Do you Believe in Me?

This week I would like to specifically speak on the youtube video that we were supposed to watched entitled "Do You Believe in Me?" Those that attendeed Whatever conference this was that this young student spoke to 20,000 or so people, must have been impressed with the audacity of this particular student. This student didn't look to be more than 10 years old.
I chose to particularly write about this movie because I feel that Believing in our students is one of the greatest ways that we can help our students achieve the greatest success. There are two challenges to this idea of Believing in our students in order to help them succeed. The first challenge would be how do we let our students know that we believe in them. To some students this may come by just telling them we believe in them, while to others us being there for them to support them, or being at their side to help them whenever they need help achieving is another way. These are just two of the many ways that students can perceive our faith in them.
Another challenge comes with helping students believe in themselves. It seems that all us believing in them does is help them to believe in themselves. Although this is an important and necessary way to help students have faith in themselves, it is also sometimes difficult especially if they don't get the same type of treatment at home like this young student mentioned. If we give them all sort of encouragement, support, and resources to help them achieve, and then they get home and are mistreated, neglected, and often times abused, then every day of the week, we will have to build their confidence back up again.
It seems that the best way to help children is by helping them to believe in themselves enough to develop confidence and a sense of resiliency when they are in situations that may be trying and difficult for them to overcome.
How does all of this apply to technology? Well, one word that this young student mentioned in his talk was "create". This word has stuck out to me all semester as we have learned more about technology and have had our own opportunity to create websites, webquests, digital stories, and etc. It has also stuck out as we have watched different videos for weekly reflections. We have learned that Technology is a good opportunity for students to exercise their own creativity. Some of the greatest creative people have achieved much success at applying their creativity to the domain of technology. If we have faith in our students, then we will be able to help them "create" and feel good about their own accomplishments, which in turn will breed more success.

Week 14

This week I have recognized that I have some serious learning to do about technology. My partner and I did our lessons for our classroom. Two of our lessons were technology enriched, while the other three involved just a basic use of a promethean. I learned something very valuable while we were doing these two lessons. I definitely need to work on basic troubleshooting with computers.
For one of our lessons, we created a virtual museum using power point. We linked different slides within the power point to each other in order to allow the students to navigate through this power point file. They were able to choose and click on any picture that was hanging on a wall and that would lead you to a slide with information about that person or pictures. I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with such a program, however when there were some basic problems with getting the program to work properly for these students, I didn’t have much of an idea of what to do. The computers in this classroom are all MAC’s and I typically use PC’s. I am not as good with MAC’s because I am not quite as comfortable. I see the importance of being able to work with all sorts of programs, and computers in order to help students advance technologically without worrying about taking time out so that you can fix your computer errors.
We were also able to use the Promethean this week. It seems like one good aspect about learning how to use a promethean as a teacher, is that it takes you back to learning how to write the letters of the alphabet. It was so difficult at first to write just our basic letters. I see that this board is a great tool in a classroom as our teacher uses It quite often, however if you don’t understand how to work it, it can really cut into important instructional time.
One last thing that I would like to talk about pertaining to the classroom and the teacher that I have been able to observe is that this teacher is one of the lucky teachers that is able to have a technology rich classroom. She has mentioned a few times that the reason she gets these resources is because she has taken extra classes and has received extra training in the use of technology. When I am a teacher, I will be eager to do any work that will provide me with the opportunity to have such resources.

Week 13

Since I blogged last week about Social Networking tools, I thought that I would blog this week about some of the things that I have noticed pertaining to technology within the classroom. I was happy to see that this classroom was rich in technology tools, however I would like to note that I was disappointed in how they were used.
The first technology tool that I found rather interesting was the Promethean board, much like a smart board. I didn't really know what either of these tools were until I started my field work in this classroom. I liked this Promethean board. It seemed like a very useful tool within the classroom in that you can have a worksheet with different math problems on this board. You can add to the board, and much to my suprise, you can even take away from the board. I was suprised to see that the teacher was able to erase even what she dowloaded to project onto the promethean board. I would be interested to see how that program works exactly, however we were unable to have time to go over it. I was disappointed that the teacher didn't have the students use this board as much as she used it herself. I was also disappointed when one of the students asked the teacher a question about how to do something on the promethean, and she responded with, "we are doing Math right now."
A second feature that I was suprised at was that there are 15 MAC desktop computers. These computers were really nice, and I was suprised to see that they hadn't been used for about 4 days. I finally asked her if she used the computers much, and I think she may have been a bit embarrased. She did say she had an activity planned for after recess, and they did some sort of webquest to learn about different Biomes. I was mainly just suprised to see that these resources were so readily available, but she didn't use them. It seemed like they could do their bell work that they do everyday on some type of computer program.
In the future, when I have my own classroom, I only hope to have a classroom that is as technologically full of resources as this classroom. I would love to use a promethean board, and allow my students to be able to experiment with creating programs and presentations for this board. I would also like to use these tools more than this teacher did, as they will only help students to become up to date with the world.

Week 11 Blogs

This week under the reflection category on the class website, their were a lot of questions asked about Social Networking tools. Most of these questions had to do with communication with your students' parents, your students themselves and your colleagues. Most of the Social Networking tools that we have discussed have been facebook, myspace, and blogs. It seems that all of these tools would be helpful in communication, however they should be used with caution.
The first area is use with your students. First off, I believe that these Social Networking tools are tools that students, particularly secondary education students, visit frequently. My younger sisters are constantly checking their facebook account, which in some ways annoys me at home, but it seems to be really imperative for the survival of their Social Life. This fact makes it seem effective for you to be able to ensure that students receive a message. The problem is that students can deny that they received a message to prohibit them from turning something in on time, or being prepared. Another area of concern is classroom gossip. I can't tell you how many times I have heard my sisters tell me some type of gossip they have learned about on facebook. As much as you try to filter something, you have no way of monitoring what is said by or of students.
These tools seem highly effective as means for communicating with parents who have these accounts, however it seems to me that parents are reluctant to join some of these social networking sites because they believe that they are too old for them. Most of them seem like sites for teenagers to keep up with their friends. Another hesitation I have with using these sites with your parents is that a lot of parents won't know enough about technology, nor have a need to learn about technology, and would prefer other forms of communication. It seems that it would be important for teachers to accomodate their parents as they use different forms of communication. E-mail would seem to be a great communication tool among parents.
I am not a huge fan of facebook and myspace if you haven't noticed from this blog. If you need to get in contact with somebody, why not e-mail them. It also seems that some of these social networks require you to be in contact with certain people. How could you deny somebody when you are added as a friend? There are some people that I don't really care to know what is going on in their life, and don't want them to know about mine. I don't like feeling an obligation of having to respond to meaningless wall posts. I would rather just e-mail people. If they are somebody you really want or need to communicate with, you would have their e-mail address. Plus e-mail can be a private vehicle for communication. I have been in a situation where somebody lost their job because of something that was posted on a social networking tool, and I just don't feel that they are private enough, but I am typically a very private person. Because of some of these things, I would prefer to use e-mail with my colleagues, rather than social networking tools.

Webquests

Webquests is a great tool for communicating with Parents, Students, and Colleagues in many ways. The whole arrangement of the webquest is friendly for all. It gives you a brief introduction, the task, the process, the objectives, and the conclusion. They can all be reached online. It is almost like an online syllabus, or rubric per say, that the Parents can look up to see what their children are working on in school. It would be great if you e-mailed parents a link to the webquest, or better yet, posted it on your class blog or e-mail.

It seems that it would be extremely easy for students to understand. They just need to know how to navigate themselves through the webquest, which can be taught in the classroom. Once they are used to the process, they will be able to do more webquests. It is also nice because the teacher can put appropriate, and reputable websites with information that the student can use. This will prevent the students from having to cite, and be sure the information they found is correct.

After looking online at the many webquests that have been posted, I learned that webquests are not only a good way to communicate with your immediate colleagues, but also colleagues all over the world. This prevents the teacher from having to always create their own webquests. Teachers have a limited amount of time as it is, and with the development of the webquest, the teachers time is now freed up a bit more.

Webquests are effective in that they keep students in touch with the technological world, while they are simultaneously learning about different content areas. This seems to create a greater ability for students to stay engaged in areas that may otherwise seem dull.

Some of the cons of webquests are that, depending on the type of webquest, it may inhibit cooperative learning for some students as they could become better friends with the computer. As i was looking online however, there seemed to also be activities that involved working with your peers.

I would like to use webquests in my class quite often in that it would be very easy to communicate exactly what you want to the students. It also would be easier for the student to understand the process.

Strengths and Weaknesses

If I could choose my title for this Blog, I would just title it weaknesses. As I have gone over the standards I have learned that I don't have strengths when it comes to technology. I am a pre-novice or novice for most of the UNI standards. I do have areas that are better than others. They would be that I can operate a computer system. I can create files and organize documents, pictures, and etc. I can also back them up on a simple thumb drive. I know word processing programs, and I can do some work with spreadsheets. Those are areas that i could definately improve on, but have the most knowledge. There are many areas that I could improve on, but the two I chose for this assignment are troubleshooting (I didn't even know what that word meant. I had to look it up at dictionary.com), and adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs.
I often encounter problems with computers and other technological material. My main solution is to do something else instead. For exmaple, I can't work a comcast remote control. I have never had cable until just recently. I just barely learned how to turn the t.v. on and scroll through the guide. Prior to my "awakening", I would just have somebody else turn on the television, or I would just find something else to do. I don't want this to be the case in my classroom. I want to be able to at least fix basic computer problems without having to look like an idiot by calling a specialist for a minor problem that sometimes just has to do with clicking a button. I have found a website that could help me with this. I found it via delicious. It is located at www.computerhope.com/basic.html. The URL describes this website perfectly. This will give you some basic troubleshooting strategies to try when you have various problems. It could be considered like an online tutorial.
The next goal I have would be able to help students with disabilities work different assistive technology to help them function better in the classroom. Because we live in an age where all students are integrated into the classroom, regardless of their level of functioning, it is imperative that teachers know what assistive devices are out there, how they can help students with disabilities, and how to work these devices. I found a website called RehabTool.com. This websites does exactly those three things that I just listed. It even has an online forum if you have any questions, or need any feedback. It seems like a great resource for teachers to help students with disabilities.