Week 11

This week we were in the schools. There was almost no technology used in the time we were there until Thursday. On Thursday they had computers. A technology teacher came in and brought the lab with her. Each student was able to use their own Mac laptop! There were 35 or 36 laptops so a class would easily have enough for each student. I noticed that the students were definitely told very carefully how to take care of the laptop. Each student hugged the laptop next to them while carrying it to their desk. I wasn't super impressed with what they did on the laptop. From what I noticed it was just a test that they could have done with pencil and paper. I wish they would show the students what a laptop can really do and let them have fun lessons with them instead of just having them take a test and then be done.

There was no video posted for this week!

Week 10

I loved learning how to do a WebQuest. It will be great to use in the classroom. I always love the idea of having the students learning and figuring things out for themselves instead of just handing information over to them. They will remember the information they find for a lot longer than if I just told them the answers to everything.

This weeks video was "We Didn't Start the Fire." It is a quick overview of pop culture. I think it would be really fun to use in a classroom but it was going too fast to teach anything from it. It was cool to see all the different things that happened and what people looked like but I had a hard time keeping up.

Week 9

Get a Voki now!

It only let me use that many words.

Week 8

Well we didn't have class this week and our homework was to print off our grades. So, there is not much to blog about. I suppose I could talk about the PDP. I thought it was interesting to do. It was a whole lot easier than I anticipated. I was kind of shocked by all the things they said we should know how to do to be a teacher... It seemed kind of above and beyond what most teachers know how to do now of days.

I thought this weeks video "Did you know 3.0" was very interesting. It is crazy how advanced we are how fast that advancement will be old news. We will see more technology come out in one day than most of the people that have ever lived ever dreamed about. We live in a very amazing time where we have so many opportunities.

My Beliefs

I think my beliefs I think are pretty apparent in the “Lesson Learned” section. I love technology and think it is a great tool for the classroom and think it would be unwise to not use it at all. I also think it should be used effectively and not abused to the point where you are doing more harm in using it that you would be in not using it. I think with everything with teaching careful planning and practice is the key. If will really help and enhance the lesson then use it. If it will distract and take away then don’t simple as that.

Lessons Learned

I thought all of the videos and websites were very interesting. I loved some of the ideas they gave of how you could implement technology into the classroom. I think it would be stupid to not use all the great technology we have around us in the classroom. We have such great resources and it would be very stupid to think that there is no place for them in the classroom.

My concern would be that it would get carried away and the technology would be abused. I would hate to see a classroom where the teacher thought that videos should teach the students everything. The students would learn much more if they were hands-on and had technology to supplement their learning.

Strenghts and Weaknesses

I scored “apprentice” in most things and “novice” in the remaining. This means to me that I have used a lot of the technology that it talked about but have not yet created anything in them to be a benefit for students, or I have heard of the things talked about and not yet tried them out.

My strengths to me would be that I am able to navigate around all programs and do the basic functions to create something. My weaknesses would be that if I needed to do more than the basic I would need to get help. I am unable to really get the full effect out of the technology.
I think it would be helpful for me to go to a workshop where they give good ideas and hands –on practice of how to use technology effectively in the classroom.
I also would like to attend a workshop where I would learn how to make a cool class website. I like the one we did in class, but it would be fun to create and interactive one where the students could add things they have learned and have it be something they would want to check and look at frequently.