WEEK 13

The video "Growth" vs. "Fixed mind's, I found was very informative. I have always been the student who took advanced class's and studied very hard to achieve good grades. I thought the two studies she performed were rather interesting. Number one because the grade's the student with the "Growth" study achieved compared to the student's with the "Fixed Mind's". And number two the fact that the teacher's could plainly identify which student's did what study.
I think I would read this book before beginning my teaching and put some if not all of it's values to action in my classroom. As a teacher I want all of my student's to succeed and I will put every effort in helping them do so.

WEEK 12

I watched the video on Coral Reef's. This video explained how photosynthesis work's not only on land but also in the water. It showed a Coral Reef and how all the step's of photosynthesis works.
It also showed many different kinds of fish that were involved in the process. It explained how the fish eat the part's of the Coral Reef and told if they didn't how the ocean and the reef would be outnumbered with different kinds of algae. It also went into detail with the different fish that live off of plankton and other tiny fish and explained how they survive day and night.
I found that this 3 minute video was very useful. I hope to one day teach kindergarten to 3rd grade but, if I happen to end up teaching science in a 5Th or 6Th grade class I would love to use this video. I found it very informative and I believe older student's would be able to comprehend the message more than younger student's. I will most likely watch more of these video's in the future especially when I start teaching.

WEEK 4- Using Blogs in the classroom

I recently searched Google for teacher's in the United States using Blogger.com in their classroom. I found out that many teacher's do in fact use this web-site very often.
One teacher I found uses her web-site to communicate with parent's as well as her student's. She allows for them to comment on whatever they like or dislike and always responds back to them. I thought this was a very useful idea. This would make it very easy for parent's to communicate with their child's teacher when they have question's or concerns.

http://www.classroomblogging.com/using-technology-to-connect-parents-and-teachers.html

This web-site unfortunately did not have any picture's that I could post on here but, it did have a few video's that I thought would be very useful if I was their student or a parent.

Daniel Mclntyre uses blogger.com in his 12Th grade Calculus class. He requires that each day his student's make a post on their blog with the note's from class. He also post picture's, table's, and guides with the note's to help his student's further understand his lesson's.

www.google.com/educators/activities/pdfs_GTA/CribSheet.Blogger3.pdf -

This web-site did not have any picture's I could use either.

Week 16- What I have learned

I have learned numerous thing's in this class this semester. I have mostly learned all about Google, it's program's and how it can help me in my classroom one day. I have a better knowledge on how to use Microsoft Word, Spreadsheets, and how to create a web-site. I am most excited that I learned about the iGoogle page because I know my future kid's will love to learn from that.

Wickipedia

Last semester I found out the hard way that wikipedia was not a good source to use. I took a public speaking class and most of my information came from that web-site. Little did I know that I was going to get counted off for using wikipedia as a source. I've never been a big computer person and I had never really thought about people going in and changing information. After my professor told our class what all goes on in wikipedia I began to understand why it is not a good web-site to use to gather factual information.
I do however think it's very useful since it does have almost everything you need to know and very user friendly. But, if you choose to use wikipedia while writing a speech, paper, or ect I do believe you should always back up you information with a variety of other sources.
I found the article's and video very interesting. I now know why people say it's not a good way to go when you are trying to find the facts.

Week 9- iTunes University

iTunes University was created by apple to help college students. They are calling it iTunes U and provides the best lectures from a variety of Universities. This program is free to users and they are able to download audio and video's. It's very easy to use and can be downloaded to any iPod or iPhone.

I find that this program is very useful to college student's. If I had a iPod and my professor's offered this program I would use it quite often! I think it would be very useful to me considering I am more of a visual learner. I learn more by listening and seeing the professor than I do reading out of the text book. I also think it would be very useful if you weren't able to make it to class one day. You would still be able to get the lecture and be able to catch up on everything you missed.

I hope to one day teach kindergarten or second grade, so I don't think it would be very useful to me when I become a teacher. Unless the parent's wanted to keep up with what their kid's were learning at school then, I would gladly post my lectures online. I think it would be a wonderful idea if 6th-12th grader's were also one day able to access this program. I have never heard about this program until today and I find it to be very useful and exciting!

http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu_mobilelearning/itunesu.html

Week 8- Ipod's and Education

I researched the web about using iPods in today's classroom. I found that a lot of teacher's, school's, and universities have already adopted this new idea. I was very surprised at this because I have never thought about using a iPod in my future classroom. The more I read about it the more I liked to idea. Teacher's are using their iPods to do slide shows and for the little kid's, they are allowing their classroom's to participate in different games they have downloaded.

I also read where Duke University provided all of their freshmen with iPods to use in their classes. They tested this policy out for one year and found that it was very successful. Now they are providing iPods to their student's taking certain classes where professor's adopted the policy.
I do believe that I will one day incorporate the use of an iPod in my classroom to help my student's learn.

http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites070.shtml

Week 7- Oct Fisch Bowl Report

I agree with Karl Fisch in some of his viewpoints about wireless internet in schools. I think it is a good idea to allow students, teachers, and parents to bring in their computer's or ipod's and be able to access the internet directly from their desk. I also find that this would be very useful when it came to school projects. Teachers could have their students bring their lap-top's from home; and the students who are not as fortunate to have internet or a computer, be able to use the ones in the media center.

On the other hand, I agree with Mr. Fisch about the negatives with having wireless internet as well. I do not like the fact that You Tube, Google video, and other web site's that would make learning fun are all blocked. Even though I know some kid's would look at You Tube for fun. I think if the teacher were able to keep a good eye out, it would not be as big as a problem as most would think.

Week 6

I think it's a really good thing for teacher's to have a basic knowlegde of technology. The world we are living in has advanced so much when it come to technology that we as teachers need to incorporate it in our classrooms with our students. I think that we need to use computers and the internet to help keep our classrooms organized.

I read Karl Fisch's responses and I agree with most all of them with the technolgy. I agree we should get our politicians to be more involved with education just as much as they are with healthcare. I also think teachers should get paid a lot more than they do and also get more praise for all the hard work they put into their students and their classrooms.

Week 5- Inernational school using blogger

I searched the web for some international schools that were using blogger.com in their K-12 classrooms. The first one I found did not use blogger for their students but, did use it for the parents. The blog is from Koroboro International School and it puts up posts to let parents know what is going on with the school. They were able to see when parent teacher night occured and also let them know when their child's new uniform's had arrived. The web-site also published pictures of their athelets from some of their competitions. I think this is a good way for parents to keep up directly with whats going on at their child's school.

http://koroboronews.blogspot.com/



Another school I found that promoted using blogger.com in the classrooms was Korea International School. In this blog 9th graders in humanities and Literature classes wrote blogs about different stories they had to read. The teacher was very impressed with their work and recommends that all teachers using blogger.com with their students when they get to be an appropriate age.

http://web20intheclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-in-classroom-why-how-and-lots.html
(This web-site did not have any pictures to display).

Week 3- ACCESS

ACCESS, Alabama Connecting Classrooms Educators and Students Statewide, is a wonderful program that has been developed. This program was developed to help the students of the 21st century learn by tying technology in with the regular classrooms. ACCESS provides students the ability to take a wide variety of courses online that they normally would not be able to take in a regular classroom setting.

ACCESS has a lot of resources available to teachers and to students. It is said that most teachers love the program because they can better relate to their students and the students are excited and eager to learn. ACCESS is adding more technology classrooms to schools and are training the teachers to be well equipped to teach the students everything they need to know with this program. This program has it's pros and con's but for the most part is succeeding when it comes to helping the teacher's teach and the student's learn.

Week 1- Part 2

How would I use ALEX in my classroom when I begin to teach?

I will defiantly use the ALEX program when I start teaching. I find it very useful and I think I would benefit greatly from using it. I love learning new things and I always find it intriguing when I get the opportunity to try something new. I dislike doing the same routine's over and over again, and I am always looking for ways to make whatever I am doing a little bit more interesting.
I'm a visual learner and I know most children are. I plan on using this program to help me to teach so I can be able to help the visual learners as well as the ones who have a photographic memory. I hope to incorporate this program in my classroom no matter what grade I am teaching and hopefully it will help me teach and the children learn.

Week 2- ALEX

ALEX, also known as Alabama Learning Exchange, is a website composed by teachers. In this website they give others the opportunity to see different lesson plans for grades K-12. They have all different kinds of subjects ranging from art to math to technology. They also have different links you can go to on their website that vary from professional studies to distant learning.
This web site is very useful in giving teachers a different outlook on how to teach a certain subject. It's always helpful to talk with others about how you are teaching because you could have a student who is having a hard time learning, and by communicating with another teacher you could just find that one thing that could help that student learn and catch up to his or her level.

Week 1 Did you know?

When I was watching this video I was amazed at how far we have come. Not just America as a country but, the whole world. I knew technology was taking over the world but, I guess a part of the small town girl in me was still living in the old days. I find it amazing how far we have come and what all we are able to accomplish with just a computer. I think we need to start preparing the children of today and ourselves to live in the world of tomorrow. How should we start preparing? I'm not to sure. Maybe we should Google it to find out. :)