including them in the way they will get their education instead of just pushing it at them.
Our book tells us that students who have decisions are more likely to care about their education. It tells us that students who get decisions feel as thought they are part of a group and feel included and then "produce better results" (Maloy).  Later in our textbook, we see that "Many teachers have told us they feel isolated and powerless as agents of change in educational systems" (Maloy). So, if many students feel powerless and many teachers feel powerless as far as decision making with things like curriculum, it's definitely time for a change!!

The next big idea I wanted to discuss is called "Flipped Classrooms". I first heard about this idea in another education class, but we referred to it as "backwards teaching". In any case, I particularly loved this idea and enjoyed reading more about it in chapter 12 of the textbook.

 I can't imagine teaching any other way to be honest. I think that "flipping" the classroom really allows the teacher to have much more time to spend working with students who need extra explanation on new concepts, but also allows students who do not need the extra help to work with others or to work on other things that they do need more time with. This entire concept is a time saver and again, a common sense notion. I love the idea that a student would be able to watch a video or read a new idea at home (or anywhere really) where they are comfortable and on their own schedule, then be able to jot down notes to discuss in the next class. I feel as if several of my college classes have been done in this fashion and those were the ones that I got the maximum learning from. I was able to stretch out the at home portions for a day or two and really think about what I wanted to ask when I was sitting in the classroom. This would obviously not work with very young students (or very immature ones who won't watch a video at home at all), but I feel that it is a great idea for the age group that I am interested in teaching; middle and high school students.
I also enjoy what the textbook tells us about flipped classrooms: "No longer passive recipients of curriculum, students become active researchers, analyzers, and presenters of ideas and information" (Maloy).

The final thought that I have for this blog post goes back to a classroom that I observed as part of my required hours in my Intro to Education class. The topic in the chapter is "Strategies for single- and multi- computer classrooms".  In the classroom that I observed, every student had a laptop computer. There were desktops still in the room from before the laptops were assigned by the Google company, but they were obviously rarely (if ever) used these days in favor of the laptops. The students were given such activities as hunting down answers to the teacher's questions (which they all loved because the students turned it into a game of researching speed and skill), verifying information that they were reading in an article (finding credible sources or looking for bias), and typing up answers to prompts that were available from their teacher on their Edmodo accounts. I admit that I was fascinated with watching a large class of sixth graders actually do their work online rather than sneak in a Facebook update when the teacher wasn't looking. It was not until later that day that I began thinking about how activities must have been done when those students only had the five desktops in the classroom....
Even the way activities are done are constantly changing. It is so important for a teacher to be prepared to alter the way he or she teaches. If we get stuck in a comfortable pattern, we are in danger of being as obsolete as those desktops. We must change and think and use creativity in every class, every day. It really isn't just the idea of how we will rotate students in a room when we only have five computers, but it is a matter of how we will rotate our own thinking and routines in order to stay productive and current for the sake of our jobs and the sake of our students.

In closing, I have enjoyed writing these weekly posts and I look forward to using some of the technologies and ideas I have learned in this textbook when I am a teacher. I am, by far, less nervous than I was when I began this class. I have even made the effort over the last few weeks to learn how to use all of the features on my Smartphone. I am moving into the 21st century now - look out!


Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2010). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Blog #K , Chapter 6

For this week's blog, I wanted to discuss Social Bookmarking. This is something that we have been doing since the first week of our class, yet up until now I did not know the technical term for it. I have always "bookmarked" sites that I thought I might use again in the future. When I was a computer novice, I used to copy and paste the web addresses I wanted to save onto a notepad on my desktop. When I became a little more computer savy, I would save my favorite sites via the little star in the corner of my Google page. Honestly, I was a bookmarking fool for a while and I would regularly go into my list and delete dozens of bookmarks that I had not used after the first visit to the page. I would find myself shocked at some of the "junk" I bookmarked and question why I ever wanted to see those pages again! Before this class, I had never heard of sites that are specifically designed to hold a vast number of bookmarks until we were asked to use Delicious. I see now on tech Tool 6.2 of our textbook that there are many Social Bookmarking sites available. I have to imagine that this way of organizing favorites is much easier than reading through a long list of jargon on a notepad! I like the Delicious account that I made specifically because I can create my own key words to identify what a bookmark means to me, or how I might search for it in the future. I also enjoy that my "search" option not only provides me with links to pages that I have saved but throws in pages that I might feel are relevant to my search so that I can broaden my horizons past my own design. I like that there are no advertisements on Delicious so I am not distracted while I am trying to work. Lastly, the best thing about a social bookmarking site is that I can share the pages I like with other educators and they can share their favorite sites with me. We can learn from each other long distance and be a network of help.

By LoveofWisdom | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

To go along with our WebQuest assignment for the week, I wanted to go into some detail about my thoughts and experiences building a WebQuest. Our textbook says that "In a WebQuest, students follow an electronic map or tour, moving from Web resource to Web resource to gather information and learn about a particular topic" (Maloy). I think that this is a nice description, but I would have defined a WebQuest as more of an investment made by teachers to carefully describe an experience that they want a student to have. I really enjoyed making my first WebQuest and I found myself thinking of it as just that - an investment I was making into something that I wanted my students to experience. I wanted them to share with me a bit of literary knowledge that I had come across not too long ago. I wanted to make philosophical leaps and bounds with them, hear what their ideas and explanations for things were and see if they were similar to mine or if they would see something I had missed. I think that a WebQuest is an opportunity, if done right, for a teacher to learn something from his/her students in return for the time spent designing it. I also really enjoy how easy it was to add links and images and videos into the template that I used. I think that, like the textbook tells us, there is a ton of room for creativity and for learning valuable internet skills when working with this kind of tool. When I was creating my WebQuest, I did feel as though I was crafting a sort of research project, but I was able to give it a unique spin and allow for the students to step into a more free-thinking role rather than just read some boring pages or listen to some repetitious lecture. I think that WebQuests can certainly motivate a student to enjoy what they are learning because they have a lot more freedom than they would when just writing a research paper. I am excited to consider all of the possibilities that exist for the subject area that I want to teach. I can already think of a hundred different WebQuests that are well suited for a Language Arts class that do not involve lengthy papers or dull homework. I also really enjoy the fact that a WebQuest has a certain freedom to it as far as time constraints. Information that I feel is relevant or helpful to a student can be loaded onto the pages and I will not have to use up valuable class time going over all of the material. Instead, I will have the freedom to use my class time to answer questions and relieve concerns, or to assist students who are not yet comfortable with writing. I think that this is the biggest reward of having lessons like this available to modern teachers. We can use our time to teach!

The third and final section of chapter 6 that I want to cover this week is Real-Time and Recorded Data websites. Although this topic is only given a small section in our chapter (a paragraph really), it is a huge passion of mine. I spend a great deal of my time (when online) acting as a "remote observer". What I mean to say is that I love webcams that show nature in real time such as the links below:
Bruce's Critter-Cam
Decorah Eagle Camera
NASA Spot the Station
I was addicted to watching Ozzy the eagle in real-time, but I was surprised (and pleased) to learn that my son's 3rd grade class was watching a real-time camera of an eagle's nest. The class was anxiously awaiting the hatching of two eagle chicks! Almost every day, until the chicks hatched, my son would try to guess when they would come out of their eggs. It really peaked his interest in nature (which is hard to do for some kids!). After the chicks were born, his class continued to watch as the parent eagles nurtured their hatchlings, bringing them food and caring for them. He was very excited to tell me about the baby eagles' day - sometimes more excited about them than he was to tell me about HIS day!
I have learned that there are many real-time cameras available on the web and that when a teacher needs to excite a student on a particular subject, these sites can really do the trick.

Here is a great Real-Time Cam that I like to show my kids every few days. Enjoy!

undermicroscope on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2011). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog Post #J

Opening thoughts to go along with the chapter....
In chapter 11 of our textbook, we are covering ways to engage students in learning and self-reflection. The chapter discusses things like performance-based portfolios, student participation systems and clickers, and digital assessments and quizzes (which we use at our college frequently via SurveyMonkey). I decided, before beginning this blog post, to play around with one of the digital quiz sites called FlipQuiz to see if it was user friendly and if I liked it enough to use it again in the future. Although the quiz that I created is not ready for my future students to use, it is a finished product that works on this blog. I found the site to be extremely easy to use and pleasantly simplistic. I think that this  digital tool will be something I will enjoy using in the future with my students. I could quickly design a Jeopardy-styled game, save it online, and then use it in the classroom for test reviews or for a pre-lesson assessment. This would be a much more engaging way to study with students or to help assess what they are retaining and what they are not. (quiz by Nicole Weeks on FlipQuiz.com)
Student Assessment and Student Involvement in Learning and Assessment is the first section I wanted to discuss this week. Although most students do not enjoy testing, teachers simply have to assess how students are retaining information. But tests do not all have to be pencil and paper, and they certainly do not have to be boring! Students have the ability to "show off" what they have learned in a variety of ways including digital quizzes and portfolios. In fact, students would be capable of revealing how much they know about a subject or an idea in a much more graphic and detailed way by using a portfolio versus filling in a multiple-choice bubble on a test. The Jeopardy-styled quiz that I designed on Flip Quiz would allow me to track the number of questions a student got right and assess how much they have learned from my lessons while allowing the students to feel as if they are playing a game. As I said above, this would be a great tool for extra credit, a quiz grade and participation, or simply for review purposes.
Student involvement in learning is "a powerful way to build their commitment to the school curriculum" (Maloy). I have been in classes that allow students to design questions for upcoming tests, sometimes working independently and sometimes in groups, so that the students decide what the most important points of their lessons are. I find that the diversity of interests that students have make a student-designed quiz or test to be challenging and well rounded. I also have noticed that these kinds of student-created assessments empower the students and they are careful to select their question(s) and thoughtful of the other students' abilities when doing so. Allowing students to "teach" their classmates with projects they have designed is also a great way to enhance learning. Some students do not wish to give presentations while others are thrilled to share what they have learned and created with their peers.

en.wikipedia.org

Evaluating Teachers is the next section I chose to discuss this week. It is not a secret that teachers have to undergo training as well as testing in order to be certified in the field. I admit to being nervous about the testing (particularly the math sections) that are in my near future. I feel as if we are teaching students "to the test" and also teaching teachers "to the test" instead of giving them (in both cases) more real-world applicable knowledge... I know that this opinion may not be a popular one, but as I do my mandatory observation hours inside of local schools, I am only more convinced that the students I see are being taught to pass a single exam instead of being taught valuable information. I agree that teachers should have to pass certifications in order to teach, but the question (for me) remains, why can't the tests that are given be geared more towards what that individual teacher is going to be teaching? For example, if you are a going to be a Language Arts teacher, you probably do not need to be tested on advanced Geometry. If you are going to be an Algebra teacher, you probably do not need to be tested on methods of sculpting. I am a big fan of learning as many things as you can, but I also believe that a person only needs to be an expert in their field and that anything else they choose to learn is up to them.
It is also important to mention that I believe teachers should be evaluated regularly, to be sure that their knowledge and skill set are up to date with modern students. It would make no sense to have a teacher in today's world be unable to access their email or confused by Google Docs. It simply would not do for teachers in this century to not have the skills necessary to "keep up" with their tech-savy students. For this reason, I think that the idea of keeping online portfolios is a great one (if used correctly and completely). Teachers should be able to go back and look at the lessons they've taught and see what they have learned through experience and how they can improve. One of the biggest reasons that I want to become a teacher is because I will be able to learn something new every day, see a multitude of perspectives from fresh eyes, and better myself as I better others.

image by: Postmemes.com / Flickr.com

Jumping into Preassessment Surveys, even though I touched on it a little in my opening paragraph, is the next logical place to go from here...  I have personally been in several classes where the professor asked students to take short surveys regarding the material that will be covered in classes. I specifically remember taking a survey in my Ethics course and wondering how in the world I will do in the class because I really did not know much of anything in the opening survey! As it turns out, I did very well in the class and went on to take several other philosophical classes like that one for fun. The preassessment survey opened my eyes to what would be covered in the class, what I did know, what I did not know (and needed to focus on) as well as alerted my professor to what he needed to focus on in the class overall. So much time in a classroom is wasted with handing out papers, preparing to give lectures, and calming students down that I feel preassessment surveys are a great way to not lose more valuable time; you would know right away if you could skip the skeleton of a lesson and head right into the meat of it if your students already knew the basic material. That could save a teacher days, but more importantly, it would save the teacher from having a classroom full of disinterested students - bored because they already know what's being taught! These surveys can also be a valuable asset to the classroom because if a curriculum calls for a certain ability to be learned, but not specific to one discipline, the teacher could find the discipline that students most enjoy and base his or her lesson plan around that thing while forming the assessment or test towards growing that ability to satisfy the state requirements. For example, if I was required to teach students an argumentative essay design, a survey could be used to narrow down what the essay topic would be about so that the students were writing on a topic they were interested in instead of a random prompt that I had come up with on my own. This also allows students to have a little bit of power over their learning and I think that goes a long way with keeping students engaged.
Although I had some trouble finding a video of surveys being done by students or preassessments (that were not boring to watch) I did find a video about teachers who are doing amazing things in their classes. They do visual checks during class to be sure the students are keeping up and understanding the material.  They encourage the students to feel great about themselves. These teachers are connecting with their students and according to the video, the students are learning at an amazing rate!


Video credit to Youtube.com by John Sule


Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2011). Transforming Learning with new Technolgies. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Digital Blog #I Chapter 4

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.

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

In addition to photo taking, the textbook talks about digital storytelling and digital art making. I am very excited about this section of the chapter as well because some of the most beautiful prose ever written in history have consisted of just a few short lines tied together by the perfect image to support it. Some people are not particularly gifted writers, and if I am not able to draw out a literary genius in a student then perhaps I can draw out an artistically inclined one...  The ability to use digital media in artistic ways with the use of photoshop or even just YouTube podcasts has actually become a career for many people now. The ability to transform a picture into a masterpiece or to amuse an audience with your wit or sense of humor is no longer a hobby, but it can be a lucrative profession. Teaching young people to plan out, edit, and execute projects via digital media is something that can be truly beneficial! Not only can digital art making be a creative process for a student or preparation for internet fame, but it can be a way to connect students with subject material that they are required to learn. A fun project idea would be to ask students to read excerpts from a classic novel and then design a cover for the book, or ask students to "improve" on classically famous paintings or sculptures. There is no end to personalizing a student's learning experience with technology. We just have to be continually growing ourselves as educators in order to do so.



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.

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!

MDGovpics on Flickr / Creative Commons Google Images

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 . 

• 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!

Assistive Technologies is the second section of chapter 10 that I want to focus on this week.  First of all, I want to say that most of us might not realize that we probably use some form of assistive technology even if we do not have a disability. Calculators are considered assistive technologies. Your car's G.P.S. (global positioning system) is also an assistive technology... and a very useful one if you get lost easily like I do. In fact, a microphone, the zoom button on a document, and sites like Grammarly.com and Thesaurus.com are all kinds of assistive technologies.
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

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  

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. 

Digital Blog # D : Chapter 5

21st-Century Literacies is the first section of Chapter 5 that I want to discuss today. This section talks about how over the past few decades, the work force has done a complete turn-around, favoring critical thinkers over physical laborers. This radical new way of life has given birth to a variety of sub-changes in our society. It has particularly changed the way teachers and students behave and perform in a classroom (not to mention outside of the classroom for doing homework, research, lesson plans, and more).
According to our textbook, "The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has issued its own definition of the skill students will need in the future, called 21st-century literacies (2007, 2008b)" (Maloy). This set of skills does not dismiss the old favorites of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but rather includes how completely and correctly a student is able to use technology. When thinking about this section, I am reminded of an amusing story from just a few years back... My youngest son's school had finally installed Smartboards into the majority of its classrooms. My son's third grade teacher was one of the lucky teachers who received a Smartboard. I was very good friends with my son's teacher so naturally the topic of the changes to the classroom came up. When I raved about how wonderful I thought it was that the school was modernizing its classrooms, she replied with a scowl and a snap. She said that she was frustrated with the "nonsense" tutorial the teachers had been forced to go through, admitted to being "afraid" of the device, and went as far as to tell me that she most likely would not even use it in her instruction! A few months later, while doing volunteer work at the school, I looked in on her. She was using the Smartboard to show Youtube videos to her students. She admitted to "warming up" to the Smartboard, although confessed to me that the majority of the time, it was a student in her class who actually operated it.

Photo Credit to John Krzensinski on flickr

Photo Credit to popofatticus on Flickr

In the following paragraphs of Chapter 5 just below the heading of 21st-century literacies, we see statistics on time spent reading either online or books. As a future Language Arts teacher, I find it very interesting that even something so fundamentally basic as reading and writing can be so heavily influenced by technology. My first "computer" was an electronic word processor. I admit that I never learned how to perform every function that it was capable of. For me, it was merely a typewriter with an attached printer. Today, children have laptops and phones, not to mention Kindles to use for research and for reading and writing. With so much to chose from, it saddens me that the statistics in our book seem to point to children not reading as much as they had before all these devices existed.

 Wikipedia : An Online Encyclopedia is a section that I feel is important to discuss, especially because of the controversy students experience from one teacher to the next when using Wikipedia. In our own college, Florida Southwestern State, many professors have told me that Wikipedia cannot be used in essays and research papers because it is too abundant with false information, while other professors accept Wikipedia as a viable source of knowledge. Prior to college, I never felt one way or the other about Wikipedia; I used it as a source for leisurely reading or to gain knowledge from a quick summary of an event. Because "...Wikipedia is dynamic; its information is updated and changed all the time..." (Maloy), I believe that the site is an experiment in an ever changing world and therefore appropriate for use in academic writing if (and only if) the sources cited at the bottom of the article are quality sources. Like all things, information changes as we develop new ways of doing things or uncover more facts for a situation. Wikipedia demonstrates the growth of our society, ever changing and updating itself. As a future educator however, I will not allow Wikipedia to be used as a stand alone source for a paper, but rather as an idea builder or as a source for finding other reliable sources on a subject.
I think it is also important to point out that because Wikipedia allows people to submit fact grievances, they should be thought of as more of a learning site and less as an authority. This, in itself, is a wonderful thing. Teachers can use a Wikipedia article to give their students practice on fact checking and authenticating information. Steven Bell of Temple University seems to agree with my stance on using Wikipedia in this way. More information about Wikipedia's accuracy and the interview with Steven Bell can be found here: Scott Jaschik's Article, "A Stand Against Wikipedia"



Avoiding Problems with Plagiarism is a section that I find very important as a student and a future educator. The specific part of this section that I want to highlight is "Misassumptions by students" under the Causes of Plagiarism sub-heading. When I began college, I did not know that plagiarism was more than exact copying. I had a general idea of what paraphrasing was, but I had never been taught to cite paraphrased work until I was in a college class. In fact, I had a very hard time grasping the concept of "original idea" and "plagiarized idea". To me, mainly because of the way I was taught in elementary school, there were no such things as purely original ideas. Anything that a person could think of had been thought of at least once before by another person before them. To properly cite an idea took practice and critical thinking. The worry and stress of this could have been avoided if I had been taught early on what plagiarism really is and what it is not. The below chart represents a snapshot of my feelings as a first year college student wrestling with plagiarism:

Photo Credit to Weeks, Nicole and magic.piktochart

According to our textbook, "Turnitin reports that it receives 40,000 papers a day, and finds about 30 percent have material that makes them "less than original" (Maloy)(Berdik, 2005, p B11). I would guess that some of that percent is accounted for by copying lesson prompts or questions directly from professors, but a staggering amount is more likely attributed to ignorance. The book also gives educators hints and tips on how to prevent plagiarism in the classroom, but overall I believe that teaching students the different kinds of plagiarism at an early age, we can alleviate any confusion that would cause misassumptions.





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.

Jaschik, S. (2007, January 26). A Stand Against Wikipedia, InsideHigherEd. Retrieved September 27, 2015, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki