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.