Exit Slip 12/9/10

Three Different ways I will integrate technology into my future 3rd grade classroom!

1.) I will keep a blog that I will update daily, informing the parents of my students about the things that we do in class and any news our updates they should know about. 

2.)  I will have a smartboard where I will create and share actively engaging lessons with my students. 

3.) I will have my students share their stories on our classroom wiki, so that their friends and family will have the opportunity to see them.  This will also give them the opportunity to become more familiar with computers and working with them. 

4.) I would love to also integrate the Scratch Program to help give students a fun way to learn and review material. 

Here are some more options...

§  Interactive Whiteboards

§  Video Streaming

§  Blogging

§  Scratch

§  E-pals

§  Stimulations

§  Online White boarding

§  Course Websites

§  Podcasting

§  1:1 Initiative

§  Wikis

§  Screen casting

§  Video Editing

 I really liked this class today because it allowed us to look back at all of the things we have accomplished over the sememster and connect it to how we will integrate it into our future classrooms.   I have thought a lot about how my views have changed throught out this class.  When I first started, I pretty much thought you were crazy for wanting to put that much technology into the everyday classrooms of our youth.  But now I appreciate what I have accomplished this sememster and I am actually very excited to use it in my future classrooms.  I think that you did a great job as a professor this semester and hope that you dont hold it against me for thinking you were crazy. 

Exit Slip 12/2

Today in class we started by watching a short clip of a teacher in Canada and how she integrates technology into her classroom.  While watching the video, we were asked to jot down notes of some of the ways the teacher integrates technology into her classroom. Here are some of her ways!

·        SMARTboard – engage participation, cooperative learning

·        Online collaborative projects – peers worldwide

·        Classroom blogs – lets parents know what’s going on in class, posted homework online

·        Student blogs – connect with others around the world

·        Computers and laptops – allowed many students access to computers

Next, we discussed together as a class and put into categories what she as a teacher could do before, couldn’t do before, and what she could do before but better now.  This really got me thinking as to how technology really affects our teaching and the students in our classroom.  It really helped me to justify when I should and should not use technology in my future classroom. 

After that, we used the jigsaw method to read parts of an article and then collaborate and talk with other people in different groups.  I really liked this because it allowed me to get to hear a variety of other people’s views and opinions.  Also because it really allows for everyone to participate and share their views with small groups.  I really liked today’s class. 

Exit Slip 11/18

In today's class, I thought that the discussion guides did a really good job.  I really liked how they tried something new using the Jigsaw strategy towards discussion.  This was interesting to me because this strategy was new to me and so I liked learning and trying it out so that I can hopefully try it with my future classes someday.  I am also kind of sad that this was our last discussion group for this semester, because I have always liked watching and participating in these discussions because I feel that not only do they help me discuss what we have read in our books, but also gives us good examples and ideas of what we can do in the future with our own students.

Chapter 10 and Epilogue of Rethinking

The end of this book was the most influential for me than any other chapter.  It really gave me that push to want to go out there and make a change in the world and in our education systems today.  I really liked how at one point the authors gave their ideas and feelings on the subject.  This made the book a lot more personal and more easily able to relate to.  One of the statistics they talked about that really made me think and definetly want to get out there and do something about is the fact that only a small percentage of people with a C average graduate from college.  This really got me thinking and made me want to do something about it.

This whole book has impacted my views not only on technology but also on education.  It has made me realize that change is hard and not always eaily welcomed, but that sometimes it is for the best.  The biggest thing that this book has made me realize is how sometimes we as teachers might not always want to or be willing to do something (example: welcome change) but as teachers we give up that right to only think about ourselves.  Instead we are expected to think about our students and do whats best for them.  And that is one thing I plan to always do in my future teaching career: always try to do whats best for my students. 

PSA

                Creating this PSA was a hard task for me, mostly because I had never done anything like this before.  I felt like I had many ideas that were either too complicated for me to figure out how to do it, or I didn’t have the resources to do it, or my other group members didn’t like it.  I felt like our PSA could have been more exciting or involving but that it still does the job.  A link to our PSA is attached below.

                As a future teacher I think that this is a creative way to assess students on their learning.  I think that I could have students do a PSA type video or something similar to assess what they have learned.  Also many times as teachers we like to use different videos to get points across and although youtube and other sites have a lot of resources to choose from, they don’t always have what we are looking for.  That is why I could make a video to help my students to understand some of the things I am teaching about. 

Here is a link to our PSA

Exit Slip 11/11

During today's class we had a very interesiting discussion group present.  I was very interested in today's  presentation group because they tried something new using scriblink.  Although this program did not work for them, the group worked quickly moving to their backup plan of having us get into groups.  I do wish that we would have been able to do group work this way, because I really was excited to try this program out.  I give this group a lot of credit though for trying something new like this and being prepared when it did not work.

Also I liked that Dr. Boyer gave us time to work and ask questions. 

Podcast

In the beginning I started off thinking that creating a podcast would be one of the easier assignments on the list of assignments on the contracts, but once I started creating it, I started coming across more and more problems along the way.  At first I couldnt get Audacity to work on my computer and spent along time recording and re-recording my podcast to find that I was not able to save my podcast.  I ended up having to re download Audacity before I could get it to work properly.  Also because I was using Audacity, I had to find my own audio to use. This created another problem, because I had a hard time finding audio to use. However, now that it is done, I am proud of what I have done and feel accomplished at the fact that I was able to achieve creating this podcast. 

To be honest, I am not sure if I plan to use this in my future teaching.  If I do however, I think it would be useful to record lectures I do or classes, so that my students could have the opportunity to go back and listen to them on their own time just in case they missed parts the first time through.