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

Dunbar article (C)

The Dunbar High School has developed a program that will allow students a chance to earn up to 13 different certificates from different software companies. They do this with a 3.3 million dollar grant that is to be shared with two other schools. The grant money is used to integrate technology into the classroom by allowing the school to purchase hardware and software that is needed in order to do so. The grant will run up in July so the committee is looking for other ways to fund the program.
The high school I went to in Orlando Florida had a computer class and four different computer labs. It was a great experience for many kids for us to have these labs and classes available to us and without the proper funding it wouldnt have been possible. I am excited for Dunbar to be able to experience this and am glad that they are trying to get the funding to continue the program.

multimedia (c)

This article was about a school that had its own technology team. The school consisted of a lot of poor Latino students who were not interested in school at all. A teacher decided that using hands on media will teach the students more than a text book would. It talks about a girl who had the choice of being a top cheerleader or being on the technology team and she chose the technology team. It talks about how the program requires the students to do a lot of planning before they are allowed to use the equipment. They have to make a presentation and convince the teacher that they should be given permission to use the equipment.
I think this program is good ways to introduce technology in the school especially in a poor area were students don’t get to use cameras and video equipment at home. I also agree with the teacher in the article when he talks about how he remembers the things he actually did in school verses the things he studied. I think you learn more when you work to produce something then you do just studying something.

http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_980&key=188

simulations in schools?? (c)

This article is called Simulation nation. It is a very interesting article about the use of simulations in school and why we should use them. The argument for it is that it gives students a way of looking at something and then seeing the consequences virtually of the things they chose. It would eliminate the, what would happen if questions. The program is not new; NASA uses it to get train there astronauts to get them ready for space. It would give the students a sense of real life experiences. The schools today don’t use it because they lack the money, time, knowledge, and technology to use the programs but it would be beneficial for them to over come these and use simulation in schools.
This was a very interesting concept that I had never thought about before. I think it would be good for children to use simulations but at home. I don’t see how using simulations could teach students, especially young ones, the things they should be learning in schools. Its more of a life lesson type and I think that would be up to the parents to decide if they want them to get a real world experience or not. In high school it could be beneficial to use in maybe a career based class so students could get an idea about the experiences of the different jobs.

http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1794&issue=mar_07

statistics

I was thinking about the ways that we use technology in classes today and I realized that this computer class isn’t the only class that I use technology in. I use technology in all my classes when I use Microsoft office to write a paper or make a power point for my classes. But most off all I have been using technology in my Statistical methods class. We have class twice a week and we take our tests and quizzes in class but we do our homework online. We use the website mathzone.com to do our homework on. Mathzone gives us the problems that we work out ourselves and then we type in the answer in the box the website provided us and submit it online. This gives us back our grade for the assignment right away and if we don’t like the grade we can do the homework again. The best thing about mathzone is that if we are stuck on a problem there is a help button that will show us how to work a problem, similar to the one we were given, step by step. This is a great way of using technology in schools. I like using mathzone a lot better than I do doing the problems out of the book on paper. This works great for college kids but I’m not to sure about the use of this in elementary and middle schools.

mosaic (B)

The mosaic project was my favorite project that we did. It was interesting to see the story board that we created in a previous assignment be turned into a game. There were nine squares that we added pictures to. These were clues to what part of the story we were hearing from the voice in the back ground when that picture was picked. It was fun to play with once it was done but getting it done had its difficulties. The first difficulty I had was finding a picture to go along with the words in each block. I started to search the internet for any pictures I could use and used the ones on my computer as well. This was easier to do once I knew what pictures I wanted were. The next problem I came across was hiding the hyperlink, for the audio, behind the pictures. After playing around with it I finally got the hyperlinks to disappear. This assignment was fun to play around with and is something I could probably use when teaching the children.

Ebook (B)

We had an eBook experience were we had to create a story and create our own ebook from that story. This was difficult in the fact that it was very time consuming to put together and create. First I had to take the story and add a dialog to it and then create pictures that would go along with the story. This was difficult to do since I am not an artist by any means. So creating the pictures took me quite a while to do. Then the microphone I got wouldn’t work so I had to turn my computer off and on to get it to work. And then putting it all together and getting the sound to play in the background was all very frustrating and at times difficult. After all this I think it was worth it. It’s a creative way to make a story and it’s nice to see the ebook once it’s all put together. And even though my ebook wasn’t perfect by any means I was proud of what I did. I learned that when things start to get frustrating you should just take a brake and breathe then go back to it once you have calmed down.

reading levels and technology

My friend and I got into a conversation about something going on at one of the elementary schools that I went to last year and she went to this year. Last year in Intro to education we had to do observation hours at the different schools and academic levels, elementary, middle, and high schools, I believe it was Three Oaks elementary school that I went to and sat through and English class. When I walked in the kids were sitting in groups at different tables and they were each reading a book that they picked out. Each book had a colored sticker on the side of it. The different colors were the different reading levels of the book. The student would be told by the teacher which color he was to choose a book from and the student would go to the library get a book and come back and read it. Of course since this was an elementary school class the books weren’t very long so the kids had plenty of time to read it in class. Once the student finished the book they would get on one of the four computers that were in the classroom and they would take a quiz on the book. If they passed they would get points. So many points would put them up to the next reading level. My friend Jan went to the same school and saw the same thing and we got to talking about how that was a good way for them to integrate the use of technology into the school class.

were are all the kids in Fort Myers (B)

The eBook reading experience started out a little shaky because I dint know where to find a child to read to. I am not from around fort Myers so I didn’t know any young children that I could ask the parents if it was okay to read to them. Finally I found a child to read the eBook to. My friend Tracy was babysitting some kids that lived next door and so I told her I was coming over to read to them. I called and asked the little boys parents if it would be okay and at first they thought it was a little weird that I was calling to ask to read to their son. But once I told them it was for a school project they were okay with it.
The little boy whose name is Matthew didn’t like the eBook really. He was more interested in going and playing Nintendo then he was reading. This I didn’t find unusual for a six year old boy. But it was definitely a challenge for me to find a child to read to and was really lucky that my friend was babysitting that night when I called.

EDUTPIA article (C)

The article I found was by EDUT PIA the George Lucas Educational Foundations magazine. The article talks about a $13 million, new Charter school in the Los Angeles suburbs in California. The school teaching is project based and uses lots of new technology. The schools design is made to look like the environments in which people will be working in. The school uses mostly wireless technology and a technology based program.
Even though the article talked mostly about the design of the school I believe that is including technology. They are using the technology of what the modern day work place is like and trying to incorporate it into this new school. They are using the same technology that they will be using when they get jobs in the work force. The fact that they can use a lot of wireless technology in the school greatly cuts down the use of wires and thus fires and other hazards.
http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1793&issue=mar_07#
Published in Edutopia Magazine march 2007 issue

Online class article A

The article I chose was one about a study of 66 female college students and online classes. It says how classes online and internet discussions the students can share their own understandings of what is going on in the class with the others. This makes learning broader and easier to do in big groups. They can use chats and discussion boards to communicate ideas and information with one another. Also because when you write in a discussion board you are able to look back on what you wrote and the responses and analyze your report.
This article is interesting to read and gives off the idea that online classes would be beneficial to the high school and college kids but not to the younger elementary kids. The classes can be more effective on line since they can write their own responses and see them. It’s a good article to the questions about why online classes and how they can be beneficial to the students. It shows some good pros to the technological use of the online class.
http://elearning.fgcu.edu/AngelUploads/Content/200701-11043/_assoc/9fb7002c59854db5ac5d99d00f9fd7c2/Question2_Article2.htm

The microphone project horror (b)

The microphone activity this week was very tiresome. We had to take a microphone and record our voice reading a book, poem, and storyboard and then burn them onto different Cd’s. I went to target and they were out of the microphone so I decided I would go to staples. Staples had the microphone for eight dollars so I bought it. I then had to go to my boyfriend’s house to use the internet to download the Audicty user so I could use the microphone.
Once I did that I thought I was in the clear. But that was not so. My Microphone wouldn’t work on my computer. Why I don’t know. But finally after a half of an hour being frustrated and yelling and screaming at my computer my boyfriend said that I should try restarting my computer with the microphone already plugged in. Well of course I was frustrated and said no that wont work leave me alone ill figure it out. I finally said fine ill try restarting it since nothing else was working. And what happened you may ask… it worked. I spent a good 45 min trying to get it to work and all I had to do was plug it in before I turned my computer on.
This taught me that maybe I should read directions to how things work instead of just assuming I know. The assignment was pretty cool in the fact that recording yourself talking and then listening to it was really interesting. I over came these problems by listening to other peoples advice and by calming down.

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