I found our session with Lori Bailey to be extremely interesting and beneficial for my future career as an educator. I was fascinated with the variety of assistive devices available for use. When I attended community college I went to a similar session, but I was only introduced to I guess "the basic" reading/writing devices. The joy stick all predictive word/sentence assitive devices were all new to me; which I believe to be all extremely resourceful to people with disabilities. The story that really caught my attention was the lady who lived in Europe; I was amazed at how she ran her household all the while being paralyzed and unable to speak. It is so true that we assume too often and quickly that if one can not speak, one can not think. It's so overjoying to see that someone who could be considered in a vegetable state grocery shops and handles all the finacnes! It was humerous to see that her able bodied husband actually functions quite slower on the keyboard then herself- who would have known. I've never been a huge fan of technology, but this session defienelty has me thinking differently; tecnology is making these people's lives and allowing their disability to not stand in the way of living what seems to be an almost normal life via the computer.
I found the most interesting assitive device to be the head controlled wireless computer access. It takes place of a mouse and can be mounted on your computer , glasses, forhead, hat, etc. It then translates natural movements of the user's head into directly proportional movements of the cpomuter mouse pointer, crazy! It basically works as a mouse, but instead of using your hand you use the motion of your head. It enables that user to do such tasks as drawing, play games, graphic works and computer aided design. There's no software needed and it plugs into a USB port, making it easily transportable which is super convientent to the user. They have simialar devices that can be used in the same way, like the device Marie from Europe was using which was a wire attached to her cheek that picked up on her jaw movements and allowed her to surf the web. Now everyone can click away!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Word Processing Ideas
Throughout my educational experience I can recall countless times that I was asked to present material using a poster. Although PowerPoint always seems to prevail when an option, I am amazed at how often the traditional "paper and pencil" way of presenting still exists in classrooms today. I'm a fan of the "old-fashioned" ways of teaching but I'm just as big of a fan of options for my students. I will always incorporate posters as an option in my assignments, but will never make it mandatory. I believe that every child has his or her own way of best presenting their creativity and knowledge and that to limit students to presentation options is wrong. All in all, I will definitely incorporate posters in my classroom because I do agree that it enables children to show a higher order of thinking( ex. not being able to read directly from the poster and having to take the key points and present it as a whole to the class).
As for newsletters, none of my teachers ever assigned them! And after reading this article, I will definitely try it out in my classroom, I think it's a great way to get students more involved in the class and also help bring them together as a community. Compared to posters I think newsletters require more higher order thinking. With a poster board you have the advantage to present your ideas and pictures to the audience while with a newsletter you will most likely not being reading it with your audience.You have to make sure you get the key concepts addressed fully in the newsletter and that the write graphics are picked out so that the audience is focusing in on the main idea while reading.
As for newsletters, none of my teachers ever assigned them! And after reading this article, I will definitely try it out in my classroom, I think it's a great way to get students more involved in the class and also help bring them together as a community. Compared to posters I think newsletters require more higher order thinking. With a poster board you have the advantage to present your ideas and pictures to the audience while with a newsletter you will most likely not being reading it with your audience.You have to make sure you get the key concepts addressed fully in the newsletter and that the write graphics are picked out so that the audience is focusing in on the main idea while reading.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
A Day in the Life of Web 2.0
After reading the article about Web 2.0 I've become much more interested in incorporating such applications in my classroom. Although I've been raised in a world full of technology I was not familiar with podcasts or blogging until this class, I feel as though this article really informed me of all the positives Web 2.0 pages can bring to my classroom. It's fascinating how easily we can all be connected to one another, and not just student/teacher. The article talks about how the entire school system is able to read over each others blogs and podcasts, allowing everyone to be on the same page all the time. The librian, tech educator, principal, superintdent and parents are also all involved, helping to make a well-organized productive community. I think it's great that parents can listen in to their children during class, this defiently helps to build a relationship with the child and their childs teacher. I like the fact that all the children can have access to what is going on in all of their classrooms and that they are able to know what is being taught and what is expected of them in the upcoming week- def. something I will be using in my classroom! What especially caught my attention was the due to the fact that all the teachers can see who is teaching what when and what materials they are using, they are able to collaborate and intergrate the same topics in 2 different classes. For instance, a health teacher could pair up with a science teacher on the topic of "genetics". I find it to be extremely helpful when I can relate two of my classes together. Overall I think the intergration of podcasts and blogs in the classroom is going to be extremely effective and i'm excited to incorpate them daily in my classroom!
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Spreadsheets in the Classroom
I hope to teach any grade from 3-5 when I graduate college and I feel as though spreadsheets will surely come in handy. I hope to use them with numerous math projects for I feel as though they are a great visual to use, especially to find mean median and mode. It will also be a great help for activities when we take different surveys or polls, which I plan to do a lot of. Spreadsheets are especially hopeful to younger children because it breaks down a lot of information that can be read in a short amount of time for any subject. Its something the students can do hands on, on their own time and makes the lesson plans easier to comprehend, having all the material in front of you on one sheet. Any visual is a good idea to incorporate into your classroom!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
"Data Driven Teachers"
How do you see yourself using data in your hypothetical classroom:
Data-driven decision making is a system of teaching and management practices that gets better information about students into the hands of classroom teachers. This is a system that I have yet to hear about in my educational career but is something that I instantly was attracted to. For as long as I can remember (coming from a student perspective) it seemed every year went by pretty smoothly and then boom, the last one or so of school my teachers always seemed super stressed (which stressed me out) and were throwing tons of work on us because some how we didn't accomplish as much as we were suppose to and goals were not being met.
I feel as though this DDDM could be a solution to this, what seems to be, annual problem with teachers. It seems teachers don't set realistic, timely goals and in result rush the students and fail at reaching certain expectations for the school year. If we as teachers can keep track of our daily progress and have a paper in front of us showing each of our students progress on multiple aptitudes i feel it will help us with our time management skills, enabling us to accomplish and succeeed in realistic goals.
In order to do this, I would incorporate the SMART goals in my classroom; creating a measurable baseline and target, specific time frames (very important, we don't want to be rushing ourselves and especially our students- unneeded pressure!), specificity about what is being assessed (keeping our expectations and guidelines clear), specificity about the method of assessment (making sure we keep it VARIED, all children have their own speciality in test taking methods we must be sure to incorpate them all to get a legitmate score), and find focus areas to improve weak areas and to guide for future actions needed to reach the learning target.
I feel as though if we as educators can incorpate all these STAR goals in our classroom we can have better time management, organization, and a bigger over all perspective on EACH of our students success in the school system.
Data-driven decision making is a system of teaching and management practices that gets better information about students into the hands of classroom teachers. This is a system that I have yet to hear about in my educational career but is something that I instantly was attracted to. For as long as I can remember (coming from a student perspective) it seemed every year went by pretty smoothly and then boom, the last one or so of school my teachers always seemed super stressed (which stressed me out) and were throwing tons of work on us because some how we didn't accomplish as much as we were suppose to and goals were not being met.
I feel as though this DDDM could be a solution to this, what seems to be, annual problem with teachers. It seems teachers don't set realistic, timely goals and in result rush the students and fail at reaching certain expectations for the school year. If we as teachers can keep track of our daily progress and have a paper in front of us showing each of our students progress on multiple aptitudes i feel it will help us with our time management skills, enabling us to accomplish and succeeed in realistic goals.
In order to do this, I would incorporate the SMART goals in my classroom; creating a measurable baseline and target, specific time frames (very important, we don't want to be rushing ourselves and especially our students- unneeded pressure!), specificity about what is being assessed (keeping our expectations and guidelines clear), specificity about the method of assessment (making sure we keep it VARIED, all children have their own speciality in test taking methods we must be sure to incorpate them all to get a legitmate score), and find focus areas to improve weak areas and to guide for future actions needed to reach the learning target.
I feel as though if we as educators can incorpate all these STAR goals in our classroom we can have better time management, organization, and a bigger over all perspective on EACH of our students success in the school system.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Engage me or Enrage me
After reading this article, it doesn't come to a surprise to me that this is a very controversial issue. As teachers I feel it is extremely important to keep our students engaged, but I don't know if coming up with a bunch of "digital games" for our students is the right answer.
Games should be incorporated in our lesson plans, but school is still school when it comes down to it, and sometimes, unfortunately, certain lesson plans just aren't super fascinating. There needs to be a balance in our school activities for sure, but I think we as teachers should remember that we are there to teach, for our students to gain a better understanding/knowledge of different subjects and not to play games.
I don't believe that it is good four our students to be starring at a computer screen all day. We have to remember where we came from and that this technology that we have overly mass produced in our lives could not last forever. We can not turn into robotic creatures who are reliant on a machine. Every once in a while it does not hurt to pick up a pencil and piece of paper, to read a book by yourself, or to sit and create a project with poster board. Do we do this all the time, no. but i personally think we have to master the ability to incorporate both old school and new school techniques in our classrooms all the while still keeping our students engaged. It's possible, we just can't give in so easily.
Games should be incorporated in our lesson plans, but school is still school when it comes down to it, and sometimes, unfortunately, certain lesson plans just aren't super fascinating. There needs to be a balance in our school activities for sure, but I think we as teachers should remember that we are there to teach, for our students to gain a better understanding/knowledge of different subjects and not to play games.
I don't believe that it is good four our students to be starring at a computer screen all day. We have to remember where we came from and that this technology that we have overly mass produced in our lives could not last forever. We can not turn into robotic creatures who are reliant on a machine. Every once in a while it does not hurt to pick up a pencil and piece of paper, to read a book by yourself, or to sit and create a project with poster board. Do we do this all the time, no. but i personally think we have to master the ability to incorporate both old school and new school techniques in our classrooms all the while still keeping our students engaged. It's possible, we just can't give in so easily.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom:
After reading the article entitled "Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom" I was a bit surprised as to how blunt the article was. Although I've heard these comments here and there in my other classes, this article really convinced me that teaching "now" and "then" has and is on a drastic turnover. We as teachers are becoming symbols of coaches and facilitators, monitoring and watching more as opposed to lecturing our students. To me, this comes as a relief for I feel reading and testing straight from text books is nothing but memorization and does not relate to "real world" situations, for it's nearly impossible to keep up with updated information in our texts.
After reading this article I wrote down a few key points that I thought will change our school systems in the 21st century; our students our taught to be lifelong learners as opposed to year by year until graduation. Excelling has no limitation in this world. Tasks will be more hands on as students are curious to find the answer out on their own as opposed to having the teacher explain it to them from the get go, gaining a better sense of independence in our students. We'll be using a lot more of technology related sources rather than textbooks. lectures will gradually fade out and teachers will begin to co-team with one another instead of planning independently. Most importantly, students AND teachers must be culturally aware of the diversity the new 21st century classroom will bring and our focus as educators will be to prepare our students for the workplace they will all one day enter.
After reading this article I wrote down a few key points that I thought will change our school systems in the 21st century; our students our taught to be lifelong learners as opposed to year by year until graduation. Excelling has no limitation in this world. Tasks will be more hands on as students are curious to find the answer out on their own as opposed to having the teacher explain it to them from the get go, gaining a better sense of independence in our students. We'll be using a lot more of technology related sources rather than textbooks. lectures will gradually fade out and teachers will begin to co-team with one another instead of planning independently. Most importantly, students AND teachers must be culturally aware of the diversity the new 21st century classroom will bring and our focus as educators will be to prepare our students for the workplace they will all one day enter.
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