Week 3

Week 3

This week’s blog entry will discuss word processors and desktop publishing programs. I will also discuss what I have learned throughout the course of this lesson. When I studied Bloom's Technology Taxonomy pyramid, it gave me newly discovered insight into websites that people use every day. One such website is Google, everyone uses Google for a variety of reasons such as research, to find another website, or even to answer a question.

Using the pyramid, a teacher can easily see which websites correspond to an area of education. Therefore, teachers can implement these various websites that are listed so that they can attain their specific out comes. The point I am making is that technology is everywhere and knowing how to implement it in the classroom is becoming more important. Word processors and desktop publishing programs are a great way to introduce technology into the classroom.

I also have explored a variety of technology resources throughout the lesson. I have learned about assistive technologies, online tools for teachers, full measure site, web quest site, and read the words site. These sites offer great resources for all teachers in every subject area. The assistive technologies resources offer great material on students with disabilities and assistive technologies for teachers. http://www.gpat.org/, http://www.zoho.com/. They offer text to speech programs that can help students with auditory disabilities. http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/, http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/, http://readthewords.com/. The web quest site offers great examples of what a web quest should be and how to construct one. http://www.webquest.org/. I loved the online tools for teachers because it offers valuable resources for teachers. These include constructing online quizzes, links to educational websites, and even constructing rubrics for your courses. http://www.4teachers.org/tools/.  

There are a variety of uses for word processors and DTP technologies for teachers. Teachers can create lesson plans, rubrics, seating charts, graphs, flyers, newsletters, and various other uses as well. It also has a variety of uses for students as well. Not only for creating papers, flyers etc. but it also allows students to correct there spelling errors, sentence fragments, word usage and has many other benefits as well. The various grammatical and spelling functions of word processors and DTP programs alone can benefit students greatly. It can help students increase their comprehension of these skills. I have used word processors and DTP for my undergraduate classes, graduate classes, and also in my teaching career. One such example of this is that I created a certificate that I gave to my students who completed a unit on soccer.  

Week 2

Week 2

Throughout lesson two I have learned new information on spread sheets/ databases, wiki’s, how technology is viewed upon as seen in the video (The Machine That Goes Ping), and how to implement wiki’s, spreadsheets, and databases in the classroom. I have also read interesting articles and seen a variety of examples of what I mentioned above. I have chosen a URL that discusses different ways to use spreadsheets or databases in the classroom. http://learntech.ties.k12.mn.us/Excel_Classroom_Projects. For this blog I will describe something that surprised me about the utilization of spreadsheets/ databases. I will also discuss how I have used spreadsheets and databases in the past. I will include ways that I have used these resources with my students and as an educator.

In the Technology explorations I discovered different ways that I can use videos, slideshows, concept mapping and a different way to store your files. I particularly like the Photo Beach site and is something that I would love to implement into my classroom. One way that I could use this resource would be for me too use pictures of different exercises and stretches presented in the slideshow. I could then have the students tell me what they are and have them perform them.   

The one thing that surprised me about these resources was the amount of subjects that you can effectively use spreadsheets in. I didn’t realize how many different ways that you can use it in a classroom. Essentially you can use spreadsheets in every subject area including PE and Art classes. For example I read that a social studies teacher used spreadsheets to instruct students on the civil war. The teacher instructed the students to create a spreadsheet about the number of casualties per side and battle. The teacher also wanted them to make a pie graph illustrating the information.

This is just one of the many examples that you can use spread sheets. I am a certified PE teacher and I have also used spreadsheets in my classroom. One way that I have used spreadsheets in my classroom was that I instructed the students to create an exercise routine, an activity, and an assessment plan for the lesson. Students had use excel to display the assessment data and calculate who succeeded and who did poorly. They also had to calculate the percentage of students and create a pie chart displaying that. Implementing different subjects into your teaching field can promote higher order thinking and increase knowledge in those other areas such as math.

Week 1

Week 1 Blog

This week’s lesson has informed me with a great deal of valuable information. We covered a variety of material including NETS, Technically Speaking: What is Tech Lit article, a vision of today’s students, and a variety of different technology exploration sites. The reading material within this lesson was very informative. The materials informed me about the many different ways in which technology is viewed upon in the classroom.

The NETS standards showed me what is asked of a teacher when using technology in the classroom. This will help me become more aware of how to correctly implement technology use in my class. Also, the video of today’s students was a very unique video. It illustrated the view that students have on today’s college education system. It was a real eye opener for me because when you are in a college class, such as the one portrayed in the video, things like that happens to real college students.

The technology explorations also helped become more informed on how to implement various technologies in my classroom. They were great resources including how to create a workspace, writing books online, online libraries, how to select podcasts and create webpages. One thing that I have learned that I would implement in my classroom would be creating a workspace through the pbworks.com website. The steps that I would use to implement this resource into my classroom would be first to discuss it with my principal/school district to make sure it would be something that I could use in my classroom.

 I would then create the workspace which will display different types of information including homework assignments, pictures of student activities, sample work, a weekly podcast, and have a section where they can submit homework. These are just some of the many different ways that I could implement this technology. However, even though this is a great resource that can be used in my classroom or even throughout my school it has its limitations. First off not every student has access to this resource and this would prove very cumbersome to these students. This is big challenge to over come and it is a big problem in rural areas. This problem can be overcome in some ways including having extended computer lab hours, give parents information on public computer locations, and not having only one choice to get the information that’s available on the website.