What is your media Diet?

I feel that these two articles contradicted each other on some level. The article "Don't fear the digital" talks about how youngsters now days are using the internet. It says that they should have a 'balanced media diet'. I would have to say that I agree with this. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times facebook has derailed my 'homework time'. The other article "The Multitasking generation" followed a LA family. It basically said that technology affects, or at least IS the new family structure. A few weeks ago, my math teacher gave a good example of this. She said that while visiting her family, everyone was on a lap top or a cell phone with facebook up. The worst part about it was that they were also messaging each other!!! I kind of think this is ridiculous. However, my mother is guilty of this. She will always send me text messages even though I am only down stairs. Every time I go up the stairs and force her to have a conversation with me!

2 articles

Don't fear the digital talks about how the world of writing and communication is always developing and changing. This article also talks about how we need to be able to adapt to the rapid changes in technology.

The multi-tasking generation was about what happens in your brain when you attempt to multi-task and how that effects the way you learn to preform a task or skill.

We can relate to Don't fear the digital because we are the generation that is developing these new ways to communicate such as, IM, texting, and e-mail. I have noticed that if you talk to the people in the older generations they are set in their ways of having to write everything out by hand.

Multi-tasking is an activity that everyone does, but most of us are not aware that we are doing it, let alone how it affects how we learn. I believe that this is a habbit that most people, including my self need to work on learning more about.

Two articles

Don't fear the digital article explains how the children/teenagers today use the interent. They are learning how to create websites/blogs. They are saying kids should have a balanced media diet. Today's kids rely on the interent a lot to finish the task they have to make. The multi tasking generation article talks about how the digital technology life is affecting kids and their plans. The Cox family from Los Angeles are participating in a 4 year study of modern family life. The director of the center of everyday lives of families says ipods, instant messaging, and cell phones are the structure of a family relationship. Kids spend most of their time on the computers, either on myspace, facebook, or whatever the case may be. I question is the internet taking over kids lives? Even the parents lives?

Chapter Two

This chapter was about designing a lesson plan using technology in a lesson. However, one line in particular caught my eye:

"Technology should be employed only when instructional planning has been completed and it is clear that a technology in support of instruction is called for." page 75, middle of the first paragraph

I believe that this is a very important idea to keep in mind. I feel that some teachers shy away from technology because they are unfamiliar with it while others overuse it. I almost feel that when you overuse technology, or you use it the wrong capacity then it loses its effectiveness. On the same page towards the bottom the book also states, "No mistakes can be more costly than those that affect our students...Plan well, teach well."

Interchapter 8

This chapter was about making a classroom website. Throughout reading this, I kept thinking of pizza. It wasn't just because I was dreadfully hungry, it's that the chapter made the process sound like pizza making.

Step one was to story board or get a general idea of what you want. When making a pizza you have to think about what sort of toppings you might want, the sauce to use, thin crust or thin, etc. The same as a classroom website. You have to decided which population to guide it to (parents or adults), do you include information about yourself, if so how much?, etc.

Step Two was content. When making a pizza you eventually have to decide what to do with it, otherwise you end up with a disgusting mess that no one wants to eat. Websites are the same way! If you just slop things together without really thinking about it, you will not only look unprofessional but you will more than likely turn your target audience away from your website.

Step Three was Check Criteria. When you make a pizza you must make sure that you have all of the ingredients on the pizza. After all, what is a pizza without sauce? When creating a website it is important to make sure you satisfy all of the criteria. Otherwise your pizza won't be tasting very well if you know what I mean.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is titled Designing and Planning Technology-Enhanced Instruction. It gives you a lot of useful tools that can help you create an effective lesson plan. The first step to creating an effective lesson is asking yourself questions about your students and the classroom to begin the planning. I believe that this is an extremely important step because teachers should always be thinking about their students. If the lesson you are teaching is not made to fit your specific students needs it may not be as effective. The needs of students in your classroom can vary greatly from the needs of the students in the classroom down the hall. This chapter has a lot of great pictures and charts that help to make the understanding of making a lesson plan a little easier. They make the steps to making a lesson plan more clear and easier to understand. One that I found really interesting was the Learning Environment Rubric, it is set up to help you figure out where your classroom is and where is should be for optimal learning.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a topic that we have discussed in class as well as read about in this chapter. Blooms Taxonomy believes in students being creative while using a higher level of thinking. As a teacher, you should always be aiming for your students to be using higher level thinking. It helps them get a better grasp on the topic in which you are teaching them. The Bloom's Taxonomy and Performance Objectives chart helped me understand Bloom's Taxonomy a little better. It broke the steps down and told what students should be able to do.
Over all this chapter was extremely interesting and there was a lot of information about making lesson plans that I had not know about.

Interchapter 8

I believe that if I would have read this chapter before I started working on my classroom webpage that I would have had an easier time. But, for the most part I thought that creating a classroom webpage was pretty easy. I believe that it would even be easier to think of what to put on it when I am actually teaching. This chapter talks about all the different ways to go about making a classroom website. It gives you details on how to do it and some different ideas. It also talks about the educational recourses that are available on the web. You can put links to these educational resources on your classroom websites for parents and students.

Chapter two

Chapter Two is about designing and planning technology-enhanced instruction. Its about becoming a teacher and beable to design and plan instruction enhanced and supported by technology. When planning there are a few questions to think about. What are my students like, do they have any special needs, what should my students be able to do when I am done with my lesson, what do you as the teacher need to do in the classroom to get everything done, and how will the teacher know if the instruction ws successful. When making a lesson plan you will want to use the instructional planning system. Which is made up with a plan like 1. design: design the instructional unit. 2. plan: Make specific lesson plans within the unit and 3. act: develop an instructional action plan that will help you through out the unit. When doing a lesson there are some things you want to know. You want to know your learners, state your objective, etablish the learning environment, identify teaching and learning strategies, identify and select technologies, and summative evaluation and revision plan. Being a teacher if you can accomplish all of those your lessons should be very useful! When making a lesson plan also use Bloom's Taxonomy and Action verbs, his step up to higher levels of thinking. They are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. If you use these in your lesson plan your lesson plan will be sure one where the students will learn from!

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 talks about designing and planning technology-enhanced instruction. This planning and designing technology-enhanced instruction can be broken down into four different types of planning. These types are planning for effective instruction, DID model, lesson plans, and action plans. Planning effective insturction is a teacher must carefully consider everything that is needed in the classroom. The DID model can be broken down into six categories which are, know the learner, state objectives, establish objectives, establishing environment, identify stratiegies, select technologies, and evaluate and revise. The lesson plan can be broken down into five different parts such as, readying the learner, teargeting objectives, preparing the lesson, pedagogical cycle, and check for sources.

The action plan is a list of to-do's for a lesson. These to-do list are broken down into seven categories having to do with the classroom, students, and the activity itself. These categories are learner preparation, activity lists, list feedback, ready the classroom, technology list, personal prompts, and follow-up activities. These check list will help you as a teacher to stay on track when you are teaching a lesson and make sure that you have what you need to teach the lesson effectively.

Inter Chapter 8

This inter-chapter focused on designing a classroom web site. This inter chapter breaks down the website design into 3 different steps. The first step in this chapter is storyboard, which is sketching out your webpages. The second step that is discussed in this inter-chapter is to determine your content. This content can include teacher information, class/course information, daily information and homework, information for parents, and information for the community. The third step that is discussed is to check guidelines for an educational website. These guidelines include site consistency, bias-free content, date notifications, current links, and contact information.

interchapter 8

Interchapter 8 is all about designing a classroom website. There is 3 steps when it comes to making a website. The first step is the storyboard, which to to decide the components you would like to use. Start with an idea, visualize an overall plan, draft each secreen on index cards, arrange index cards in final sequence and then finally create your webpage. Step 2 you need to determine your content. The teacher information, class/course information, the daily/weekley information and homework. Step 3 is check guidelines. Make sure you met the criteria needed. Classroom websites are really fun to me! They are a great way of communication to the students and the parents.

Chapter 10 and on your mark get set wait.

Chapter 10 is about using technology to redefine the classroom. It talked about distance learning and tools to help the teachers. The article was based on technology for people in schools and to sepcial education students. With the distance learning style it takes a lot of more planning and preparing what you are going to teach. They have to prepare a pretest to let the students see if they have any previous knowledge. The teachers need to make materials for students to research and learn. Chapter 10 also discusses Murphy's Law , stating that anything can go wrong, will go wrong. It states to have a backup system to solve crises. It talks about delivery technologies with telephone, broadcast video, radio broadcast, internet chat, videoconferencing, and net meeting. The article discusses Assistive technology also AT which is a new field that is constantly changing. It mentions Universal Design for learning, which is a concept that orginated in the field of architecture. They are wanting teachers to use these programs in their classrooms to help the students learn.

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.