Week 14 Post

Technology in Education. Where it is going. Everywhere and nowhere. After doing some research, I find that the struggle that's happening right now will not last long. As the next 2 or 3 generations enter the teaching field and start going to school, this will no longer be a frontier, a battle field, or even, necessarily, a challenge. The issue will not be integration, it will be money, and are school districts with more money and more tech better equipped to teach their students, and what is the discrepancy between the learning in that school and the school that can only afford one computer per classroom? Thankfully, technology is getting cheaper, and more and more is being invented and updated. The real struggle, after a while, will be maintaining a personal presence and connection between the teacher and the students and other students. Resources:1,2  just a few places I found interesting information.

Week 13 Post

Word:
Bullets, find/search, spell check, comments, fonts, line spacing, numbers (outlines), Columns, All of the other features!

Students could Write a 2 page paper on a topic (say an invention from the industrial revolution) and then email it or save it on a desk top and another student could read it and leave notes in the margin digitally!

Students could Use the column feature to create a newspaper with different articles based on a historical event (something that actually happened, or based on a location at a certain point in history, and how it affected all of the different sections of the newspaper like sports, obits, weather, night life etc.)

Students could read a chapter of a novel or text book and take notes in the Cornell style by using columns of different styles and using the outline (numbers/letters) to show the progression of the chapter or book as a whole.

Excel: tables, calculation/check cell marking options, data bars, color scales, title, charts, equations, symbols, text box, all of the other 'basic' features.'

Powerpoint: add slides, backgrounds, insert pictures, transitions, sound clips, Shapes, arrows, screen shot, picutres, links,  Animation (fades etc), print slides.

Week 12

Are all of this guy's articles/works about the Activboard? I searched and searched for something else, but all I could find were bits about his research and ideas about that kind of technology. He seems to be in favor of the boards, as they have 'proven' to increase the learning of both individual students in a classroom, but also the general learning abilities of the classrooms in which an Activboard is present.

How did I miss WEEK 10?

Well, I found this great article about Bloom's Taxonomy, and how it relates to classrooms. As I read, it became obvious that technology is dependent upon the stage in which learners find themselves. Also, technology integration can be a vital and irreplaceable tool when students transition from say, comprehension into application, analysis, and evaluation. The wide resources which are available for students today technologically allow kids to create, to research in a world of ever expanding knowledge. Technology also adds, perhaps, one final level to the stages put out by Bloom. Kids now are able to find sources which are illegitimate and are given the opportunity to evaluate true from false, valuable from worthless information. They become the drivers of their own learning and understanding and comprehending and analyzing... they are given charge of their future learning action and guided through the maze of choices to be made in the world of technology. 

Assignment 4 part 1

The podcast I created describes a project for a 7th or 8th grade English class. Basically, I want students to write a detailed paraphrase of a monologue of their choice. Then they will enlist the aid of a friend (possibly in the class or a friend from outside the class) to read the Shakespearean monologue one line at a time while the student interpolates their paraphrased text and posts the video on my blog. Also, I want to see that students understand, visually/textually what they are paraphrasing, so they will type (using 2 columns) in Word, the two texts side by side.

Week 11 Post

The comment  that I left on Adventures in Educational Blogging refers to a post about digital reading and how it affects teachers and students. This is a topic that has long interested me. I learned more about the accessibility of digital reading devices and how it applies to more than just books, but to textbooks, newsfeeds and news paper articles and other forms of text media. I learned a lot about how marking a digital text works. I think my post added to the community by asking a question that had not yet been asked on the blog (as far as I could tell). I asked about the value of the written word and what the effects of digital access will be.

Week 9 Post caught on video

Well... Bob Sprankle seems to think that his ideas are crazy fantastical and beyond comprehension. I disagree. I think that his concepts in the article are completely plausible and indeed to be expected in the years to come. There will come a time when it is more difficult to deny the use of tech (especially video capture technology) in the classroom than to incorporate it. I love the idea of film as evidence. Instead of teachers collecting assignments which might have a variety of factors contributing to the final grade (such as writing skill, reading skill, test taking anxiety, a learning disability etc. ) the teacher could film a student explaining a concept instead of having to write it out, or maybe she could use a screen capture of the student's writing process to tell how he/she is doing with grammar and punctuation. The possibilities never end, however, I believe that the letter or percent grade is not obsolete. Yes, more comprehensive evidence would be desirable, but in the end, a student has to know how to complete long division and they need to be able to do it in a short enough period of time when asked to. In the end, grades help to determine what the student is capable of accomplishing which is also an important aspect of learning. Maybe the student learns the process well and that is documented on film, but if the student is unable to arrive at a correct answer when asked to, they are not equipped to succeed. That is something to keep in mind as the world keeps changing.