Chapter Ten

This week there were two course readings: Chapter ten and the article “On Your Mark….Get set…Wait!” Chapter ten discussed distance learning and tools to help teachers while the article talked about using technology for the general population in schools in addition to special education. I couldn’t help but feel that these reading contradicted each other. The book claimed that distance education originated to serve students in remote locations. They both agree that teachers are having to use technology more and more, especially with No Child Left Behind being passed. The book also endorses the use of online learning etc. However the article stated that using assistive technology is not as effective once it is used in isolation. I know of a few elementary schools in town that use assistive technology in isolation only. I suppose it could be to avoid jealousy from other students. Or it could be to keep the peace of the classroom atmosphere. If anything, I can’t help but wonder if there is more evidence out there to tip the scales?

Comment Questions: What AT do you want to use? How will you use it in your classroom? Will you use it in isolation or will you try to integrate it into the classroom? What do you think about the situation of isolation vs Integration? Why?

Chapter 10 and On your mark, get set, wait.

Chapter 10 focuses on the topic of using distatance education in the classroom. The distance learning teaching style The distance learning system goes beyond a normal lesson plan and involoves more planning. Once you start to plan your distance learning leason plan teachers will then need to prepare their students. When preparing the students the teacher should prepare a pretest, so that students are able to check for previous knoledge that would conect with what is being taught and they should also make review materials availible for the students to look over. Along with students checking their previous knowledge teachers who use distance learning should also provide feed back from the pretest all the way through the end of the school year. Even though technology is a great tool to use it may sometimes not work as you planned it to. When a certain peice of technology fails, commonly reffered to as Murphy's Law, it is useful to have a back up plan or system. Distance learning has many peices of support technology that helps to enhance the experience of learning online. These peices of support technology can be spit up into two types of instruction synchronous and asynchronous. In our every day lives we are actively useing several of these types of technology. Some examples of these technology types are the telephone, internet chat,voice mail, and electronic mail. Even though these peices of technology are used to support and encourage distance learning there five major issues that are addressed in this chapter, readiness, prep time, tech support, instruction support, and copyright. On your mark, get set, wait examines the standards, assistive technology, and the universal design for learning.

Chapter eight

Chapter eight discussed the vast majority of Electronic resources available to educators. The chapter discussed educational journals and their uses as well as how to access them whether it be by PDF or HTML. Something interesting that I hadn’t really thought about before this class was teacher blogs and chat rooms. I guess I didn’t think teachers could be so organized! I believe that through these blogs the teachers learn about all of the electronic resources available to them. For example, the chapter said some electronic resources teachers take advantages are test generators and electronic grade books. Maybe a teacher could be faced with a decision on which program is the best for them, but do not want to risk downloading anything? They could go onto the teacher blogs!
Another way teacher blogs can help is to arrange a global learning community. Not everyone knows of someone in another country, specifically a foreign teacher. Through blogs a teacher could meet and arrange for their class to have cyber pen pals or they could arrange for a video chat.
Another great way for teachers to utilize blogs are to communicate with the parents. We have all been in the position where your parent asks you, “So what did you do in school today?” I don’t know about any of you, but this was the LAST thing I wanted to talk about after having done it all day long. If a teacher were to use a blog daily, then the parent could simply look up what their child did in school and generate conversation that way.

Comment Questions: How would you use electronic resources in your classroom? What would you use? How often would you like to use it? What technology would you most like to use in your classroom?

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is all about using the web for teaching and learning in the classroom. It talks about online publications which are current and archived artciles of interest to educators. It states that electronic publications offer a page or related links that will be useful to the persons information. They can be saved or printed. It mentions blogs and working with blogs helps you communicate better with others. It talks about book marking your favorite sites that way you can always have them in just a click away. It explains electronic grade books, where the students average is calculated for you. It talks about classroom websites that give the teacher, student and parents a way to communicate with each other. Also so everyone knows what is going on day by day. It mentions in the end the internet issues that you can face. Being a teacher you need to use the interent acceptable. When sharing students work use the guidelines becuase of privacy issues. Chapter 8 is basically teaching you all the ways to use the interent in the classroom, and ways to have fun and be safe with the internet.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is about using the web for teaching and learning. Online publications was one of the first things that caught my attention. We have done a lot of work with online publications in W200. It talks about the different ways that you can use these articles. You can save them, print them or even email them to yourself. It talks about how some websites save their articles as PDF files. This is something that I have dealt with a lot. I think it is actually easier to have the articles as a PDF file then just on the website. You have to have Adobe Reader to read PDF files. The chapter then goes on to talk about weblogs. Blogs are something that I have had a great deal of experience with. I've had several different blogs over the past few years. I love blogging and I would love to incorporate it into my classroom one day. Another part of the chapter that I found interesting was Class Web Sites. It talks about teachers who made their own classrooms websites. I definitely think that this would be something that I would enjoy doing with my class one day. It would be a great activity for older students and I definitely think that they would really enjoy it. Towards the end of the chapter it talks about acceptable use for the interenet and privacy. This is something that we have covered a lot during class. As a teacher you have to make sure that your students are not abusing the internet and that all of their personal information is kept safe.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 focused on the broad topic of academic software. To me this broad topic is so important for teachers to incorrporate into the classroom. In this chapter this broard topic is divided into a variety of categories of software. The categories of software that stood out to me were the graphic software, tutorial software, educational games, special needs software, and mapping tools. I believe that these specific types of software stuck out to me in the reading because they are the ones that I have personally seen used integrated into the classroom. What I like most about these types of software was that they get the students to be interactive with the lesson.

Chapter 6

Chapter six is all about academic software. Academic software includes a wide variety of things such as, desktop publishing, graphics, reference like encarta, tutorials and drill and practice, educational games, simulations and special needs. I remember using simulation software in elementary school to play the oregon trail game. It was a lot of fun and helped me learn more about oregon trail and how things happened. Educational games are something that students probably enjoy the most out of anything. They learn without even knowing that they're learning. The chapter then goes on to talk about how to use each of these systems. One thing that I found useful was the pictures and diagrams they used to help explain themselves. I'm a visual learner so pictures are always better for me. Also, I liked the rubics that they used to show how to grade the different softwares. Towards the end of the chapter it talks about content specific software. It explains the different types of software for math, science, social studies, and language arts.

I was really surprised when I was reading this chapter because I had no idea that there were so many different types of academic softwares that could be used in schools.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 was all about software! The Academic Software includes the software that can help the teacher and the students learning. They have many softwares such as desktop publishing, graphics, and educational games. All of these helping the teacher and the students. Chapter 6 gives a description of the paint program, the drawing program, the imaging software which is used with scanners to convert hard copy images to digital images. The editing software allows you to change the image. It explains the reference software such as encyclopedias, atlases, grammer tools, and dictionaries.
Chapter 6 is all about the software available to you to use on the computers. To me it was all familiar to me just a review.