Chapter Ten

Objective:

Describe teachers' thinking processes as they consider emerging technologies for educational use.

Question:

For all the good things which come out of technology, how come we do not continue to use past methods which work just as well if not better? This question is directly connected to calculators. American students have been using calculators more and more and it has come to the point where kids my age can not even do simple arithmetic at a grocery store for change. This is because if you get a TI-83 which is used in most high-school classes you do not need to know how to multiply or divide like you learned while in elementary school (third grade I believe). As well as forgetting these important methods a student can write the formulas into to the calculator and save it. While Asian cultures use ____ (I was not able to find the name of the tool used) which ensures the student knows how to multiply extremely well and can do it at an efficient speed.

Connection to my teaching:

With all the breakthroughs we as teachers need to look at what is better than past methods or how to integrate past and present together. A simple example is a dictionary while when we were younger and computers were not your typical house hold appliance as they are today; a child had to look up words in the dictionary while today you can simply go on a computer and just type the word in and in five seconds you have read your definition. In the seventh grade class I help teach one of the students did not know what a word meant so I had them look it up and it must have taken them five minutes to find the word. While using a computer is a nice and efficient way to solve many of life's problems today we must ensure students learn basic arithmetic and how to use a dictionary properly in order to keep up with other countries who hold their history on a higher level.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Objective: Clarify key stages in an effective demonstration that guides student learning with and about technology in various subject areas?

Question: Who are we supposed to go see when we encounter problems? Especially in Montana or rural communities where having a technology class is unlikely?

Connection to my teaching...

This objective connects in every way to my teaching and should to every teachers plan. To be an effective teacher we as teachers need to be able to capture the student's attention. In order to do this we need to know how to use the technology. I have been in far too many classes where teachers do not know how to use the technology in which they have prepared their lesson. It is not only embarrassing for them but me. I hate watching people struggle with a problem but when there is nothing I can do and the teacher is fumbling around with the projector for 10 minutes and the solution was as simple as hitting a button. It really makes me question why they are a professor at a university. As teachers we should not be embarrassed to ask questions because if we are embarrassed to ask then how are our students supposed to overcome their fear of us asking questions?

Chapter Three

Chapter Objective- I have chosen constructivism and how it affects teaching and learning today. This is because I agree with how the book states that the student is the most important factor in their learning. A good teacher can inspire the student to WANT to learn more but a student has to have their own drive to actually initiate the learning process. As a freshmen in high-school I did not care at all about academics and preferred to just hang out with friends and concentrate on athletics. It was not until I learned how important grades in high-school can be for the rest of my life and college career that I started to focus on academics.

Question-Is there anything we can do as teachers to get students who do not care about academics to care? Being one of those students, I had numerous teachers and counselors my freshmen year who told me how important my grades were but it was not until I learned for myself that I actually cared.

Connection to my teaching- As the book says, we must bring our personal experiences into the classroom in hope of inspiring students to attempt to do well in academics. I feel as a teacher who was a student that did not care for academics I can help communicate with students more than other teachers who excelled in academics. This is because I can help connect to students who are not interested and help them one on one and show them the importance of academics in a persons life. By doing this hopefully I can guide a student through my experiences but allow the student the freedom that (s)he needs to learn from their own personal experiences to truly understand the importance of the lesson.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Objective- Identify authoring tools that offer a multimedia environment for students to express and communicate their ideas. I feel this is an extremely important objective especially after what we did in last weeks class. As we went from station to station we were able to use (play) with tools that can be extremely useful for students. The most interesting to me personally (and most of the class) was the smart pen. Being a college student and having gone to a private school which stressed education I have learned how important it is to take good notes. By being able to record a professors lecture makes everything that much easier, from being able to go back and check dates for a history class to checking a reference used in-class. After seeing the smart pen in use it seems like almost anything is possible.

Can we (as teachers) use technology too much? With my generation growing up with technology and the younger generations being able to use technology as if it were as easy as reading a Dr. Seuss book. It is hard for me to think of a teacher using technology too much unless they use it in an unproductive way.

Connection to my teaching- As I look forward to being a history teacher one of the most useful ways of learning was watching historically accurate movies. I personally love watching the History Channel for all the useful things you can learn in a short amount of time compared to reading. As a way of catching a students attention I could have them do a project of reenacting a part of history. One of my friends in high-school worked for a company which produced movies and television shows on the Civil War. I know my students would not be able to make as well produced movies but they could have fun with the acting and producing. As a teen-ager my friends and I loved making stupid short films and coming to school in Bozeman I met numerous kids who also had a similar passion as they entered into the film program so I think it is something which would be useful for them to learn and could help further their education in two academic areas at the same time. Especially with the growth in technology we see these days most high-schools are offering multi-media classes in which they learn basics about editing films, taking photos, and other various aspects of the area.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Objective: Clarify the purposes for different types of assessments and how those assessments support learning in technology-rich environments. The reason I chose this objective is because of the importance of using different methods of assessing since different students excel at different aspects. As long as the student understands and successfully finishes the problem (s)he should be allotted a good grade.

My question for the chapter is...how are we as teachers supposed to judge whether a student is learning the proper method or cheating the system? As I thought more about this question since I was one of those students, at least in math class, I have thought of some answers. For the student you think may be cheating the system you can ask them to explain it to you personally so you do not embarrass them in-front of the entire class. Although this leaves the problem that you can't do this for each individual so hopefully we won't be put in that position.

The connection to my teaching...well my objective was to learn how to assess differently and how they will accomplish supportive learning in a technology-rich environment. The example they use with Mrs. Blake's class is a great one for me personally since I am interested in teaching history. We see Mrs. Blake lead an extremely interactive discussion about inventions and then she finishes it up with having the students make a time-line of what they think were the most important inventions over the past 2000 years. On p.283 the author refers to students doing a presentation using powerpoint. As they say, you need to grade the student on how well the student uses the tool but what if the student is just nervous and fidgets and hits a button which changes the slide or closes the program? In my British Literature class we have been reading poems in-front of the class and it is easy to tell who is comfortable and who is not. In situations like this I feel it is important for us as teachers to help the student because if we continue to give them poor grades because they forget a line and stumble here and there then we will continue to reinforce the student's negative thought of themselves and they will continue to do poorly. As I have learned over the years from giving recitations and taking a public speaking course; it is truly easier to speak in-front of a class if the more you do it. Instead of having students do just one presentation or recitation a semester we can have them do them more often.

Chaptah Twelve

My question is...how does a teacher keep the attention of students on days where we (teachers) lack the enthusiasm which is needed too teach? I know we are able to use powerpoint and other presentation guides but it will still be hard to gather the classes attention for 50 minutes (or whatever the class period is). We have an advantage compared to teachers even just five years ago but it is still a struggle to show up five days a week with our game faces on. As I thought about this I realized how important it is to get your class involved in discussion while preparing the lesson plan. If you have a class of kids who you constantly get involved in lectures it makes our job easier as a teacher since we do not need to talk as much and on our down days we can continue to use student led discussion to run classes.

Connection to teaching...As a teacher technology is becoming more and more important and while it helps make our job easier it is also making it harder. This is because we must find ways of implementing plans of teaching a student to use technology or we may have to find a way to keep ourselves as teachers up to date. My generation may be the one that has grown up with technology but the younger generation is...technology. There whole lives have revolved around technology and parents are taking advantage of this by giving them the newest gaming system so it makes their job of parenting that much easier.

Chapter Four Reflection

I chose objective 2: Describe why it is important to learn to use technology as a tool within the context of the academic subject areas.

My question is: How do you define "within context of the academic subject areas?" Especially in a time where the academic subject area is growing monthly. Through the internet we as teachers are able to expand this area immensely because the availability of quality filler is at our fingertips. We also need to be aware of the false information on the internet so this allows us to teach our students another lesson on false information. As long as we get permission from principles (or whoever we need) we can gather interesting content from websites like the Smithsonian, National Geographic, etc... and need to rely less on textbooks which have limited information because of how the government and other resources want to mold our students minds.

The connection to my teaching is...through using technology I will be able to capture my students attention and be able to show them up to the minute statistics (for history) on wars or (in english) writers blogs. I also feel that as technology continues to become more and more important for children's daily lives (instead of phone calls people now use webcams or skype). Not only is this financially less straining but you are able to see the person you are talking to. This may help prepare a student for future jobs where they can deal with a partner in China, India, or on the other side of the country. It is important as teachers to ensure our students are capable of using this technology advances just as you (Nick Lux) are helping us learn the path of smart boards, ipod touches, and other recent advances. This is an especially interesting time to be breaking into the education field because of all the advances which are being made in the technology field. With companies like Apple who are education friendly and really are trying to make technology accessible to every student. When Professor Lux brought up Maine's plan to have a laptop for every student I really found this to be an amazing break through. This would allow each student to have a computer in front of them and they can learn hands on how to use programs like Inspiration or Microsoft Word. As Americans this is one of our best ways to learn and can help our students interact and teach. If they are able to teach one another to use programs not only does that help make our jobs less stressful but it proves the student has truly learned how to use a program.