World at your fingertips (C)

This article is written by Jan Hawkins who was director of the Center for Children Technology for 7 years in New York City. It talks about the many uses of technology in schools. She mentioned in it that technology has “assistive technologies empower students with disabilities, allowing them to contribute in ways never before possible.” She also says that students are using tools that real professionals use to determine the weather. They are also able to use simulators similar to the ones astronauts use to see how space would be as well as careers, while inside the classroom. The use of technology can change the use of time in the classroom.

I liked this article especially because it mentioned how technology could help the student with disabilities. I never thought about that before and thought it was a great idea. I also liked how it talked about how it cut down on time spent in the classroom and the use of simulators.

http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_307&key=137

Technology in young kids classrooms (A)

The article I found is about integrating technology into classrooms with young kids. It talks about how it is the teacher’s job to find ways to use technology to teach young kids. They have to find the right ways to use technology to teach children and they must find the benefits of teaching young students with technology. This article states that technology can be used to establish the diversity in the students. Teachers should use the technology given as a tool to communicate not only among professionals like themselves but use it as a tool for teaching all sort of children. The teacher must find ways to use it with every child and find ways to use it with special needs children as well as the different ages.
This article puts a lot of emphasis on it’s the teachers responsibility. I don’t agree with that. I think it that it is everyone’s job in the school system to integrate technology. It should be the job of the teacher, principle, school board, parents, and all else involved to learn how to use the technology with young kids. I found this article helpful to me in the fact that I want to teach second graders and I didn’t know how I would incorporate technology into the class. This article gave me several ideas of how to do so and proved to me that classrooms with young students in them can use technology.
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?recid=0bc05f7a67b1790e921d53c70e8fdc3163a6f5feb4dac732239491a72d2342682a12e89d5f88a06a&fmt=H

Comments on Ebooks (B)

In class on Thursday professor Baylen went over our eBooks and gave comments on them. At first I was thinking how embarrassing why is he doing this to us I don’t want anyone to see my eBook. But then I thought that this was the whole point of the project, to make something that kids would read. We got to see others eBooks which I thought was very interesting and we got to get helpful criticism from the professor on ours. This I found very helpful and wished he would have done on a lot more of the assignments.
I got over the whole embarrassing thing by realizing why he was doing this. It wasn’t to be mean or to make us look stupid but to help us understand what we did wrong and how we can fix it. I really appreciated his feed back on my eBook and I enjoyed looking at others. I think everyone did a great job and put effort into their eBook and was glad I got to see them.

Labels (B)

For each CD we turn in we have to have a label on it. This was difficult for me since I don’t have a label maker program on my computer. I had to use a friend’s computer each time I had to make a label. I didn’t want to go out and buy since I figured I wouldn’t use it after this class, I much prefer just writing on the cd’s. On each of the label you have to put certain things and a picture on it. I wasn’t at first sure what I had to put on it so the first couple of Cd’s didn’t have the correct label.
I still use my friend’s computer to print out the required labels due to the fact I don’t feel like buying a program and I don’t download things from the internet onto my computer. I finally figured out what all to put on the labels by asking professor Baylen. I don’t feel like I will use the labels after this class due to the fact that I find it very time consuming and sometimes complicated.

Paper 1 (B)

Paper one was a group effort and was hard to due. We had to think if we were given a certain amount of money in the school system what we would do with it to integrate technology. We had to come up with what we would get and how we would use it. We had to make a proposal to the principle explaining the project. It was difficult to get everyone in the group together in the chat room since we all had different schedules but we finally did it. The next hard part was coming up with a product and how we would use it in the classroom, and what kind of project the kids would do.
The entire group just kept trying to get together and it finally paid off. Then once we got together we just started to toss around ideas about what we could do. All in all it finally came together and we learned some interesting things from the project. And even though I didn’t get a good grade on the first paper at all I still learned from doing it.

Audacity (B)

The Audacity program was the program used for all the microphone projects. However it was very complicated to get used to at first. The first time I tried to download the program it told me I had to download another program first which was very frustrating for me since I don’t download anything on my computer. I downloaded something for school last year on my lap top and got a virus that caused my computer to crash so now I am very careful with anything I have to get from the internet. Once I finally got the program downloaded I couldn’t get it to work. For some reason it wouldn’t read that my microphone was hooked up to the computer even though my computer said it was. Once all said and done the audacity program finally worked and was actually kind of fun.
I over came the problem with downloading the program by calling my uncle and having him look at the program and make sure it was alright to download and why it wasn’t letting me. He being the computer genius in the family figured it out right away. The problem with the microphone disappeared on its own so I have no idea what was with that. But I was glad it started working and it was fun to play around with and yes I did try singing on it. What I found out about myself through this program is that I’m not a very good singer at all.

Technology and Math??? (A)

There are many different lessons that the author gives in integrating technology into math lessons. The lessons can be made for lower as well as higher math classes and he gives examples of software and websites to use the lessons he is providing. He uses items that we would use everyday in his lessons and leaves room for teachers to add to the assignments.
I like this article because while reading it I thought about my statistics class here at FGCU. This class uses the Aleks online program to do all homework assignments on and this article reminded me of that. It’s a good article to read if you want to know how you can integrate technology into your math class. The authors gives numerous examples on how to use it which I think is what teachers need to see in order to understand why they should be doing this.

below i posted the link for this article but it will require your FGCU id to read it.
http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/pqdweb?index=29&did=714890501&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1174167541&clientId=8631