My Beliefs

Call me old fashioned, but sometimes I do get nervous that technology is making us less and less in-tune with ourselves and others, despite it's effectiveness in connecting us with people immediately through text, facebook, etc. I have enjoyed with Instructional media class and the resources that are now available for me to use as a teacher in the classroom. I believe that these resources will reach a broader range of students and benefit them in their studies. Technology is definitely great for education. According to the NETS AND UNI standards, teachers should always be using technology to create, teach, evaluate, and assess the students. The combination of both of these standards made it seem a bit overkill.

There are many good things with technology and I figure it's inevitable to avoid the jumps that it's making each day. But will there be a point where we all stop talking because we are having video conferences and we never go outside because we can enjoy everything virtually? Are we making students even more dependent on technology? When they are done with their homework on the computer will they go outside and play, or play an interactive game online and chat with facebook friends? I think we need to be careful of how we present these materials in the classroom and make sure that students don't become absolutely dependent on having a computer for their school survival.

Strengths and Weaknesses

A strength that I discovered with the UNI survey and NET standards was that I was at least familiar with every option. I never felt comfortable with saying that I was at the practitioner level, however. Almost all of my answers consisted of apprentice level knowledge, I didn't have the opportunity to really put them into practice. This was a major weakness that I have. Although I am familiar with them and have used almost all the resources at least one time, I hadn't thought of incorporating them into the classroom so much that the students would have to learn and understand what I knew. My only knowledge of video conferencing and podcasts consists of seeing them used before.

Goals I would like to set as a beginning teacher are:

1) Help students realize all the good materials and tools that are available to them through the computer and other technology.

2) Use more audio and visual technology for the diverse learners in class to provide them with a variety of ways to understand the information. Record my lectures and make them accessible

3) Use graphic organizers more readily to help students understand what they are looking at and learning. This is especially important in the math field.

Video Conference Tutorial

I found a tutorial on video conferencing that explains how to set it up and use it effectively. I think it would be neat even if we used it with another math class in the school to interact with each other, have competitions, or help each other with problems.

Graphic Organizers

Becoming more familiar with graphic organizers and how to use them will be very helpful in the mathematical world. Real life application requires students to gain information based on graphs and charts and be able to interpret the data. This site explains why graphs and charts are so important for you and your student, and gives a bunch of sources that can help you build your own graphs.

PPT

For class this week we finished up our powerpoints and posted them on our Google sites. Our two powerpoints we did were called, "What Number Am I?" and Hinky Pinky. Hinky Pinky was really fun to prepare because everyone started to get into it and wanted to start thinking of their own Hinky Pinky's.

Both of these assignments were great for using cognitive ability because the encourage them to brainstorm and think of possible answers to the clues that are given. Hinky Pinky is really fun, funny, and good for an activity that could be a nice break from the typical things they are doing in the classroom. Powerpoints are a good thing for the students to practice because right now they are very typical in the workforce today and it's important for them to learn the proper way of putting them together.

For my classroom, I love the "What number am I" because it's an easy way to test their knowledge of what we are learning. I can make a requirement for them to think of a number that will include certain terms that we have learned in class. I can also have them come up with equations that they will have to solve in order to get a clue to the number. The only problem with these activities is the fact that they might get a little out of control and rowdy. As a teacher you would have to maybe baby-sit the students while they are working on these assignments to keep them on task.

Video Blog

This would be a good thing for students to watch before they start on their own powerpoint presentation. I like it because it's very entertaining, but also applicable to learning what you should and shouldn't put on your slides. A lot of powerpoints have a tendency to have paragraphs of information on a slide, which leads to minds wandering, and ineffective teaching strategies. I get side-tracked when there are animations on the screen next to words and words of information and he even addressed that, I loved it!!! The main point he seemed to push was to keep the powerpoints simple, and be sure to post the most important information ONLY. It's the perfect length for students to pay attention to and teach them the important facts.

Powerpoint Presentations

In class we had the opportunity to design a sample powerpoint presentation that students could design themselves. The powerpoint we chose to do was "What number am I?" This was great for us math majors because it completely applied to our major! It was good because we were able to design them as if we were the student.

This will be good for students because they get to brainstorm and apply the use of what they have learned about numbers in class. It causes them to use a higher order of thinking as they discover and relay what they understand about numbers to help others better comprehend these numbers. It's really effective because they get to incorporate both teaching and learning as they create their own powerpoint, but also will have to do the other students' powerpoints as well.

This could be a great tool for class as long as we have access to computers. But even if we don't, we can create our own without a computer, it would just take a little bit more time. It could be a great activity to take a break from the mundane things we might be learning in class about formulas and such, and help them have fun while still testing their cognitive abilities.

This week we continued our work on the WebQuests with our group. We got together as a group and continued to organize and plan our assignment, figuring out the fine details and straightening out the wrinkles. We discovered that there are so many tools out there relating to math and helping students better understand, but it's hard to find information specific to our topic and what we are covering.

This made me realize how careful we have to be when using information and tools from the internet, because you never know what you're going to end up with. We had to do some in-depth research on some of the sites to make sure they were what we wanted.

Mainly what I realized this week was that WebQuests do take a lot of time but I think they are well worth it in the end, if they are done correctly. The important thing is to set up the WebQuests well enough that the students have a learning experience and gain something instead of just doing busywork.

Video Blog

Wow, this kid has got some incredible public speaking skills! I think he definitely has a bright future, but I couldn't see how this video would benefit me as a teacher. I felt like his situation was very specific for him, and didn't relate to me in the classroom. All it made me think about was how I needed to believe in all my students, to help them succeed in life. Other than that, I felt like he was a great speaker, but I struggled to be motivated during his speech. He seems like an exceptional student, and I didn't feel like his situation was like many other kids'.

Webquests

Webquests will be a good variety in the classroom and will be effective because it can take up a couple class periods, depending on the amount of information you have them research! I like the flexibility of webquests. You can present a concept that you want, and let the students research it for themselves and structure your assessment according to the research they have found. Although webquests might take a lot of time to set up initially, it will pay off in the end because of what the time the students will put into it and what they will gain.

Although math is very straightforward and there are certain requirements they have to master in order to move to the next level, I've thought of some ways to make math more applicable and help them understand it by using it in real life. One of the math webquests I found was something called Carshop. Students had to research certain used cars, pretending that they were going to buy one. They had to research the monthly payments, how long it would take to pay off, interest rates on loans, etc. It was a great application!

Math webquests will also be good to introduce students to the concept we are learning, the background of it, how it relates to what we just learned, and use of this concept in the real world. We are trying to do that with the webquest we are working on in class. I think it will make their study of math more effective and they will be able to retain the information better. It will help them understand why they are doing math, not just for the sake of the teacher inflicting pain to their minds!