Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Journal 9 - "Taming the Chaos" NETS-T 2

Johnson, Doug. "Taming the Chaos ." Learning and Leading with Technology 38.3 (2010): 20-3. Web. 8 Dec 2010. <http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-november.aspx>.


This article discussed the issue that educators have with students when they use their personal technologies in the classroom during instruction time. Johnson noted that while these technologies can be a big distraction in the classroom, banning them altogether is not the best idea. Instead why not have the students use these technologies in a way that enhances their learning and keeps them engaged. 


Question #1: How can student who live in low income areas participate in the same kind of online communities when they might not have access to a computer at home or or at school? 
Students that come from low income families and neighborhoods could go to the public library and use the computers, though teachers would need to give ample time to complete these assignments. Enough time would be needed to ensure that every student had more than one opportunity to get on to a computer. 


Question #2: Why is it important to change the model of education at all by the integration of technology?
It is important to change the way we view technology in education because the internet is becoming a  rapidly growing source of information and a way of communicating with others. If we as educators continue to ignore these advancements that have happened since education was created we will soon find our education structures worthless. They would be considered worthless because we would not be prepping out students with the proper knowledge to be successful in this day and age. Change needs to occur so the whole education system does not fall apart. 

Journal 8- "Culture of Collaboration" NETS-T5

McCombs, Brenda. "Culture of Collaboration ."Learning and Leading with Technology 38.3 (2010): 10-3. Web. 7 Dec 2010. <http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-november.aspx>.


This article is about how this school district in North Carolina had to rethink there whole view of education. They did this through the integration of technology by using different forms of assessment for students and teachers, and focusing on a more collaborative effort from the teachers. They were also able to provide the teachers with new technology equipment such as new laptops and interactive whiteboards from a grant they had received. The author went on to say how successful the new changes were as the students test scores rose significantly. 


Question#1: Can teachers implement a this more collaborative approach to teaching without grants? 
I keep hearing over and over again how education needs to be reformed and changed to have relevance in todays society. Though I rarely hear, except for a few exceptions here and there, that there is anything being done about it. Those few exceptions that I mentioned are generally the schools with enough funding to revamp the system. Though money is needed for new supplies, such as new laptops and other materials, no  money is needed to collaborate with teachers within the same schools. While some may argue that many teachers need training,there are so many free educational technology tools on the internet that the teachers could work on discovering the tools together and get to talking and collaborating together. Teachers need to start the process even though money may not be readily available they need to move forward and work with what they got.  


Question#2:If students scores go up as much as 21% why aren't more schools adapting a more collaborative approach to teaching? 
While I think it is primarily the responsibility of the teacher come up with more engaging twenty-first century material for the students.I also believe that the school should work together to provided these different aspects into the classrooms of all students. 

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network - NETS-T 5

This is my personal Learning plan, which consists of several different networks that I can use a resources for furthering my knowledge in education. 


1. Write a few sentences explaining what your personal learning network is and how it will help you as a classroom teacher.
My personal learning network (PLN) consists of different networking sites that can be found on the internet. These networks are built communities where people with like interests can converse and share information form all over the world. My PLN will help me as a teacher in incorporating the use of technology in the classroom and get new ideas for my lesson plans. I can also work to share my own ideas with others and converse with other educators to make myself an informed and all around better teacher. 
2. Discuss your use of Twitter, including who is in your network and why, and your participation in an educational chat (list the topic discussed and what you learned)
I have used twitter to follow and connect with people who are in the field of education and discuss relevant issues and topics related to education. When I participated in the edchat I choose to follow several people who expressed interesting points that on the topic of whether education was broken or just outdated. While I was not brave enough to post or retweet in the discussion yet, I was able to observe and learn how it works and see how easy it is to participate have a conversation with others. From the actual discussion itself I learned that people have many different ideas on how education is and how it needs to be improved and many believe completely reformed. It was interesting to see what all the teachers had to say, a lot of teachers are not happy with what little money and time is spent on the professional development. Many also expressed the need for more time to collaborate with other teachers to better their ideas and lessons. In the future I will have to get a tweetdeck or something similar to it because the conversation was hard to follow at times with new tweets coming in every few seconds. 
3. Discuss your use of Delicious, your Delicious network, and describe what you tagged "PLN"and why (there should already be a link to your Delicious Tag Roll on your blog)
I absolutely love delicious! It is a helpful way to gather, tag, and keep tabs on multiple websites. It a great way to keep track of research and you can view others research as and follow them if you like their findings. My delicious network will help me keep track of different resources and blogs that I can use in the future for teaching and my own learning. I have flag other people in delicious who bookmark things that I think I can benefit from. I bookmarked a educational news blog and several other web pages that contain helpful information and even more links that will lead me to different blogs and sites. I really liked the math website I found it compiles hundreds of different lesson plans, games, online tools for all grade levels.
4. Discuss which digital discussion forum you joined, add the badge to your blog, and reflect on the blog post, video, or article you explored.
I joined the Educator's PLN discussion forum and watched a video on changing education paradigms. It was interesting as I never gave thought to how education was created during the enlightenment period and during the industrial revolution. The point of the video was that since school was the way we live and do things is vastly different and this old way of education does not fit as well as it did back in the industrial revolution days. 

Journal 6 - "Change Agent" NETS-T 5

Rebora , A. . (2010). Change agent. Education Week Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook , Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2010/10/12/01richardson.h04.html?cmp=clp-edweek&intc=bs&sms_ss=delicious&at_xt=4cb7dc75d03,0



This article talked about a need for change in education today. It persuades the reader into thinking education today is outdated and educators need to be focusing on a way to bring the idea of life long learning through the use of technology into the everyday classroom. Will Richardson believes that students should be taught how to be network literate, and it is the job of the educators to make sure that the students know how to use these new network resources as tools for learning. He also stresses that students need to have modeled before them how to appropriately engage on internet social sites. Overall, he thinks the emphasis in education should change to teaching students the learning process rather than feeding them all this facts and stats of knowledge to help them learn. 


Question#1: Why is there such a slow move to the use of the internet world inside the classroom as a tool for learning?


When I think about implementing Will Richardson's ideas into the classroom I cannot help but think that parents may not want their children to have access to social networking sites. I think that in order to implement his plan effectively we need a generation of parents and teachers who see the value of such such sites as excellent resources for communicating and learning with others. I think that it would be awesome to get kids involved in different networks to enhance their learning. Although, I feel that since the internet has such a wide range of possibilities teachers have been hesitant to use these tools. I also foresee parents having a problem with the access their child has to certain information and the access the rest of the internet world will have to their child's ideas at young ages.


Question #2: How do we convince parents and colleagues that the internet and the tools it provides that enhance the learning process out way the dangers of the use of internet?


I think that there are still so many people out there who did not grow up using the internet and feel that it is not an important tool for learning. I think that if the advocates of using technology spent time with the older generations and teaching them how they could benefit from the all the different resources (i.e. twitter, delicious, ect.) that they would begin to see the value of it.  











Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Inspiration - NETS-T 3

This is my NETS-T Standards Inspiration map. It visually represents all 5 standards with two artifacts for each standard. Below the visual representation of each standard I also have written the standard. Likewise, below each visual of the artifacts I wrote how it meets the standards.  

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

iMovie PSA - NETS-T 5


Untitled from Andrea Goetz on Vimeo.

This is a movie that I created in a program called imovie. I learned how to assemble different clips and add music and facts to the video.

Web 2.0 Wiki NETS-T 2,3&5



Live link:http://csusmwebtools.wetpaint.com/page/lucidchart

This is a website that I created about an online tool that I can use in the classroom.