“To learn and never be filled, is wisdom; to teach and never be weary, is love.” – Unknown

My Spring 2008 semester has finally come to a close.  I am so happy to be out of school for a few weeks that I don’t even know where to begin to celebrate.  My birthday was in the last week of classes and I have not gotten the chance to have one of my typical parties, and I don’t even care.  At first I was sad because I was at school on my birthday, but now I am happy.  I am just happy to be done.  I am going nuts because I don’t know what my grades are going to be like, but I am happy.  I have to take 2 summer classes at William and Mary, one summer class at Richard Bland, then I will be taking 3 extra summer classes at William and Mary to go towards my master’s degree.  I am going to be one busy girl this summer.  I hope there is enough time to get through all of this.  I think I will be just fine… I hope anyway.  For now, all I know is I’M DONE!! And I am happy

The design team project was a project that I enjoyed for this semester.  I was so busy this semester that I was not able to think straight at the end, and am worrying about grades in classes, but I can honestly say that I got something from doing this project.  I really liked collaborating and fixing a potential problem with technology.  Many students have a hard time with writing, and if they can see their writing published for “the world” to see, then maybe they will take more pride in making sure their work is spotless.  I think that this way to teach my students will definitely come in handy.  I will be sure to teach the students about safety issues with blogs, but the best part is that the students will be creating a classroom blog to show to their peers and parents.  They will take pride in their accomplishments and I will surely see improvement in their work the more it is displayed.

I learned a lot in this class this semester.  I know a little about technology, but this class really opened my eyes as to how to incorporate teaching technological ways to make education fun.  I feel that my students will love making blogs and podcasts instead of traditional projects and assignments.  I had not thought of these things as being learning tools before I took this class.  I blog for fun, not typically for learning purposes so I had not thought about this for my future students.  I especially liked learning about games and fun ways of teaching my students with technology.  The students will not only get a kick out of their work being automatically on display, but they will learn more and different skills by being able to work the technology to get their work to that point.

http://www.edutopia.org/change-attitude

 This site is a very neat site for incorporating techonology in schools.  One part of the article talks about how the teacher uses a PRS system to assess the students formally.  Instead of using pencil and paper tests the teacher uses the remote system.  The students have fun with it, and learn.  There have been studies that show students test scores are higher when using the remote systems then when they take pencil and paper tests. 

I think the PRS system to test students is neat, but I worry that technological problems could make the whole process a lot more complicated than it is worth. 

http://faculty.goucher.edu/jcampf/pcarpenter/Making%20Money.htm

 My first day at my placement school the kids came in to the classroom and began their morning work.  They were coloring coins on a worksheet.  They had to color quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies a different color.  This activity was a pre-assessment activity to see where the kids were because they are starting a money unit.  The webquest that I found goes farther into money.  It is about goods and services.  The students will learn what goods go with what service, and then how to make money.  The site provides questions to keep the kids going and to teach them many things, and also a rubric to assess their learning of the material.  There are activities that go along with each section of the webquest that will take some time for the kids to do.  I imagine that they could get through the webquest within a centers time block.  They may have trouble with the activity where I could go over the slides with them again so that they could move on to the next activity.  For the most part though I think they would be able to handle the activities on their own with a little guidance here and there.  I think the implementation of making a poster is pretty neat too.  They would have to be guided here too so that they would stay on task, but it would be a nice way to evaluate what they learned throughout the webquest. 

Information

http://teachersnetwork.org

This site is an informative site with lots of resources linked. The information seems very up to date, and ready to teach new and experienced teachers. There are links to stores, and also the news about what is going on in education today. Everything was stated in a way that I could understand it, and I had no trouble surfing around the site finding out new things, and places to go to find out more things. The site was indeed interactive. I could view videos and shop in stores, which I found pretty interesting. The site is colorful and has pictures for everything. Everything about the site seemed clear to me, it was easy to play around on, as well as just read articles. The sidebar seemed to change for a lot of the links. Everything I clicked on had more options and links to go with it. Each link within the site, was like another mini site, which I liked a lot. There were broad descriptions that were broken down into smaller categories, which made the readings manageable and interesting.
Fun

http://www.tryscience.org

This website has a lot of games and experiments that will help the children learn or refresh science topics they have learned in the classroom. The site seems to be accurate and to the point. The students or the teacher will pick a topic, and according to the topic chosen play games. This is a fun interactive tool that can be used by the students in the classroom or at home. It is bright and cheery and makes the person who wanders across it want to play. The first game that I started playing stumped me, but it was still fun. The games do not seem to be mindless tasks, they actually involve thinking about a solution and getting to that point. There are lots of different kinds of games to play with a variety lessons to be learned.

I enjoyed reading the different blogs about education, and teachers having blogs in their classrooms, and it really made me think about the idea.  I’ve decided that it’s a good idea as long as it is done safely.  I really enjoy the blogs where the teachers post assignments and such even for very young students.  It is a place where the students can go to make sure they have done everything, as well as a place for parents to go to see what their children are doing in school.  http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml this was really interesting to me.  I thought it was neat to use blogging as a way to make students more interested in their writing.  I am used to reading blogs that do not pertain to school, unless someone is complaining about a teacher, and they really do not care how they are writing.  To think about kids caring about what they are publishing online is really neat to me.  The part about the audience being a lot bigger than a teacher with a red pen is so true.  Things are so different from when I was in elementary school, I am really amazed at how technology has progressed, and how it is becoming more and more important in every day routines for everyone, even children in kindergarten.  The sites that I looked at are evidence.

Technology is a nice thing to know. Most of the time it makes things much simpler, sometimes though it can make things way more complicated if one step is off.  I enjoy using technology, I have good days and bad days with it.  For instance right now I am having trouble with my virus manager thing, and I just need to do a simple scan. I do not know a lot of technical terms, or if I might be messing one thing up trying to fix another, sooooo it gets interesting at times. 

I did not get a real taste of computer-based technology until I was well out of elementary school, so to go back and see what children are working with on computers and the sophisticated systems they are “playing” with is amazing to me.  I think it is very good that new systems are being installed in classrooms and labs in schools K-12.  I do not know too much yet, I just know that at the school my mom works at, where I went, things are a lot different.  At computer resource time when I was in K-5th grade, we played on old bulky Apple computers with very blocky images, and very slow games.  I remember using a program to make up stories, but I did not have very many options when it came to being creative.  Now, the options are limitless for students making stories or any kind of project they might have to complete for school.  That to me is very important.  Students have so many ways of getting information and producing wonderful things with the use of today’s technology.