Week 14 -- The Future of Tech in Ed

http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/technology-in-education/

This article discusses some of the positive ways that technology can influence education. Essentially, it states that technology has nearly endless potential to revolutionize even the trickiest areas of education, but a lot of work needs to be done before it's totally ready for student use.
The blog showcased a student-made video about how much technology they use. Technology can be helpful for more accurate assessments, having students learn through multimedia projects, and giving students a creative outlet for their potential. However, the most interesting component of this blog's suggestions for me was the simulations portion.
Technology is now being created to allow students to play roles to simulate everything from solving a math word problem to reorganizing the city plan of a major urban center. The technology is still very limited for school use (though it's widely used corporately), but when it is good enough to be implemented, it will allow kids to step into adult roles to solve problems and learn teamwork and responsibility.

Reflection 8

It continues to amaze me how much of a blessing technology can be. One of my cousins is in the Peace Corps right now in Malawi. She rarely has internet, but when she does, I get to chat with her. She's literally halfway around the world (about 12000 miles away) and I still can talk to her. People in history would have flipped their lids if they had known that such a thing was possible.

One day, I want to teach in Africa, but while I'm teaching here, how cool would it be to set up a classroom Skype account to talk to classrooms around the world? Middle school students could practice their Spanish with students in Mexico or talk about life with students in a Zambian school. The intercultural possibilities are truly staggering to contemplate. :)

Week 13 -- Features of Microsoft Office

• Word
• Creating documents
• Bulleted lists
• Formatting
• Downloading documents 
• Editing papers 
• For myself and friends
• Excel
• Creating organized lists
• PowerPoint
• Creating presentations
• Highlighting
• Linking videos
• Making FlipSnack (saving as a PDF
• Possible projects:
• Listing/alphabetizing data in Excel (Poll answers for a speech unit)
• Presenting their projects on civilizations for history class (PowerPoint presentation made into a FlipSnack)
• Editing one another's papers and checking for accuracy using the editing features of Word.

My Wordle!

Week 11 - Marzano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCrd8Sqf4ig

"Within 5 years, 50% of American classrooms will have interactive white boards. In the UK, 80% have them now."
I chose to watch a YouTube video rather than read an article because it better suits the subject matter. :) Marzano's main point is that we should use what we know about teaching without technology to better use the technology we have. ActiveBoards make a huge difference about whether or not kids learn to the best of their ability.
I will use my whiteboard (since I'll likely have one when I am a teacher) to further integrate students into the learning they are doing. It must be used well, though, so I will train myself accordingly.

Reflection 7

Today, I was struck by the amount of potential that technology has in the classroom. Whilst I was in my least favorite class (British Literature II), the professor kept insisting on correct MLA format. He refused to take the papers from the class out of nowhere for little things. Rather than allowing us to make changes, then email it to him, he insisted that we correct (even if it was a very small thing) our mistakes before he would even accept. While I am all for accuracy and correctness, I believe that there is a better way to handle it than waste all that paper. i think that students should be able to use technology to email the papers to him so that he could check that corrections were made and then grade the paper. That would be environmentally friendly and less obnoxious. Just a thought. :)

Our FlipSnack