11/18/2012

"Using the web to teach yourself something"

I chose how to make the 'perfect' brownies. I started on my Pinterest page because I knew I had some different recipes on there. It was easy, there were tons to pick from. I picked one from a guy's blog. He even had a Youtube video to watch if the instructions weren't clear enough. He claimed in would take two minutes to make them, which wasn't how long it took me.. I had to go get the supplies and then preheating the oven took a while. I could comment back on his blog about how the brownies turned out, if I had any suggestions for the recipes, if I had any ideas for making his instructions more clear. I could use this for student learning purposes. They can learn about lots of things from class on their own. In the lesson plan, I had them look up information about the dissection. I could use it to teach myself things as technology advances so I don't fall behind. I could also find lots of ideas for lesson plans online.



How to Make Perfect Brownies by Drew Hime available at http://cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/2009/07/how-to-make-perfect-brownies/  

11/3/2012

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may07/vol64/num08/Assessment-Through-the-Student%27s-Eyes.aspx

This article is about using assessment to help students instead of it just being another mark in the grade book. Some students get on a winning streak where they do good on a test and they continue to do well. On the other hand some students fail which discourages them and then they continue to fail. One thing it mentioned was showing your expectations through examples of excellent student work. This way students know what you are expecting so they can work towards that. I remember a few different classes where there assignments that I wasn't sure what the teacher wanted me to do so I did what I thought he/she wanted and I didn't get as high of a grade as I expected. I think if I would have got an example I would have done a lot better.

I liked the part that said you aren't going to keep all failure from happening but you are trying to keep it from happening twice in a row. You can find what the student failed on and correct it. The steps were setting your students up for success and turning failure into success.  I think it is important that your tests aren't just a regurgitation of material.

10/31/12

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/02/16/11-programs-only-as-good-as-their-teachers/

The article wouldn't allow me to read all five pages, but I will blog about what I read from the first page. The article talks about how without the adaption of lesson plans, incorporating technology is useless. You can't take a plan that you made for class without laptops and then use it for a class with laptops without adjusting it. This is just lazy teaching. A good teacher can be able to reinvent their lessons to stay modern with the technology and to adapt to their student's needs. Classes wanting to involve a one-to-one program require a teacher that is willing to put in the extra time and effort that it is going to take to remodel their curriculum. For my class I really want to use laptops, I think there are a lot of great resources available.

9/20/2012

Reflection on technology tools to use in the class room:
http://www.techlearning.com/article/back-to-school-product-showcase/46264

A lot of these tools were software or online downloads that look very useful. The online learning exchange is a site that a teacher can upload their course material alongside the information from the textbook for student access. They have different activities on the website to track the student's progress. One idea I thought was very interesting would be to have an independent learning class. Since I am a science teacher I would have one of my classes be an independent science class. The Gradpoint tool is an online program (http://www.pearsonschool.com/%20gradpoint) that has different elective courses a student could do. This class that I am envisioning would need to be in the computer lab or have enough laptops for each student in the class. Students could pick different science courses and do it at their own pace. I would be more of a facilitator than a teacher. If students had a problem with what they are learning I would be able to help them. I think this would be good to give them experience in courses they wouldn't normally encounter in high school. It would also give them experience being more independent in their learning to help them prepare for college.

9/13/2012

"Find an article and respond on your blog"

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/websites-for-science-teachers-eric-brunsell

This blog post has ten websites that this science teacher thinks are the most useful for classes. I choose this article because I think it is a good idea to have lots of different resources that way it keeps the class from getting stale and boring. I have started a "Links" page on the website we have for this class for all the useful/interesting educational sites that I have found. I am definitely going to be adding a bunch from this post. The comments had a lot of them as well.

The flexbooks that I read about in the last blog were mentioned in the comments for this blog as well. Something that I hadn't heard about was the scishow channel on youtube. This channel has TONS of short science videos by a guy who (in my opinion) does a good job of keeping them interesting. I really like that he does current event science topics. One of the websites on the blog was called Edhead. I checked it out and it is doing virtual surgeries. I think this website would be helpful for an anatomy and physiology class. The one negative of the program was that it took a lot of time. They did a large introduction and explained everything very thoroughly. I liked how much it explained the surgery process but if you have already covered the material in class the large introduction just takes more time away from the class.

9/8/12

Reflection on this blog: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/01/12-education-tech-trends-to-watch-in-2012/

This blog is about different technological areas and the advances that they expect to make in being used for education. The one that I thought will be the most prevalent is gaming. I think more and more games with educational purposes are being made and teachers really need to embrace them. Kids connect with electronics and enjoy them. I am not saying that we should do only electronic activities by any means, I think that the hands on and group activities (ex. making volcanoes, coloring pages etc.) are very important as well. I believe that with the advances our society has been making technologically that we have a lot more variety of activities possible in our everyday classroom.

To be honest, I didn't like how this article was written. I felt like the author repeated things just to make 12 different categories of "trends." Some things I felt had nothing to do with education, they were just for anyone that used technological devices (bandwidth, privacy/security). There were also a couple things that I just didn't really understand (the maker movement).

I actually felt like I learned the most from the comments below. One person commented about a free online textbook.  http://goo.gl/U40c0 is the link for the "flexbook" which I found very resourceful. You can look up any grade and any subject matter and they have different options such as National Science Education Standards or the Texas Standard. (Quick interesting fact I learned the other day-Texas has a certain way it wants textbooks done, especially history, and since it is such a largely populated state a lot of publishers cater to their wants) Anyway, the flexbook was really neat because it gave you an idea of what you should be covering and it is a resource your students could use at home if they forgot their textbook at home. It had exercises you could do and it also had links to other websites that pertained to your topic of interest. I know that alot of textbooks you buy these days have their website but I thought this made a good supplemental resource. Something similar that I learned about in high school is khanacademy.org  which is this guy that is absolutely brilliant who makes these videos for different subject matter, I found it especially helpful for calculus.

8/30/2012

http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2008/11/student-friendly-learning-goals-.html 
"How does technology help with writing and communicating objectives?"

The article that Mr. Ferriter wrote made some very good and clear points about how creating objectives may take a lot of time and even seem pointless at first but once you take the time to write objectives that students can easily interpret it makes it easier as a teacher to plan out the rest of the class. I liked how making objectives seemed to spark a dedication in him to go home and assess different ways of teaching and communicating with parents and students. He revised his entire lesson plan according to the objectives he created.

I think that technology could make it easier to communicate objectives. Mr. Ferriter sent home sheets for each unit. To save paper (part of my teaching budget) I would make a website for all of my classes and have different pages pertain to each individual class and put my objectives on there correspondingly. Also, much like how college is, I would add the syllabus and lectures online.

The hardest part of having objectives for your class is making them. One way technology has already helped me with writing student friendly objectives is by providing me with Mr. Ferriter's blog. He explained an easier way of writing them by starting each statement with 'I can...' I believe that there are multiple websites/blogs that have useful tips for  creating objectives. Another way technology can make it easier to deconstruct difficult to understand objectives is by right clicking on the "fluffy" words and choosing a synonym that the computer generates that is easier for students to comprehend.

8/25/12

"Reflect on the role that technology has played in your education thus far.  What role do you see technology playing in your future career as an educator?"

 Technology is part of just about every class in one way or another to make the class easier or make the material more relatable. In anatomy and physiology we watch videos on different surgeries. In my geometry class we had quizzes every week using the clicker system. For my composition class instead of going to the library we used online resources such as ebsco. Students can take classes that aren't offered at their school through distance learning. I think the advancement in technology has made our generation more capable of learning a larger variety of information. If you are interested in something you can go home and google it. If you can't understand it from that; you can youtube or read people's blogs that describe how they did it.

I think technology will continue to upgrade, and we will have to continually be refreshing ourselves on the latest equipment. I hope that they can find a way to make it cheaper-with the constant upgrades it would be very difficult for schools to keep up with the technology if they are so expensive. I think one idea that would be neat would be a whiteboard that is kind of like a touch screen so that after you write on it you can just push an "erase button" that would clear the whole screen.