week 13

    Teachers are constantly designers.  Designers have to layout plans to follow so that the result is the best outcome,  teachers have to do just that.  Teachers have to design their lessons around the type of students that they have and around how the students learn. So every time they teach a lesson it is completely different.  Even the way that the teacher lays out the room arrangement affects how well the students are learning and so the teacher learns to design and adapt a room for the type of classroom setting.
    Scratch is a very important and useful program for in the classroom, mainly a programming classroom.  Scratch helps new students that have never programmed before the basics of programming and how it works.  This program takes graphics and by clicking and dragging the user can create a very simple program.  Now while this program cannot replace the normal way of programming it can help teach basic concepts, which is why it is so useful for programming classrooms.
    Digital storytelling is a new way to help allow students to be creative.  Digital storytelling requires that a student write a story, then after that is organized the student has to become digitally creative.  To be digitally creative the student must make a video to go along with their story, then using the appropriate software  edit the video using their imagination.  This form of story telling allows for the development of creativity in many new and different ways.  Since there are so many ways to edit something digitally there are nearly unlimited ways for something to be edited.  Thus promoting new and creative ideas.  I believe it would work in my classroom because I enjoy when the students are creative and I tend to do anything that will promote this.
    Visualization is very important to completely understanding math. Math and especially in the higher levels of math deal with very complex concepts that involve functions.  The functions get warped in such ways that many times its very hard to understand what is going on, but with visualization it helps the students completely understand what is going on during the problem.  There are many programs that help to visualize what would be going on is such problems probably the most popular being a graphing calculator. 
    I do not believe that someone can completely rely on learning from a television.  While this form of teaching can be very affective in some situations. Most types of learning need to be active and involved so that the student can fully understand by asking questions and get hands on experience rather then watching someone else accomplish something.  Many times while watching the tv the viewer can “zone out” and not really pay any attention to what they are looking at.  While learning something that the viewer finds completely interesting from a tv, may be a good use. Attempting to learn something that the student is not interested at all in can be very hard.  Where having a teacher could help the student in ways a video cant.

                    references 

Jonassens, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M.,Grismond, D. (2008).  Meaningful
           learning with technology. Columbus: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.

Voicethread

    Voicethread looks like it would be really convenient for the classroom, and  I really liked it.  Voicethread looked really convenient and user friendly.  I think that while someone is talking about whatever media happens to be up, that drawing can really help focus on whatever the speaker is talking about.  Allowing multiple speakers makes it nice for group activities, maybe even for a online class even.
    I would use it in my lesson plan if I had a online lesson that required the students to work together.  It would get everyone together to discuss no matter where they are at.  They could still do many of the activities that are on my lesson plan.  The drawing and quick acting activities would be the main activities that would work best.
    I would use this in a classroom when the students are having a busy time during the semester.  Students and especially high school students have really busy schedule with all of the extra curricular activities.  With Voicethread I could have the students get together online no matter where they are at.  I as the teacher could get on and help explain certain things that might help with their studies.

                                                                                 References

Group conversations around images, documents, and videos. (2007). Retrieved from              http://voicethread.com/#

week 11 chapter 3

    The three most important Principles to me are practice principal, discovery principal, and multimodal principal .  practice principal is important because it focuses on letting the students practice the task.  This is very important for mathematics, my teaching subject, because the only way to get better is to try different ways to solve problems and see what works best when.  discovery principal is also important because in math is continually building upon itself so math is naturally taking what you already know and looking into it much deeper. Which is what the discovery principal is about, taking prior knowledge and looking into it much deeper to have a better understanding of it. Lastly the multimodal principal , is important manly because its about learning using different signs. Now while this may not necessarily be directly useful for math, but it will help because not all speech is communicated directly though speech.  Having the students learn this way will help them to learn to read other signs of speech.
    There are many ways to create a simulation for a classroom, but one that would be most helpful for my classroom being a mathematics teacher, would to have the students create a business of some sort.  This will help for a math classroom because it would not only have the students handle money, but help them with problem solving skills that is essential for developing mathematic skills, and lastly have them thinking creatively while working together.  The students would have a limited amount of money to start with so they would have to come up with the necessities for there business and how much to buy. Then set prices to make money off the merchandise. Then they would have to create a marketing system to bring customers in to purchase from there business and where there business would be located at to bring in customers.  Essentially trying to create and maintain a business, and possibly working with other groups in the classroom to learn how the fiscal portion of how a business works.
    What I feel are the important principals are practice principal, discovery principal, and multimodal principal. Mainly because they have a major affect on helping in the subject that I want to teach, math.  A simulation that I would try to create would be having the students create a business and have them decided how to conduct their business for it to grow and become successful.

references  

Jonassens, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M.,Grismond, D. (2008).  Meaningful

           learning with technology. Columbus: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.

Week 7

    Using technology to help support writing is growing at a significant rate.  Anyone can use technology to write anything.   So it should come to no surprise that it can help with any sort of writing activity.  I would make use of creating concept maps to help the students to actively create and plan their own writing assignment easier.  Also using technology to write essays becomes much easier and can help produce more and newer ideas.  Using this technology allows for easy editing.  Some of the online programs make it assessable for others to review the writing and make it very for them to add constructive criticism.
    Not allowing a PowerPoint presentation not distract the viewing audience is very important.  One way not to distract the audience is by not using violent or obnoxiously bright colors, such as red that hurts the eyes and brings the attention away from your presentation to the color.  Other ways not to distract the audience is by not allowing too much animation.  Animation can be helpful when trying to make a point clear but can also take the attention away from what is important.  Following the guidelines from the textbook should be something easy to do and will allow for a very affective presentation.
    Using technology for writing and presentations is becoming more and more popular.  Writing assignments in the classroom are benefiting in more ways thanks to technology. Programs allow the students to practice, prepare, and do the actual writing assignment.  But the students need to understand with technology come some distractions. Such as using PowerPoint to help with their writing.  Students need to understand how to weed out the distractions and make a clear and concise project that will benefit their writing abilities. 


Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology. Upper     Saddle River: Pearson.

Investigating With Technologies

    Personal digital assistants is a handheld device that has many of the same capabilities of a computer.  These have operations that will help organize and plan a day out. They typically have word processors to where you can type documents up on them. What makes these so useful compared to a  normal computer is that they are much more portable and allow them to be taken anywhere. These are very useful in the classroom for a teacher because if they are up and moving around it is much easier to carry and with other technology the Personal digital assistants  or PDA can be incorporated into the main system of computers to allow it to function like a desktop.
    Online surveys are also very useful to use. Surveys are main goal is to collect information in a unbiased way.  The information that is retrieved from these surveys can be used to understand the thought, feelings, and understanding of certain subjects.  One good rule to follow when writing a survey is to keep the questions from being slanted that would cause a different answer. This causes false results in the survey making it inaccurate. Another good rule is to have a variety of survey takers. If there is only one kind of survey taker then the results will also be slanted. Such as if the survey is conducted only during work hours then many people who work will be left out of the survey, once again causing the survey to be inaccurate. Surveys can be use in the classroom by helping the teacher see how much the students already know about a subject or just a overall understanding of the students knowledge.
    Both Personal Digital Assistants and Online Surveys are very helpful in the classrooms but in two different ways. One, the PDA, allows the students to learn. The other, Online Surveys allow the teacher to learn about the students. Both very useful to allow optimal learning.

Yuen, S., & Yuen, P. K. (2003). PDAs as Educational Power Tools. (cover story). Tech     Directions,   62(9), 14. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Webspiration Classroom

    The webspiration classroom would be a good program to have in the classroom.  I really like the organizing portion of the program, I believe that it would make objectives clear and concise so that students will be able to see what needs to be done and when for their project.  The fact that webspiration is online makes it nice to access from anywhere. Also if it is a group project any member can work on the project sharing things from anywhere while getting input from the teacher.  But as with anything on the internet if the internet or something dealing with the system is down, you cant work on the project. It seems like a very good program but you can accomplish the same tasks except the organizing portion on google docs that is free.
    Really any sort of writing activity can be helped with the use of technology. From research papers to long essays. Both with the organization of the essays and with helping to find research for them. As a teacher I would have the students use a online document editor or a blog to post suggestions on other students works for peer review.  This will make it more fun for the students since it is something that they haven’t gotten to do in the past. Peer editing is a good way to help the students learn because if they help teach they will learn the lesson better.  I had taught a lesson about running in speech class and through all of the research I had to do I learned more about running.
    Technology can help in many ways for teaching. With all the new technology out now all you need is a good imagination of how it can help in the class room. Keeping students connected on assignments or letting them peer edit there are so many ways to use technology.

                    Citation
Inspiration Software, Inc. (2011) retrieved from http://www.inspiration.com/

Blogs

I believe that using blogs can be helpful if you use them properly.  If anyone can create a blog then any information can show up on a blog.  This causes for blogs to become  untrustworthy. But if you do use them properly then you will be able to weed out the bad ones.  Blogs can be useful for education in situations like this for the class to stay updated and be able to contact each other very easy.  If someone believes that blogs are a waste of time then they clearly do not understand the possibilities that blogs have. Blogs can be about a wide variety of things and be very useful to some.  I would show them blogs that can help them in everyday activities.  The main way I would use the technology in chapter 6 to support the students, is mostly by letting them use it. If they don't understand something how will they if they do not use it? The use of new technology in general will spark ideas in students and help them create new and creative things.

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M. & Grismond, D. (2008) Pearson, Merrill/Prentice Hall, 3rd edition

Blogs in Plain English [video file] retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI