Reflection #8

The child in the Ted Talks video completely blew my mind. Here is another example where a child does something with technology that I would never dream someone in sixth grade could accomplish. In this instance, however, I believe I am not alone in being shocked. The thing is, now this child is passing on his knowledge to other kids, and soon no one will think twice about a 3rd, 2nd, even a 1st grader creating apps for the ipad. If at all financially possible, more schools should create programs that give children an avenue for learning more about technology and physically creating things. This is a wonderful way to get students excited about learning!

Reflection #7

It really is amazing how much more children know today about technology, and how quickly they catch on. The other day I was babysitting Jodee's son Grayson, who is just beginning to learn how to read. We were watching legoland movies on my laptop and without being able to read any of the text on the screen, he was able to completely navigate the page without any of my help. He figured out how to make the screen full screen, moved back and forth between the home page and video pages...he just figured it out. Students today can do far more than I personally would expect, even young students. This means 1) I need to constantly be up on new and upcoming technology and
2) I need to be sure not to underestimate the abilities of my students.

Tech Project Plan

1. Students will write five sentences about why they like winter.
2. Students will identify and underline all of the nouns in their paragraph.
3. Students will be paired off and will edit one another's work.
4. Students will turn their five sentences in to the teacher to be looked over once more.
5. Students will create a finished project from template in wiki that has a hand-drawn picture in the top box and a typed paragraph (their 5 sentences) in the bottom half of the page. They will use Microsoft Word to complete this assignment. Students may use whatever font they desire. All the nouns in their paragraph must be underlined.
6. The class will create a wordle document together using all the nouns from students' paragraphs.

Week 14

I found an article called ‘Classroom Technology for the Future’ on meetingtomorrow.com. It discussed 4 major technological tools that are being used in the classroom now and will continue to evolve to be used in the future. These include: computers, projectors, elmos and smart boards. This article was helpful because before reading it I did not know what an Elmo was. Now I do : )

Week 13

In Word, I use the editing tools, header and footer, different fonts, the page layout tools on a regular basis. I don’t use Powerpoint a whole lot. When I do, it’s just the basics. I create different slides with different layouts. In excel, I use the Insert tools to insert cells and delete tool to delete cells. To have my kids learn and use Word, Excel or Powerpoint, I could have them create a multi-colored, multi font paragraph using sentences constructed in class. I could have them create a powerpoint show about their favorite things, for a show and tell sort of presentation. For excel, I could have them log their physical activity/exercise over a month.

Week 12

5,000 students and 120 teachers from a broad range of schools participated in a study conducted by Dr. Marzano about the effects of technology in education. The study found that achievement is, on average, 16 percentage points higher in classrooms that use interactive learning technology than those that do not. It was two years long and consisted of half of the classrooms being equipped with a smart board, and half without. Those that integrated the smart board into the lesson were more successful than those classes that did not.

Week 11

http://1stgradelearningstars.blogspot.com/2011/04/dino-color-by-numbers.html?showComment=1320800807693#c4333744010029481659

I am doing a math lesson for first grade for my Instructional Design. This teacher's color by number picture gave me a great idea for a worksheet for my lesson. Hopefully my comment helped other teachers/parents/people in general think of ways they could incorporate a similar worksheet into a lesson for their students or children.