Week 16

I think this class has been very helpful and I'll use a lot of the things when I teach. I was happy that we learned how to save documents as a pdf file because I never knew how to do it before. Using pdf documents would be good when I'm posting things online like class assignments or newsletters. I will use google documents and powerpoint in the classroom to make presentations for my class and also to work with other teachers. I think it's important to work with other teachers because they can have good ideas that you would not otherwise think of.

With the video I think it's fun to use variety in teaching and I will use Schoolhouse Rock to help enphasize nouns, verbs, etc. Using a song and a video is a creative way to help students remember concepts learned in class. When they have trouble remembering something the songs might help them to remember, for example, the difference between nouns and pronouns or verbs and adverbs.

Week 15

I think that it's good that we learned how to use powerpoint and google presentations in the class. I had never done a powerpoint before this class and now I realize it's really simple. The google presentations are really good for working on group presentations. I will difinitly use powerpoint and presentations in the classroom to make lessons and visuals for my students.

I couldn't get the video to work.

Week 14

I think it's important to use videos like Schoolhouse Rock in the classroom because it makes learning more fun. It puts it into a song and most people can learn better through visuals and especially through songs. I remember watching Schoolhouse Rock when I was in school and the songs stuck with me. It made it a lot easier to remember nouns, verbs, etc.

So far this semester we've learned a lot of useful technologies we can use in the classroom to help make learning more fun. When you're having fun you learn more because you don't think of it as bookwork. I will use a lot of the things we've learned in class when I teach. Technology is an important part of the way society is today and learning to teach from it is very important.

Video

It's important to realize that today's world is different than it was even when I was a kid. I didn't have the internet when I was little. Kid's now days learn how to use the internet when there 2 or 3 years old. Kid's even do homework different now. When I was a kid if I had to do a report for school I went to the library and looked through encyclopedias. Now it's so easy just to open up the internet and any topic of information you want is at your fingertips. Technology plays a major part in our lives and it's important to incorporate that into the classroom.

Week 13

I think Kidspiration and Inspiration would be very fun and useful tools in the classroom. I could use them to have the kids brainstorm or to teach them how to make graphs and tables and how to cluster. I think the kids would like the fun pictures and graphics and it would be a fun way to learn in a different way than normal.

Week 11-Video

I thought the video was funny but he also had a lot of good points too. I've had a lot of teachers who have done just what this guy says not to do in a powerpoint. I think it's important to at least be aware of the things not to do. If you've never been told you might not think about it. You might think that the more information or the more colors you use in your powerpoint the better it will be, but that is not always true. You have to realize how it looks to the audience viewing it.

Week 11-Picasa and Powerpoints

I think that powerpoint's will be a really helpful tool to use in the classroom. It's an easy way to use visuals in your presentation. You can post pictures that go along with the presentation and also links to videos you might want to show. They're really easy to make. The google presentations would especially be helpful if you were collaborating with collegues to make a presentation. Powerpoints could be used to teach almost any kind of lessons and you could also use them for presentations to collegues or parents. Picasa is a very easy and helpful way to edit photos. This would be really helpful to cut or manipulate images to make them more useful in your powerpoint or to use in the classroom.

Week 9-Video

I thought that the edited David Letterman top 10 thing was kind of lame. But there is truth to some of the things they said. Things that you wouldn't really think about when you're going into teaching. It's important to realize those things too.

I thought that the Mashups were really cool. They would be really hard to make but it would be fun to use them in the classroom just to provide some variety for the students.

Week 9-Digital Camera's

Digital Camera's are a really good tool to use in the classroom. You could take pictures of all the students to help learn there names at the beginning of the school year. You could use the students picture to make a poster for the student of the week. Also, you could take pictures of anything you wanted to teach about in the classroom and print them off or use them in power point presentations. I think that using a digital camera would be a very helpful way to provide visuals to your students to help them learn. Some of the pros to digital cameras are that you can edit the picture on your computer so you only use the parts of the picture or emphasize the parts of the picture that apply to what you're teaching.

Week 8-Video

I think it's important to use upbeat things like this video to teach. Subjects like history can be boring for kids and by using songs it gets them interested. I think this video is a good way to reinforce what you've been teaching in class or to introduce something that you might be talking about. It's good to introduce kids to famous people and events and this video is one way to show them a lot of events at once. Then when you teach them about it, they've heard of it so they have some kind of background knowledge or an image to draw from. I know that when I've never heard of something before it's harder for me to learn about it but when I've at least heard of it or seen it then it makes it easier to learn about and I'm more interested.

Week 8-Internet Safety

I think it's important to understand the dangers of the internet and ways to keep safe. As a teacher I will especially use these techniques to make sure that I keep my students safe from the things they might find on the internet. The more you understand and learn about internet safety the more you'll know what kinds of things to watch out for online. Parents will feel better if they know that their child's teacher is aware of the dangers of the internet and ways to keep their child safe. I could use what I know to help educate parents as well so that they know how to keep their kids safe at home too.
Also with understanding web safety I can help my colleagues to keep their classrooms safe as well and give them tips to find reliable information to use in their classrooms. By knowing how to evaluate websites I'll be able to provide students with the most accurate information and not just things that are passed on as true.

Week 7-Video

I think that it is so cool that they can do stuff like that now days. It seems so futuristic. As technology continues to develop we, as teachers, need to stay caught up on what is going on. The students coming through our classrooms will be exposed to so much more technology than we were at that age. As technology continues to improve, we will be lost if we don't keep up and we will not know how to teach our own students, who will know so much more than we do.

Week 7-UEN

I thought that they were really confusing to figure out how to use them, but I think once I'm comfortable with it UEN will be a good resource for teaching. There is a lot of information on the website and a lot of things that I could use to teach my students. The interactive's would be really good to help students learn while having fun. Pioneer Library would be really helpful to find information to teach to the students and also to have students use the articles, etc. to do reports.
The only con to UEN would be knowing how to find all that the website has to offer and getting used to using it.

Week 6-Video

I think that we need to engage students in learning. We need to let them use their creativity and express themselves in their own ways. I think that a lot of teachers don't do that. Students learn better if we let them learn things in their own way. Teachers need to be aware that students need to be engaged in learning in order to get anything from what you are teaching them.

Week 6-Reflection

So far in class we've learned about a variety of different tools that we can use in the classroom. I think that they will be very helpful in communicating with my students, parents, and colleagues. I think that using a variety of tools to teach will help the students learn better. Videos are a good visual to help the children remember as well as clipart in microsoft word. Parents like to be updated on what is going on in the classroom and gmail is an effective way to do that. It is also a good way to stay in contact with colleagues and what they are doing in their classrooms.

Week 5-Reflection

I think that Zamzar, teachertube, youtube, national geographic, etc. are tools that would be very useful in teaching. Using videos from youtube and teachingtube and converting them would make it very easy to show videos to students in class or email them to parents to watch with their students at home. Also, if you wanted to share a video with your co-workers to help them out in their classrooms using these tools would make it really easy. National Geographic is a fun way to teach students about the world around them. Using the interactive games makes learning fun and not just a chore. Parents could use it to help there students become more interested in what is being talked about in class. I could use National Geographic to reinforce what I am teaching in the classroom.

One of the cons to youtube would be that anyone can post videos on there and you don't always know if they're good. My neice likes to look at carebear videos on youtube and sometimes the videos that she pulls up have things that people have added in that are not good for kids to see. I think it's important to teach kids what to watch for so they know which videos not to click on and what to do if they happen to come across something online that is not good.

Week 5-Video Reflection

I think that it's important to realize that many students use new technology for almost everything: music, pictures, communication, email, etc. The kid in the video talked about how his mom has to ask the kids how to do anything on her cellphone. I think it's like that a lot. I know that my mom has to ask me about things on the computer or her self phone all the time. When I'm a teacher I don't want to be the teacher who doesn't know how to use modern technology. Your students feel like they are way smarter than you in the subjects that you should be teaching them.

Week 4-Video

I think that a lot of the facts in the videos are really interesting. For example, one said "I will read 8 books this year. 2,300 web pages and 1,281 Facebook profiles." Another said she would write 42 pages for class that year and 500 pages of email. I think it's really interesting when you look at how you spend your time. You think you have no time for homework yet on average people spend 2 to 3 hours on the internet each day and a lot of that time is spent on Facebook and Myspace. I think that if we could find a way to get our students to use the internet effectively they could do so much more. If they could focus the time they spend doing pointless things online into something that would teach them something they would learn and relate to class more. I know that when I've been in classes they've taught things that I thought were so boring and had no interest in then later read about them online or watched a video and it held my interest so much more and I remembered more of what I learned from it. It's important to engage students and find a way to relate something to their life and catch their attention so they will want to learn about it instead of just feeling like they have to learn it.

Week 4-Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is an effective tool to use in the classroom. It has a lot a features that are very helpful in teaching. I could use Microsoft Word to write letters to parents or make fliers for students to take home. It's a quick and easy way to keep everyone updated on upcoming events and whats going on in the classroom. I could print off what I needed the parents and students to know and send it home with the student or I could send it in an email as an attachment to all of the parents. Microsoft Word has clip art and it also has ways to make columns and tables depending on what kind of document I am trying to create. I could use Microsoft Word to keep in contact with colleagues as well. I could write letters and send them as attachments for my colleagues to read. In the classroom I could also use Microsoft Word to make posters for the walls or for lessons. One of the cons to Microsoft Word is that it is not online and you do have to attach it if you want to send it in an email.

Week 3-Video Reflection

I think that students would be more engaged in learning if we used tools and technologies that they are already comfortable using. You couldn't make it a requirement though because not all students have cellphones and ipods, especially in elementary school. But it's important to think of things like that to get students attention and realize that the use of technology is the way the world that we live in is. I have nieces and nephews and they know way more about computers then when i was their age. I remember the first time I learned about the internet and basic email. Kids now days have a lot more opportunitys to learn about technology and to use it. I think it's important to realize that so you can incorporate it into the classroom environment.

Week 3-Tools

I think it's important to know how to use tools on the internet such as google sites and gmail documents and the calender to better communicate with students, colleagues, etc. The more tools you know about the more options you'll have as a teacher to choose the best way to communicate with those you will be working with. Google documents is an effective way to work on projects with other teachers and collegues without having to officially meet together to get something done. Google sites is a great way to update parents and students on what is going on in the classroom and what is coming up in the future. I think parents who have access to the internet would like the easy way that it is set up to browse whats going on in the classroom. One of the cons to these tools would be those who do not have access to the internet. Some parents don't have or don't use the internet. Therefore, it would still be important to send letters home with the students to let parents know what is going on in the classroom.

Week 2-Video Reflection

I think that using music to teach children things like math is a very good idea. I know that I remember things a lot more when it is turned into a song. I had a math teacher at UVU who would sang songs for us to help us remember formulas and things like that and it made math more bearable. I think in Elementary school it's even more important than college to keep the students interest. However, I did not think the video that I just watched was very helpful. I didn't remember anything he was actually trying to teach in the song, just what he was singing about. I think you should use songs in teaching, but it's best to find ones that are actually helpful in remembering something.

Week 2-Communication Tools

Using blogs, facebook, sites, gmail, etc. will make it a lot easier to stay in contact with students because most people use the internet and the students will be able to look up what they may have missed on a day they were sick, or they can email me with their questions about assignments or due dates, etc. Parents will be able to keep track of what their students are learning in school and be able to easily contact me with any questions they may have about their students work. These communication tools will also help me keep in contact with collegues to know when meetings or other important events are. Also, I can use it to ask them questions related to teaching. I think that things like facebook are so popular with students because it allows them to communicate quickly with their friends and keep up to date on whats going on. They feel connected to others.

Some of the pros to these communication tools is that it keeps you up to date and you can check it when you have time, whereas a phone call has to be done when both people are available to talk. Some cons would be that sometimes technology is unreliable and also if you say something in an email meant as a joke, someone reading the email might not hear it the same way you meant it and take offense.

Overall I think that using email, blogs, etc. are an effective way to keep in contact with students, parents, collegues, etc.

Video Reflection

I think that it is really good that they have students using technology more and more in the schools. As they come out with more technology it's important that kids use it in the schools because not all students have access to it at home. As the world moves more towards technology, computers, email, etc. its important that kids learn it too so their not left behind not knowing how to use it. I think that using computer animations to teach students about things in the world is a really good way to help them to learn. It makes it more fun and more realistic than just looking at words and pictures in a textbook.

Ideal Classroom Reflection

My ideal school would be here in Utah County so I wouldn't have to move too far away. The class size would be smaller than the average class size, about 15 students. That way I could give them more one on one attention. My classroom would have a lot of books for the students to chose from and read during their free time. My classroom would have a lot of different art supplies so the students could build their creativity. The other teachers would be helpful and supportive. The parents would be involved and give their input but also they would be supportive. My goal in the classroom would be to build a safe environment where students felt free to explore and learn and express their personalities in a place where they wouldn't be criticized.