Teaching With Technology Week 5 Reflection

This week’s lesson gave me a chance to put everything together that I have learned thus far and put it into collaboration effort with my teammates to create a final product. It was very rewarding to be able to see the final product. All that hard work has paid off. We also got to talk a lot more as a team and submit our reflections of our project together. I feel that I had a great team. This week’s lesson also brought to light the amount of collaboration which occurred in creating the whole lesson since the beginning. We collaborated on creating lessons and activities that would fit the needs of all learners from any backgrounds. We met their needs “By nature, both multimedia projects and cooperative learning groups require attention to detail in the planning process” (Pitler et al, 2007, p. 141). It was a lot of work and took many hours of collaboration, writing, and creation. Teaching with technology brought my partners and I, from all various backgrounds and ideas, to create a very nice finished product. This just shows that any teacher can get together with various ideas and create something to help all students. Teachers who broaden their horizons to help kids learn by implementing various technologies and web 2.0 tools are considered very respectable because it is something that Solomon and Schrum mention as an “uncommon” thing that needs to be changed in society. Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, pp. 141. Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, Chapter 7, 21st Century Skills, para. 11.

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Week 4 Reflection - Teaching With Technology

I learned a lot this week during the readings and videos of week 4. Although I could mention everything I learned, there is just one thing that stands out above all the rest; kids being tested in a variety of ways. This comes from the quote, "For an assessment to accurately reflect what students know and can do, those students must be giving their best effort.” I often share with colleagues that if the sun and the moon align perfectly many of my students will be successful on exams. Formal paper-pencil assessments provide the data required by many however often do not show a true representation of a child’s abilities. Many students suffer high levels of anxieties when taking standardized assessments." This quote came from Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning, chapter 7. The reason that this quote his me so much and got all of my attentions is because I am one of these kids. My whole life I have suffered with test anxiety. There has been one mode of testing while growing up and it has kicked my butt every time. It really tore me up when it came to teacher certification and principal certification. The more high risk the test, the more anxiety i get. Today there are a variety of ways that children can be assessed without having to take a standard test. The minds of our children, like mine, are not wired to take standardized test. We all need something more engaging and interactive. There should be multiple of opportunities of how kids should get to show what they know and do not know. Until we can fully implement that then we will never truly know what are kids know.

Plate Tectonic Book

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Week 3 Lesson Reflection: Teaching With Technology

This week I read documents that dealt with UDL and how they benefit the children. It was not only about the UDL, but it was about how kids need the varied instruction to be successful in the classroom. “Providing multiple representations of patterns through a variety of media, formats, organizations, levels of detail, and degree of depth includes more learners by offering both choice and redundancy.” This is the quote that I had chosen to write about. I love this quote because it is so true to the success of our children. This is fantastic when it comes to student learning. There are too many teachers and lessons that are just focused on one way of doing something. By enabling the kids to have choice in their learning, you will find that they will be more engaged in their learning, as well as be an effective learner. The kids of today’s generation grow up with a lot of visual stimulation. They are used to graphics and moving around. We as teachers need to cater to their needs to help them reach their fullest potential. What is great about having kids learn and create things online is that there are literally thousands of resources and ideas of way to create projects. Students are not limited to just one way of doing something. They have options. By giving the kids options on how they want to learn something will bring great success to the classroom. Another thing that is great to help kids learn is the use of web 2.0 tools. I have been teaching my kids online for about 3 years now. I have implemented many web 2.0 tools into the lesson and have helped them to be successful. Not only have they been successful but they enjoyed their learning because they got to choose their style of learning. Great lesson this week, although the UDL was difficult. Like all my other posts, please visit https://sites.google.com/site/5364project/home to see how our project is coming a long.

Week 3 Reflection: UDL

I felt that this week was very difficult. I have written many lesson plans in the past and have felt they were well outlines. This week we learned about the UDL (Universal Learning Design) for creating lesson plans that will fully focus on reaching any and all children. This design was very thorough, which made it somewhat difficult. I felt that it was bit overkill in my opinion. But I am not the expert. I feel that I could create just as efficient and effective lesson plans without having to use that design. I have used many other formats in the past and have had great success as a teacher. I do understand however that there are certain teachers who do need this kind of lesson plan to ensure that they fully connect their lessons to all types of learners. I also believe that this would be a perfect format for those in college who want to become teachers, as well as first year teachers. Although I had a rough week when It came to lesson plans, it was not all that intense. I created an online book using my lesson. I found it to be very fun and engaging. I think that I will be able to implement this into my classroom and gain great success from my students. It is activities like this that I am always looking for to keep my kids wanting to learn. Like all my other posts, please visit https://sites.google.com/site/5364project/home to see how our project is coming a long. Here is the product of my UDL.

Teaching With Technology Week 2 Summary

I am really loving this class thus far because it is right up my alley with what i have been doing in my classroom. For the past 3 years I have implemented full technology into my classroom. As the years have progressed I have found newer ways for the kids to become engaged. This week's lesson was about the same thing. The lesson discussed of how we, as teachers, should find new and different ways for the kids to engage in their learning with technology and online. It was said that sticking with one way for kids to respond and learn is not going to be conducive to their learning. Also when I did my reading over "Teaching Every Student In The Digital Age", I read that there needs to be a lot less talking by the teachers. In the article it discussed how long speeches and lectures will lose the kids very quickly. This is very true because today's kids have grown up in a very stimulating environment. These kids grew up with television, video games, cell phones, social media sites, and progressive music. These kids need to have lessons and activities that are equivalent to what they have grown up with. I love how it has discussed all of these aspects. It is something I agree with 100% and is something that I implement in my classroom. I definitely think that many teachers today are too lazy to want to be inventive to help adapt to the kids level of learning. This puts our kids at a disadvantage.

Week 1 Learning

I found week 1 to be rather intriguing, mainly because of the constructivism theory. The main part that caught my attention was in the "Building Knowledge: constructivism in learning" when it was said that a person never learns anything from scratch. When a person learns something, it is already something that they have learned in the past, but are just building onto what they already have obtained. I never thought of this before. In a way I feel that this is very accurate. As teachers we are trained to teach kids a certain way, using various strategies, and make lessons that relate more personally to them. By creating various lessons that deal with cell phones or any other social media device, this will make a connection with our students. This will not only make a connection but it will "build" upon what they already know. I never thought about this before. It is a very genius theory. Another thing that was mentioned in this week's lesson was about connectivism. In the video "the Changing Nature of Knowledge", George Seimens explains that an individual needs to stay connected by staying current with what is going on in the world and in learning. When people lose touch of reality and fail to stay current, they have that inability to stay connected with not only reality, but with learning. It is important to always stay up to date. For instance, compare the older generation teacher to the current generation of teachers. Most of the older generation teachers have the inability and knowledge of today's current teaching practices and technology. This is due to the fact that some of these older generation teachers are more set in their ways and refuse to stay "current". With the newest generation of teachers they grew up with what our kids are growing up with so they are already up to date and know what it takes to reach these kids. Keeping up to date it very important teaching our kids and for gaining knowledge. Please look at my team page to see how we are starting to develop our future lessons. https://sites.google.com/site/5364project/home

Experience Using My Blogger

I have tried to use a blogging system before and have never really stayed on top of it. I originally did it to keep people updated on my family happenings. I got this idea from my brother when he was in Afghanistan and Dubai with his family. He updated his blogger almost every other day. Unfortunately I found it to be too time consuming for me. Since I have started my masters, there has been a requirement for me to have a wiki. At first I was a little hesitant but it has really started to be a part of my course. It has been a good way to document and to reflect on many of the things that I have been doing in my course. I would like to continue to use a wiki type system throughout my educational career and teaching career.