Reflection 4

Tough to believe that the semester is almost over, but it is.  I have really enjoyed the many different technologies that we have learned about in this class.  A few of the technologies, like PowerPoints, blogs and Twitter, I had prior experience with.  I did however learn ways to implement blogs and Twitter into my classroom.  I would never use Twitter in my middle school classroom because I do like to have separation of home and school with my students, but I would however use a blog as a journaling device for my students.  Other technologies, such as Symballo and Glogster, I had never heard about.  The most interesting of the new technologies that we learned about was digital story telling.  I had always wondered how to utilize windows movie maker into my classroom, without giving students video cameras and this was the answer that I was looking for.

Review 3

Since the last time that I have BLOGed we have created an interactive PowerPoint, and looked at emerging classroom technologies.  My favorite Module of the two was learning another application for PowerPoint.  Each spring I teach a lesson with the eighth grade science teacher.  In this lesson students utilize PowerPoint to show a scientific change in PowerPoint. The students use animations to show movement of the change over multiple slides.  Some students create a PowerPoint about the different types of moons, some show a predator/prey relationship, and some create a 2 dimensional roller coaster showing potential and kinetic energy.  This project is well received by the students and allows them to take the knowledge that they gained in the science classroom and apply it into another setting.

            When I was looking at the emerging technologies I was impressed by how many of them focus on maximizing student creativity.  I feel that school sometimes drains student creativity by constantly focusing on hard data information gathered through constant testing. 

Reflection 2

Over the past few weeks we have been learning about the variety of different applications that are available through Google.  I was aware of some of the features that Google docs had to offer, but I was unaware of how similar Google docs are to The Microsoft Office Suite.  This is wonderful in a school district like mine that does not have enough site licenses to run Microsoft Office on all of the districts computers.  Only two computer labs in the district are able to run Microsoft Office, my middle school lab and the high school lab.  Because of this there are is difficulty presenting a project that is created in my computer lab, in a regular education.  Because of this I am going to teach Google docs next year along with Microsoft Office.  Both programs are very valuable in a future work force because if a student knows how to create projects in either program they can create in any program.

I really like Google forms.  I thought it was really interesting how you could create a test, quiz, or worksheet, and link to Fluburo and have it grade it for you.  This is a great time saving application that doesn’t cost money.

Reflection 1

This is my reflection BLOG for EDCI505. So far I have really enjoyed the class. The SYMBALLO EDU assignment was very interesting and a great way to get organized with electronic data. I really liked the finished product of GLOGSTEREDU, but I found the program lacking in usability.  As a middle school computer teacher I think I will use SYMBALLO EDU often to organize Youtube videos about similar topics. On my SYMBALLO EDU webmix I chose the common topic of finances.  This is a Social Studies standard that I take responsibility for in the computer classroom.  I enjoy teaching this subject because of my original area of study being Social Studies.  I do not see me using GLOGSTEREDU very much in my classroom.  It just is to time consuming to make one for most subjects.  I would be nice to use though after the GLOG is created.  I could also use it as a way to introduce new subject areas.  I really hope that the remainder of this course is as useful in my computer classroom.