My New Found Confidence with Technology

As this course comes to a close, I am really excited about how much my confidence has grown with technology. I used to feel somewhat technologically inept. Now I feel that I can really work with technology and use it to my advantage as a teacher. Although there have been several frustrating moments when I have been trying to complete projects, I feel that I really know how to work with a variety of programs and technological resources. Overall, I am really excited about the new ideas I have about technology and all the ways I can use technology to support my teaching in the future. I now know how to make quizzes, videos, how to blog, twitter, and utilize the various aspects of Google. I am very excited about whats to come, for me, in the world of technology!

Restrictions with Technology

Last week, I planned a lesson to teach in my 2nd grade class at Beaumont. I had tons of great ideas to ingrate technology into my lesson. When I got into the classroom and began to teach it, I realized that the school website had Youtube blocked and I was unable to teach a very important aspect of my lesson. These are some of the reasons I feel hesitant with utilizing technology. I ended up having to somewhat improvise and I was disappointed because this was the best part of the lesson. I felt really discouraged and just felt that the lesson did not go very well overall. What I have gained through this experiment is that I need to be sure to check my resources before I teach the lesson rather than banking on them working. I do not want this to shy me away from utilizing the resource of technology, I just want to utilize this experience to give me an awareness of how technology will not always follow through. It was a good experience to have because it pushed my teaching skills to improvise and still teach the children what they needed to learn.

Utilizing Technology in a Social Studies Lesson with 2nd Grade!

This past weekend, I wrote a social studies lesson that had several activities and phases. I was really excited about the ideas I had that utilized technology. The children have been studying plants and animals for about 4 weeks now. My class, in particular has been studying the Arctic. I decided to end the unit with a map exploration and creation. For the exploration portion of the activity, the children will be researching various maps throughout the activity. I have set aside websites for them to go to to find information about the map of Antartica so that they will be able to create their maps based on their research. I am also planning on showing the children some videoclips by utilizing Youtube.com and also by showing the children the videos on the SmartBoard. Before this class, I was oblivious to how much I utilized technology. Now I feel as though I am looking for ways to utilize technology more within my lessons and I am also becoming more and more confident in my own capabilities with technology. When I first began taking this class, I felt that a technology course was not going to be very useful to the Early Childhood Field. Now that this class is coming to a close and I feel much more confident and educated in technology, I cannot wait to continue applying technology in my classroom next year as an intern, and in the future as a teacher!

Classroom Website

As I have been creating my final project through a website, it has made me very excited about the possibility of having a website for the parents of my students when I am a teacher. There are endless possibilities for utilizing the website to communicate with parents and showcase children's work.
It could be a great way to stay in touch with parents on nearly a day-to-day basis. It would take little time to get on the website and post a little blurb about how the day was and what the children learned and to remind parents of what ever their child may need for the following school day.
When I am a teacher, I really hope to utilize the tool of creating a website through Google sites. It would also be a great way to post homework for children that they can practice at home with their parents to not only gain extra practice, but also to show their parents their progression over the course of the school year.
This is also a great place to post resources for parents, as well as students. We have discussed this in class before, but for children who do not have many books, you could post a couple of read-alouds each week so that they could have the opporunitity to either be read to or to read to themselves. The possibilities are endless! This is something I definetly hope to utilize in my teaching career!

Activboards in Relation to engagement

I am spending 9 hours a week right now in a second grade classroom at Beaumont elementary. Overall, this experience has been very beneficial for me and my future career as a teacher. The teacher I am with does a great job of utilizing technology in her classroom through her Activboard. She utilizes her active board for language activities and also utilizes it as a center during their designated center time. She pulls up worksheets that the children would normally have in paper form and allows them to write on the board with the pen. I really like the fact that she allows them to utilize the board because I feel that it gives them a sense of competency with technology and it involves them in her instruction. It is also a great way to create a classroom community because the children will often read aloud from the Activboard together or will work on activities by brainstorming together.
Another aspect of the Activboard that has been really neat, is that I have gotten to utilize a couple of the assignments from my Tech 486 class by utilizing the Activboard. I was actually able to show a video recording I made of the book, "The Very Lonely Firefly" by Eric Carle. These boards are a very practical, useful tool in the classroom, because not only are they fairly simple to use, but also serve multiple purposes and have multiple uses.

The Very Lonely Firefly

This is a video presentation that I created through Imovie. I recorded myself reading a book and scanned the pages and added background music. This was a great project for my field of teaching and was something that I would do again. I was actually able to show the video I made to my second grade class at Beaumont elementary and they absolutely loved it! It would be a great tool to segway into a writing activity where you have the children write a story of their own and then allow them to publish their book by reading it and recording it. Having a day where you allow the children to share their stories with one another would be a great way to integrate technology into reading curriculum. I was really excited when I thought about this possibility because so often I think of finding ways for me to integrate technology in the classroom and forget that it is also a great tool/way for children to learn. Allowing the children to read a book and record it would be great practice for their reading and would allow them to see/use technology at the same time!

Spreadsheets!

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtzuezMMY4zOdHdqenQ4SFRCMW4ybEUxQXVfclVwNWc&hl=en

Here is the link to my spreadsheet quiz in google documents. I could not get the printscreen to work, but this works just as well. Overall, I enjoyed making this quiz and could see myself enjoying it more once I get more accustomed to how excel works. It ended up taking me kind of a long time because I was following the directions so religiously. One aspect of creating this that I was thinking about was that once you have created one quiz, you have it and then can continue using it for the years to come. If you were to commit to sitting down and making even one of these a week, you could easily create a ton of them over the course of a few years and be well stocked with fun little quizzes for your classroom. The way that I have thought to utilize these the most, would be for pratice and for a morning activity when the children arrive to school. This would be a great way to get them engaged and thinking about what is to come in that school day. Overall, I do feel that these are a great resource for teachers and I am excited to implement these in my classroom!