Reflection for November 3, 2009

I have been looking around lately to get a video camera. I have just wanted one to have so I can document events in my life. This week in class I learned a whole new way to use a video camera. The flip camera is really cool. Just seeing how easy it is to use makes me want to buy it. I have been looking on KSL.com everyday to try and get a great deal on one. I also learned how easy it is to use an iPod to record pod casts. I wonder if they have anything like that for a Zune.
I want to expand my knowledge with podcasts now. Know that I how many there are millions of different podcasts I can download them and listen to them on the hour long bus to school. Usually I just listen to music, but now I can learn so many new things.
Podcasts and Vidcasts can be used in the classroom is so many different ways. I think it would be fun to use them to help kids read. If they recorded their own voices reading and then listened to what they read, it would improve their reading skills. It would be fun make a list of songs that we used to learn throughout the year on a cd and had the kids listen to it in the summer to remember what they learned. For example, the math songs that a child learns to help them remember.

Reflection for October 27, 2009

Since I was little, I always wondered what school was like in another country. I remember in elementary, my friends told me that in China, students go to school 6 days a week, and only have a few weeks off a year. I am not sure how true that is, but it got my mind thinking. There are so many tools that could be used to see what it is like in another school in a whole different part of the world. The one I am choosing to research is Skype.
Skype is a great tool to use when trying to communicate with people. It started in 2004 and by 2005 there were about 40 million active users. It has features of a telephone, and also some of a messenger. The user can call the computer from a land line and reach the person. There are features with video conferences, and just plain old messenger. You can add little smiley faces or emoticons, and also transfer files.
I could easily use this tool to chat with other classes in other parts of the world. There could be many benefits to using this. I like that it was made to be able to talk to people in other countries. The cons of skype is that there is no way of contacting customer support. If we had a set time to talk with a class and something went wrong. There also is the problem of computers not working.

Reflection for 10/20/2009

Videos are a very great teaching tool. I remember when I was in school I loved watching videos. Before this class, I only knew of youtube.com, so learning about teachertube.com was amazing. I also loved learning about zamzar .com. There are so many videos on the internet, I think it would really be weird for a teacher not to use them.
I can use zamzar to help put videos into presentations with classmates in future classes. I can also use it to keep videos that I find now to download and keep for when I become a teacher.
As a teacher I can use videos to use as examples. If we are learning about weather, I can find a video of a hurricane, or hail. In areas where kids cant learn about things, videos can help with that. For example, in Utah, there isnt a beach with an ocean. On youtube, I could find a video of the beach and some animals in the ocean. I like that I could use zamzar to download a video as a mp3 and have the students use their hearing sense to figure out what it is when I teach the 5 senses. Then I can show them the mp4 format to see if it is correct.

Reflection for October 13, 2009

Picasa is such an amazing tool! I have always wanted to edit pictures, but I never wanted to buy the expensive software. I love that this is free and it seems very easy to use. We just uploaded the pictures and started editing them. It's just super easy.
I can imagine myself using it a lot now. I can edit pictures to put into presentations to make the pictures really stand out. I can use it to brighten up certain areas of the pictures to show the point I am trying to teach. For example, I could show a picture of a street, then ask the students to find something red. On the next slide, I could have everything black and white except for the red stop sign. There are so many other ways to use this, i just can't wait to mess around with it more.

Reflection for October 11, 2009

My digital camera never leaves my purse. I take it everywhere because I want to capture every moment of my life. I was really excited when I looked at the website and saw that we were learning about them in class. I love the assignment. There were a lot of fun things I could take pictures of, and going outside was a great way to spend class time. The assignment was so easy and was fast.
I like that I can import my pictures and use them so easily in the presentation. This will help me as a student to improve my presentations. Once again, GoogleDocs is amazing. I did have a few problems with uploading my pictures, but I just uploaded them into paint and saved them from there. I like that I worked with my partner with taking the picture. It really was fun.
My mind keeps coming up with with new great ideas for using digital cameras in my future classroom. I love the ideas that are on the list of 100 ways to use digital cameras in the classroom. I want to make my classroom visually appealing. Using the pictures on a poster for rules, learning visuals and to make presentations are just a few things that I want to do in my classroom.
The Thruyou video is awesome! It is amazing to me that you can do that with technology. I wonder how long it took for the person that made this to make it. I think this could be inspirational for students to look at this and see what they can come up with.

Internet Safety

I think it is very important to use the internet in education. There are so many things on there that can help students learn, and find a lot of resources. I do however, think it is important to still use the encyclopedias, and hard copy resources.

It is very important to evaluate the website we use because any person can make a website and put wrong information on it. There are so many ways to hack into other computers, and get information and put viruses on computers. We need to be careful of what we have students look at. If we don't evaluate a web page before we have our students look at it, the student could be in an unsafe area. We need to look to see if there are things that ask for information, make sure the information is accurate, and up to date.

1- Is the website up to date?
2- Is the website easy to navigate?
3- Is the information valid?
4- Does the website have footnotes or a bibliography
5- Are there pictures, is it appealing to the eye?
6- Did it take long to load?

The ways I can keep my students safe are have a page blocker on the computer, and educate them. I think it is very important to teach the students about safety before you even get on the internet. Also a good way to keep reminding them is to hang posters of simple tips of how to stay safe.

The video I chose this week is about internet safety. It just goes through different ways teachers can keep their students safe. I really feel that it is important to educate them on internet safety. I like that this video is short and to the point, but it covers quite a bit of information.

UEN Reflection

UEN... If you asked me 1 week ago, I would have told you that it is a channel on the TV. After this long assignment, I really have a good feel of what it it. UEN is such a great tool that I could use now and later on when I start my career. I think that when I create a public profile for my class, I can put so many things on it. I think that the most useful thing for me as a beginning teacher would be the Lesson Plans and the Core Curriculum. I will have lesson plans, but if one is unsuccessful, I can get on to the page and see a different way of teaching that particular core curriculum to my students. I especially love how easy it is to use.
When I have my students do work where they need to find information I will have them only be able to use what is on Pioneer Library. I think that Searchasaurus will be the best resource for them. Since I am planning on being a Kindergarten teacher, I think that the interactive activities will be the most useful of all. I think anyway a child can interact with what is being taught is great.
When I teach my students, I think that a really good thing to teach is diversity. To teach it, I think the Culturegrams would be a great tool to use. We could use it to decide which country we want to know more about. I am a huge fan of writing letters and communicating with webcams. I absolutely loved this tool. I may just use it on my own for a lot of other things.
Overall, the assignment was frustrating because it took so long, but I think that it is a good way to teach all the interesting things that UEN has to offer. I am excited to keep looking at the website and seeing what other great tools it has, and how I can better my web page. I feel that this is not just a great site for teachers, but also students. I want to spread the word out about what a great resource tool this is.
This week my video is about letting students blog. I like this video because it has young children using blogs to learn. I can understand how you can incorporate blogging into a high school curriculum, but it is kind of hard for an elementary teacher to do it. Simple easy assignments can be done and then the parents will be able to see the great work the students are doing.

Reflection for 9/15/209

Wow! Todays class was interesting. We just got started with our assignment, which was Google Documents Presentation, when the power went out. At first it was fun. but then I realized that we were going to have to do the work anyways, so it was just wasted time. Then Doc Waters did something, that I think was brilliant. She started a class discussion about our blogs and other things that related to the class. It ended up really helping because I didn't really understand the blog questions. Now I hope I have them down I ended up learning a few things that wasn't meant to be taught today.

Like I said last week, I love that I can use this for a group presentation and not have to figure out a specific time to meet up and do the project. We can simply split it up and do the work at our own time. I feel like I will really use this throughout the rest of my college life and even on into my career. I don't like that there aren't as many options as PowerPoint, but it still gets the work done. Besides, with a little creativity, and images, I can make it customizable.

When I am an elementary teacher, I can't just tell my students to go home if the power goes out. I will have to be fast and on my feet to start a class discussion, or something that will still keep the lesson being taught, going. I think I can do a lot with Google Presentation. I can use it for teaching lessons and then share it with parents, so if they have questions about a students homework, they can look at the presentation that was used in class to help. I could use it as a fun way to do announcements in the morning, or even take pictures of fun activities and post them on a presentation so the kids can show parents what they did in the day. The options are really limitless when it comes to how I can use it when I become a teacher.

The video I chose to do for this week is like the one from last week. I really got inspired to use technology as a teaching tool, not as an enemy of the classroom. I want to find as many ways to use it as possible. This video isn't quite as good as last weeks, but it still is good. I had to watch it two times, to fully get all the information, but I still liked it. It has a different approach to giving the information.

Reflection for the week of 9/08/09

This week in class, I walked in thinking I knew a lot about Google, so its just going to be a review. I had no idea just how awesome Google really was. I wish I would have know about the documents a week earlier, because I just went out and bought Microsoft Office. I was so interested in everything we learned in class, and just kept thinking how useful this stuff will really be once I start teaching. Can you imagine how much more Google will have in 4 years?
The assignments are really helping me see just how useful the products are. I can now use my iGoogle as my home page, and really be able to just open up FireFox and see my email, and know whats going on without having to go to a million different websites. The letter that we have to do is helping me really see how Google Documents really works. I like that I can work as a group to get stuff done without having to set a meeting time and place. That can get really hard with school schedules and I live in Sandy so its not very easy to meet places for me.
Now I will be able to use these tools in my own classroom in a couple years. I can't wait to see the looks on my students faces when I pull up cool power points, and print out worksheets that are fun, with pictures and different fonts. I will not have to worry about losing my flash drive, or remember to print things off at my house, it will always be where I have access to the computer.
The video this week was really inspiring. I think that all teachers should watch this video. I was one of the high school students who felt that the work I was doing was just busy work, and there was no way I could make anything unique because the teacher had already assigned it for the past 20 years. I couldn't compete with that. If my teacher told me to go home and find a pod cast about our next topic, and bring it to share with the class, or write a summary about it, I would have been so much more interested in the assignment. A text pop quiz would have really been interesting, and I would have to know the information to get a good grade on it. It is hard when a teacher is doing a presentation and cant even work the computer. How is that going to be any fun? I find it more interesting to look at power points with pictures and different fonts, not just white background with black Times text. I really plan on showing the teachers that are in my family this video and maybe they can use some of these ideas in their own classrooms. I really can't wait to see what other videos are coming in the next weeks.

Ideal Classroom Reflection

My ideal classroom would look bright, and when the student walks, they will automatically know it is a fun learning environment. I would like the desks put into tables of about 4, so they can work in teams, and get to know what team work is. I want a corner with a lot of books, with a bright colored rug, for the students to sit on during story time, and a section with learning toys, for free time. The table team names will hang from the ceiling, and the students will create the names as a team.

I want to teach kindergarten, in a school in a big city. I would love it for the parents to be involved in the classroom. Since I am not the best at art, maybe a parent could come in and teach an art lesson, or music lesson. I want to have a class blog that I would update daily with pictures of the work that the students have done. I want to put a lot of technology into the class because it will introduce them to it at an early age. I would want my students to be as engaged in learning as possible. I think it would be a great idea for the teachers to make rotations and teach different lessons so the students don't get tired of the same routine and environment.

I would start the class out with show and tell. I remember that was my favorite part of kindergarten. It gets the students comfortable to speak in front of groups, and also use descriptive words. I would have a different theme after everyone has brought their item. Then I would go into reading. I think that reading a book to the class is good, but also having them split into their teams and have them read the books that they can read. P.E. would be one of the last things that they will do in the day. If they behave well, then they will get rewarded with it, or art, or music.