Best Two Ideas

1) I really liked the idea of using a kidsperation to help your students learn a concept. The presentation that i saw included a Kidsperation activity that the students did to classify objects. I think this a great program for this because it allows the students to classify really anything, there is no limit since it is virtual. This helps the students better understand the task at hand.

2. I also really liked the idea of using a flex camera. This is great because it shows the pictures on the board so clearly. I think that the students can all benefit from such a good visual aid.

Doing

I had the opportunity of talking to my 14 year old cousin about being safe on the Internet. I choose her because I really care about her and I know that she has had some negative influences in the past. Fortunately, as I spoke to her I was convinced that she was careful about what she did on the Internet. I first talked to her about how she needed to make sure she was not giving out important information about herself to anyone on line because she has no way of knowing who she is "REALLY" talking to. There are some real sick people out there who just want to take advantage of people and she needs to be as far away from them as possible. I also told her to be very careful about what kind of pictures she may be posting on her facebook. I told her not to post anything that may embarrass her in the future because once something is on the web it will always remain there. I also wanted her to know how addicting the Internet can be. I told her that she needs to limit the time she spends on the Internet and spend more time doing more productive things. I asked her to try and use the Internet mostly for informational purposes and not chatting or wasting time. She assured me that she was going to be smart when using the interenet and only communicate to those she already knows.

Things I learned from others...

I watched Hannah's slideshare presentation and really enjoyed it. Like me, she had no computers in her classroom. But, I liked that Hannah took her lesson into the school's computer lab so that they could create their art with technology. I could tell from her presentation that the students enjoyed being able to use the computers themselves. I also liked that Hannah go to use a flex camera and the projector. This is a great way to help the students visualize things. I loved that the students came up to the projector and displayed their pictures; i am sure they enjoyed having to place them in the right spot so that the camera could capture the image.

Technology Project

Technology Integration Report

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Article #4

What article did you choose to read for your fourth article?
I read "Tangled in the Web" by Name Withheld

What were the most important things you learned from the readings?
I learned that the Internet can become addicting just like anything else. What may start as a half hour of entertainment can lead up to seven hours of wasted unproductive time. The person who wrote this article tells us that at first she would just get on to play some chess. But after some time, she began building relationships with men who competed with her. She was constantly on the Internet and spending less time with her husband and family. The lives of her chess friends, their problems and activities, became her life. She also allowed one of these friends to weaken her testimony of the church and question her believes. She knew that she needed to get rid of her addiction to the Internet but she did not how. She finally talked to her bishop and came to her senses and is now back on the right path.

The Internet is a great source for information and entertainment. But we have to learn how to manage the time we spend on it. We can not allow for the Internet to disrupt our lives in such a way as the person who wrote this article. We should not allow for relationships with total strangers to become more important than that of our family members. In order to avoid these things, we should be responsive to the people that love us when they are giving us advice, and simply take the Internet away from yourself if it is necessary. Make it hard to access it.

How will what you have read influence your actions as a parent and/or teacher of children and youth?
I will always have my home computer in a place with high traffic. This should make it more difficult for my children to get into troublesome websites. I plan to have a schedule that my children will have to follow. They will only be allowed to use the Internet for about half an hour a day. They shouldn't be spending all of their time on the computer; they should be spending time with their family and other positive influences. This article has influenced me to really supervise how much time someone I care for spends on the computer. I know that even I can spend too much time on facebook or my email, but I should not be letting these programs run my life.

How can you use what you have learned from the reading to have a positive influence on family and friends?
I realized that staying informed with new programs and sites that may become addicting is important. I need to stay on top of things so that I can correct any problems that come my way. I also realized that it is good to keep track on how much time my children will be spending on the Internet and what they are doing. I need to be aware of who they are talking to because they do not need to be surrounded by negative influences and people who just want to damage them.

Technology-enhanced Lesson

I had the opportunity to teach my third graders about commas. I specifically taught them about using commas for separating the day and the year in a date, separating cities and states, and also the use of commas when addressing a person. I was able to teach the whole class with the aid of the Promethean board. I made a small presentation which included the rules for the different uses of commas. For each rule I included some examples that so that the students could see exactly what I was talking about. For instance, when I showed them the rule about using commas to separate a city from a state, I included, "Seattle, Washington" or "Dallas, Texas." The Promethean board made it so that all of the students could see the new material at the same time, it also made it easier on me. I did not have to write out each rule on big posters or paper; all I had to do was type things and expose it on the Promethean board. After going through some examples, I decided to let the students show me what they learned. I wrote some sentences on the Promethean board with the special pen you use on it. The sentences included dates, cities and states, and examples of addressing people. None of these sentences included the commas which were needed. The students had the opportunity to go up and use the pen to fill in the missing commas on the Promethean board. This was so neat because I was able to see if the students really understood the concept. It was also neat because it included a lot of interaction and the students were so excited to use the Promethean board; I know that this kept their interest. Something that I know would be hard if I had simply explained the rules of commas.

Possible Lesson

Something that I have really liked seeing during the practicum is the use of the Promethean board. I think it is great because many students are visual learners. I think that I could make a lesson on lets say, contractions, much more inviting by allowing the students use of this board. For example, after I have taught students how you make a contraction, that is you combine two words like "is" and "not" and substitute the O with an apostrophe, I could have the students come up and actually use the special pen that the Promethean board uses to do that themselves. They could model to the class the crossing off of the letter O and adding an apostrophe between the N and the T. Their end result would be a new, shortened word. If asked, students could also underline or circle important things or rules, that help them remember contractions. This could make them feel more responsible for their learning, because they will want a chance to go up and apply their knowledge onto the Promethean board. I think that the Promethean board will also give me a better feel for if the students are understanding the material or not because of their participation or lack of. Not only that but students love to use technology, so anytime they are given a chance to do so, will get them much more excited to learn.

Technology Inventory

I have had a blast at my elementary school. My teacher is great and my students are great! I have had some opportunities to observe my teacher use technology. I noticed that she mostly uses her Mac and her Promethean board. This way the students can all see what she is doing as she is doing it. Her favorite programs include Word and Power Point; she does most of her lessons on these. I found it surprising to see a telephone in the classroom. I think it is a great idea because parents may need to get a hold of their children, and this makes the process easier. Besides that, if an emergency comes up, a phone would be very helpful.

The school is well equipped with computers, and there are two computer labs. My third graders mostly visit the computer lab to work on YPP. YPP is a program with activities that helps them prepare for the end of the year test. I also thought it interesting that students will be doing their end of the year test on computers. It seems like only yesterday I was doing my end of the year test, but I definitely did it on paper with my special number two pencil. Technology has obviously improved and really fast.

Google Earth Tour

Go check out my tour!! Go to my links and click on Virtual Tour

TPACK

Content: This project will cover some standards included in the Utah core curriculum for 3rd grade. More specifically, standard 1: students will understand how geography influences community location and development. Objective 1: determine the relationships between human settlement and geography. Students will explore Mount Everest, the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, and the Alamo. They will determine what geographical influences these places have and there developments.

Pedagogy: With google earth, students can experience many things and learn many things by personal research. They can can better grasp how the world looks like, distances between places, and where things are. They can also access information about historical events and passages. Most of what they will do with google earth is discovery learning.

Technology: The technology we use for this activity mostly deals with google earth. With the availability of computers, students will be able to do some exploring. Students can find out a lot of information and see pictures about places they have never been to.

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1. Mount Everest	Students will first estimate how big Mount Everest is before having the terrain icon on, they will then have to estimate how big Mount Everest is after they turn on the terrain icon.	Using google terrain function, students will view and explore Mount Everest.
2. New York	Students will find out properties of the Statue of Liberty. They will find out about its height, width, and materials it is made up of. They will learn about how it is able to withstand weather and time.	Using a link, a picture of the Statue of Liberty, and a short article, students will learn more about the history of the statue of liberty.
3. South Dakota	Students will find Mount Rushmore and answer the following questions: How many faces are there? What are the names of the faces? How big is it? How much money did it take to make it?	Images of Mount Rushmore with a short article including major facts.
4. Texas	Journal Entry: Students will write about important points that they find out about the Alamo. They should include dates and important people.	Wiki information about the Alamo and its importance.
Details of image overlay / path / polygon:	Polygon

Digital Story Telling

TPACK

Content: We are going to focus on teaching students about poetry and its different structures. We covered part of Standard 8 objective 6 indicator b: Produce traditional and imaginative stories, narrative and formula poetry s an individual/shared writing activity. Produce traditional stories, narrative and formula poetry as an individual/shared activity. During this language arts activity, students will be able to practice rhyming.

Pedagogy: Our pedagogy is teaching kids different forms of writing through poetry. Students will better understand the format AABB with this particular poem. They will later be able to research a peice of work that will interest them that fits this format.

Technology: We will use a PhotoStory to create this project. Photostory will be fun for students to work with. It will alwow them to see peotry not just as writing but in pictures. They will be able to hear themselves rehearse peotry and become more interested.

TPACK Questions

Content: Through Stellarium, we were able to create a lesson plan about both geometric figures and constellations . We were able to cover part of standard 4 of the 6th grade core curriculum. Students will understand the scale of size, distance between objects, movement, and apparent motion (due to Earth’s rotation) of objects in the universe and how cultures have understood, related to and used these objects in the night sky. Students would have to look at the night sky in Stellarium to find constellations that resembled geometric shapes or had geometric shapes within them. They would also become more familiar with constellations and their names.   

Pedagogy: Learning about the stars could be difficult to do during school because it would still be day time and you would not be able to see anything. Stellarium is a great tool to use to be a more effective teacher. You would not only be reading out definitions of things or reading out names, instead you would be using Stellarium to help your students literally see what they are learning about.  

  

Technology: The technology we used for this activity was the program Stellarium. The students would be able to see features of the sky through a computer program. Stellarium is a useful program because it helps students get a real life image of things in the sky. 

 

The tech savvy teacher

Students often find science and math a bit boring. Using a program like Stellarium, students will become engaged with the constellations, stars, and the night sky. The program is easy to use and students will have no problem accessing the information it holds. You can do neat things with this program. One example is you can look at the sky the night you were born. But, we are not going to learn how to do that now. This time we will learn about constellations and how they form geometric shapes and patterns. For this activity, the students will identify at least 5 constellations with a geometric shape or pattern. Then have them draw the constellations on a piece of paper.

Discuss with the students that constellations are made up of stars, and that they create different kinds of shapes. Explain to the students that you will be finding shapes in the sky. The first step is to open up Stellarium. Then the student will click on the drawing of the constellations and names of the constellations icons in the lower left hand corner of the screen in the tool bar. This will bring up a screen that looks like this:

Next,  the student will use the mouse to move the sky around until they find a constellation that has a geometric shape. Here are some examples:

This is an example of triangles.

In this picture you see a triangle and a parallelogram.

This is a picture of a constellation that is the shape of a kite. 

As shown in the above pictures, there are lots of geometric shapes made out of stars. Through this activity students are able to better understand math through a science activity. This activity expands the students' knowledge about star constellations. It helps them become more familiar with their names as well as what they look like. This activity is for sixth grade, but it could be used in lower grades as well.

Stellarium

I really enjoyed Stellarium. It was interesting to be able to trace back to the night of my birth to see what the sky looked like. I really think this program is a great resource for teaching about the stars, galaxies, and much other things like planets, because the program shows real time images. Students like to see the real thing and Stallarium is just that. I also like Stallarium because it allows for experimentation and play. You can do neat things like go back in time or fast-forward.

TPACK

It is important for teachers to have a balanced approach for teaching. Understanding how TPACK works is a great resource for this. It helps teachers understand how content, pedagogy, and technology relate. Different subjects require different attention, and teachers should be able to manipulate these three knowledge types to help their lessons become more effective and meet the needs of their students.

RSS Feed

Rss feed can be a very resourceful when trying to keep yourself updated to new research and information. I really like that with this tool information can come straight to you instead of having to seach for it. GoodReads is really neat because you can go to it as a reasource for finding out what books are good not only for personal use but also for teaching purposes. This will save you from spending time and money on books that are not worth it.

Background and History in technology

To be honest i do not have a whole lot of history with technology. I do know how to work the basics in word and powerpoint, i don't know a lot about excel just enough to pass the test we had to take before we entered the program. I do know how to browse the internet and find information i need. I also have a facebook account so i know how to upload pictures and stuff like that.