Blog #12 My current view of technology in the classroom

My current view of technology in the classroom is a little more open than originally. I think that it can provide some really great resources for projects for students and lesson ideas for teachers. I believe that I will be using computers more in the classroom than I had anticipated. I believe strongly in using adaptive technology in the classroom. I think that it can really help and aid children on their road to success. I still believe that children need to do a lot of hands-on activities that are physically in front of them instead of sitting in front of the computer looking at a screen. I will use technology in the classroom to enhance a lesson. Students need to learn to use technology, so I need to be willing to be more open to using it and introducing it in the classroom.

Blog #11: Non-computer based technology

There is one program that is non-computer based that I really like. This technology is to help children with their letters and writing skills. This system is called Handwriting Without Tears. It is for children who have trouble with their fine motor skills, may have a vision impairment, or may simply be struggling with the writing skills. This program works by giving children a couple different shaped pieces of wood and they can make their letters using these pieces. This allows these students to not get too frustrated when they are having trouble with their writing skills. The student can do their writing, but by physically forming the letters with wood pieces instead of actually writing them out. Eventually students will begin to get the idea of how to shape the letters and begin to write them out successfully. I really like technologies that allow students to show what they can really do.


To read more about the importance of writing and the Handwriting without tears program you can read a newsweek article about it at...
http://www.newsweek.com/id/67956

You can also check out the home page for Handwriting without tears at ...
http://www.hwtears.com/index.html
This site has all their products on it and ways for parents, teachers, and therapists to use the sytem.

This program has come a long way since it first started. It can even work on children's cursive ability.

Blog #10

After watching and listening to many of the ERIC research projects, I feel that I may be a little more open to using technology in the classroom. I still am more of the hands-on activities and getting down and dirty in their work than a computer person. I will be more open to using technology though. I do believe that I will try and incorporate some of the programs that we have learned about in my class. I was really fascinated by the disposable digital camera. I believe those are a really cool idea and I could use them in my class. I did not know they even existed until the presentation that Emily mentioned it in.
I will also utilize the internet a whole lot more when looking for lesson plans. There are a lot of resources out there for me to utilize that have lesson plans and video clips and quizes on them. I find these sites really handy. They make it so I don't have to come up with my own ideas of the top of my head. It is nice to look at what other people have done and see what has worked and what hasn't. I believe the use of computers and technology will probably be more used for my use in my career than for students, but we will have to see. It may also depend on the technology access in the school I end up in.

Incorporating Technology into the Physical Environment

The article I read was entitled "Designing Successful Technology-Rich Elementary Schools." This article was really interesting because the authors did not discuss how to incorporate technology use into the classroom through curriculum, but through physical means. Many studies have shown that the actual physical environment can either enhance or impede learning. This article is about a study being conducted with fifth graders and how they are physically placing computers and furniture into the classroom. This was a study about the ergonomics of the classroom. In the study they are looking at how to create a setting where computers are in arms reach of all children, but are not in the way or a distraction. Also in this study the designers are work with the teachers to discover what works best for the children and what the teachers prefer. It was a very interesting to read about every aspect of the room design they worked on. It ranged anywhere from carpeting to the desk size and the teacher placement in the classroom. It was nice to look at a slightly different topic related to technology.

I would have to say that I liked the article. I would probably give it a 4 out of 5. All the details that went into designing this classroom so it best worked for the students was very cool. I would be really interested in reading about the final results, since they were only two years through their study at the time this article was written.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1999-02/HFaE-DSTE-010299.php

My Half-way Feelings

Well, my feelings have not changed much since the beginning of the semester about using technology in the classroom. If anything I feel even more strongly against it. I have not found much of anything we have done in this class to be helpful to an early-childhood classroom, except for resources for teachers. Some of the projects we have had to do, such as the Imovie will never come in use in my career as a kindergarten or first grade teacher. They will never use Imovie and I will never use Imovie in my teaching. Many of the skills we are learning in this class are geared more towards students in middle childhood or high school level. First graders are not going to be using ERIC research databases nor will they be keeping Blog's online. I do believe that the internet and technology can be great tools for older students. I mean we used the internet for research and as a resource in high school all the time. I really wish we would study more useful ways to incorporate technology into the early-childhood education class in this course.
I also feel that we could use some more time in class to work on projects assigned. Often times we are left hanging with so much work that it is hard to keep track of it all. For example, the Imovie. I really wish we had been given the time to bring our clips into class and work on it in class for a while. I ran into many problems with my Imovie that even the tutorials could not aid me with, so I had to call student tech several times. I think it would have been much easier to have had some time to work on it in class where I might not have become so frustrated.
This class has taught me some new interesting things. They will help me in personal uses of technology, but not necessarily in the classroom. Like I stated before, I would really like to learn more techniques that incorporate technology specifically into the early-childhood education class because most if not all of us in the class are early-childhood majors.

Internet Use in Elementary Classroom

The internet can be a very risky tool in schools. Many things can go wrong, but there are also good uses of the internet.

Some pros to using internet in the classroom would be to connect students to help sites that will help them with their letters, shapes, colors etc. Another good aspect to internet use is the ability to teach students how to safely search the web. Teachers could also use the internet to let the students look up information on a topic they are discussing in class. The students would be working on autonomy.

The cons of using the internet in the classroom are the lack of fine motor skills young students have. These students must learn to first write and hold a pencil before they rely completely on computers to do their work. Also, there is the possibility that students could end-up on a very bad and inappropriate website on accident. Also using the internet for research can leave the student unable to use paper copies found in the library. Using the internet is also not giving the students the social interaction that is so important to early-childhood development.

Personally, I do not believe in using the internet in early-childhood education. I would tell a principal this and also tell them that the only way I may use the internet is to make accomodations for students with exceptionalities. I would also explain to the teacher that I believe in hands-on, movement involving activities that get the kids up and excited to learn. I do not feel that staring at a computer screen and doing the work independently is beneficial to students at such a young age.

I do believe in teachers utilizing the internet for new and creative lesson plans or curriculum ideas. One website I love is author and illustrator Jan Brett's website. On her site she has many different games, flashcards, activities, and crafts to go along with her books. She is my favorite children's book author/illustrator and I love all the activities teachers can print out and use. It can be a really helpful site to incorporate ideas to use her books in your curriculum! Check out her site! It's awesome!

Kindergarten Standards, Good or Bad??

The quote at the end of the article from veteran teacher Veronica Rieck sums it all up for me. I agree that having standards is a good way to keep teachers in check. I believe that teachers need to be addressing important curriculum, but if it was not laid out in standards, then teachers would not teach it and those students would miss out.
I do not agree with how high the standards are for the kindergarteners. If these standards were in place when I was a kindergartener, I probably would have been held back. I came out of kindergarten not knowing how to read and sometimes I couldn't even tell my numbers from my letters. In today's society, it would not be ok for a kindergartener to be that far behind. The amazing part is that I became and excellent reader and was in all the advanced courses through middle school and high school. I was just a little slower than others at first, but once I was ready I picked up on the idea. I turned out just fine and I was not held back and did not know everything that the students of today are expected to know.
I feel that it is unfair to expect such high expectations from kids that are so young. If they are developmentally ready, then yes give them a challenge, but do not punish them if they are not quite there yet. Overall, I feel that the standards are a good idea to give some guidance to teachers in what direction to point the students, but I do not believe in forcing them to stick strictly to the standards. Teachers need some room for flexibility!

Digital Lesson Plan

This activity could be used in teaching a lesson about families and connections. I was going for the idea of a picture family tree, I did not have pictures of my family, so I used my friends. This activity requires the student to be able to paste pictures into a word document and manipulate them to positions on the paper. It also requires skills in layering pictures and text in Word. This activity utilizes many of the students computer skills and makes creating a family tree fun and creative.

Blog #3

Creative

Accepting

Honest

Inclusive

Flexible

Blog #2

Chapter 2 discussed many different theorists, but the three we focused on were Gardner, Bloom and Dale.

Gardner's theory is based off of people having eight different intelligences. Each one plays a part in our learning process, but some may have more strenghth in certain areas. If a person knows their strength, then they can use that to help them gather information in a way they will remember.
Gardner's theory supports technology integration in the classroom because it supports the idea of having many different means for a student to learn. Often times a student may need the visual or kinesthetic use of a computer to help them understand a concept. It could detract from the use of technology in that it would only cater to the visual and kinesthetic learners.

Bloom's theory is the idea that there are three levels of learning. A person must first gain the knowledge for the lower levels before being able to reach the upper level. His idea is that people must first figure out themselves emotionally, then move onto physical movement and manipulation and then move into the cognitive domain, which deals with knowledge and thinking things through.
Bloom's theory would detract from integrating technology into the classroom because it suggests more personal exploration and thought. It is hard to incorporate technology into descovering one's feelings and emotions.

Dale's theory is based off of experiences. Dale believed that a person learns best when something is experienced first hand. He then has a pyramid with different types of experiences. The lowest level is reading text, which is the top of the pyramid, and that is where people remember the least.
I believe Dale's theory would also detract from integrating technology in the classroom because he is saying that one can not remember or learn as well from watching something on a computer. On the other hand, it supports technology in the classroom because he says that people remember the most from first hand experiences, so having computers for children to work on in the classroom will help them to remember and learn how to use computers.

All three theories would relate pretty well to type I technology because they are discussing ways to help children learn and recall information. They could also relate to the type II, productivity, because teachers can use these tools to help them plan and organize their classrooms and lesson plans. The theories do not really relate to type III use of technology because the theories focus on the development of the minds of students and not the keeping of records. The theories relate most closely with the type I, instructional, use of technology.

Me and my opinion

Well for starters, my name is Jenny and I am from Grove City, Ohio. I am a junior at Bowling Green and have many interests. I am involved with the Latino Dance Association on campus and am also the president of the horse back riding club on campus. I am also a huge fan of old movies and musicals and really enjoy a good game of racquetball!
I am here in Bowling Green because the education program here is really good. I have known since about sixth grade that I wanted to be a teacher and I am following in the footsteps of several family members before me. Bowling Green seemed like a good place and a good option. I guess I am in this class to learn more about computers. I personally do not like computers very much, and now enough to get through life, but I guess the university has decided that is not enough. So, I am in this class because it is a requirement, but I hope that I will learn many new things. I am not against learning new things, but in general computers frustrate me. I hope that through this class I may learn new things that will help me to not get so frustrated with computers half of the time. I am open to learning new things, but I would probably not have taken this class by choice.
I do believe that the university is right in requiring this class though. Every year computers are becoming a much more important and dominant role in society. There is almost no career out there that does not use a computer in one way or another. I believe that integrating technology into the classroom at a young age is really good because it is preparing students for the real world. If students are not getting a good basis in computers before they are thrown into a situation where they need to be capable of navigating a system, then they will not be very successful. I think it is essential that we, as teachers, introduce technology in the early years.