Week 13 Blog

Teachers act like designers every time they have a lecture or assign a project.  When they are giving their class a presentation they always have to make sure it is appealing to the students and can hold their attention for a long period of time.  Many times the teachers have to design a worksheet or a project that requires them to start from scratch and design the format and make the seem fun and worth doing to the students. Everything they do they have to think of the student and how it will visually affect  them.  You don't want to present a student with something that would see overpowering and make them not want to do it because it seems to hard.




Sketch up is powered by google and allows you to make a 3-D simulation for virtually anything. This would be good in almost any class. History you could create a model of a city form the past and see what it would look like.  Science it would be a good way to create a a model of habitat for an animal or to make a model for the solar system.  In Agriculture it would be a good way to develop blueprints and then execute them for a grade, and they could see exactly how i would look if they built it. I believe this would be a good way for  students to express themselves and provide them with some hands on learning they desperately need in the classroom.




Digital storytelling is way for anyone to create a story from beginning to end.  They develop ideas for a story and then they analyze them and put them in story form.  They can associate pictures and even music with their story.  The students get to record their stories and then time it with pictures and music.  This is a great way for children to get involved with writing.  Writing is something that teachers struggle with when getting children interested.  This way they have an incentive of making their story and then showing the whole class what they did. 




Using graphing calculators is great way for students to learn how to do complicated problems.  The book says to give them visual aides to help them along.  Calculators are a great way to help them along as well as interactive projectors where they can watch the teacher work out the problem.  There are even handheld calculators that are connected with the Promethean boards that let the students interact together.




I believe it is possible for students to learn how to do something from the TV, but I don't think they could learn to do it correctly or efficiently unless there was someone there to answer their questions and supervise them so that when they try to execute it themselves that they do it correctly. Children need interaction and a way to express the,selves, by simply watching something on the television They are not meeting all of their potential and cannot be expected to actually grasp the information at hand.


References
Jonasse D., Howland J., Marra R. M., & Crismond D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 11 Blog

   The three most important principles for education, in my opinion are: 1) Practicing principle, the students get more interesting hands on learning so that the information really sinks in and helps them grasp the information.  the second is the discovery principle where the student thinks out the process on their own and figures out how they need to solve the problem.  This helps the student learn the problem solving skills that they will need in the future.  The third principle that I think id the most important of the three is the committed learning principle. This is a longer periods of time where the student has to commit to learning the subject and associating them with things that actually happen in the real world.  All three of these principles I think would help a student to better understand the lesson and grasp the material. 
     Simulations are very useful when teaching a complex lesson, they can help the student to actually understand what is going on.  I think in my Ag class I will use a lot of simulation to help my students grasp the lesson.  When we are welding, woodworking, wiring, or even just learning the parts of an animal I know that it will be key for me to apply ample hands-on experience. Almost everything in my classroom will have a simulation associated with it.
     These three principles go hand and hand with simulations.  They allow the student to actually grasp the lesson and subject at hand in a way that they can understand themselves.  Without using simulations it would be hard for the student to gather information and truly remember and learn the information.  School would be a much harder place for children if we did not use these principles and simulations and we would just be setting our kids up for failure. 


Jonasse D., Howland J., Marra R. M., & Crismond D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 7: Technology with Writing

     I actually like some of the writing activities with technology explained in the book.   I would like to use the synchronous setting to have my students work on group projects together.  I feel like many times when you assign a group a paper to write that only one of the students does the majority of the work.  This way I feel like they can all contribute equally to their project.  I also like the concept map, it would really help the students to figure out exactly what they wanted to include in their paper and how much they really want to use.  The concept map I feel would be a very effective way for the students to work together in writing their paper and feel like they have a more active role and this I feel would make them more prideful in their work.

     There are several things one can do so not to have a distracting PowerPoint.  For one I would stick to the 7 by7 rule for PowerPoint’s.  Which is no more than 7 words on 7 lines a slide.  I feel like this keeps the audience engaged more because they aren’t really trying to read all of the information on the slide and they are paying more attention to the speaker at hand. I also do not like it when a presenter reads me everything that Is on their slides, I feel that you should just put the main points on the slide show and speak about the details this way the audience feels more engaged.  I also think that too many pictures and sounds can distract the listeners.  If they are focused on what your pictures look like then how can they be focused on what you are saying?  I think that I can follow the pitfalls from the textbook, they are all very good points and they have helped me to realize what I have done wrong in my past presentations. 

     Technology is a very good thing in the classroom and can help us to help our students get things done in an orderly manner.  PowerPoint presentations can be very helpful in teaching students more about the lesson and can even provide a visual aide to help them better understand.  PowerPoint scan also be helpful to the teacher because it allows them to teach a lesson in a more efficient way and allows them to use less tools and space for one thing.  I believe that if we utilize these technologies in the classroom that we can better teach our students. 

References

       Jonassen, David, Howland, Jane, Marra, Rose M., Crismond, David. (2008). Supportingwriting with technology. Meaningful Learning With Technology. pp. 62-79, Columbus,OH: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 6 blog

     PDAs are personal digital assistants, or small handheld computers.  PDAs are becoming more and more available in the classroom and are a very useful way to help students get that hands-on experience needed to help them learn.  PDAs are very effective in helping calculations, emails internet access and many more useful features.  I have used these in many of my classes in high school.  One that I remember very well is the calculators that hook up to the promethean boards.  Everyone in the classroom would get a calculator and then we could see on the board what we were putting in our calculators. 

     We use online surveys to help us figure out data and reasons forwhy you may or may not like something.  I believe that using them in the classroom is a very effective way to make sure your students are very engaged and have paid attention to the task at hand.  On the other hand I don’t believe we should take what the students say to heart every time because kids are not always rational in their reasoning’s behind something.  I believe the two main rules should be not to ask the same questions over and over because they might not take it seriously, and to make sure the questions are simple and easy to understand.  Both of these help to avoid misinterpretation and make the questions seem more serious. 

     I think that teachers are taking way to much initiative in thinking about what their students want to know instead of focusing on what they need to know.  Technology is a great thing in the classroom and using online surveys and PDAs are very good ideas but I still believe we are focusing way to much on the technology usage and not enough what is actually being taught. 

Jonassen, D. Howland, J. Marra, R. M. Crismond, D. (2008). Maeningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Merrill Prentice Hillon

Week 4 Blog

     I think that spreadsheet is a very useful program.  I love the fact that I can do a lot of things for my classroom in just one place.  Spreadsheet is very easy to use as well as convenient, it takes less time to organize your thoughts and design your worksheets and tests in the way that you want them done.  You don’t have to worry about spending a lot of time positioning everything the way you want it, the program does it for you.  I know that this will be a very useful and almost required tool in my classroom.  Excel is a very easy program that is used very frequently in agriculture to evaluate and track animals and business. 

     We use spreadsheets in the classroom because they are very efficient to store grades and make worksheets.  As a teacher you don’t have as much time to make tests, lesson plans and keep a grade book; spreadsheet makes this easier and allows for more time to be spent developing a curriculum.  Spreadsheets are a lot easier than calculators because all you have to do is type in the equation one time and it calculates all of the grades at one time.  It is a very time conscious program and also helps to avoid error a lot  better than a calculator and has a quicker input time. 

                I think the three primary functions of spreadsheets are all very useful. Calculating comes in handy when doing grades; it helps you to store and organize your information to keep it in an accurate form.  I also like that it is almost an interactive program that you can do with your students.  I love Excel and I believe that I will use it very often in my classroom.

 Sources

Jonassen, D. Howland, J. Marra, R. M. Crismond, D. (2008). Maeningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Merrill Prentice Hill

Blogs in the Classroom

Blogs in the Classroom

     I like the idea of using blogs, but only to a certain degree. I think that people in general, are posting way too much on blogs and social networks and it is bringing us a point where there really isn't such a thing as a personal life nowadays. From an educational point of view I believe it can be a very helpful tool in keeping track of students and assignments outside of the classroom.

     I believe a blog can be a very helpful tool for students by helping them to remember dates and details of assignments and things such as club meetings. Especially in the Agriculture classrooms, you can remind students of meetings and events that are going on and make sure that they are all aware of deadlines. Blogs can be helpful in keeping everyone on the same page, but I hope we don't grow too dependent on them and forget how to keep up with everything on our own.

     I feel that requiring a student to have a blog is somewhat of a waste of time. First of all I have students in middle school that are more aware of blogs than I am. Secondly, there are a lot of things that are more important than teaching a child how to display information on a website and set up a social networking profile. If I am going to be teaching a student, then I have a lot of other things I would rather them know about. In our text book a teacher remarks that a blog "would encourage students who normally wouldn't participate in class discussions."(Jonassem). Honestly students have to learn how to speak in front of others and share their opinions. Most people will not be able to sit behind a computer for the rest of their lives without human interaction. It can be a useful tool, but can also help us to lose the personal aspect of teaching.

Sources

Jonassen, D. Howland, J. Marra, R. M. Crismond, D. (2008). Maeningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Merrill Prentice Hill.

Hi Y'all!!!

     Hi y'all I'm Randi.  I'm 19 and graduated from Quinlan Ford High School in 2009.  I am currently a sophomore and I will be graduating in May 2012 with a degree in Agriculture education. I have a fiance' in the Air Force who is stationed in Alaska.  I work at Boles ISD as a substitute teacher. I am working hard to get out of college ASAP!!!