What I Learned from Other Presentations

It was fun to watch other people's presentations and see how everyone was able to use technology in their classrooms. There were many different ideas that I was able to get from watching them but one thing that I really learned was that children are sometimes more excited to learn when you use technology. This will in turn get them more interested in the subject matter and they will become more involved. That could lead to a better understanding of what is being taught. There are so many ways to use technology within a lesson and this can enhance a lesson by allowing the children to become more actively involved. This will also give the children a chance to see how to properly use the technology so they can use it in the future.

Internet Safety

1. What article did you choose to read for your fourth article?

The fourth article that I chose to read was Called "Righting Internet Filth". This article was by Mario Hipol and the first one under the Internet Safety link on the LDS website and thus I thought it would be very valuable to my learning. I found that this article gave a lot of helpful and valuable information to adults and parents for how they could protect the children around them from the 'filth' on the internet. It gave actual instructions for parents and adults to follow so that they could protect their personal computers in their homes.

2. What were the most important things you learned from the readings?

One of the things from the reading that I thought was very important was that even a same game could lead into additive behavior. This is why it is so important for everyone to decide today to avoid harmful information and filth by protecting our lives from this additive behavior. We need to start following different ways to protect not only ourselves but others around us so that we do not fall into a difficult situation. This will prevent many of the problems that will arise if we do this today.

3. How will what you have read influence your actions as a parent and/or teacher of children and youth?

I've learned so much information from these articles that it is difficult to see me not using the information to better my life and those around me. First, I think that I am much more aware of the dangers that everyone can come across as they are on the internet and so I want to take precautions to ensure that my future children and students will less likely fall under the grasps of additive behavior and internet filth. Now I know that I will safeguard against the many problems that could arise on the internet. Additionally, now that I understand that such small things can become addictive behaviors, I believe that I will spend less time on the computer doing things that are pointless, such as checking facebook. There are better things I could and should be doing with my time.

4. How can you use what you have learned from the reading to have a positive influence on family and friends?

One way to help my family and friends is to make them aware of the problems that can arise from the internet. That is the first step to preventing the negative problems, is to be aware of them and their risk. Also, I could help them to know and understand the different prevention tactics to use in order to protect themselves and others from the evils on the internet. By introducing them to the articles that I read, they would be able to see the danger and become aware of different situations in their own lives. Additionally, when I have children of my own I can teach them about the problems and the blessings of the internet so that they know the difference.

Technology Practicum Intergration Power Point

Technology Integration

View more presentations from hharris387.

Technology in Lesson Idea

I plan to use a powerpoint and math template with my students to help them to review adding and subtracting large numbers. The way I am planing to do this is to play a game, Math Jeopardy, where the students are given a question that they need to solve. If they students get the question correct then they get to move on in playing the game. The goal is to answer 10 questions correctly and get to the end of the path before without making any mistakes. If the students get the question wrong then they have to go on a side road which explains how to correctly solve the problem. Then they get to try and solve the same problem again. This will help them to understand how to carry numbers into the next place value and how to borrow from another place value. Because it is a review they will not need as much instruction at the beginning and so I might just model a few examples of adding and subtracting large numbers on the board.

Lesson using Technology

I think that I would use the a digital story board to help teach the students how to sort and classify objects using more than one attribute. I could do this by giving the students different objects that they will need to sort. Then I would help them come up with the different categories that the objects could go into. We would work together to write a story about each object and how we know that it relates to another one and therefore it must go into the same category or how they are different and must go into different categories. This story could be a true one that happened in my own life. For example, it could be objects in my room and how I organized them within my room. After the students and I have finish writing a story about where all the objects should go and how we know they are in the right stop, then we would draw pictures of the objects. These pictures could be the ones that we could use in the digital story board. Each student could then do a similar story of their own about all the objects in their room and how they would sort and classify the objects into categories that were similar with others.

Technology Inventory

Currently, I am participating in my first cohort experience. The school that I am at is called East Meadows in the Nebo District in Spanish Fork. I am in a 3rd grade classroom where I am proud to say that technology is used often. In the few days that I have been in the classroom, I have been able to discover many ways that technology is used within a classroom and what all is available in the school.

The school provides all the classrooms with an audio enhancement so that the teachers do not have to worry about students being able to hear them. This is a great device that I believe should be in every elementary classroom. Also, the school has two computer labs that have over 30 computers each were the students can go as a class to review or study any subject. These computer labs are available to all classes as long as they are signed up for in enough time. Additionally, the upper grades have a few computers in their classrooms. The school is planning to put in another computer lab just for the sixth grade so that the other ones will be more available. The children go to the computer labs a few times a we to help them on many of the topics that they are learning. In addition to the computers, this school also has VCR and DVD, document cameras, digital cameras, and video cameras that came be checked out. Lastly, there is one smartboard that is shared in the school.

I was shocked to see how much technology was available but extremely happy to see that the teachers take advantage of the technology in most of their lessons. My school, East Meadows Elementary School, is a new school that place a great portion of their budget on technological advances.

Virtual Tour Link

Here is my Virtual Tour Link.

TPACK for Virtual Tour

Social Studies Core Corriculum for 6th Grade:

Standard 1
Students will understand how ancient civilizations developed and how they contributed to the current state of the world.

Objective 1 Explain why physical geography affected the development of early civilizations

a. Identify the major physical features of the regions where ancient civilizations flourished.

Content: The content that I will be to view and discover four different ruins and the cultures that built them. The students will learn about the Roman, Mayan, Egyptian, and Chinese civilization and how these different cultures contributed to the world we know today. The students will be able to compare and contrast the information that they learned about each particular ruin and the culture behind it.

Pedagogy: The activity will have to be presented in a way that will be helpful to the students' learning. I believe that this can be achieved by having the children study one group of ruins at a time. Once the students have gained an understanding of all the four ruins then we could compare and contrast them so they will not confuse which information goes to what ruin. Also, in order to make the activities more meaningful I will try to focus the lesson on the students by asking if they have been to these ruins, if they would like to go, what they think they would find there, etc

Technology: The Technology that I will be using in the lesson is Google Earth and the Internet to go to these websites:

http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/ruins.htm, http://www.italylink.com/woi/buildings/colosseum.htm,

http://www.eyelid.co.uk/pyramid3.htm,

and http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/greatwall.htm

These websites will help the children answer the questions that they are give about the ruins and their civilizations. These technologies will help the children gain knowledge and understanding of where the ruins are around the world.

Virtual Tour Plan

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1. Tikal, Guatemala	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/ruins.htm and answer some questions about the Mayan Ruins by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Mayan ruins in Tikal, Guatemala
2.Rome, Italy	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.italylink.com/woi/buildings/colosseum.html and answer some questions about the Colosseum by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
3.Giza, Egypt	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.eyelid.co.uk/pyramid3.htm and answer some questions about the Pyramids of Giza by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Pyramids of Giza in Giza, Egypt
4.Northern China	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/greatwall.htm and answer some questions about the Great Wall of China by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A Picture of the Great Wall of China in Northern China
Details of image overlay / path / polygon:	I am going to use an image overlay in my Virtual Tour Plan. The pictures will be of the different ruins that we are discussing and will be placed on their location on the globe. That way when the students are looking for where to go in the tour, they will be able to easily locate the four areas.

Boa Constrictor

TPACK in Digital Storybook

My students will use a digital storybook to better their understanding and comprehension of text. They will read and analyze the poem "Boa Constrictor" by Shel Silverstein. The children will read the poem and interpret what the speaker is saying. They will imagine the emotions of the person within the story and then will draw pictures that go along with the words. These pictures will express the emotions of the speaker. Then the children will transfer what they drew into clay models of the snake and the person. As they make these models they will be able to make different connections as they realize that they have felt some of the emotions that the poem expresses, such as frustration and anger. These clay models will then be used as the pictures that go alone to the reading of the poem. This shows that the content in the lesson is understanding and analyzing poetry.

The pedagogy will be helping the children see the importance of poetry and helping them to see interpret the text within a poem. Before the activity will take place, I will ask my students to think about the poem. Is the girl really being eaten? How does the poem make you feel? Do you think the poem has a deeper meaning then what is read in the text? Could you write a poem like this? What makes this poem so popular? These questions will be asked in a discussion about poems that will take place before the activity.

The technology that will be used in this lesson is PhotoStory. We will use this technology to create a digital storybook as a class. Also, will will get music from freeplaymusic.com that will fit our story and help inhance the emotions that we would like to express within the story.

Story Board

Here is the story board that we came up with:

Using TPACK in a Science Lesson

In our Science lesson, the content that we focused on was observing and identifying leaves of plants and their different parts. The children are asked to observe the many different types of leaves and explore different parts of the leaves. They looked at them in detail and were asked to identify one of them and draw it. This helped them to be able to identify many different types of leaves and how they come from different plants.

Pedagogical knowledge within the lesson would be to the ability to discuss the differences in plants and leaves. These differences would include the different parts of a leaf, a proper way to identify and observe the leaf, and the numerous plants that it could come from. This discussion would have to be in terms that the children would be able to understand so that they could be involved in the conversation and participate. It is important to include the students in the discussion so maybe by asking questions or having them lead different parts of the discussion would help to get everyone involved.

Our lesson used two different technologies to help teach. The first one was the leaf identification website which helped the children find what type of plant leaf they had and what plant it came from. This technology allowed the students to answer questions which enhanced their observational skills. The second type of technology we used was a microscope. This allowed the students to find details in the leaves that they might have missed otherwise and to further their understanding of the different parts of a leaf.

Investigating Leaves of Plants

First grade students are required to learn about and explore various plants from their environment. It is important for children to understand that not all plants are the same and, therefore, be able to identify the differences between them. For this activity, I worked with Diane Hanks to plan an activity that involves technology in carrying out a science lesson. The objective we focused our lesson on was that students should investigate plants through observing and drawing pictures of plants. Further, we extended the lesson to explore identification of plant leaves.
To start off our science activity, we would have the students get into groups and gather various leaves from outside. Once the students bring these leaves inside, we would have them draw pictures of the leaves they collected. The picture below show our drawings of our leaves.


After the students have drawn their pictures, we would have them go to a leaf identification website, www.fw.vt.edu/dendro/forsite/key/intro.htm, where they would use this technology and their observation skills to identify the type of plant their leaves came from. One of the leaves we identified as we did this activity was a leaf from a sumac plant. In the picture below, you can see the image of our leaf next to the plant it came from on the identification site.

Once the leaves have been identified by the children, they would put their leaves under a microscope to observe in more detail. The children will notice that the leaves are not just one solid color, but have speckles and different colored veins. Also, there are often holes and blemishes in the leaves. Below is shown how our leaf is actually many different shades of green, unlike the dark green color that is seen without the microscope.

Additionally, each leaf contains veins, blemishes, and even tiny hairs, which are hard to examine without the help of a microscope. Below, you can see the veins of a dried leaf that we observed while doing this activity.

After the children have observed the leaves carefully under the microscope, we would have the children make new drawings of their leaves, making sure to show the new details that the learned about and observed.

Science/Math Technology Exploration

In class we were able to use some really interesting tools to better our understanding of what was in the world around us and to measure temperature. I really liked the microscopes that we used in class. It fascinated me that you could hook up a microscope to a computer so that you could take a video or a picture of what was being looked at under the lens. Also, I remember that when I was younger and we used microscopes, they were really big and difficult to use/understand. These microscopes seemed simple. The teacher could just use on if necessary and hook it up to a projector so that the whole class will be able to see what the teacher is talking about or looking for. This would help to cut back on the confusion of what the student is supposed to be doing. Also, these microscopes are not that expensive so that it will be possible to put them into the school budget in order to get enough for the class. This will truly help the students to get more involved and feel more connected with science.

TPACK

In class we learned about TPACK. This is the combination of three types of knowledge: technical, pedagogical, and content. Each of these different types of knowledge can be taught separately or connected in different ways. Technical knowlege is when you have a lot of information on a specific subject and it's content. When you know different strategies of teaching and ways to get information across, you have pedagogical knowledge. Technological knowledge is when you use technology to help or increase something like your knowledge or teaching. All of these types of knowledge can be used in teaching but the most effective ways of teaching are when you use all three types of knowledge. Teachers should always strive to use TPACK because they will be able to learn and and grow which will in turn provide them with a better understand of how to help their students. By using all three types of knowledge and teaching then the lessons of the teacher will reach out to more students and the students will learn more effectively.

RSS and Web 2.0

Wow! I never Knew anything about RSS before. I found it ever fascinating that we were able to put updates on our blogs that tell us when there has been any changes to a website that we like. Many websites have them and this is a great way to keep informed. I really like that you can have a lot of information from many different sites in one area, such as your blog, so that you do not have to go to many different sites to see what is going on. Plus, you do not have to check the site many times to see if anything new has come up because it will tell you at the location that you added the RSS. Also, what we learned in web 2.0 will be very helpful as a teacher. I never used things like this before so I think that being connected with many different teachers and seeing what they have to say about books and websites will help me out in the future.

My Technology Experience

Hi! I'm Heather. I've moved a lot of places and so I don't really have a home town that I claim. My favorite place that I lived was in Guatemala! It was so amazing to be around such a different culture!

I come from a fairly big family with 6 kids. I'm the last one of the bunch but I like it that way, most of the time. I'm not very experienced with technology. I have a computer at home but I've just done word and email.