Final Blog Reflection!

* What do you feel is the most useful technology (or teaching approach) you have learned this semester?
The most useful technology I learned this semester BY FAR was learning how to create an effective website.

* How do you plan to use this or other technologies in your future teaching?
In the year 2010 I am SHOCKED by how many teachers do not have a website for their class. It is very easy to create and even easier to maintain. As a teacher you can tell you students who miss class to simply check the website for what they missed. You can eliminate the need to print out 1,000 copies of one handout for you 500 students because they will lose them, you can just point them in the direction of the website. You can post interesting material to them and enhance your student's learning in a very meaningful way. Students can also interact with each other if they need to, and in many cases they do need to. Every class needs a website or at least a blog and I have come to this realization through my IP&T class.

* How can you use technologies (the ones we learned or others) to engage your students in ACTIVE learning?
This is bit of a tricky question because most technology facilitates passive learning such as allowing kids to create an online poster and teach the class on the subject or showing your students how to use word to write a research paper. I think active learning technologies includes online movies, pictures and other media. Visual learning is the easiest way to facilitate active learning in our students minds.

Wiki-ness

http://k12instructionaltechnology.wikispaces.com/Krista+Burkhart%27s+US+Presidents+Powerpoint+Game

I think that having a wiki like this for future teachers is a great resource, we can't always come up with great ideas all the time, unfortunately. I think a wiki is something that students in a class would also benefit with as well.

Interweb Safety

For my internet safety activity I decided to become isafe certified. Here are some statistics I learned about kids on the interned

40% of websites ask for private information
25% of kids encountered a stranger on online chat
9% of kids believe it is okay to post their picture on the internet

I was shocked by these facts mainly because this is dealing with elementary school aged children! It is a sad fact that nowhere is safe in this world.

Noun: Innovation

I just watched this video which pitches Lewis and Alyssa Young's Innovative Instruction Competition entry. I thought this was a very interesting idea especially because I tend not to think about technologies used in the elementary teaching level. I think it is in many ways much more difficult to use technology with a younger audience but as it said in the video, many elementary classrooms have projectors and I have seen visualizers in the elementary level as well. Students are often exposed to computers and typing at this early age. With this is mind, however, we can see the first problem with Lewis and Alyssa's proposal. Singling out one child to type for the rest of the class is:

1st- no fun for the child that likes to type ad doesn't get to
2nd- no fun for the child that gets called on if they feel uncomfortable with typing in front of the entire class.

It reminds me of when I was called on to write on the board. I didn't have the best spelling or handwriting and when I would get something wrong my peers were sure to let me know about it.

As for the pros...
working together to create one document is a great idea! much less time consuming for both students and the teachers! Using Google Wave is really great for the purpose.

Grab some popcorn and lets reflect

How you might use instructional video projects in your teaching?

I can even think about how many times I made a powerpoint when I was in school. I feel really comfortable with the software and the technology behind it now. I was always very proud of how pretty and informative mine turned out to be. But now I will more teachers had come up with new technologies that we could demonstrate our knowledge with. Obviously this takes more time, but I think it would be memorable for the students and in the end worth it.

Finding pretty images on Flickr

Everyone knows that in order to become a good searcher, one must learn how to narrow down the results to get the most beautiful images.

For the recent assignment in this class we need to find Creative Commons-licensed pictures on flickr.

So Say you search for "ice cream."
(550,198 results)

Okay. Too much to handle. Narrow the results by using Advanced search to get Creative Commons-licensed content only.
(69,848 results)

Still far to many. Well, there is a magic button you can hit that will give you the prettiest pictures first.
Ahhh the Interesting button. Where you can find This:


("Holsten's Uploaded on October 3, 2008 by EJP Photo)


("Mister Softee" Uploaded on July 30, 2008 by Pabo76)

I'm going to make a movie project for my students!

Why would I do that?
The purpose is to connect to historical events and people from their previous knowledge of them. It is also a way for me to assess what my students already know so I know what to teach them about Lewis and Clark.

How am I going to go about doing this?
My students will create a 3 min video about what they know about Lewis and Clark from their own lives such as a movie about them, a book, or from a previous class. This video will represent the kind of work your students would create for an assignment.

They have to include the following:
What they know about Lewis and Clark
What their family knows about Lewis and Clark
Where their previous knowledge of Lewis and Clark comes from
And What they would like to learn about Lewis and Clark.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AbHOCDrFF7ARZDVoNG5wdF82MGQ0eHFnM2Rr&hl=en

Perhaps we didn't start the fire..

I like to stick with the Billy Joel theme. First of all, obviously the song is way more than 10% of the work, because the whole thing is featured. Billy Joel is not pleased! There is also a number of other things that are copywritten that would be fine in the classroom, but on the internet it creates a problem. There are a number of clips and pictures shown that are not cited such as: Bowling for Columbine, book covers, movie posters, historical photography, music videos, movies (Elvis) and others. Plus it is unclear where the pictures of the historical figures came from as well. It would have been just as easy to include this type of information in the credits because the credits did exist!



This is one of those viral videos for social studies teachers. I am sure any teacher who wants their students to memorize the state capitals has shown this clip or played this song. This obviously threatens copyright because I do believe that you can buy this song but now nobody has to because it is one the internet! Also, again, nothing is cited. And I have one more bone to pick with this clip... I am quite sure that buffalo never roamed Utah, they are native to the plains! Misinformation in the media is something history teachers battle enough of. Can anyone say disney's Pocahontas?

Personal Technology Project

(Here is a link so you can download it and actually play it) Something that I have decided to make a priory in my teaching career is to teach my students much more in depth about the US presidents and require that they memorize them in order. My plan is to use 3 different ways of teaching to reach all my students and I created this game as a way to review those ways of teaching. My unit plan can be seen here.

Well I have for sure picked a topic... just forgot to post on here!

for my Personal Technology Project and I have picked (drum roll please)


to make a powerpoint game!

I love powerpoint games, they are so much fun! I can't count how many times I have played jeopardy via powerpoint for a review in high school! I am creating a fun review game, because I think this type of powerpoint could break up all the other powerpoints shown during lectures but it is still in a familiar format so students can recall that information!

Techonolgy and Preventing Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a major problem for History teachers. If you are a history teacher you may be familiar with programs and websites that check your papers for incorrect citing and copying-and-pasting. Personally, I have experience with Turnitin.


Turnitin is allows teachers to check students ability to cite and teach the correct way to cite. This also makes it a positive teaching technology tool other than catching a cheating student. I think in the future I will most certainly use Turnitin or some other paper checker; I do, after all remember the cheating culture surrounding high school. Wikipedia always said it better than I could anyway.

New Site to the Family!

http://sites.google.com/site/burkharthistory/

This is my mock class website. I am very proud of it but let me know if I should change anything!

I learned everything I know from Oregon Trail.

Oregon Trail. It was the educational computer game available in 1997. Or at least it very much felt like it with how many hours I played it in computer class in elementary school. But now there are even better educational games online! Like the one I found here.
Students love to be able to use the computers but things can get out of hand when they are done with the assignments and they need something else to do; such as pretending to be a colonist via this fun Jamestown-themed game. This "History Mystery" game is also a good one.

For you math teachers go here. There are enough games to fill up an entire year of interactive games.

Okay, I now understand the appeal of teaching Elementary school students.

When I have been asked in the past what I want to be when I grow up/ what am I going to school for, I have always just answered by saying “teaching.” This of course prompts the individual to ask which grade and subject I would want to teach and without hesitation I say “high school. This usually produces one of two responses. The person either says “Yeah, I would teach high school above anything else as well” or “Really? That would be the last level I would teach.(I find this particularly interesting because most people have an opinion as to what grade they would teach even when they don’t work in the field of education. This seems to infer to me that most people at one time or another have asked themselves what it would be like to be a educator).
I agree with the former group, of course. I have always said that I couldn’t deal with the bodily fluids that seem to always been in the younger classrooms, especially snot. I also think that I would just be a better fit for the high school environment. I think that secondary educators need to be more the professional/mean side than the friendly/kind side of the teaching realm, and I certainly have more qualities of the mean than the kind side. This is not to say that I am not kind, but my default mode is more likely to be commanding than most and it may take a while when people get to know me that I can be kind, too. In fact one of the kids in the Mrs. Louder’s fourth grade class that I visited this week, Uriah, wrote in his card that he thought I was mean when he first saw me but then when I helped him with his math he realized that I wasn’t so mean after all. (He also drew a great picture of me wearing a pink and black polka dot dress with matching shoes). I guess what I am trying to say is that I possess the skills of managing a secondary education classroom than a primary education classroom. Though I did love being in the elementary school for a week.

What am I following? Personal Learning Network

Note: Screen Shot is clickable.
In looking for my own "personal learning network" I tried to find different types of resources from lesser known, teacher run blogs to more trafficked sites.
1. http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/
This blog caught my eye due to the post on "Cloud File Storage, Sync, Backup." The Author provides a much needed update on the technology world in general with a focus on the benefits on education. The Author is a science teacher so if that is useful for you, great! It isn't for me as a future history teacher but I couldn't say no to following this blog. I mean, he offers links to online whiteboards! How awesome is that!
2. http://multimedialearningllc.wordpress.com/
A fabulous source for resources for history history. I was drawn to it because it had a post that came with a blank map, a quiz and a key for a possible quiz. I am game for anything that means I don't have to repeat what someone else has already done. This also has great links to videos online. I find it hard to find truly useful historical videos on youtube. Most are in the realm of US history but their are topics on World history as well. Also to note about this blog, it may seem odd and unnecessary, but the posts are very well organized and very welled tagged to find exactly what you need.
3. http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
This a great blog that I found via Dasily's Blog. The new technological advancements shown in this blog blows my mind. There are some many useful things showcased here! It is very cutting edge, and I suspect shows things that we in the future might use quite a bit in our teaching careers. I found the post on how google earth is useful in all kinds of fields and not just in the hard sciences.
4. http://ushistoryeducatorblog.blogspot.com/
This blog talks about the subject I will most likely be teaching: US History. Now, I love all types of history but US history I find the most boring, second only to ancient history. I need ideas on how to keep US history interesting not only for my sake but for the sake of my future students. Students can always tell when the teacher is bored with their own class. This blog provides the much needed support of technology and lesson plan ideas when dealing with US history.
5. http://weblogg-ed.com/
this is a very different blog compared to the other ones that I am currently following. It mostly talks about teacher technology as a science and dives into the successes and failures of different mediums. Technology can fail and hurt the classroom at times. Cell phones are in fact a major problem in the classroom as well as cameras used for cheating. This blog provides thought provoking questions and a conversation starter on the specific advancement and downfalls of technology in the schools.
6. http://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com/
This blog is much like the US history one but obviously, dealing with world history, my much more prefered subject. So I added it for the same reasons as the other one-- to keep me fresh and on my toes about World History and how technology can add to the teaching environment of the classroom.

High School is like a dirty novel . . .

Honestly, I didn’t think that Walden Charter School (located in Provo, Ut) was all that different. I admit that I did jump a bit when I saw one student walk into class completely barefoot and the mild swear words certainly caught my attention, but other than that, nothing shocked, scared, astounded, or offended me. (No desks were different for me though). The students were diverse and trying to discover themselves just like anywhere. The teachers wished to inspire and educate through respect and friendship just like anywhere else. Also, there are pros and cons in attending and teaching at Walden, just like in any other school. My own personal experiences might have something to do with this fact.
I went to school in California and Illinois. Both happen to be quite “blue” states.I went to high school in a suburb of Chicago and it was certainly a more liberal experience.I often joke that my political values were taught to me by my teachers rather than my parents. As I talk about my experiences and thoughts on Walden, keep in mind that any of these teaching methods were used in my education, further showing that Walden is not all that different from other High Schools. High School can be related to Romance Novels: the cover and the setting may change, but for the most part the plot and the characters remain the same. And it is not at all a bad thing.

Who the . . .?

Paperback= Paperback Writer
Tripper= Day Tripper

Why, yes! I did go through a huge Beatles obsession-- how did you know?

My non-interweb name is Krista Lee Twitchell Burkhart.
I have been married for 2 weeks, so my name still confuses me.

What do I like? hmm
raspberries. sporks. giant slippers. frozen chocolate. rubix cubes. warm fuzzy towels. floating in water. blowing bubbles. nighttime. clementines. endless circles. best friends.the word spunky. kitchen floors. laughter. butterfly kisses. hammocks. wet sand. whoever chooses the sweet love letters. acoustic guitars. the ballet. beautiful smiles. peanut butter m&ms. random discussions at the dinner table. old ladies with crazy sweaters. sleeping bags. irony. "b is for basil assaulted by bears." singing in the car. learning from mistakes. men who arent afraid to cry. clear straws. romantic comedies. optical illusions. movies in english class. Joel Mchale. medical history. funny names. swing dancing. grapefruits. untouched snow. magic erasers. homemade moccasins. men who wear turtlenecks. drawing on cds. olives. light sabers. spelling words with the english u. adorable dogs. patriotic christmas trees. unicorns. nachos. screaming your head off. having 10 of your best friends change your flat for you. compliments. piano. fulfilling dreams. new friends. 5 stringed guitars. buzz lightyear. long conversations.& the feeling you get when you just had a perfect day.


Picture of me looking all kinds of awesome.




More pictures (of me looking all kinds of awesome) found here