Wacky Web Tales

While doing my research I found a website called Wacky Web Tales. (http://www.eduplace.com/tales/). I think that this is an excellent site for teachers to integrate into their classroom. On this website there is a whole bunch of stories for the students to help write. It has a place were you can review the parts of speech to help you fill in the blanks. Along with this if you click on the kids place it has a spot where you can pick a subject. After you pick a subject you pick a topic. Once you have picked your topic it has questions, ideas, and experiments for the children to try. I think that this is a great learning site. I think it is a great way to involve students in every aspect of your teaching. It even has state specific questions. I think that this site will allow students to have so much fun learning. I played on it for a while and really learned some interesting things. I would definitely use this site in my classroom. You could use it as a whole class or as individual students. This website is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom!

Digital Cameras

I read an article called “Using a Digital Camera in the Classroom” it was written by Deborah Duncan. The website I found this article on is http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~toh/image/DigitalCameraUses.htm. This was a great article about the many ways you can use a digital camera in the classroom. This article had ideas for all subjects as well as for librarians, field trips, and many more. One of my favorite ideas is “elementary teachers (K-2) can use a digital camera to create an ABC book. Working in groups, students are assigned a letter of the alphabet. They complete the phrase "__ is for ____." Using different manipulative (cereal, marshmallows, legos, colorful paper cutouts, candy, game pieces) they form the letter on 3' X 3' pieces of colored paper. The kids can add interest to their letter using colors or makers. Then take pictures of their creation. In MS Word or Works, insert the picture and their chosen caption under the picture. You can then bind the book for the class. If you take pictures of each student at the 1st of the year, at Christmas and around the end of the year, you can send these pictures home to the grateful parents. At the beginning of the year before you send the pictures home, you could put the pictures in a notebook so you can learn the student's name and put them on the board so the other students can learn each other. You can play games with them almost like flash cards to learn each other's names. Use them when you study the 5 senses, for sight scan their picture, distort them and then have the student find their face.” I really liked this idea because the kids could learn a lot from this and still have a lot of fun.
Before I read this article I did not think it would be very easy to have a digital camera in the classroom. Now I see there is so many ways to use the technology while teaching any concept. I would defiantly love to have a digital camera in my classroom. I think that it is a great way to get students engaged and motivated in their learning.

My Beliefs

I think that technology in the classroom is an essential technique for teaching children of the future. I think that all students need to realize what is out there for them to use and to create things. We need to create students who are able to create new technology for the future. In order for them to do this they need to be experts in the current technology.
I also think that using technology is the best way to teach students. It allows them to be engaged in what they are learning. Technology is the best way to activate all of the different learning styles. This allows every student to get a better education. With technology students are able to go places that they would never be able to other wise. I think that technology has its place in every single classroom.

Lessons Learned-

I thought that the videos and websites were very interesting. I learned a lot of information from them. I learned that we need to introduce technology to students at a young age in order to help them in future jobs. I also learned that there are some schools out there that base all of their learning around technology. The school finds ways to help the students learn through being interactive. I also realized that it is important as a teacher and as a parent to learn some of the shorthand that students are writing. This protects them and helps use be able to see what they are writing and talking about. However my concerns on this subject are that students will begin to write short hand all of the time and will not care to learn how to spell. Students need to be able to write effectively in order to get jobs and to appear smart and professional.
I thought that these reading and videos were very eye opening. I especially liked “Why Integrate.’ I thought that this was very educational and eye opening. I was astonished at how many different ways that we use technology. One thing that I found very interesting was how in the future a computer will be smarter and able to compute better then the human population. This is just so amazing to me. I also found it very interesting that China will become the country that speaks English the most. I would have thought that it would always be the United States.

Strengths and Weaknesses-

When filling out the UNI survey I soon realized that most of my answers were apprentice. The reason being is because I have used these items before but have not had a whole lot of experience in the classroom in order to teach these items to students. There was however a few items that I need more experience before I could even try to teach them to students. Those were using spreadsheets, graphic organizers, and what to do if I get a trouble shoot error.
The goals that I have as a beginning teacher are to use spreadsheets in my personal life so that I can help students use them in school. I will learn about graphic organizers and the many purposes they can help me teach in the classroom. I will also learn about many different trouble shoot errors that can occur and how to fix them. This will help me if I have a student that has a problem I can help them fix it.
To help me with my goals I have found a website that will take me through a tutorial for excel spreadsheets. The website is http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/excel/. This website will take me step by step in preparing a spreadsheet and the different ways to use them. I also found a website to help me learn how to solve some of the basic trouble shooting errors and how to fix them. It is http://www.troubleshooters.com/tuni.htm. This will help me to help my students when they have problems.

WebQuest week 2

We are now on week two of our webquest. I am really enjoying working together as a group to develop this project. It is so much fun to listen to everybody's ideas and to see how everyone comes up with things that will make our project that much better. I think this is how having teachers that you team up with would be very benefical. If two teachers tought the same subject they could work together to create ideas that would benefit their class. I think that working in teams is a very useful strategy to learn.