Final Reflection

Overall, this course has been so beneficial to many aspects of my learning. It has helped me better understand current technologies that I am using in other classes, such as Googledoc, and has prepared me for technologies that I will be able to incorporate in my own classroom in the future. This class has provided me with a toolbox of technologies that I will be able to draw upon when planning future lesson plans and when presenting new ideas or tools to other teachers. I feel that I started off this class by thinking that I knew a lot about technology, but I realized that there were so many other sites, tools, and features that dealt with technology that I never knew about. I was so surprised with how many resources there are available and how there are similar sites that accomplish the same task, but it is great that there is a variety because different people could prefer different set-ups. I liked that I was able to begin the projects and come back to them later in the semester to add to them or change them. This was helpful when creating my website because it started off with a very basic layout and I became frustrated when trying to add too much at once, so when I was able to take a break from it and come back to it with a fresh mind, I was actually able to figure out more features. I think that the blogging was a really great feature and it was good to have us split up into "houses" to be able to have deeper blogging conversations and not feel so overwhelmed with too many thoughts all at once. I have learned so much through this course that I will be able to carry over in to my future teaching and think that this class has ultimately made me a better teacher because I am aware of all of the resources that are available to teachers to help them make their classroom better.

Rachel C's Highlights

You have done some great work this semester! I enjoyed looking at your highlights. I think it is interesting how there are so many different tools to express similar things, such as you being able to use Jing for this showcase and Weebly for your portfolio, where as I took the route of using other sites and technology tools. I definitely would consider using some of the tools that you used in my future teaching career because they do look like they are much easier to navigate and I know that was the one drawback that I saw with some of my technology choices, where I had some frustrations with how to work with certain technologies. It was great to have you narrate your portfolio as we were looking at it because it helped make it easier to understand how to navigate the pages and create the site. I was very impressed with how much information you were able to incorporate on your page. It looked very professional! I thought it was great that as you took us through your website, you were able to touch on all of the different technologies that you used along the way throughout this class. I think you went above and beyond with the work this semester and it looks like you got a lot out of this course to help improve your use of technology in the classroom. Nice work!

http://www.screencast.com/t/lOkm0tpBp

Jenica Hale's Highlights

I really like how you made the connection of being able to expand on your portfolio throughout your teaching career, which I think is the whole point of making a website like the one's that we made in this class. I think it was really great for you to use your new literacy project as your wiki project because it really does make viewing all of the information so much easier and is a great way for people to add some information they might have found that is different to yours to the site. Your points about using a googledoc, especially in a college setting, were exactly the benefits that I also saw to using this site. I have used it in a lot of classes and find it very beneficial because of time constraints and it takes away the hassle of finding a meeting place. I think the technology tools that you touched on were definitely great aspects to highlight, especially for future teachers, because they are great tools to use to incorporate in the classroom and are easy enough for students to learn and for teachers to keep up with the progress of technology. Awesome job!

http://www.screencast.com/t/ZxzBz65Rnof

Courtney Yee's Highlight

Very nice job on your showcase! I really appreciated how you talked about all of the steps that you took in creating your weebly because I know I personally was lost on how to create a weebly, but watching your highlights helped me see how easy it can be and get a sense for how to set it up in case I wanted to use it in the future. I think that something like this would be really beneficial for future lessons in CEP when introducing new technologies. I think that there were a lot of cool features on your website that would be beneficial for when we become teachers, such as the e-mail form. I also agree with you on the use of GoogleEarth in the classroom and think it is great that you included it in your lesson because it can really help students expand their learning. Your overall presentation of the highlights was great and you seemed very confident with how to navigate your page and explain it to others. Great job!

http://www.screencast.com/users/yeecourt/folders/Jing/media/579b532c-2a1a-48a9-b286-1601b98e23b1

Technology Changing our Classrooms

In my TE 402 class, I read an article that dealt with "think-alouds" and it talked a lot about students getting information online and reading text online, but instead of reading the full thing, it mentioned skimming and scanning the articles. It made mention of setting up online readings with straight to the point headings and putting the most important information at the beginning of the article so it is easier for the students to just brief over the information. This made me think of how technology is altering the set-up of how we were taught on how to set-up stories, information, etc. I know that I was personally taught to spread my details throughout the story or paper and then to save my biggest information paragraph at the end so the reader was left with the lasting impression of everything that should have been gathered from the piece. I feel that with this new technology arising, the current future teachers will slowly become the teachers that we talk about that refuse to change their ways and refuse to progress. How are we supposed to teach students the "original" writing structure when they will constantly be exposed to this new writing format? Since the original set-up will not be seen in everyday examples, they could see no need for it.

Voice Thread highlights

Here is a link to my voice thread which highlights my progress throughout the semester.

http://voicethread.com/?#u1789093.b1972769.i10408151

Wiki usage

Wiki was one of the harder tasks that I had to do for this class. I understood how to set it up, but it just felt so much "bigger" to me to use as opposed to the blogs and other sites we have been exposed to. I felt like I had a lot more space to deal with and trying to fill things was harder, which I guess could be a good thing if you have a lot of information you need to present, as most websites do, but I found it a bit overwhelming. It was, however, very easy to manage and navigate while also being easy to put information on the site. This was different from using a blog because with a blog you can just post your thoughts and the format is already pretty much laid out for you, whereas with the wiki you have the opportunity to build how you want the wiki to look and what you want on each page. I think that if I were to use this in the classroom, I would make sure to use it with older students because I think that it might be a little much for younger students to tackle. I think this would be a great way for them to share projects, similar to how we used it, and they could do it individually or link up with a few group members and all edit it. I also think it could be a cool way to do literacy assignments, so students can post their work and have different tabs for each paper/writing assignment and then students can peer critique others work.

GoogleDocs

I absolutely love using googledocs. I have used it in a few other classes and it is seriously such a great way to work on projects, especially if you are doing it in a group. I am currently working on another googledoc with a big group to put together a lesson plan and we designate certain times where we all go on it together to access it and can fix stuff as a group. It is so much easier to work with instead of having to constantly send things as an attachment back and forth through emails. Since I was already somewhat familiar with this tool, it was not that hard for me to get used to. When first learning how to use this site, I struggled with the copy and paste because I was trying to do it the same way that I had done it in Word. I soon realized that I needed to highlight it and drag it to place it where I wanted. I also went about doing my resume a little differently. I uploaded my resume from a word document and edited it through googledocs, which was a little challenging just getting used to the different format, but I quickly learned how to adjust. I think this is a great tool to use especially in the classroom because students can work together on projects all in one space and it is just easier for them to all see the document at the same time and work on it together, but from their own computer.

Link to my googledoc!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S6g4ob0AAwncMwbgGpFWEhUvepOe2A9KBPpKfmzB4Z0/edit?hl=en#

Classroom integration

Something that has always been really interesting to me is working with special needs students. I have volunteered in classrooms that are specifically designated to having only those kinds of students, but I have always wondered how classrooms are run with special needs students amongst the mix of regular paced students. I know that there are classrooms, especially in lower grades that are consisted of mixed students and some teachers have the luxury of having an aid who is there to assist students, but what if a teacher doesn't have that benefit? My biggest goal is working on reaching out to all students in my classroom and it is becoming very apparent that I very well could have students who struggle because of a disability in my classroom and I need to be prepared for that. This post is more geared towards being able to have a lot of ideas on how to reach out to all of my students and always having back up ideas ready for when one might fail. I think one of my best ways to continue to explore this would be to observe different classrooms that have these situations and get ideas from teachers who have the same goal as I do.

Exploring more about Prezi

I had some exposure to using Prezi in another class and wanted to play around with it a little more and explore the rest of my options and this was a perfect way to do that. I had made a very basic presentation while using it with the other class and realized that I can actually make very extravagant presentations with this technology. I think this would be great to use in the classroom for both teachers and for students. It would be simple for teachers to set up their entire lesson with this technology because there are so many tools and options that allow the teacher to do diverse things. If they need to include just some facts, bullet points, or sources they can easily type those out in the alloted space. If they need to include a link to a video, they can do that. They can also insert images. The coolest thing about this technology is that you can jump from place to place on the presentation, instead of just having to flip through it like a basic powerpoint. This could also be easy for students to use as well if they were putting a presentation together because since there are so many different tools, options, and themes, students can really make it their own and get creative. The tools are easy to use and do not require a lot of technology background knowledge to understand, therefore it could even be beneficial in lower grades.

I do not see any major downfalls with this technology because of its simple and easy to use features along with it being an upgrade from powerpoint. I think this would be a big advantage in the classroom because teachers would not have to stress about a complex way to gather their information and present it to the class. It is an easy way for teachers to break in to technology and make it more present in the classroom.

Twitter overload

I am becoming more familiar with using Twitter and actually am starting to really like it. I like that I can do status updates and not have to overload Facebook with all of that. One thing that I am catching on to is that people tend to do a lot of updating throughout the day and I never realized people had that much to voice to the world. :) I know most of us who are using Twitter in this class are ready to/close to being done with college and are beginning to transition in to the work world. I know that we all like to do funny updates sometimes and have inside jokes with others on Twitter, but I just keep wondering, where do the funny Tweets end and where do the professional ones begin?

Website struggle

I really like the idea of setting up your own website and have seen some of my other classmates create awesome looking ones with great layouts, however, I am having a hard time figuring mine out. I thought it would be a little bit simpler to use, but it is turning out to be harder than I thought. I wanted to do little things like add a "link" to my sidebar to direct followers to a new page that was still part of my website that just showed different information (ex: link to my lesson plan) and instead it only seems to let me do "new posts". I wonder if it is maybe just the google website page that I am using that is giving me problems and if I need to switch to a different site or if I am just missing some way on how to work the site.

Interesting eavesdropping...

I overheard my friend talking the other day saying something along the lines of "...with all of these modes of ways to put your opinion out there, it seems that everyone feels entitled to be a critic and I feel like I see more negative opinions than positive." The modes of technology for opinion output she was talking about were things like Twitter, facebook, bbm statuses, etc. What are others thoughts on this idea? Do you tend to see people just assuming the role of "critic" a lot more now that there are so many ways for them to express their opinion through technology?

How much is too much?

This course has definitely opened me up to a lot of technologies and resources that I never even knew existed and I do appreciate that it is "forcing" me to become familiar with a lot of new things, however, I had a thought cross my mind the other day and wanted to get others opinions on it. How much technology is too much technology? I have heard some people talk about technology overload and that our generation is becoming so reliant on it and part of me thinks that maybe being too reliant on technology could potentially be a bad thing because I am sure we have all seen flukes with technology and had our rough moments. On the other hand, I also see the increase use of technology as a positive because it is opening our world up to new experiences and faster/better ways of communicating. There have definitely been times where I have become a little overwhelmed with this course and thought to myself if so many websites, blogs, generators, etc were necessary and it actually almost gave me a little bit of anxiety at first, but I think if I just keep trying to increase my usage week by week, it won't seem as overwhelming and maybe that is how people need to react to all of the technology overload as well.

Prezi usage

Using a Prezi was so much fun and I have actually used it in a lot of my other classes now. I am working on making it my "go to" technology for when I want to do reports or try to create lesson plans for my CT. I think that the more I use this tech, the more familiar I am becoming with it! I think that everyone should at least attempt to use it, even just to play around with all of the features. I would like to see an updated version of this tech come out soon because I think it has potential to incorporate more features, such as sound, presentation effects, different fonts, etc.

Integrated Tech plan

Speaking (Discourse): S.DS.01.01 engage in substantive conversations, remaining focused on subject matter, with interchanges building on prior responses in literature discussions, paired conversations, or other interactions.

Writing (Comprehension): R.CM.01.01 make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and comparisons by activating prior knowledge and connecting personal knowledge and experience to ideas in text through oral and written responses.

These are the GLCE's that I plan on using because I am taking them from another lesson that I have recently done. I want to see how challenging it would be to take a previous lesson and "kick it up to speed" with incorporating technology. I want to incorporate blogging in to my lesson plan because it is something that still challenges me so I think that if I can "force" myself to use it in lessons, I in turn will become more familiar with it and get better at using it more often. I think that some people misinterpret this technology as just a place to throw thoughts around, but I don't view that as a bad thing. I think it is important for students to hear others ideas and see if people agree or disagree with some of their thoughts, as well.

Digital Storytelling Prezi

Copy of CEP Digital Storytelling - ABC's on Prezi

I think this was a good "story" for me to use as a way to get to know the prezi technology because I could work on it as if I was planning a lesson plan for the classroom that I am in. Word problems are a bit tricky for students sometimes and I think this would be a fun way for them to be exposed to word problems instead of just seeing it on a sheet of paper. This method could be useful because for the classroom because it could keep the students attention and is a baby step towards bringing new technology methods in the classroom. I think that my students could benefit from this because it is set up in a user friendly way and is easy to catch on to. The students can experiment with new ways to present their ideas with little stress. I liked that it was easy to use once you got the hang of it, but I didn't like that I couldn't incorporate sound to go with my pictures and words. I thought it was a step above a powerpoint, so it is easy to use and a step towards learning and experimenting with new upcoming technology.

TECH BLOG

I personally think that Google Earth would be really cool to use in the classroom because it can be used as an exploring tool. Obviously, it is not easy for students to see other places, especially if they could be things like other countries and I think having this resource in the classroom would be very beneficial. The first thing that I thought of was using this more for social studies type lessons and presenting different areas to the class so they could actually see it instead of talking about it or only seeing it in books. I think that you could bring in a lot of other technology aspects with this, such as blogs, so students could observe and research some areas and then talk with other students about what they saw or thoughts they were having. Students could also research other sites or others blog posts about thoughts that were similar to theirs. I think this would be a good way to tie in a bunch of technology. The only drawback that I see from this resource is that it might only be appropriate after a certain age. I think that it is great to get younger students involved with technology as early as possible, but I also think that it might be hard for some younger students to handle because they might not have as much outside exposure to technology, especially depending on what type of area they come from. I know most schools have security and block on their internet systems, but I would also be a little worried about students finding information that was not relevant. I think this tool could also be beneficial for parents because the teacher could provide the site names for parents and they can keep track of what their child is doing from home.

TE 402 - CEP

I found it interesting as I was faced with two assignment that were somewhat similar in regards to dealing with technology. This class has done a fantastic job at broadening my resources for technology usage, but I found something interesting in my TE 402 class that I thought might be useful here. I was going to begin a project in digital story telling and I came across a site that said there was a way for ESL students to log on to their computer and view a program that would have a letter pop up and the student would hear how the letter sounded while seeing it and also see it in a sentence. I thought this was an awesome way for technology to be incorporated into ESL classrooms because it takes some of the pressure off of the teacher to make sure that each student is getting one-on-one attention. This allows the teacher to go around to students who might need help in certain areas instead of "wasting" the whole class's time.

Twitter

My friend was the first one to sign me up for a Twitter account, so needless to say, I was kind of struggling with how to use it. I have been trying to get the basics down about it and have been trying to constantly remind myself to update it or check it. I feel like once I get the hang of it, it will be more useful for me to use and I will constantly be updating. The biggest challenge for me is trying to figure out how to "retweet" or share things that I find interesting from other peoples tweets. I am so used to Facebook and being able to comment on things or tag people in things and this is kind of frustrating to me because I can't seem to do that as easily with Twitter. I know that if I keep playing around with it I should get the hang of it, I think I just need to do a little more exploring. I could see Twitter being most useful with communicating with others and updating others on new findings or experiences.

slideshow

Copyright Usage

I think that it is really important for teachers to be cautious when using images that are not their own and protecting the ones that are theirs. I think that teachers should talk about it with the students in their classrooms, especially before projects and things are due, to try to get students in a good habit of using proper sourcing and to remind them of the risk they take when they take others work. Along the same lines, I also think that teachers need to point out when they use other people's work in class and how they give proper acknowledgments just to show students the right way to do it so it is something that they are familiar with and should expect to do.

Creative Commons

I love this picture because I think it captures the idea of the world being made up of many different cultures. I think this would be an awesome lesson to teach and this picture sets the stage for the lesson. I think it would be really beneficial for a social studies lesson and I really think acknowledging the variety of cultures is something that needs to be taught from an early age and not ignored, as some teachers decide to do.

Original image: "The world is made up of different cultures"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweettradephotography/286423882/

By: Sweet Trade [Photography]

Released under Attribution Generic license

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

This is the photo that I licensed with Creative Commons. It is one of my favorite pics because it captures my favorite place to be.

Original Image: "beach pondering"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59480418@N06/5442180101/

By: Kristy Strouse

Released under an Attribution, Non-commercial licence (Creative Commons)

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

New Technology

This week I have become more familiar with Twitter and blogging. I had never really branched out to these types of technology styles, but I am starting to like them. The more I play around with them, the easier they become to use. On another note, I also observed some technology use in my classroom I student teach in this past week. The students (1st graders) were using interactive websites to learn about magnets for their science block. It was really cool to see this lesson be taught in a "fun" way that really got and kept the students engaged.

Hello World

Hi! My name is Kristy Strouse and I am using this blog for my online class where I hope to learn more on working with technology.

I would say that I have an average level of technology background. I like to try to stay up to date with what is new and how to network and stay connected, but there are still some things that I am unfamiliar with, like blogging for example, that I hope to become better at. I expect that after I finish this course, I will have new sources of technology and will feel more confident about using certain types that I was unfamiliar with before.