Harris 2000 post

Some critics believe there's no place for Internet projects in today's world of high stakes testing and emphasis on student achievement. What is Harris'(2000) answer to this criticism? What is your answer?

Harris believes that use the internet is helpful for students if it is a well designed project. She emphasizes that the internet itself is not what distracts from teaching well, but that it can help students learn their content area and learn how to process if according to standards if guided in an appropriate engaging manner.
She states, “tools (internet) don’t constitute curriculum. Rather tools should be used in service of students’ learning needs. Therefore if guided appropriately the internet can be a valuable source of information for students and teachers alike.

Dodge Article

Dodge Article
According to Dodge one of the elements from the Focus Five article that I found useful was “Find Great Sites.” In my experience for the content area Spanish, it is hard to find really useful websites that are free and helpful. Often times the best sites require a fee and the free ones are often not very useful or often have links that no longer work. While at the UCET conference I attended a class for Foreign Language Resources where we received information on many useful sites that we were able to use in our webquest.
Another great resource is the Delicious Bookmark tool where you can keep track of all your bookmarks no matter what computer you work on. Since it is web based the convenience of signing in and clicking on bookmarks allows for the freedom from having to use large blocks of time working on a personal computer. With this service you have the freedom to look up information at any time that you have free, that is great.

Webquest Webite

Check out the webquest that we did for class.
Webquest

Reiser Article and Integrated Learning

I believe that the Integrated Learning and the Riser Model would be worthwhile to explore in teaching material to students of any grade. Gone are the days of the teacher lectures and the students absorb material in order to regurgitate on a test. Due to the vast learning styles of students we are obliged as teachers to offer all students a way to grasp a concept or lesson. Today’s students are very aware of technology and can become bored very easily with just reading or being lectured at.

I love the idea of breaking down the interactive modules across all the classes. This helps to engage students in their learning environment to learn to think outside the box. They would no longer segregate classes into one box or another when in this line of teaching they might start thinking about how does this crossover to Math, English, or Foreign Languages. In the Integrated class lesson plans the breakdown such as Life Skills, Curriculum Tie, etc helps the teacher to be able to keep their focus on teaching their content area along with applications to real life. The students again are allowed some creative freedom which helps them to feel like they can engage in the activities because they have a vested interest.

To incorporate modern technologies helps the student to have a voice in how they learn best. Even though some of the strategies may not reach out to each student, every student has an opportunity to be touched by one of the strategies if teachers take into account learning styles and base their curriculum around that in order to engage all students.

Fundamentally we need to incorporate technology into the learning environment in order to help our students become competitive in the global market for jobs. Students will need to know how to think critically through websites, programs and anything else technology throws their way in order to compete with local and foreign markets.

You Tube Link

New One Semester Spanish Spanish Love Song

Arends Post

Arends; planning cycles

3. To successfully integrate technology through your curriculum, you should consider the planning cycles as described by Arends. List the planning cycles described in the chapter, then give examples of how you would use technology in each of these phases.

Planning cycles have a large time span that can be linked to the next minute of the day and up to a year in duration. As Arends states throughout the article, the best way to maintain the classroom climate is to be prepared. Planning cycles are the way to that success, as described in the article planning cycles require daily, weekly, unit, term, and yearly planning.

Uses of Technology During the Planning Cycles

Daily—use a computer generated role list to call attendance. Prepare warm up exercise that can be projected either from a computer to a screen or an overhead projector to a screen.

Weekly—prepare a weekly agenda through a calendar program to stay on focus of objectives for the week. Create clip arts for the students to use for flashcards or an end of the week bingo game or other activity to help identify vocabulary words.

Unit—divide the unit up into daily and weekly objectives. Have students create websites, PowerPoint presentations or other projects about what they learned in the unit. To make the unit more interesting, provide music or video that pertains to something in the unit.

End of Term—let the students develop a last day collection of materials used in the class. Put the students in groups and provide them with a computer generated list of materials to be found in a scavenger hunt fashion. Be sure to include fun prizes or treats to be found as well as classroom materials.

Yearly—could prove to be the most challenging for the first few years until there is some experience in the classroom to draw from. At this point in time, I would seek counsel of other teachers for their advice, check out the curriculum, textbook websites, and other materials from the publishing company such as dvds, cds., and computer exercises etc. I could plan out units first based on what the other teachers’ recommendations and seek to implement my own creativity with those units. I am sure that it will be trial and error for a while but in a few school academic years, it will come with more ease.

Barron post

Kim Mazza

Ed Ps 6151

Barron: Technologies for Education: A Practical Guide

Question 3: What are the benefits of technology in education?

According to Barron, the benefits of technology in education encompass many realms; such as learning to find and analyze information on the internet, “increase in student achievement”, technology provides “stimulating environments”, “increase in logical thinking”, diversified learning and communication. The use of modern day technology stretches into the very core of society and the child who is not taught how to use it will be left far behind. The teacher who cannot or will not use technology in the classroom will alienate themselves and their students from experiences that will aide them in their marketable skills latter in life. Teachers that use technology in their classroom allow for the student to increase their potential in critical thinking skills, being part of a larger environment where they share and disseminate information. Those teachers who use technology as a tool allow for children to learn how to communicate in various ways. Students can work collaboratively on projects where each contributes to the project, they can video conference with students in other parts of the country or world, they can learn to use a variety means to chat or find information with cell phones, computers, and other interfaces to enhance their learning environment. With that said, there is a potential for the wrong kind of learning to take place as well. If teachers are not prepared with skills to use the technology successfully, then there is the potential for that teacher not to reap the benefits that can come with proper use of it.

Barron makes the point that while technology in the classroom has many benefits for the children, it can also be frustrating and expensive to bring to every classroom. However, she makes no mistake to state straight forward that the school community is often “disappointed when they find that measuring the effectiveness of new technologies in education is more complicated that giving standardized tests” (Barron, 3).

Through the use of multimedia technology it has been reported, that students that used one or more of the following showed an increase in achievement in national standardized tests, those technologies are: computer assisted instruction, integrated learning systems technology, simulations and software that teaches higher order thinking, collaborative networked technologies, and design and programming technologies (Barron, 4). Barron proposes that the use of technology creates “new learning environments” and “linked with strategies that promote student involvement and active learning in the educational process” (Barron, 4). Isn’t that the focus of education that we give our students the opportunity to be active in their learning instead of passive listeners.

Nikon or Cannon

As a photographer I have noticed that most photographers are subject to brand loyalty. Recently, I attended a party where two photographers were arguing over their cameras, one Nikon the other Cannon. My question is; what do you prefer Nikon or Cannon, and why?