Reflections!

I cannot even begin to talk about everything I have learned in this course. I think that this course has been one of the most useful ones that I have taken in my education block. I think that technology in today's classroom is so necessary. Today's students are so technology oriented, and find using technology relevant and engaging. Throughout the course of this class I have learned many different ways in which I can can implement technology in my future classroom.

I have learned about Web 2.0 and certain Web 2.0 programs that I can use in the classroom to take the place of more mundane and out-of-date practices. For example, rather than using a poster for a presentation, I could have my students create a Glogster or Prezi presentation. Rather than a "get to know you" game at the beginning of the year, I could have my students create a Wordle "word cloud" about themselves and I could hang them up around the room.

I have also learned that projects like digital story telling, scavenger hunts, and Inspiration projects could be great ways to assess students knowledge of a concept, rather than tradition pencil and paper assessments. Games like interactive spreadsheets can be great practice for students on different topics, and are relatively easy for teachers to make. WebQuests are great ways for students to be able to explore concepts on a more in-depth level.

I can't wait to use everything I have learned in this course in my future classroom!!

Lesson Plans!!

I thought writing the lesson plan in this course was an interesting task. I have never had to write a lesson plan placing so much emphasis on technology. I had to consider which programs or activities would best compliment my lesson on ecosystems with out taking focus off of the lesson. I ended up choosing a WebQuest that had students explore various ecosystems as a main part of my plan. This lesson plan was one of the first that I had written this semester. Now, as the semester comes to a close, I have written many more. I think that if I had to write this lesson plan now, after all of my experiences this semester, I would have much more experience and my lesson plan would have been much better.

Websites in the Classroom

Websites in the classroom are an excellent idea! They can be used for a very wide variety of reasons, all which benefit the students, parents, and educators. I think the most important way that websites can be used is for communication. Teachers can post assignments for students who have missed school. Websites can also be used to keep parents informed of what is going on in the classroom. Things like class projects, volunteer sign-ups, up coming events, and other need to know items can all be put on the website to keep parents informed. Even more general things like school calendars, supply lists, and PTA information are beneficial to place on a classroom website.

Another great way to implement websites in the classroom is to post student work. A website is a fantastic way to display students work. If work is posted, parents can view their students work, and even share it with family who don't live in the area. This gives students the motivation to work hard on their work because they know it will be displayed somewhere.

As a future teacher, I am very excited about having a website for my classroom, I have already started working on one and I will post it here when it comes together more!

This project was both fun and frustrating at the same time. I do like that digital stories can be used across ALL grade levels. While younger students may have difficulty creating their own digital story, if you, as a teacher, are proficient in creating digital stories, they can be very beneficial in supplementing instruction on a concept. For older students, digital stories are a great way for students to demonstrate their understanding of a topic. I think that digital storytelling would be a great project for students who are very technologically inclined and enjoy working on computers. The only issue with this would be instructing students on how to work with iMovie or Movie Maker. This could be very time consuming if the students are unfamiliar with the programs.

I thought that the concept of this project was fun, however, I found it to be very frustrating to carry out. The most frustrating part of using iMovie for me, was getting the captions right. I needed them to be longer, and I could never seem to fit enough information into them. Next time, I will be sure to create my iMovie in a way that does not require as long of captions. That being said, I would like to work with iMovie more so that I can become better at it, and more capable of incorporating it into the classroom. I think there are many beneficial ways in which it can be used.

Interactive Spreadsheets

Interactive spreadsheets are awesome!! I always thought of Excel as a program that was only used by people in finance and business. I always saw my business major friends using Excel in their homework assignments and complaining about it. I never thought that it could be used to create such an exciting and interactive activity for an elementary level classroom. Interactive spreadsheets can be used for any subject and in any grade level. They make for a great review or enrichment activity in the classroom. In an elementary school classroom, I think that the teacher should be the one that makes the spreadsheet game, and the students play it. However, in upper grade levels, I think it would be a great idea to have students make the spreadsheets on their own. Given detailed, step-by-step, and some previous knowledge of Excel, I think that this activity could easily be one that requires the students make a spreadsheet game to share with the class.

I think a great way to use these spreadsheets would be to have a collection of them on the classroom website. This gives the students a place to go while they are at home to work on skills or concepts in a way that is fun and interactive, or even to play them just for fun! If an upper-grade class made interactive spreadsheets, they could all be loaded on the website so that students could explore the work of their classmates. The only downside to creating an interactive spreadsheet is that it is rather time consuming, and students who are not very tech savvy may have a difficult time.

In this project, I chose to continue the space topic I started in my Inspiration project. I decided to format my Inspiration project in a way that the questions were stated in a "I am..." clue. The first person clues are to be answered with the space object that is being described. I alternated the colors of each line and removed the grid lines in order to make it easier to read. I added graphics to make the game more aesthetically appealing, and the picture of the solar system also serves as an aid to students when figuring out which planets are which.

Inspiration

Inspiration is an excellent tool to implement in the classroom. Inspiration is a computer program that is used to make graphic organizers. I like this tool because it is great for teachers to make graphic organizers for lessons in their classroom. It is also great because, rather than using a pre-made one, a teacher can create an organizer that is more personalized to their class and what they are teaching. Once a teacher becomes relatively familiar with Inspiration, creating graphic organizers becomes very quick and easy. Inspiration is also great in classrooms because it is easy for students to use on their own. Inspiration is a program that students can use for projects and classroom assignments. An Inspiration graphic organizer would be a great option for a student choice project.

In this assignment, I chose to do my graphic organizer on objects in space. I am very interested in space and it is a subject that I am very excited about teaching. I found using Inspiration a little difficult to catch on to at first, but once I caught on I found that it came easier and I began to experiment with different options. I think that the wonderful thing about Inspiration is the unlimited things that can be done with it. It can be incorporated in any subject and any grade level. I think that it is something that every teacher should become familiar with.

Scavenger Hunt

Another digital slideshow by Smilebox

I think that scavenger hunts are an awesome activity to do in the classroom. I think that if you can come up with a scavenger hunt that is meaningful and relevant to \ the lesson, it is a great way to get students actively involved. They will be engaged and excited about the lesson. It gives students the opportunity to get up and move around =, possibly get outside, and collaborate with their peers- all of which are needed during the school day. I think that scavenger hunts are also a way that you, as a teacher, can reach out to kinesthetic and visual learners.

The other thing I like about scavenger hunts is that they can be used across subject areas. A math scavenger hunt may include looking for numbers, shapes, or fractions. A language arts scavenger hunt may be finding spelling words or taking pictures of verbs in action. A science hunt could be taking pictures of various natural phenomena. Scavenger hunts provide a very versatile activity and I plan to use them in my future classroom.

Blog Review: Teacher Tom

http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/

The first thing that hooked me when looking at this blog was the picture at the top, and the "About Me" section. The picture is of a middle-aged man with long hair in a cape. The "About Me" informs readers that he is a preschool teacher in Seattle, as well as an artist and author. He is also the ONLY employee of this preschool. The next thing that hooked me, was his most recent blog entry. It was a very profound and insightful reflection on hiding the truth from our children and students. He recounts a student incorporating the earthquake in Japan in a story he was telling, and other student asking questions about it. He also remembers a time when he and his daughter walked to Ground Zero. His daughter got angry with him when she found out that 9/11 happened when she was alive and he had never told her about it. He discusses the importance of telling our students and children the truth in a way that they understand.

From looking through more of his blog posts, he presents very insightful reflections on parenting and teaching. He also posts activities and projects that are going on in his preschool. This blog is very entertaining and informative. It has won some blog awards as well. I found it so enjoyable to read and I plan to follow it now and read it regularly.

Digital Images

I ♥ WebQuests!

I think WebQuests are awesome. I am very excited about the possibilities they hold in the classroom. From the first time they were explained to me, I thought it sounded like a very interesting and engaging idea to implement in the classroom. I think what got me really excited about them was the first activity we did, looking at 5 examples and comparing them. The one about the Underground Railroad (here is a link: http://questgarden.com/88/01/4/091112091643/index.htm)  stood out to me. I think that it was a great way to get students immersed in what they were learning, and it allowed them to look at it in many different ways. Although I think that the role playing activity may be taking it too far considering the sensitivity of the subject. All in all, I think WebQuests offer students a chance to do something different, to do something that varies enough that it appeals to all types of learners, and something that offers a deeper level of immersion and engagement.

I found another WebQuest that I thought was really neat (link: http://www.questgarden.com/113/36/8/101108153227/) This webquest is called astronaut for a day. It is a webquest on space and the solar system. I would love to implement this webquest into my classroom during a unit about space. The webquest requires students to do rather in-depth research on their groups planet. They compile their research and then create a paper mache model of their planet. At the beginning of the webquest however, they are told to color a picture of a space ship. I think that I would probably take this out. It seems like it would take a lot of time for nothing that is really beneficial. Instead, I would have my students spend more time on the research part of the process and do a write up or poster to put with their planet. We would discuss which planet is most like Earth and then we would do a display by hanging up the planets with the posters. I would also demonstrate the vastness of the solar system by laying out the planets to scale. 

I think I will definitely use WebQuests in my future classroom one day! 

Reflection: Website Evaluation

I think that this exercise in evaluating the legitimacy of websites was very beneficial. In today's society, the internet is such a huge part of everyday life. Everybody utilizes it, and now everybody can add to it. With everyone having the ability to contribute to what people see in the internet, it is necessary to have a way to judge whether or not what you are reading is accurate. This exercise allowed me to learn what I need to look at on a website in order to make this judgment. This is especially important when incorporating websites into educating young students. Younger students are apt to believe things the read on the internet, especially if it is their teacher showing them.


Not only is is it important to judge the accuracy and legitimacy of the information, but the way that the information is presented is important as well. The information should be presented in a way that makes it easily accessible to students. Graphics must support the information presented. The information must be presented in a clear and clean manner. Colors and texts should not be overwhelming, but aid in engaging the student with the information. All of these things are important to look at when considering including a website in your teaching instruction.

Web Evaluations

http://www2.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/11605_12006.cfm

I think that this would be a great resource to use to explore website legitimacy. It is set up in a way that could be easily used as an activity with students. If I were using this with a group of students I would have them examine the following chart: http://copia.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webcrit.html. This chart explains the criteria for evaluating web pages. It is a great companion to the UCLA activity. The UCLA activity asks readers to evaluate certain websites based on this criteria and decide which they would use for a  research paper. Students could get in groups and decide which of their group of websites would be a reliable resource for a research paper.

Wiki Wiki!

Learning about wikis this week in class has been very interesting. I have read a lot of wikis, but never really knew how they worked. I think that the potential they have in the classroom is very exciting. Reading about all the things that teachers have done with them makes me interested in exploring how I could use wikis in my future classroom. I like the ideas of having students share their field trip experiences, collaborate on projects,and post spelling words and homework assignments. I saw one teacher that had students who were absent for a trip use the wiki to tell about their experiences on their trips. It could also be used as a way for students who miss school for illness or other reasons to stay involved in what is going on in the classroom.

As exciting as the possibilities of wikis seem, I think I still have a lot to learn about them before I would feel comfortable using them with my students. I think that it is something that takes a lot of practice. I also have concerns with how long it would take students to get used to using them, assuming they have no prior experience with wikis. Despite this, I think that wikis are something worth learning about and they have excellent and unlimited possibilities. 

Great Expectations

Technology is such an integral part of society today, and no one keeps up with new technologies quite like today's students. Because of this, it is crucial that teachers not only keep up with new technologies, but integrate them into their classrooms as well. Integrating technology into the classroom provides options for students of different learning types, gives students a sense that what they are learning is relevant, and allows more outlets for students to express creativity and critical thinking.  These are the tools that students want to be able to use in classrooms, but are not readily being made available to them.

There are so many new technologies that are capable of being integrated in to the classroom. In this course, I expect to learn more about these. Podcasts, blogs, and wikis are all things that I have heard of and come in contact with, but I expect that in this course I will learn more about them and how to make them available to my future students in a way that will benefit their learning. I expect that this course will provide me with the tools I need to be a tech savvy teacher who is capable of guiding her students through all these new ways of learning.

There's a first time for everything. . .

. . . and this is my first time blogging! I never thought that I would actually start a blog. I have many friends who have started them, and I read a lot of blogs online (my favorites are listed to the right). However,  I apparently have chronic writer's block (or blogger's block, in this case), I never really knew what to say. I guess an introduction is a good way to start. My name is Lizzie Smith, and I am a senior at the University of Tennessee. I am studying Geography and Elementary Education. I enjoy reading, food (cooking and eating), music and movies, traveling, being outdoors, and spending time with my friends and family. While in school, I also work at the Wesley House Community Center in Knoxville. It is the greatest job in the world, and I work with the most incredible kids. I started this blog as a way to reflect on what I have learned in my "Integrating Technology in K-12 Curriculum" course. So for now, my topics of discussion will pertain to that. As for the future, maybe it will help me to shake the blogger's block, and I will continue and venture on to other topics. Thanks for reading!