Last Reflection!

Ah...and we come to a close! This whole semester has been a great opportunity for reflection and I have appreciated the blog. I loved the chance to be in a classroom and to try and take what we have been learning in our classes into actual practice. Lets just say the lab is different from the real world. I have recognized a shift in myself from my understanding of education from the perspective of a student who spent time sitting in my desk in a classroom of rows and going to the computer lab once a week. Everything we have learned is contrary to the way we were raised. I saw in the school I did my field experience in the tendency for older teachers to take less advantage of technological advances than our technology class would lead me to believe is natural for teaching students growing up in this generation. A shift must happen and I imagine our cohort will be a part of it in the years to come.

The video for the week was great. In our educational psychology class we have just been talking about the differences in students backgrounds and learning styles and what biases we may have in the way we approach students. As a teacher, our perspective should be one of really believing in a child's future, each child we come in contact with.

Reflection Week #12

So we're in our field experience! Wahoo! And technology has been a real help in the work my partner and I have been collaborating on. We are using Google Docs for each of our lessons and are both able to work on them and do last minute edits before we print them off the night before the lesson. This has been perfect for our different schedules because instead of meeting at the lab too often, we are able to do our work on our own and collaborate after we've finished our assignments. What I have observed is that technology in the actual classroom is not yet the ideal we talk about in class. Teachers are using technology in the same ways my teachers were (i.e. overheads, and copy machines). We did meet the technology teacher though (and will give more in our technology interview write up) whom our students work with three times a week on a three week rotation, and found that she is doing great things. There is not a lot of subject integration though still because what she is doing has nothing to do with what our cooperating teacher is doing in the classroom. There are not so much strides being taken in technology in the schools, for at least this school, as baby steps. But hey, good place to start!

Reflection Week #10

This week was technically spring break but more realistically was our prep time for our field experience. Technology came in so handy this week as my partner and I put all of our lesson plans on a Google document and communicated with our supervising professor via email. We had a question about a WebQuest we had in process for teaching the causes of The Dust Bowl and realized that, like I had kind of worried about, we were trying to fit our subject to the choice of media instead of fitting the media to our subject. We realized that a WebQuest was not the right way to go for our lesson exploring the causes of The Dust Bowl. The resources offered online had more to do with the people and their lives than with the causes and so a photo story (suggested by Dr. Cox) may be a better way to go because technology, in this case, might be best used to create the emotional connect which a photo story would offer.

I loved the video for the week. I love when pop-culture is used for education and that song is just more than perfect for teaching a brief run down of the 20th century in America (I've learned things!). I think, especially at the end of a fifth grade year, this video would be perfect. Some of the people and things in the movie are fairly simple and some are so important in our history and I think this kind of thing brings history to a more accessible level for students: history is not boring and hard, but just the invention of the television, a famous actress, a popular band, etc. There are disturbing things in the quick video and I'm sure parents would need to be made aware of them but what a great tool!

Reflection Week #9

Webquests!!! This week we began our POD work on webquests. Our division of labor was much more smoothly made than last time and our ability to share information through a GoogleDoc has just made life so much easier. Webquests are a wonderful way of collaborating because they can be shared so easily. Webquests are student based as well because, once the teacher has completed the set up, the child is left with a degree of flexibility. One thing my POD members and I recognized as we filtered through our subject matter options was that some lessons lend themselves more easily to webquests than others. Well, I should say, they all lend themselves easily to webquests but some make more sense. We were talking about punctuation for a couple minutes and thinking of the School House Rock video we could direct our students to before we realized that wait, punctuation is something that is just right or wrong. Something so straight forward does not have as many places to go with as something more like an opinion piece or a history topic that always has different sides and more and more to learn about.

This weeks video was so interesting. I'll admit to having been a little creeped out because of how similar some of the technology is coming to stuff I've seen on futuristic movies (and especially on ship with lazy fat people in Wall-E). Surface computing wow! I was impressed at the beginning with multi touch interfacing then it kept going. The most impressive, and not just flashy but seemingly most applicable was the quick use of wireless technology. The surface computer picked up information from the wireless camera and had it on the I-Pod in seconds. The way the scientists looked into the future and the many possibilities was intriguing but again, a little trippy!

Reflection Week #8

This week we had some free time during class. We were able to make sure we felt comfortable with our grades on Engrade. This is a great tool to use in this classroom as well as in our future classrooms. It can be used to make sure parents are up to date on what is going on with their students. Having us check our Engrade was a great chance too and it would be wise to do that in our classrooms sometime before SEPs, when we meet with the parents, so they will know what to expect and there will be no nasty surprises when we meet face to face.

In my life this week I used technology in very fun ways. I went on a road trip with friends this weekend and within an hour from when we got home, our Facebook accounts were updated with pictures from four different cameras and we were able to blog about our trip and get information out to our friends and family all over before we even took time to give them a phone call to tell them we were home safe. These tools are so great to keep people up to date so fast on what is going on. Just thinking about this quick exchange of information I think of how great this would be for the parents of our students. I think sometimes we get too stuck in having to write out a whole newsletter or wait till we have something really important to say and by then, information is out of date. What if we took the fast pace of something as simple as the status change on Facebook and found a way of really having education keep pace with how parents and students receive information. If a status type tool was put on a class website or even if I created a special Facebook page for myself to which I only added parents and students then I could keep information going out so quickly with something like, "Miss Rappleye's class loved the assembly!" or, "Miss Rappleye is at a meeting this morning but will be back in class for the afternoon." What a great tool for the classroom and welcome to the 21st Century oh ye World of Education!

The video was similar to a video we'd watched before and was again an eye-opener. I did enjoy the video How Not to Use PowerPoint because it put into words (or rather a funny PowerPoint) the feelings I've had about technology. I know I get into the mindset of just wanting to use technology just to fulfill a requirement instead of really taking time to figure out how to use it well. Evaluating myself through the PDP made me more aware of where I stand and gave me direction for where to go.

My Beliefs

I believe in the meaningful use of technology in the classroom. I believe that students these days do learn and create well through the medium of technology. I understand that there can be abuse of this tool. As we plan lessons I sometimes find that we throw in technology because it is required and in those cases, the use is not meaningful (e.g. video or PowerPoint out of place). I validate some of the concerns expressed in some of our readings for this assignment. Students do write differently in texting or blogging or instant messaging than would be appropriate in a more professional document. But, evolution occurs and it seems to follow that it changes based on technological advances. Before the printing press only the "learned" write and read, dispensing knowledge to the unlearned in terms difficult to understand. The letters Jane Austen wrote were elaborate and detailed because her contact with people she cared for and the audience she wrote to was limited to her writings because distance (and she had no blog or writers page). Change is natural. It will be important to teach students "voice" and help them understand in what style of writing is appropriate for what text.

I conclude that the addition of new vocabulary and a new way of expressing is good. It may influence old ways for good. But, the integrity of traditional writings must be preserved. The danger lies in students becoming so caught up in their own way of expressing that they are unable to adjust or that lack of exposure to more traditional conventions of writing make them incapable of reading and understanding classical literature. I'm fairly modern but am still able to understand King James English. I was trained in formal writing but feel more comfortable and have more fun expressing myself in the informal outlet of a blog. Add to and prune till what is used is everthing of the best!

Lessons Learned

There are quite a few of the different types of technologies shown in the articles and videos that I didn't even know existed. I was also surprised/worried by the technologies that seem to be used in place of a actual classroom. I worry about a) my job and b) the child's ability to interact with other people face to face. I know it is in preparation for the working world they'll be in...but I'm not even sure how healthy that world is. I had a boss that could IM from the next room but couldn't look at me in the eye when we spoke. Go figure!