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