Techno Kids Article

In the article Teens and technology – a good match? addresses the onslaught of electronic media and the effects on teens. The article has several good points as it analyzes behavior, usage, school interactions of, and parental involvement. Many good points were brought up including:

• 8 – to 18-year-olds devote an average of about seven and a half hours a day…using entertainment media
• the electronic media glut…have made it more difficult for parents to keep tabs on what their kids are doing
• the time kids spend consuming media constitutes more than a full workweek
• multitasking in the adult workplace leads to inefficiency and increased errors
• about half of heavy media users get fair to poor grades in school
• the family unit is not what it used to be
• television and computers shouldn’t be in the kids’ bedrooms
• cyber-bullying occurs
• having students with technological capabilities is the key to making the project work (school related)

There were many good points in this article. I agree that student’s do waste a lot of time using technology inappropriately in the classroom. This is a behavior issue and not a problem with technology. I feel that as educators we should be addressing the behavior instead of blaming the tools we use. We should incorporate technology whenever we can and help students learn the value of appropriate use of it. A number of them think that it is perfectly okay to surf the net or text during class. If they truly feel that this is “alright” to do at work and at school, how will this affect their future as contributing members of society? We need to help guide students in the right direction with appropriate use of technology so it can benefit them the most.

Social Web Final Reflection

At the beginning of the semester, I signed up for Edutopia so I could join a Social Studies social community. I read articles and comments by other participants, but did not “speak up” myself. I ended up switching my teaching area from Social Studies to Special Education and joined a Special Education group in Edutopia.

After some digging around on the site, I found some interesting articles that will help me in my new field. I recently read an article about the rise of autism and the challenges facing schools because of it. A member of the Special Education group I am a part of has an informative website that gives helpful tips on behavior plans for students with autism, effective classroom set ups, and written plans for classroom roles and responsibilities. From this site, there are links to lesson plans and other useful resources when working with students with autism.

I’ve introduced myself to the Special Education group and saw that it’s a friendly one. There are other teachers like me who are qualified in more than one field. I found this interesting; maybe they discovered (after getting their initial teaching certificate) that Special Education was their calling to.

Even though my involvement in this social community has been brief, I see it as being a valuable resource when I start my Special Education career next school year at Craig Elementary. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the resources I can get! :o)

Teacher Tia Edutopia

IEP TECH

My IEP plan worked on multiple levels. It set out a World War I project for my students that helped strengthen their abilities to gather information, properly site references, and to make an effective podcast. At the same time, I was able to use Jing to screen capture what needed to be accomplished for those who were not in school due to a school function. For all teachers who use technology as a tool, I highly recommend setting up a Jing account. It is free and it makes communicating with absent students a breeze! Here is an example of this project demonstrating a students podcast, how I set up the lessons, and screen-capturing using Jing.

Final Reflection

Digital Story

The journey I've been on this year made for (what I feel is) the perfect digital story. It's been such an exciting journey that I enjoyed mapping it out and taking a moment to appreciate what I am accomplishing. Here is my Digital Story Map.

Digital storytelling is an exciting learning tool that I plan on using in the future. It gives students an opportunity to share about themselves while learning something new. It provides a broad range of creative options and allows students to express themselves as individuals. In special education, this tool would be useful for students who are visual learners with low reading skills.

In addition to being a great tool for students, it will be an asset for me as well. I can use digital storytelling as a way to communicate with students.

I had some challenges learning about this type of storytelling. One difficulty with this project was using my pictures without being invasive of anyone with special needs. Instead, I chose some of my favorite school pictures from this year and randomly lined them up for the background. I'm going to miss all the wonderful friends I made and will always look back on my students with a warm heart. Here is my Digital Story and rubric.

Online Education Community

I have joined an online education community called Edutopia. I saw that it was recommended to Macky and since I have never been a part of a community like this, I thought I would go where I knew someone. I have set up my account and I look forward to digging around for new ideas in the field of history.

IEP For New Technology in My Classroom

For my IEP for new technology in my classroom, I have researched and have discovered a new program for myself and my students to use. With the laptop/student ratio being 1:1, I thought they knew it all and was fortunate to have an opportunity to learn about Jing.

I signed up for and attended some technology workshops last week and learned how to use Jing. It is a wonderful program that allows you to capture images of your screen, record your onscreen action, and instantly share with others. I want to find a way to incorporate this into a class project. I have been working on how I might accomplish this and I think it could be done like an “In Plain English” assignment.

Students can visually walk a viewer through online steps to finding information, while presenting what they have researched. I will need to write up a precise rubric to avoid chaos and confusion, but I think that adding another tool to their technological tool belt will only benefit them as they move on to college.

Digital Storytelling

In Jason Ohlers “Digital Storytelling in the Classroom” he addresses what a good story is, the elements that are needed to keep the viewer engaged and how to go about mapping it out. It is essential to have a good story map to make sure that the story is fluid. Some great points that were brought up in chapters 5 and 6 include:

• Make sure the audience will not be able to wait to hear what happens next
• Ask yourself “does this make sense?”
• Does it have a core?
• Does it have a central challenge, character transformation, and resolution?
• It can be humorous
• Make a story board or map that show the story in motion
• Does the story have all the elements?

Overall, when making a Digital story, it must be well thought out and mapped. The creator must be careful to make sure that all the essential elements are included in their story and to work on making the story as fluid as possible.

Exciting Internet Resources for Social Studies

Three internet resources I have found to be very resourceful are:

www.microsoftencarta.com
www.discoveryeducation.com
www.nationalarchives.com

The first one I pay for myself and have kept my subscription for over five years now because of it’s valuable resources. It rarely fails me when I am searching for information or interesting facts. Also, it’s better than wikipedia since the information is from a trusted source.

Discovery Education is a site the Petersburg School District subscribes to. At the start page, it always has a “this day in history” blurb about something that has happened in the past. It is loaded with videos (mostly from PBS and other educational channels) that I can present in class, or post small clips from onto Moodle, where students can view them and answer questions. This is especially helpful with all the students that travel for extracurricular activities.

The National Archives is great for fact checking and finding. I don’t use it as much as the other two sources.

I highly recommend a subscription to Microsoft Encarta for those in the Social Studies field. If you have an overhead in your classroom or an online class site like Moodle, I recommend Discovery Education as well.

Philosophy Reflection

Writing and putting together my video presentation was an interesting process. Things that I thought would go smoothly didn't, and things that I thought would be difficult, weren't. Three things that I found worked well were:

• Already having a stockpile of pictures and video I had been taking since the beginning of the semester
• Asking students for tips on iMovie
• Having the tools necessary to make this project

Four things I found difficult were:

• Having to listen to my presentation and addressing all the horrible mistakes (lots of "ums").
• The amount of time it took to put it together
• Having to submit it without it being perfect because I had so many other obligations
• Going through the pictures and realizing I won't have my wonderful students forever. My mentor teacher is going to have to wrestle them back from me

If I could change some things about my video, they would be:

• To have set aside more time
• To tighten the narration to match the images better
• To have more images
• To have a better introduction and conclusion
  

Something that I thought was going to be difficult, and turned out not to be, was finding my philosophy of education. "What the heck is my philosophy of education?" I kept asking myself. When I set that thought aside to cool, I started watching video footage from my class and reviewing pictures. I found my philosophy right there in the documentation.

Overall, projects like this one are fun for my students. From now on, if they do have to something like this assignment, I'm going to make sure there is enough class time for them to get the help and support they need.

Energy Conservation Project Reflection

Oops! I thought I had done this one!

The most challenging issue I had with the energy conservation project was recording myself. I felt like the first day of student teaching. When I went back and reviewed myself, I found myself saying "um" A LOT! I also noticed I avoided looking directly at the camera and instead kept my eyes safely pointed towards the screen. This shouldn't have been a problem since I came in on a Sunday to record it in private.

For the actual project, I was amazed at how much money I spent on fountain sodas and how much paper waste I accumulated because of my soda addiction. I used to also get a latte every morning but I have switched to tea to save money and paper. When I made this switch I had to deal with headaches (which I used to never get) that finally went away after about a week. Can latte withdrawals cause that?

I did try to get the convenience store to carry re-usable cups to sell, but I got a not-so-polite "yeah, right!"

Overall, it was an eye-opening experience that has influenced my routine.

Philosophy of Education iMovie

Starting my Philosophy of Education movie was not easy. I wasn't too sure what my exact philosophy was until I went back and started reviewing video clips and pictures I had taken over the last few months. I was surprised to find my philosophy right there in iPhoto!

It was fun compiling the pictures and video clips of my wonderful students. They continue to be the highlight of this school year and it is nice to know I will always have these images/memories of them to look back on after we have gone separate ways.

The only part of this project that made me want to throw my laptop out the window occured during recording. Getting my sentences to match up with the images was not an easy process...my blood pressure is going back up just thinking about it.

I hope you enjoy my presentation (sorry it's blurry, it loaded that way).

Orchestrating the Media College

Orchestrating the Media College by Jason Ohler highlighted what I have been experiencing in Mr. Engell’s tech savvy history classes. My mentor teacher’s classes are almost all internet or technology related and he decided that it would be best for me to follow in his footsteps since technology is the future. Although I find it frustrating at times, I am incredibly thankful for this experience. The whole article by Ohler made sense to me since it can be directly applied to my classroom. If I had to take two statements from it that really stood out, they would be:

1) “As student participation goes public, the pressure to produce high-quality work increases.”

and

2) “I have witnessed more digital art taught by computer-savvy teachers than by art teachers.”

Having students post documents to googledocs and collaborating on projects raises the quality of the work immensely. It does cause additional stress to the student but in the end, their grade is higher because of it. It also gives them a chance to help each other out and correct mistakes that might have gone unnoticed.

The second statement also caught my attention because of something my mentor teacher keeps telling me. He says that he never thought of himself as an artistic person until he started embracing technology (mostly videography). It is a medium in which he can express himself and help students to learn. Technology is a tool that students want to use to learn.

One major problem that I have had with students using technology is keeping them on task. Having a laptop with internet makes it easy for them to end up doing something other than paying attention to the work. However, this is not the fault of the technology, it is a behavior problem that would probably be manifested as something else if the laptop wasn’t there (ex. note passing, doodling…).

Overall, these are exciting times to be a teacher!

Energy Conservation Project Finale

I finally built up the nerve to record myself presenting my powerpoint presentation. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be but I still sound and look nervous. I felt like how I did the first week of student teaching. I'm relieved I am no longer that way in front of the students.

I had to record it a couple of times because I caught my self saying "um" a lot.

Thank Gawds that is over with. On to the next project!

Energy Conservation Project, Cont.

For my energy project, I gathered information on how much soda I drank, how much waste I was responsible for, and how much money I spent on it. To view my presentation, click here.

After looking over the numbers I gathered for this project, I became rather disturbed over the amount of waste I was responsible for and the amount of money I was spending on a beverage I drank only for pleasure.

I've permanently switched to a reusable cup and have cut back on the amount of soda I purchase. Hopefully, over time my routine will be broken and I will no longer purchase a daily fountain soda. To see the data I collected, click here.

The Read/Write Web Article Assessment

Will Richardson’s article The Read/Write Web discusses how the World Wide Web started, how it has become essential in today’s culture, the effect it has had on education and the challenges it brings to new immigrants in this society. Many great facts and points he addresses are:

• Tim Bernard Lee’s grand vision for the internet and how the first part came to be in 1993.
• How quickly it evolved and how far it has come.
• “44% of adult internet users had used the internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files, and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online.”
• Schools “…have been slow to adapt to these new tools and potentials.”
• “The ability to easily publish text, pictures, and video is changing the face of journalism as we know it.”
• “Today’s schools are faced with a difficult dilemma that pits a student body that has grown up immersed in technology against a teaching faculty that is less facile with the tools of the trade.”

This rapid change in our culture has impacted our society greatly and getting schools up-to-date with this cultural change is essential both to the school and to the student. I have had the fortunate opportunity to be student teaching in a school that has made the decision to move in the direction of technology. Every student has a laptop and the majority of work is done online through a Moodle site. We incorporate Wiki’s, Podcasts, iMovies and other forms of technology to learn about subjects and synthesize information. Combining subject information with tools that they will need once they graduate is essential to their success.

The downside to this is that the students tend to know more than I do when it comes to technology. Thankfully, they have been patient with me as they show me what they know and give me the opportunity to present material in a medium they enjoy.

Energy Conservation Project Overview

For my Energy Conservation Project, I have decided to research what impact both financially and environmentally my daily 32 oz, disposable fountain soda cup has. First, I am going to purchase a reusable thermal mug to use in replacement of the paper cups. Then, I'm going to keep track of how many refills a day I end up drinking (this could be as high as four) and track the money saved and the paper conserved. Some questions and facts I will be researching are:

• How much money will I save by using a reusable cup instead of the disposable paper ones provided at the convenience store? How much paper will be conserved?
• Green Research, an advisement organization that promotes clean tech and corporate sustainability, analyzes how items like disposable cups impact the earth and the money that could be saved by reusing.
• I will keep a daily journal of how many fountain sodas I purchase from the convenience store.
• I will find out the weight of each cup and come up with how much paper is used throughout the course of a year.

After seven days of acquiring this data, I will figure out how much money and paper will be conserved over a year and present the results here on my blog.

"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"

In Marc Prensky’s article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, he argues that the plasticity of the brain DOES change after the age of three, which is contrary to the previous beliefs of scientists. Because of this change, educators must re-think how to educate students who have been cognitively trained in a much different fashion than others before them. The evidence is apparent when observing today’s technology “Natives.” Prensky feels that we are “…at the very beginning of understanding and applying brain plasticity research.” Presnky believes that in order to properly educate today’s young people, technology that has helped program their brains in a non-linear way, should be used to fulfill their educational needs. If our schools continue to teach in a linear way of thinking, it could actually do more harm than good.

1. “Research by social psychologist shows that people who grow up in different cultures do not just think about different things, they actually think differently.”
2. “…strong evidence that one’s thinking patterns change depending on one’s experiences.”
3. “…brains that undergo different developmental experiences develop differently.”
4. “…children are furiously retraining their brains in even newer ways, many of which are antithetical to our older ways of thinking.”
5. “Children raised with the computer think differently that the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds…it’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.”
6. “Linear thought processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning for brains developed through game and Web-surfing processes on the computer.”
7. “The cognitive differences of the Digital Natives cry out for new approaches to education with a better fit.”

Overall, I agree with Prensky’s viewpoint. I am in a classroom where technology is the focus in education and I am constantly amazed with what the students are capable of. They can work on multi-level projects and thrive using technology with their work. Regular assessments show that they are retaining the information provided in class and I believe it is because we are using a medium that they are comfortable with. It is clear that when a school uses technology in a successful, educational manner, it is beneficial to today’s students.

Anthro Tech Assessment

Technology is heavily emphasized in the Petersburg School District. It is encouraged on all levels and is expected to be used by both students and teachers. The school has already made a decision to make technology in the classroom one of its top priorities. A few years ago, the school made an enormous agreement to supply every student and faculty member with their own MacBook. The district pushes to stay as up-to-date as possible on new ideas and uses in this department.


I have seen wondrous things since I began student teaching at PHS concerning technology and its uses within the school. I’ve learned a tremendous amount in the past month and I am scrambling to catch up with the rest of the faculty. The only thing that I've noticed, that could use tweaking, would be to hire on another person in the tech field who can go around and personally assist teachers with any tech questions they may have. The two people who are the tech coordinators now seem to be overwhelmed.



Tia's Tech Assessment of Petersburg High School.

Futuring

School Train and Fox Becomes a Better Person –

Both Fox Becomes a Better Person and School Train are excellent examples of how technology can be used for school projects. After getting passed the “wow” of the technology, it is clear that the students who did these assignments met the requirements for the work. As an educator, a person must look past the technology and analyze the content. A clear rubric should be set up for the work so both the students and teacher know how to grade/assess the project fairly without being overwhelmed be the technology aspect.

The students of Molalla Elementary who made School Train proved their understanding of a metaphor by comparing education to a train. Hannah’s does a wonderful job using creative story telling to tell Fox Becomes a Better Person. She demonstrates creativity, clear voice, good organization, and appropriate use of technology.

Epic 2015 –

Ideas from a “thought criminal”…

If technology and the exchange of information becomes as advanced as the video Epic 2015 portrays it, physical classrooms could become obsolete in the near future. With online schools and other forms of distance education, we need to start thinking of our students as clientele and keep up with the rapidly growing tech world. To do this we need to focus on technology by making it relevant in our classrooms. Not only will this aid in preparing students for life outside of school but will also help maintain the student population. If all assignments, tests, grades and lectures are available online, the same classes that students show up for in person can be offered to home school children as well. By providing this service it would increase the student population AND funding for the school.

Sabrina Journey –

Sabrina's theme “Do I Belong Here” goes well with her full-circle presentation. She continues to remind the viewer of her theme as she chronologically presents how her life has come to where it is and how her own question “Do I Belong Here” is answered. She uses good visuals and audio to show her journey in life.

With students, I would encourage this outline for a podcast. It’s clear, concise, and interesting. It would be a great way for them to individually document the beginning of their journey as they are about to head out into the world to search for where they belong. My students would enjoy an assignment like this and it would give them an opportunity to record their own history. Along with this project, I would encourage background music that represents who they are.