Blog 6 - Chapter 8&9

In this era of information, technology builds us a platform not only to communicate but to share as well. Chapter 8 concentrates on the various ways that both teachers and students can use computers and other technologies to communicate and share ideas and information in the classroom settings and online learning environment. 

Since this is the last blog for this class, I would like to share my own experience of using blogs and other types of technologies I learned from this class. Keeping online journals as blogs is not only just recording the reflections of what we learned from our textbook, the class and other resources, however, the key is to communicate and share with my peers so that we can learn from each other and grow better. I want to be a teacher in the future and I may teach ESL for my future career, whereas I am an English language learner myself. Thus, in an English learner's perspective, it's very helpful for me to see my classmates who are English native speakers' writing. It's a good way for me to learn how they write, for example, the vocabulary they use. Besides, I spent most of my academic life back in China, I had no access to the school settings in the States, while I was taking courses and doing observations since I came to the States months ago, I started getting to know about the whole school systems here. The huge difference between China and the U.S. in the education field was a shock for me. Thanks to reading through my peers' blogs, which for me is a pass to their world, I can  travel back to see the way they were taught and their educational background in school years by reading them talked about their own learning experiences. Most of my classmates who are already teachers shared their episodes while teaching in their classrooms, for instance, their attitude to the use of technology for teaching and learning, those ideas even gradually changed my view on technology.

In terms of the multimedia technologies in today's classrooms, those things in Chapter 9 really amazed me. According to the observations I did in the schools, I was stunned by the different kinds of technologies being used. The most impressive one was the use of SmartBoard, it can be widely used in content areas, it's easy to support teachers to teach with an easy tap, which students' attention can be attracted by the visual resources. For the students, they learn how to write on the board, pull up images, draw a line connecting the critical parts, etc. I have to say that SmartBoard is actually a very interactive tools in the classroom.  The introduction of the photo taking and movie making by students also provided teachers with different instructions to promote students' collaborative learning appropriately.

Questions:

1. It's undeniable that multimedia provides students a relaxing and interactive learning environment, however,  how can we assist them to take advantage of the skills they learned from the virtual world to reality?

2. How can teachers lead the parents to give our students useful support to the appropriate use of  technology out of the classroom?

Take Away Message for April 7

I saw students' portfolios in almost every classrooms I observed in and I heard portfolio frequently being mentioned in other courses.  I'm glad to get to know more about portfolio in today's class. Thanks for Rebecca who pointed out the importance of being "professional" in our portfolio. I used to think that portfolio was like a bunch of stuffs one have done in a certain field. However, there are more than it could be. It's meaningful when it's more like a self-reflection process. Articulate goals can also be presented to help you set goals for the future. The examples of the previous students' work help me to have a more complete overview on the digital portfolio. It's meaning for me to reflect, select and to have a review and a preview as well to build up my own portfolio.

Take Away Message for March 31

In today's class, we spent most of time on discussing about our group video project. Once I heard about this assignment, honestly, I felt anxious more than excited. However, after the brainstorming and our group discussion, I think we have some very good ideas on different topics: sports (rules of some popular sports), occupation (description of different kinds of jobs), obesity (introduce the indexes of obesity, What kind of diet can cause obesity? How can we avoid obesity? ) Thanks for our classmates' comments and suggestions in regard to our topic. I think we will have more discussions on our topic and choose one that is more applicable and manageable as soon as possible.

Blog 5 - Chapter 7

Most of things I learned from this course was like a whole new world for me since I never experienced in the classroom where plenty of technologies had been used. I felt great to learn more about different types of  technologies and how they could be applied in the field of education and used for students in and out of the classroom. Chapter 7 provides us abundant information and resources of educational software and web tools and illustrates how can educational software promotes problem solving and inquiry learning, meaning that we should be clear that students are not supposed to merely know how fascinating technology is but to reinforce their ability of critical thinking, problem solving and inquiry learning.

Seems like we are all familiar with Word or Excel, but the example of the Excel spreadsheet program reminded me that there are more functions for us to explore even in those standard composing and calculating programs which are daily used in our computers. Besides building, inventing and creating software, I found visual thinking and concept mapping software is more effective that can visually benefit students in different levels. Visual thinking and brainstorming software can promotes students  thinking and instrumental learning.

Undoubtedly, students will find so much fun when learning engaged with computer games and some  people believe that video games may develop the conditions for deep learning. However, I still doubted that if video games can promote learning and problem solving or not. At last class, we watched a video of Minecraft applied within a classroom, I was interesting to hear that during the "live phone interview" with a kid who is obsessed with this game. But I felt a little shocked that he said the point of the game was to kill. The fact was that few things could really benefit students with thinking or learning. So I think we as teachers should seriously consider how to teach our students  learn with games.

At the end of this Chapter, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are shown to be effective in improving student learning. The best thing I would say about ITS is the collaborative learning models, which provides practices so that students can cooperatively work in groups and learn together.

Questions:

1. Are games supposed to be frequently used in and out of classrooms? If so, how can we control their time on those games? 

2. Can you list some games that you use in your classroom which you find them appropriate and effective?

Take Away Message for March 24

Plentiful websites have been shared today's class!

Both visual thesaurus and lexipedia present great visual technology can be used in exploring vocabulary. Personally, I prefer vocabulary.com which I think is an amazing website for students who need to expand their vocabulary. However, I would say that this website is better for higher level learners instead of students in the beginning level. Jason shared a website quizlet, which I believe is a very useful resources for teachers when planning their lessons. Also for students who are preparing for certain tests such as SAT, GRE, etc., this website provides quizes for various tests in different content areas. plimoth.org is another good website for both teachers and students to explore.

 

We then shared our experience discovering Google Maps, I do believe students are going to love it if we as teachers well-planned to help them use in the classroom. Speaking of Minecraft.net, I don't think it should be use in schools.

Blog 4 - Chapter 4&6

Before talking about how can technology integration and educational change help teachers in instruction, we need more awareness of the concept called Digital Citizenship (For more information, please click here). I like the explanation of digital citizenship that it is a way to prepare students who are now technology users for a society full of technology. Simply speaking, both teachers and students should gain more knowledge in how to appropriately use technology and be a good citizen in digital society.

Thanks to the professor of the Math class, we attended the Long Island Mathematics Conference last Friday. At the conference, several useful math websites had been shared. One of the best websites would be Illustrative Mathematics (Click Here). In this website, standards from K-12 has been clearly presented and relative tasks can be easily found by searching by Grade or Category, which I believe is a very helpful for math teachers. During the observation in a classroom where the general math teacher and a special ed teacher were co-teaching, the math teacher shared a website he frequently used when planning. The website is  called JMAP (Click Here), which offers teachers in New York plentiful free resources.  

Speaking of current technology on iPad, I tried some of the Top 50 free Education Apps our professor gave us. I think these two Apps- Preschool Memory Match and Learn and ABC Alphabet Phonics are great Apps for kids at their beginning level in exploring technology. They can literally learning for fun by "playing" with iPad. There are some other Apps I'd love to share which I learned from the Mathematics Conference. The session's called "The perfect Apps". MyScript Calculator is a tool that can turn our handwritten math equations into a functional calculator. It's one of the Apps I would say students are going to love it, they can learn to be independent and they can check everything on their own through this App. 

The fact is technology such as iPad, Smart Board are now widely applied in the real classroom. However, the problem is lack of teacher's appropriate support. Even though it is said at the beginning of Chapter 4 that even teachers with relatively little technological skill can provide useful instruction, I still think we as teachers should to the largest extent prepare ourselves to be more professional in order to use technology effectively to create positive change in schools.

Questions:

1. To what extent should the teacher use technology in a period of class?

2. In terms of the use of educational websites, I think we'd better ask students to write a short reflection on their experience of those websites so that we as teachers can know more about their interests and also make sure the students are in the right track. What do you think?

Take Away Message for March 17

Another informative class today!

It's always exciting to explore something new. I totally agree with the viewpoint that instead of thinking about what are lacking, we literally need to think about what we are having, what we can do. Technology does makes smart people smarter, however, for me it's more like a key for every one of us to open a door to a new world. As teachers, our job is to help students to become smarter with technology. It's not only about technology but is more about participation of both students and teachers in the digital age. I'm glad we discussed about what schooling prepare our students, it's still an ongoing question to think about out of class!