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.