Final blog entry

It is very important to incorporate technology in the classroom. Technology in the classroom can increase student involvement and understanding of key concepts. Students are more likely to want to participate when technology is involved in a well-made lesson. Also, technology can allow for the easier creation of lessons and other materials, which reduces prep time.
The challenges are that a school might not have the necessary technology or it might not function properly when you go to actually teach the lesson.
Some of the things I will take with me from this class are: always be open to new technology, use all available resources in order to make the task at hand easier (as with the fill-in lesson plan), and to use technology in order to make sure my class is unique to my personal style.

4/27 blog post

One thing that definitely surprised me about copyright laws for teachers is that a teacher may only use a copyrighted work in one class, and may not use the same work in another. This seems stupid to me, because if a teacher teaches more than one section of the same class, he or she will most likely have the same lessons for each class, which would incorporate the same copyrighted material. Also, showing copyrighted videos in a public space without a permit, even in a school auditorium or LGR, is forbidden. We watched a lot of copyrighted, non-educational films in my classes in high school and middle school- I had no idea you would have needed a permit.
I think it is our job to teach the copyright laws to students. I think by informing the students about fair use practices when handling copyrighted materials, they will begin to understand the policies associated. For instance, if a class wants to watch a movie of a book they're reading in class, explain to them why you would/would not be able to watch it under the fair use policy.

Examples of good and bad electronic portfolios

Good portfolio- http://keithschroeder.net/

Bad portfolio- http://www.cesa8.k12.wi.us/teares/math/it/samplePort/LAURIE/Laurie%27s%20index.htm

4/13 Blog Post

1. I think overall our video project was fairly easy. We did end up doing two takes of two scenes, but only because we found that the camera angle was not right for the scene. I would say that extra planning beforehand would have been helpful, such as going over the storyboard. I think our group did well with time management, and while we didn't put many effects into the video, I think the effects we did use look pretty spiffy. I don't see myself using video technology too much in my classroom, although giving the students an option to do a video book report would be an interesting option.

2.
Music video project. 10th grade English
Goals- Students will, in groups, select a song for which they will write and shoot a music video. After completion, the students will individually write papers explaining why their music video reflects the lyrics or mood of the song.
This project will allow for students to practice creating storyboards, explaining procedures through writing, and evaluating mood within a piece of written work (in this case, a song's lyrics).
Prep work- securing video recording equipment, scheduling different locales at which students may record their music videos, assigning groups.

3/11 post

I think one of the great things about whiteboard technology is that it provides a different style of teaching other than lecturing and other in-class activities. There are many games, activities, and interactive forms of learning on the Smartboard software, and many of them involve students as well.

The technology wasn't difficult to use, since many of the tools were readily available and only needed to be modified to be used correctly. More difficult was the narrowing down of the ideas and deciding what exactly to do with each interactive tool.

Some of the pros of the smartboards were what I've listed above: they're interactive, they have many unique tools and features, and they add variety to a curriculum. Some cons are: definitely the cost, especially considering the $1 billion cut to educational funding in PA. Also, some teachers may use smartboards excessively as an alternative to good teaching, just as some teachers do with videos.

I wish I had been familiar with Smartboard software when I had taken my Secondary Methods class, as it would have worked perfectly with one of my lessons. For this lesson, I had the students create a monster presented in Dante's Inferno, with 3 students each designing the head, upper body, and lower body respectively. The catch was, no group could see what the other groups had done, so by the end the beast came out looking grotesque. Smartboard software would have worked great, as the students could have drawn their parts on the smartboard while the other students turned to face the back of the room, and then I could have hidden the section of the monster so the next group could draw.
Another of my lessons involved labeling the circles of hell in the Inferno, which would have been much more interactive on a whiteboard versus a powerpoint.

3/2 post

I think learning all the skills necessary to complete our projects for the Software Productivity Lab will be very useful when I am a teacher. In particular using Inspiration will be very helpful. It makes it very easy to create concept maps which can then be interactive, involving the students in the lesson. Also, learning how to use Word effectively will save lots of time. I remember making my first test in Word and having it take a half hour to make one page because I individually spaced each question and the blank for that question. Now that I know how to use tables to make my answer spaces, it saves so much time. My test for our project only took 5 minutes to make, which saved a lot of time that was spent on better things.

2/23 Blog Post

1. Inspiration is definitely something I would invest in for my classroom. 10 great classroom uses for it are:

• Show the groups of pilgrims described in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, sorted by the different types of stories (the marriage group, the corrupt clergy, etc.)
• Create a web showing different literary movements and what sort of changes they entailed.
• Focus on the Enlightenment and show the different aspects of culture it affected.
• Focus on symbols within a Shakespeare play and connect to each symbol instances of that symbol in the play.
• Create a flow chart for how to teach a Shakespeare play; connect related ideas, include allusions, symbols, etc. Print out and keep with me while teaching to make sure I don't forget any important details.
• When assigning projects to a group, make the groups' physical layouts on Inspiration. Include a bubble describing their assignment, and if applicable who is responsible for what part of the assignment.
• When introducing symbolism as a concept, write a word and have students fill in the ideas which are related to that word or image.
• To teach Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled," create two "roads" with a series of events to show how one decision can affect your entire life.
• Create a diagram of the parts of speech and how they work in a sentence.
• Along the same lines, create a sentence with spaces for the inclusion of nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs depending on the unit, and have the students come up to the board and move around the parts of speech to have the sentence make sense.

2. So far, the most interesting web resources I've seen in class are United Streaming and ethemes. I think I would use United Streaming the most in my class because, to be honest, not a whole lot of people enjoy literature. People do like watching videos. If I can find a video biography of, say, Mark Twain, I think my students would be more apt to pay attention than if I had them read his biography instead. The videos can also be used as a reinforcing tool once a work has been read. There is a series on US of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry which breaks down the major themes and moods of the poems. This would be great to use after reading his work to really drive home the points he's trying to make.

2/16- Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking can be a great tool to use in an English secondary classroom. During research projects, students can save bookmarks to all of their researched articles on their social bookmarks. That way, they will have access to them anywhere (combined with Google Docs, this would allow them to work on their paper from any computer). Also, the tagging system would allow students to organize their articles by keywords to make it easier to arrange their ideas.

Social bookmarking could also benefit me as a teacher. I would be able to see what sort of materials the students were bookmarking to make sure they are appropriate for the topic and the academic level. I could also use social bookmarking to bookmark websites which I might want the students to visit, as we do in EDU350.

Social bookmarking already does benefit me as a student. I have saved bookmarks from years ago when I was writing an essay in my senior year of high school. Recently I was writing another paper on roughly the same topic, and I was able to go back and find the articles which I had saved. The tagging system also helps greatly, as it allows me to organize my bookmarks by author, subject, or theme. This saves a lot of time when looking for an appropriate source.

2/9 Blog Entry

1. I could see myself using blogs in a classroom as a way to evaluate whether or not students read the assigned homework. I could give prompt questions and have them answer the questions on their blogs. This way, it would feed the information directly to me if I subscribed to their blogs. I could also have the students create blogs for characters in stories we read in class as an exercise in creative writing. They could update the blogs from the point of view of the characters as we move along in the storyline. The students could also customize their blogs, which would be something to get them interested in the idea. These are two of the advantages. The disadvantages would be that the students would need time to learn how to use the blogs, they would need time in class to type their responses, and they might get distracted with customizing their blogs rather than answering the prompts.

2.
Advantages of Google Apps-

• Students can work on a collaborative project together over the internet, rather than being forced to be in the same room
• Work is saved online instead of a flash drive or hard drive, which makes it harder to accidentally delete or lose files.
• Google Apps keeps track of changes made by individual users, so you can tell whether or not everyone contributed a fair amount to a project.
• Not everyone can afford Microsoft Office; Google Apps offers basic versions of the same program for free.
• Documents created in Office can be uploaded and worked on in Google Apps.

Disadvantages-

• Not every student has access to a computer/the internet at all times.
• Some students will be unfamiliar with using these types of programs.
• Google Apps does not offer as many customization options as Microsoft Office.
• All changes made can be traced, which may not be a good thing for some students. It may also be taken as an invasion of privacy.

Overall I feel that the advantages of Google Apps far outweigh the disadvantages. I think that it is a great program and should be instituted in all schools.