Course Reflection I have enjoyed this course. Of all of my courses that I have taken in the MAT program, this would have to be one of my favorites. The things that I liked about it were the layout of the class and learning things that were actually useful. In most of my MAT classes we have gone over material that is not relevant for me and the type of classroom that I will be running. Another thing that I liked was that this course was very "hands-on" All of the projects that we did were relevant and fun to learn how to use. Through the projects in this class I have learned things that I am able to use in my lessons. This class has been a breath of fresh air for me knowing that I could potentially use material from my courses for once.
Learning Tools
I have enjoyed learning about each of the different learning tools in this class. I will be able to incorporate these into my lessons and hopefully they will boost my lessons to the next level. Thinking back, I am very glad to have learned how to operate Weebly and learning how to use Edpuzzle and Thinglink and Quizziz. Since this upcoming year will only be my third year teaching, I feel like I can easily incorporate these technologies into my lessons since I have not necessarily established a preferred teaching method. I am still experimenting what teaching styles and strategies work best for me. One of my weaknesses in utilizing technology in my class would have to be the district in which I work. Internet is still very slow and not available in all areas. Also, not all of my students have access to the internet at home, and our school does not have enough resources to provide all students with their own laptops or tablets.
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Chapter 11, Question 2
Privacy is a controversial issue in the Digital Age. Schools have an obligation to ensure student safety, both physical and virtual. When using the Internet or the network, this requires keeping close tabs on student’ activity when they are using computers. Do you think this violates students’ privacy? Justify your opinion and consider both points of view. I do not think that this obligation to keep a close eye on a student's activity when they are using computers. Students are not fully protected by the 4th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. My school district makes it clear that all teachers must keep a close eye on students whenever they are using laptops or are in the computer lab. The policy is not just to protect students. It also there to help prevent students of violating piracy laws which would not only put the school at risk, but the teacher and student as well. Chapter 12, Question 3 Of the emerging technology trends presented in the chapter or those you discovered through your research on the Web, which emerging technology or trend do you think will have the most significant impact on education? Of all of the emerging technology trends that were presented in this chapter, the Google Glass is one that I wish would take off. Sadly, if I remember correctly, Google has since cancelled or pulled back from the Google Glass. One of the technologies that I think will be the most important moving forward is cloud computing. By storing software on a cloud-based application, we no longer have to worry about running out of storage on our school computers. My school already utilizes a few of the cloud websites such as Dropbox. It makes life so much easier being able to open documents from any device. It also great to be able to collaborate with colleagues not only in the same school, but also with others across the country. Below are the links for this week's projects. Padlet Link https://padlet.com/wthompson20/u9yt6e1xbsb9 Quizziz Link https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/5d34f22431972e001a7635ab Rubric File Thinglink File https://www.thinglink.com/card/1209668036819156999 Scoopit Link https://www.scoop.it/topic/u-s-government-by-w-thompson Chapter Nine, Question 1
Web communication tools open broad new opportunities for interaction among students across the globe. Of the communication tools you have learned about, which do you think holds the most promise? What are its strengths and weaknesses? How might you use this types of tool in your classroom to develop and promote 21st century learning skills? I personally find that online video conferences hold the most promise of creating new opportunities for interaction among students. Websites, such as Zoom or Skype, allow people to see, hear and interact with each other instantaneously no matter the distance between them. These sites and apps allow not only the presenter (teacher) to display a Power Point, video, face cam, etc, but it also lets the viewers present content as well. One of the few problems I could see with this technology is that not everyone in rural Mississippi has access to quality internet at their homes yet. I say yet because I do not think it will be long before everyone across the world has access to high speed internet. It would be difficult for me to incorporate this into my rural Mississippi high school classroom on a large scale. However, I believe that I could use this technology. I wouldn't be able to require students to attend scheduled sessions, but I do think that I could host a voluntary session. In my mind this might be a review session the night before a quiz, or perhaps I offer students the opportunity to work on a project online and instead of presenting it orally in front of the class, they instead can present it online during a voluntary scheduled session. Regardless of how it is implemented, the video conference sites and apps still blow my mind whenever I meet for an online class in a virtual classroom where I can see my professor and all of my classmates. Chapter Ten, Question 1 There has been much discussion about whether distance education can provide students instruction that is equal in quality to traditional education. Do you think an equivalent experience is possible via distance delivery? Why or why not? I do think that distance education can provide students with quality instruction that can compare to traditional education. I believe that a lot of the success of a distance education boils down to what methods the teacher uses in his class. Also, certain methods will appeal to different students depending on their learning styles. Introverts will naturally be drawn to a distance education where extroverts would more than likely prefer being in a physical classroom or a the very least, be in a class that has a scheduled video conference where they are able to interact with other classmates and their teacher. I very much prefer a flipped classroom style of class. Similar to the style of this very class, ITD 645. I would much rather learn on my own and complete assignments by myself. I have never enjoyed group work or collaborating with others for projects. In conclusion, I do believe that a quality education can be received by a distance education that can be on par with a traditional education. However, the success of the class and quality of instruction will come down to having an appropriate teacher who is able to provide quality instruction using 21st century learning tools and having students in class who are open to learning in the styles that a long distance teacher is limited to. Attached below is the course site that I created this week. After completing the podcast and video projects, reflect your working experiences of creating multimedia materials, the challenges you encountered during your creation. You also want to focus on how you will use these technologies into your own classroom? How can authoring software help you teach and your students learn? Make sure to use Chapter 7-8 as your reference. You need to upload your movie to youtube and embed youtube video to the end of your blog. You can embed vocaroo audio to your blog as well but the link will be expired soon. So I want you to download your audio as MP3 file and upload it to your blog. You will also post the interactive Edupuzzle video class and access code to the end of your blog so that your readers will be able to access it.
I enjoyed learning how to create a podcast and doing the different video projects. It would be hard for me to implement a flipped classroom strategy at my school, but I do think that I will be able to implement these new talents in my future classes. The first way that comes to my mind is that I could easily create an audio file or voice over a ppt presentation if I knew that I was going to miss work one day. It is not too hard or complicated to create. Also, now that I know about Edupuzzle, I plan to start using this tech to create short personalized videos for my class. I am especially excited about learning about this website because I have always liked to show short clips from movies, web shows, etc, to keep my students engaged, and this will just add another dimension to that. This week was focused on creating active learners. Chapter 8 discussed different software to engage students. For our projects we had to create a podcast, a movie story and an interactive video. Each one of these will be very useful in the future. Attached below are the three projects for this week. Teacher task software is abundant for instructors to perform all types of teaching and learning responsibilities. After completing the Google Docs projects, reflect your working experiences when collaborate with your group members by using Google Docs. You may want to focus on how you use these technologies into your own classroom and how Google Docs promote active learning and collaboration among students? Make sure to use Chapter 7 as your reference. Link your projects at the end of your reflection and make the links open in a new window.
Chapter 7 in our text goes over the several different types of productivity software that can be utilized in the classroom. The book discusses the basic functions of word processors (Microsoft Word), electronic spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel), and presentation software (Microsoft PowerPoint). The chapters also discuss classroom management software, online applications and challenges implementing teacher task software. This week we had to create a Google Doc and Google Slide Presentation. I was familiar with the two platforms, but it still to this day blows my mind how easy it is in this day and age to be able to collaborate with our peers. I have not yet used either Google Docs or Google Slides in my own classroom, but it is something that I would love to incorporate. It would benefit students to be able to work together on projects in new ways, and it would be easier on me, the teacher, as well. Before I could use these tools all of my students would have to have access to the internet either outside of school, or the school needs to provide me with a classroom set of mobile devices that could access the internet (Tablets, Laptops). Sadly, neither will happen anytime soon at the school I am at. Attached below are my projects for this week. Chapter 4 Question 3
When technology is used to support culturally and linguistically diverse students, it is often remedial. Some students find themselves using technology that has been designed for younger learners simply because the vocabulary level matches their current language acquisition. This types of remediation via technology can be frustrating to use. Imagine yourself living in another country, trying to learn its language, and being asked to learn via remedial software. What concerns would you have about this instructional approach? What other options might be found to avoid remediation when it is instructionally unnecessary? I could see how using remediation software could be frustrating to use. If you are not a student with any kind of disabilities, but are being treated as such, then it could be demoralizing for a bright young student whose only problem is that they do not know the language yet. However, I received a minor in Spanish, and for those of you who have never taken a Spanish class, they are basically classes that an elementary student in Spain or Mexico would take. Spanish 101 or 102 would the be the equivalent of a kindergarten or first grade class in a Spanish speaking country. You are learning numbers, letters, colors and basic words. As you move through the courses they do become slightly more advanced. You do learn different tenses and such, but that is something that English students are doing in middle school and high school in the U.S. One of the 400 level courses that I took was a history course that was entirely in Spanish, however the content that we covered were things that we teach to our elementary and middle school students, such as the basic stories of the Aztec, Inca and Mayans. The point that I am try to make is that students should not feel as if they are being taught down to. Whenever language is a barrier, things still need to start at step one and go step by step. Content cannot simply be skipped because a child is intelligent. Many of today’s language learning apps can be tedious in the way that it tries to teach the user the language. Questions will be repeated over and over, and it can become demoralizing after a while. Chapter 5 Question 2 Discuss the cloud storage. Why is it advantageous for educators to share resources and programs on a network? What concerns are associated with program sharing? Cloud storage helps to make documents and applications accessible to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. For example, our school has adopted a new system for our athletes. With this new system all of coaches are able to see which kids have physicals and are cleared to play. On each child’s profile the parents must log in and fill out certain forms, such as allergies, and medication With just a glance I am able to see which kids are cleared to play. If an accident occurs during a game, I can easily access the cloud on my phone and pull the child’s medical papers up to see all of his or her relevant medical info. It is advantageous for educators to share resource through a cloud because we should always look for ways to improve. By networking with other teachers, we are able to see how other teachers approach their content and teach it to their students. My concern with this universal sharing is that all of our content will become streamlined and every class will become the same. Yes, it is ok for teachers to share resources if they are trying to learn and evolve how they teach their course, but if the teachers are only sharing resources in order to copy and use someone else’s work then every class will start to mirror the other. It is good for teachers to diversify what strategies they use when they are teaching their content. It would not be good if every teacher used the same strategy and resources. Chapter 6 Question 1 After considering the various types of digital technologies presented in this chapter, what three pieces of equipment do you think you would most want for your future or current classroom? Explain why you selected these three and how you would use them for teaching and learning. My school has a pretty strict cellphone policy. I wish that students would be able to utilize their smartphones regularly in my classroom. I taught an Economics class this past semester and I was granted special permission for the students to play a stock market game in my class. In order to play the game, I had to create a virtual classroom that the students had to sign in to and then they were given virtual money that they had to spend in the stock market. The stock prices in the game mirrored the prices in real life so when the prices changed in New York on the trade floor we were able to see the new prices live in my classroom. Needless to say that my students had a lot of fun with this game, and I wish that we were able to do more with mobile devices. I would love if our school was able to give me a classroom set of tables or laptops. I would also like to have clickers in my classroom. I hate to ask questions to my class as a whole because the same kids will raise their hands over and over. The kids who need to be answering or trying to figure out the question or either to shy or afraid that they will be made fun of if they get the answer wrong. With clickers, the students are able to answer anonymously and instantaneously. With immediate feedback I would be able to see how I needed to alter my lesson if students were struggling on a certain portion or if they had mastered a section faster than anticipated. I would also like to be able to have microphone and speaker system in my classroom. My room still has two large window units that when turned on high in the summer and winter months can be very noisy, especially for students who sit in the back of the room. I would love to be able to speak and have all the students in my classroom hear me clearly and equally. It would also help for when I showed content at the front of the class on the screen. Students would be able to clearly hear what was happening on the screen. Chapter 1 Question 2
Lifelong learning is not just a teacher preference; it is also a requirement for maintaining state certification. Technology literacy courses and workshops are some of the most popular learning experiences for certificate extension and renewal. Do you believe that taking additional courses in technology literacy is as important as those for your content or discipline? Is too much emphasis being placed on developing and maintaining technology competency? Defend your view. I believe that technology literacy courses are just as important if not more important for teachers looking to take courses for certification renewal or extension. Technology changes every day. My wife and I were discussing in the car yesterday how iPods were just becoming popular and you were considered the cool kid if you knew how to burn your own cd’s. It has only been a few years, but that time has left us. We have moved on to streaming music with Spotify, Pandora, etc. What I am trying to get at is that technology is always changing, for instance, today’s classrooms are considered outdated if they do not have a smartboard and overhead projector in the room, and it is up to us teachers to keep up with the times and learn how to implement this new technology in our classrooms. Chapter 2 Question 1 Imagine that you are going to teach a unit about Christopher Columbus to the grade level of your choice. What strategies immediately come to mind as good possibilities for teaching this unit? What relationship can you discern between how you might want to teach this unit and your learning or cognitive style? Describe how you think your own personal style might affect your teaching styles. What lessons can you draw from this realization when you teach your diverse students? My cognitive style is very much that of an “Thinking Introvert” According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) I am a learner who is most interest in the inner world of concepts and ideas and make decisions on the basis of objectively analyzing facts. I am also very much a visual learner. I need to see something in order to learn it. Though I am a visual learner, a lot of the lessons that I teach are lecture-heavy which would appeal to the auditory learners. In order to compensate for the visual learners, I always try to have notes, pictures, paintings, etc. on the board while I talk. I generally try to include a short video related to the lesson. I find that many of my students can remember the short documentaries or cartoons much better than their notes or my lecture. I believe that is because the students have been conditioned to learn from television since most of them have grown up watching it. If I were to teach a lesson on Christopher Columbus, I would try to incorporate different elements into my lesson to engage all of my students. I would appease my auditory learners by lecturing to the class the story of Christopher Columbus. I would be sure to have pictures on the board of his three ships, the Native Americans, etc., as well a short clip in order keep my visual engaged. In order to reach my kinesthetic learners, I would teach them the Christopher Columbus song/poem. To this day, whenever I think of Christopher Columbus the words, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” still pop into my head. Chapter 3 Question 2 To effectively design instruction with technologies, a number of instructional design models are used in education. After reading this chapter, discuss the Dynamic Instructional Design (DID) model with the focus on its five steps. Step 1: Know the Learner The first step in the Dynamic Instructional Design (DID) model means the teacher must design his or her instruction in order to meet the needs of his or her students. Teachers should be aware of their students learning and cognitive styles. For example, some students my be auditory learners and others may be visual learners. It is also important to know which students are gifted or have special needs and/or accommodations. Step 2: State Your Objectives This step is to help the teacher identify what outcomes they hope to have after the lesson is completed. The teacher needs to be able to answer what standards and content they will cover. This step is important because it helps teachers and students stay focused during lessons because they know what should be covered by the end of the lesson. This step sets the expectations for students. Step 3: Identify Teaching and Learning Strategies This step establishes what teaching and learning strategies will be utilized during the lesson. Teaching strategies are the procedures the teacher will use to help students achieve objectives. Learning strategies determine what your students need to do in order to achieve the objectives. Step 4: Identify and Select Technologies This step can often be included in Step 3. However, our book points out that it is important to select support technologies after a strategy is created. It is important for teachers to pick which strategy they want to use and then pick an appropriate support technology to support the teaching strategy and not vice versa. Step 5: Assess and Revise The last step of the DID model is the assess and revise your plan. Creating a strategy for a lesson is just like writing a paper, there is always room for improvement. This step will be completed after the assessment for the lesson is completed. The teacher will look at the results of the assessments and see how well the students did and try to figure out what could be done differently in order to improve student mastery. Greetings, my name is William Thompson. I am a Secondary Education major at the University of Southern Mississippi. I currently hold a Bachelor's degree in history and am pursuing my Master's degree in Secondary Education.
I am a teacher at Newton County High School. I have just completed my second year of teaching there. This past year I was a 9th grade U.S. Government and Economics teacher. I have had a lot of experience with online courses. I have taken numerous online classes as an undergraduate and graduate student, but with that being said, I am not a tech savvy person when it comes to computers. However I do have sufficient skills in Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. I use these two programs extensively in my classroom. When it comes to online courses, I have used Canvas, Blackboard among other sites. I have had to communicate through different means such as email, discussion boards, and the in-site messaging tool. My favorite way of communicating would have to be the in-site messaging as it is on the same site where I can see my assignments and I am able to constantly check and see what messages I may have received. I like to try to incorporate technology into my classroom, but the extent of my technology prowess is to embed a Youtube video into a powerpoint. Governemt and/or Economics can be tedious subjects. Therefore I like to try to keep my students engaged in the lesson by lecturing anywhere from 15-20 minutes and then taking a brain break for my students where I try to either have a fun and engaging activity prepared or have short fun video for my students to watch. The current generation of students are not able to focus longer than a short span so I try to keep my lessons ever-changing in order to keep students engaged. |
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