I have enjoyed my time in EDIT 2000. I am an education major and learned how to use technology in numerous ways in the classroom. One of the most beneficial parts of the class was learning how to use the smartboard. I have one in my classroom that I student teach in and did not really know how to use it creatively. I was excited to be able to see the interactive games and notes that it can be used for. I cannot wait to get back in the classroom next semester and test out what I learned. I also really loved the fact that we were able to start this blog. I hope I can use it to show future employers my knowledge of technology in the classroom. This class has really changed my mind about the many ways technology can be used in the classroom as well. I did not have enough understanding of the types of technologies that I could use and this class has brought me many new things to try in the classroom. I think students learn entirely more when they are interested in the topic and have something interactive and technology does a great job of doing that. Students are so used to using technology everyday that when they come to the classroom now they expect that. If teachers are behind the times students will not have the same interest in school as they do at home with their own technologies. I think this class is something that every teacher should take. I am excited to use what I have learned and my new understanding about technology in education. It has become such a huge part of the classroom and teachers need to make sure they learn it. Hopefully I can help my mentor teacher learn more as well. I thought every part of this class was something new and I thought the way it was set up was really beneficial to all the students no matter what level you were at to begin with.
LAD Final Documentation
Our group had a great time learning more about our topic. We picked a rather difficult topic but we were happy with the way it came together in the end. We all thought it was something that was really important to pay attention to in our community today. Driving affects everyone in one way or another and we thought that was something special to focus on. I think we ended up having a great tool for students and parents alike to use to assess driving defensively. We had a slow start but ended up working well as a team together. Different members of our group had strengths that they were able to add to the group. Overall we learned a lot about navigating a new website and about different technologies. The QR codes were something that our group knew little about and it was great to get familiar with a new skill. This project was a great learning tool and something really useful came out of it. We were all happy with our product and we thought the presentation went well!
Reflection 9: Smartboard
I think Smartboards are such a great tool in the classroom. It is important for teachers to know how to use them and I am glad I was able to get that experience. Most teachers Smartboards just sit in their room and take up space. I think it is such an interesting tool to be able to have kids interactive in their learning. The different tactics we learned about how the Smartboard works can really be useful in my student teaching next semester. My teacher this past semester has helped me learn some but not nearly everything I need. I hope now I am able to teach her what I have learned through the presentation we had. I think the most interesting thing we learned about how to use it was that you can throw the balls at it to interact with it. I had never known that you could use anything but the pen to interact with it.
Although I think Smartboards are great they are starting to not be used as much anymore. Many schools are getting even newer technology that teachers are going to have to learn now. The Smartboard also has many things that can be difficult for teachers. My teacher has a problem when it comes to writing on the board. It seems that writing on the whiteboard is a lot easier. I would not want the Smartboard to take up time that isn’t nessesary during a lesson. She would write and have to fix it because things wouldn’t show up correctly. This took time out of her lesson and I cannot help but think the same thing would happen to me. I would need to test it out in lessons before I could decide if I thought it was really useful or not. I did really enjoy the tutorial we had on the board though. 
Two-week documentation
Our project is going well so far. I really think our group works well together and we came up with a great essential question. It is more difficult then we imagined though to come up with each section regarding our specific topic. I think it is such an important aspect of everyone’s lives today and that is why we choose it. I think we will have it all together by our presentation, it has just been more work then we imagined. Our strongest section currently is our i +1 Zone. We have compiled resources for teens and parents as well as a list of things that drivers do that annoy other drivers. I think this section is one that will really get the attention of our audience. I think we are doing great work but just need to find a few more things that will make our project pop. I know our presentation will be great!
LAD Project Reflection
We had a little bit of difficulty trying to find our essential question. We wanted a topic could apply to older students and parents. Then we thought of one of the most major points in an adolescent’s life is getting a drivers license. This has a lot of risk and there are many problems with teen drivers not applying driving safety skills. Once we decided on the topic we learned of different options for creating a wedbsite on this topic such as Weebly and Google Sites.
We chose Weebly because it looked more user friendly since none of us had any previous website creating experience. Weebly had a variety of templates that all looked easy to work with and professional. We also finished our introduction video using photobooth and youtube. This was not hard for us because we gained more experience with imovie and editing during our previous project. Once we have that posted we will move on to creating the different sections of our website. We already have many ideas for those sections and we are excited to start on them. So far the project is going smoothly and we are happy with the direction it is going.
Project-based Learning Refection
I feel as though project-based learning is extremely important and needs to be included in all classes at school for students. I am a middle grades science education major and it is extremely easy for me to use this way of learning in all my classes. Using experiments and building projects that relate to standards in science is a great way for students to learn and retain the lessons. When kids learn a skill by doing that skill they are way more likely to be able to recall that information later. One project that I will always remember from science when I was younger was building a egg drop box. They asked us to come to school with materials we think would help to keep an egg whole and we built them in school. I had fun doing this and learned about gravity and forces acting on the egg. I will always be able to retain this information because it was so interesting and I had to think deeply about it when I was creating my project.
I think there are many pros for project-based learning. I believe when students are active in their learning they will enjoy it more and will learn more easily. Getting kids excited about what they are learning about can really help make the teacher’s job easier. It makes learning less stressful and boring for all the people involved. I think there are absolutely more pros to project-based learning there are some cons. I think that students do need to have some instruction that is not project based because at times if they do not know the fundamentals they will not be able to do a project based on the information. I think there is a need for non-project-based activities such as vocabulary and basic skill being taught through lecture or practice. I do think for the most part that project-based activities do nothing but help students but I do see a need for different types of instruction as well.
I believe the pros and cons I stated above are the same for student and teacher. As a teacher you want your students to learn the information and as a student you want learning to be fun and easy. I think both the pros and cons are related to both sides of education. I will absolutely be using project-based learning in my own classroom when I am older. I think it is what we need to transition towards as future teachers. In life students learn things through doing them and I feel like it should be the same in the classroom as well. I am happy we were able to learn more about this skill and that I was able to share my feeling about it in this reflection.
Reflection 7: Stop Animation
I thought the app that we picked for our project was a great tool that could be used in education. I think kids do not look up words enough because dictionaries are so difficult and time consuming to use. I think kids would enhance their vocabulary and reading skills by using the Oxford Picture Dictionary app. I think putting technology into all students education really helps them get excited about what they are learning. When kids get to pull out their phones or tablets it makes them feel more into the lesson they are doing. I would absolutely use this app in my own classroom. When middle school students are beginning to read books with more challenging vocabulary they will simply skip over it. I think this app would really help students want to look up words and feel excited about them.
I think not only our app we choose is great for classrooms but many others and many websites as well. I am excited to look into the ones that other students used in class as well. They all looked as if they could be extremely useful. I think all technologies such as these are very useful in classrooms today. Because kids are digital natives these technologies are so normal to them that I feel they need to be included in a lesson because they are the easiest way for studnets to learn. I really enjoyed getting a look at all of the other groups presentations because it really gave me so many different new things to use to make sure I have technology in almost every lesson.
I really enjoyed becoming familiar with the stop animation technique. It was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Taking the pictures was the hardest part because you had to make sure you got a picture of each little movement. I was very happy with our final video because of the difficulty we had with the pictures. I would give someone who was trying it the advice that they should get a camera with a fast lens so that it can snap each movement quick. It would make it so much easier to make sure the pictures were exactly what you needed. I think this is a great technique to be familiar with and a great one to use with students. I am really happy we were able to learn it.
Augmented Reality
I was very interested to hear about augmented reality when Tim spoke to the class. I can see from the articles and his lecture that it could really be something useful for my future classroom and even my own education. There are many pros using augmented reality. One is the aspect that you can live in moments that are not happening currently. This could be such a great tool for a social studies classroom. When Tim talked about the tours with virtual pictures and flyers I was really interested and thought a lot about how I could use that app or similar things. It would be great to incorporate that in to any classroom not only social studies. I also really like the fact that Tim mentioned that the app can enable anyone, even beginners, to create augmented reality learning materials for the classroom. Including the future of these kids education which is virtual technology and real world aspects can absolutely add so many things to students education.
Not only does the fact that augmented reality add the aspect of technology to the classroom but it uses the virtual world and actual world together. This can really round out lessons that I may teach in the future. I loved being able to read the articles about augmented reality in education. The one about the project that a teachers student’s did using augmented reality. Having a class create an app would be something I would love to do. I loved that they were able to create an interactive exhibition on the history of game design. I had never really heard about this type of learning before and this really opened my eyes to it. It is amazing how far we have come with education. It was cool to see students using a new nontraditional type of learning that really engages students.
It was also interesting to hear the other side of this aspect of education. Many people believe that it is a passing trend and this really interested me. I always think about the opposite view of things and it was great to be able to hear this one. People argue that this is still a new emerging technology and that we do not know everything that we should before using it. I do see what one of the articles said and it really interested me thinking about the fact that although these technologies are used so often and even in the classroom they are relatively new. I really enjoyed learning about this and look forward to learning more about augmented reality throughout this semester.
Reflection 5
I thought it was very interesting to learn more about art in education. I feel as though teachers all need to become more familiar with this because it is something that really needs to be included in all classrooms. I thought the article about media literacy was very interesting. I had never thought about the fact that the arts does not just make students more well rounded but actually caters a whole different part of their brains. I want to make sure I add these aspects to my classroom after reading this article. I thought it was great that it mentioned that each side is important to stimulate. I want to make sure I learn more about how to be able to do this through this class.
I also really loved the first hand account of the man that stayed in school because of the arts. I really was able to see how much it can mean to students to be involved in it. It is true when he says that that is one of the biggest arguments for arts education. It has always baffled me as to why people would not want to have it in schools. It is great to see the many reasons why it should be there. It was interesting that this same man brought up the point that it helps with critical thinking skills. He makes the point that many projects with deep content knowledge can be done using art and creative outlets. He mentions that almost any subject can incorporate art into learning of that.
I loved watching the video on this as well. The arts integration is great and I think it is so interesting how this school has put this in place. This hands on approach is a beautiful thing. I know as a learner that I learn better when I am able to do something and learn it through doing. I loved the task where the kid looked at a picture and had to decide if it was the beginning, middle or end of the story. This gives kids the freedom of creativity. I loved the dancing as well. The student that says that when he works with the arts the information sticks with him. It is always great to hear from a student and his words were very encouraging about this type of learning. I loved getting to know more about the arts in the classroom.
Horizon Report
I thought the horizon report was very interesting as a future educator. I did agree with the trends listed in it. One that I really felt is a big trend in the technology that educators are using is a tablet. My dad is actually getting me one for my birthday to use in the classroom. We have been learning so many applications to use in the classroom in all of my education classes lately. I think they are so useful to post up on the smart board and have an interactive class using it. I also really agree that games are going to soon become a huge trend in education. We have been learning about that also. That is one thing I want to work on learning so I can soon learn about it. I want to use this in my own classroom some day.
I absolutely think that some of the challenges mentioned are real. I think that just using technology is not enough. It does the students no good using technology if it is not engaging them and helping them gain a deeper understanding of the topic. Just using technology is not enough. It is there to make the teacher’s job easier but not only that. It helps students as well and if you aren’t using it to help them then it is not worth it. I think one solution to this problem would be just to be conscious as the teacher. We need to make sure that we are using technology to help students and not ourselves. If the technology makes it easier for you but doesn’t help engage students on a deeper level then we need to rethink the use of that technology.
I think the wearable technologies are the most interesting technology to watch. I have seen many things on the google glass. I think that is something I absolutely want to try and see when it becomes more common in the classroom. I think the glasses are such a cool idea and could absolutely be used for so many different things in the future. I think that these reports are such a great thing for teachers to look at. I would love to keep up with them once I have my own classroom.
A Million Little Pieces 