EDLD+5364-+Teaching+with+Technology+Reflection+Page

Week One- I am very excited about starting this class. With the readings, the videos and the collaborative assignment, I am excited to see what this class has to offer. Many of us have the issue of time, curriculum, and district expectations so it will be interesting to see how this class could help in all those areas. Web 2.0 shows us how technology has made its way into our students homes. How much time our students spend doing something electronic is amazing. It's also amazing that they are no longer just competing against their neighbors in the job industry. They are now having to think about people that are half way around the world and must take that new education and skill set into consideration. The internet articles that we read really covered the surface of some of the projects that we could incorporate into our classrooms. The goal of every "new age" teacher is to have a classroom based on project based learning. The trouble is to get schools and districts to follow along with it. They discussed how real life application can improve the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy as well as holding steady in standardized testing. This kind of learning can take our students directly from the classroom to the workforce, taking what they have already learned inside the academic environment and apply it outside. The last article touched on social networking and Second Life. After my very brief experience with Second Life in another class, I am still struggling with how this could play a productive role in any school or professional environment. The final video that we watched with the British Professor and his chip implants, provided a view of what I thought would only happen in movies. Views from Terminator and Aliens brought to life the very, to me sometimes, scary thought of being able to control things by "plugging humans in". At this point, it is quite remedial and of course, needs much work...but with this in mind, I am hoping that this technology does not go beyond the advancements that we as humans are capable of handling. All in all I am looking forward to what this class has to offer. I am hoping to streamline how to incorporate technology yas an EFFECTIVE learning tool so that all my students can learn and so that I have the ability to learn right along with them.

Week Two- This week was interesting with the main article having to do with students and technology in low socioeconomic areas. I have felt for several years that the educational profession has really seemed to focus in this area. I haven't seen too many articles in our classe sthat have focused on the changes in standardized scores for students who live in average economic areas as well as those who are on the wealthier side. The only reason that I am bringing this part up is that I work in a more affluent section of my digstrict and many people use the consistent phrase, "well, you get those scores because of the area that you teach in...your kids are just smart". While many of my students are bright, I have many that struggle with dyslexia, special needs, autism, are emotionally disturbed. With this, I have parents who work non-stop to provide their students with the houses, clothes and material possessions that are so popular in my area. This leaves much to be desired when working with students who struggle at school and then have no support at home. Many of my students have the latest technology at their fingertips which may be an advantage over those who do not have computers or the internet in their own homes, but most of my students are self taught and are, for a lack of a better term, "babysat" by the latest and greatest in audio and video. I would love to know how students who live in affluent areas and have the most of many things, compare to those who have to access most through academic environments. In Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, I felt that this chapter was a little remedial. I learned about Kidspiration and Inspiration since I tool my methods classes almost 10 years ago and have been using Rubistar since I started teaching. I know that authors need to start somewhere and I am sure they are wanting to cover all their basis, especially with teachers who are not as comfortable with technology as others, but I feel as part of this class we are way beyond this instructional information and feel as though the first chapter could have been scanned for review and we could have moved on to more applicable things that work for our level of study. Blogs have started to make their way onto the elementary educational scene. They are used by many teachers as a fun and interactive way for teachers to post things for parenst to see, most are not interactive at this level. I could see some great possiblilites with those at the higher level...the same goes with email. Districts have become quite strigent with email access and levels of access thgat students have while on campus. I have worked with email addresses for all my students through gmail that is strictly used for the Google Docs and Wikispaces process. No personal or even academic emails are sent through this address currently..I'm not sure that I want to go there. All pose great thoughts in where our schools, students an districts need to move.

Week Three- This week was completley intriguing to me! I was so excited when I saw the title of the class and this week was a culmination of all I was hoping it would be. I enjoyed all aspects of our readings this week. Both books gave great resources for some things that you could actually implement in the classroom. I have made myself my own little cheat sheet to be able to add sites and software that may be beneficial to go back and review long after this class is over. What I want to focus on the most this week are the videos. I loved Luis and his inspirational story of being the first one to go to college from his family and how technology has become such an integral component of his life. But I especially liked Cameron's story! Wow, what an amazing young man. I have parents and students who complain about 30 minutes of homework each night yet this boy wakes up at 5:30 to video tape himself making hockey shots on goal to be able to analyze his hand and foot work. I am currently teaching 10 and 11 year olds and most of my days are filled with complaints from the students and their parents. I can't imagine any of my students making the extra effort to do anything that we saw from this young man. I was also impressed with his "green screen". I have been asking my campus to purchase a green screen for our campus for about thrfee years now and would never in a million years thought of using green posterboard! I mean, really! Do you have to be 11 to have such ingenious ideas? I was impressed with his diligence, his ability to work with his peers and his teachers, to show his parnets the latest and greatest and to make sure that he stays on top of balancing his school work with multimedia. I loved the ideas that he had to share and I am hoping to take his ideas back to my clasrsroom to encourage my students to be able to make the extra effort to take their leanring one more step! How exciting! This was a nice pick me up to a long week of teaching!

UDL Lesson Planner- After working with the UDL lesson plan builder I thought that it, as well as the site had a lot to offer as far as finding what would work best for your vas array of students. I appreciate the fact that it takes into account all learning disabilities including those that are vision and hearing impaired. I am hoping that by sharing this site with many other teachers that I will see a trend that goes to those who wish to do more for their special education students insdie the general education classes. I did find that some of the things on the planner seemed repetitive. I did not feel as though all of the information was worded correctly and it would have been nice to have been able to upload word documents to include with the lesson staright the the plan builder. I created a rubric for my project and would have liked to have been able to attach the word document wihtout having to save it to a website or try to attach it to a google docs, which it would not allow me to do. I can see some absolute strengths to this application, just wish I would have been left with a little more lee-way.

Week Four- This week we really looked into how to focus on collaborative learning and how to implement it in the classroom. //Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works// includes quite a few examples of how to use technology collaboration in the general education classroom as well as listing some sites that may help with allowing schools to emphasis what is going on in thier own classrooms and schools but to also connect them with schools around the world. //Web 2.0 new tools, new schools,// hit on a huge topic in the technology field, professional development. I am always encouraged when I see the new levels of the technology workshops that are offered over the summer in my district. this last summer I signed up for more of those than I did in my own curriculum area. I felt as though I would get some great ideas to be able to incorporate into my classroom and I was excited to see what presenters had to offer. I attended several of these classes and was ready to get started with what I had learned...and then the first day of school hit and all my plans went by the way side. All I had learned that summer was shoved into the corner while I got buried under paperwork, parents, lesson plans, staff meetings, ARD's, 504's, emails, grading papers and all the other things that come with the daily grind of teaching. My conefernce time that I could be using to set up technology projects is consumed by running copies, parent conferences, meetings with my team or administration or answering the massive amounts of emails that I recieve daily. All that I was so excited about in the beginning has taken a back seat. There is no one coming into my classroom to check up on what I learned that summer. There is no one in administration that is holding me accountable for a technology lesson plan each nine weeks and staff developments that may get me excited all over again are few and far between. I enjoy this chapter for the aspects of Web 2.0 that should be easy to incorporate. For this, I am hoping to start up again with my established wiki and allowing students to work more with google docs, our classroom blog and making our own podcasts. From Chapter 7 of //Teaching Every Child in the Digital Age//, I have conflicting feelings. Although I agree with the author in his discussion of how many students would think of the same test in many different fashions, I have to think in the areas of how to manage so many students learning on different levels or with different styles. I am not negating his major point but I am playing devils advocate. How would you like to provide this individualized instruction in over crowded classrooms with teachers who are underpaid and in many cases, undertrained? I have enjoyed reading chapters of this book, but found this chapter particularly hard to swallow, not because I disagree, but because this is something that may only occur in a perfect world.

Week 5- I love the video with James Paul Gee. Although these rae not new ideas, I appreciate his refreshed idea on how to incorporate games in assessments. I appreciate the idea that games are ongoing assessments, if they students aren't successful then the game tells them that they are not. I loved the quote "kids want to produce, not just to consume". New games are coming out have the software capabilities that allow students to change and manipulate the game to create new things to happen in the game. He also discusses the fact that many of our schools across the United States are test prep schools rather than allowing students to collaborate with their peers for the "group to be smarter than the smartest person ion the group". As a teacher, I appreciate much of what he had to say about the profession of teaching. There is much to be desired in the area of education and bringing down the walls with digital learning will allow teaching to become a sought afetr position and much more exciting the the people that now make up the work force. Sasha Barb has the same conceptual idea about using video games, especially in real life appliactions to get students involved in making decisions and taking the consequences of the decisions that they make. It makes a much more profound impact if they don't make the right decision rather than getting an "A" or a "F". Howard Gardners information was fabulaous and informative, but I really enjoyed the small portion of hsi video where he talked about his project talking about ethics and "trying on different masks". That it is okay to try on different masks, we may all at times want to be someone or something different, but this comes with knowing that you can not try on those masks at the risk of hurting someone else. I loved this analogy and appreciated his ability to voice it so well. I enjoyed both the infomercials on learning through technology, although I think most school districts overall have a long way to go to embrace this type of thinking. In Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, I enjoyed this chapter on reinforcing effort. Much of what I have seen my job come to in the last five years is to start the vicious daily cycle at 7:50 a.m. each morning in trying to get those students to show pride in thier work. To want to do, because they want to do. Then I send them out the door at 3:00 to go home to houses where they have no chores, earn allowances for simply being there and want for nothing (most have more technology in their rooms than I do in my whole house!) I fight the same battle each day when I have to try to overcome the entitled attitude that a significant portion of my students have. The thought and idea of visually representing to students through grpahs and rubrics thier "effort" is ingenious and I am looking forward to implementing this into my next classroom project! I loved Web 2.0 informatgion on assessment on line. I love the idea of portfolios that can be accessed through the internet and allowing so much more into the world of learning than just the paper pencil tests. Our students have so much more to offer, I am hoping that teaching continues to look forward to help each student learn thier best!