Blog post 8

I'm actually really proud of my PowerPoint 2 presentation. According to the rubric from chapter 8, I excelled in all areas. The text is easy to read, and the colors compliment each other well. The navigation buttons are located in the same place on each slide, and are labelled correctly for what they're supposed to do. Every image on the screen has a purpose, and no slide is cluttered with objects. I did not use any flashing text and all transitions are consistent and appropriate. A variety of images were used, including Word Art, clip arts, and pictures from online. I tried to incorporate screen shots, but for some reason that button won't work on my laptop.

There are a lot of peripherals that can be incorporated into a classroom. Some of these include printers, digital cameras, loud speakers, microphones, and scanners. Having a digital camera in the classroom would be really cool, especially when working with younger students, because you can take pictures of the special activities that you do, and hang them up around the classroom. At the end of the year, you can put them together to make a digital scrapbook for each student. Printers are clearly important, because they're used to print out information/assignments for students and must be connected to a computer to work. Another importer non-computer audio device is an Ipod/ Ipod player. My childhood education teacher last year used to play songs for the preschoolers to teach them lessons, and for the older students when we were doing book work to keep us entertained and focused.

I absolutely loved this lesson. A girl in my Intro to Education class last semester made a Jeopardy game for our final exam, and I thought it was the coolest thing. I learned how to use hyperlinks in PowerPoint presentations which opens up a whole new set of possibilities for presentations to my students. I would use these new skills to create games and animated stories for my students, which will be a fun new way for them to experience and learn information. If my students are old enough to be able to learn these skills, I'll teach them how to create games and stories as well so that they can create presentations for other classes.

blog post 7

There's a lot of advantages to using powerpoints in the classrooms. It allows students to easily write down notes on the topic being discussed, which benefits the people who don't learn from just hearing information. It gives students a visual of what's being discussed. It also helps the teacher stay on topic with the information, and helps them stay organized. A few disadvantages are that students may not listen to the additional information provided by the instructor because they're too busy copying from the powerpoint. I know in college, that when teachers post the powerpoints online, it discourages kids from attending class (high schools may do this too.).

One of the biggest educational topics that interest me is the idea of copyright. The Internet provides so much information that it's hard to write a paper and not accidentally "copy" someone's idea. When should you cite something, and when is it considered your own words? Copyright has always confused me, which is why I hate doing research papers.

blog post 6

I'm not sure that all aspects of Web 2.0 should be used in K-12 schooling. Wikipedia and Wikispaces are definitely useful because students can learn information from outside sources, and contribute their own knowledge, and teachers can easily convey information with the use of Wikispaces. However, sites like Facebook and Myspace have no use in the educational environment, except allowing students to connect with their classmates. So I would use Web 2.0 sometimes, but not all of it.

I love Wikipedia. I use it all the time to look up terms I'm not sure about (such as Web 2.0), or to look up facts on people and events. All my teachers in high school refused to let us use Wikipedia as a reference for research papers because it wasn't "reliable" due to the fact that anyone can create a Wikipedia page and change information to make it incorrect. This is true, but the site works hard to make sure all the information is as accurate as possible. I think Wikipedia shouldn't be the only resource a child uses to learn something, but I think it's an excellent source to use first because it provides a foundation for the knowledge in an easy to understand manner. Then the child can have an understanding of the topic and find new words to also research with
other Internet or book resources.

Learning about Wikispaces was really cool, especially since I didn't know it even existed. I think it will be useful to use Wikispaces as a teacher because it allows me to easily create my own webpage, where I can provide information on topics we discuss in class, upcoming events, and other important things to remember. Wikispaces gives me multiple pages to design on, which could allow the creation of an archive of posts; each page could be dedicated to a week in school and students will be able to go back to each week in case they need to look up information. No information is ever lost.

Blog post 5

I highly agree with the idea of using the Internet for student research. The Internet allows so much more information to be accessed that otherwise students wouldn't be able to find...and if they did, it would most likely take a long time. The Internet may be considered the "easy way out" but just because it's easier than looking up information in books doesn't make it wrong or "bad". It's not AS useful when you want students to look up primary documents or other certain information. It also tends to be easier to copyright from the Internet because you can just copy and paste information.

I'm actually a huge fan of using Wikipedia as a web-based resource for knowledge. Yeah it's true that almost anyone can post on Wikipedia, so the information may not be completely accurate, but for the most part it's really good. I think Wikipedia should be used as a sort of...outline for knowledge. Like it can help you get started and giving you new ideas to look up, plus at the bottom it usually provides a list of websites related to the topic.

I do have a few concerns when it comes to being a teacher who supervises technology. I feel like, at least when it comes to my computer, I am pretty familiar with it if something goes wrong. But sometimes something can go wrong and I have NO idea how to fix it. I don't want to be the teacher who has no clue when using the technology in the classroom, no matter what age/grade my students are in.

Blog Post 4

I think developing concept maps for use in the classroom would be a productive way for students to oranganize their knowledge. If I were a teacher, I would use concept maps to help students gather their ideas. Making an outline before writing a research paper is extremely beneficial in staying organized and allows students to put their ideas together before trying to gather it all up to put in a paper. I would use Inspiration because I'm most familiar with it and I find it easy to use..and it's fun.

Even though as a student I wasn't fond of creating concept maps and outlines, I would encourage my students to do so. It may seem like a waste of time, but once you start getting "good" at creating one, it can really help in gathering ideas. Looking at a broad outline of what you're doing can help students see if they missed any important ideas. If you just go ahead and start writing your paper off the top of your head, you're likely to miss a lot. It'll also be harder because your ideas aren't all written out in front of you.

I'm not really sure which "week" this is referring to since we missed a week...so I'm just going to assume it's based on concept mapping. I really enjoyed using Inspiration and even though it's super easy to use, I think it's an important skill to have in the future as a teacher. Creating outlines by hand can be dull, but using Inspiration will help me add excitement into concept mapping that will hopefully keep my students' interest.