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.