Thanksgiving!

Teachers are designers’ majority of the time.  When creating lesson plans they need to design assignments that benefit their students so the y will learn to the best of their abilities. As a future physical education teacher I would need to create activities for my students so they won’t become bored.

If I was a science teacher I would use Trebuchet Simulator in my class room.  It is greatly used for teaching lessons about force and physics.  Trebuchet Simulator is software that simulates a throwing device and the students have to manipulate the movement.   This can also be used in a PE class, putting students in groups and allowing them to compete with one another.

Digital Storytelling is software that puts a lot of focus on activity more than the technology.  It is used for great team work and working with others.  Students think of a story and put it together.  I would use this in my classroom if I was having my students act out tell their body parts and bones.

I would tweak with the data sets, which should be interesting. We could take the data used in a chemistry lab and change the variables, by changing the students can see how accurate they need to be in a lab and how some small mistake can make a huge difference.

I think it is very possible to learn from TV alone.  You can take a cooking show for instance; it is very instructional and informational. That’s more of a hands-on type of activity but you can also learn about what’s going on in the news or stock market by watching the news. I don’t suggest you learn solely from the TV more and better information is put in books.

Jonasse D., Howland J., Marra R. M., & Crismond D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall

Week 11: Chapter 3 Assignment

The three principals that I think would be important for education would be; Committed Learning Principle, Discovery Principle, and Practice Principle. The Committed Learning Principle is an extension of the real-world to the virtual world. It also engages in a lot of effort and practice.  The Discovery principle is probably the most important to me because students should be allowed to experiment and make discoveries on their own in order to better their learning experience.  The Practice principle gives learners a chance to perfect a certain skill. For example, an athlete going to the gym everyday and practicing free throw shots.

            The one activity I would support the most would be the focus of physical education.  Not because I’m an athlete but because I would want them to stress the importance of staying fit and healthy in our society.  My concern would be mainly to teach students what muscles are doing what in different exercise and teach them about hyperkinetic diseases.    

            Gee’s principles and stimulations play an important role in education.  The focus on keeping students engaged and experiencing hands on a real life situation.  There is no better “teacher” than hands on experience.

Jonasse D., Howland J., Marra R. M., & Crismond D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Chapter 7: Multimedia PowerPoints

The items I choose that would be most helpful in a classroom setting were the concept maps.  I plan to become a Health teacher preferably on the high school level and using concept maps can be used to show my students the guidelines they need for better learning. When studying a specific topic my students can use the necessary concepts to have a better understanding of what is going on. I'm more into technology so I would like it if my students would create their concept maps on laptop or computer, this way it'll be more creative.

PowerPoint is a great teaching tool, one of the biggest ways to inform your students about a certain chapter in a text. PowerPoint’s are still using words even though it's taken from important ideas of a chapter is still can come off as boring.  You'll need to use some creative colors and even pictures to keep your students well in tuned to the task at hand. Following the pitfalls from the text wouldn’t be a problem.

In conclusions, concept maps are a great fundamental tool that should be greatly used in a classroom setting.  They'll keep the students engage in hands on activity. PowerPoint’s are good as well, when I go into teaching I'll probably use PowerPoint’s more than concept maps just because I've been so familiar with them in college.

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 6: Investigating With Technologies

Personal Digital Assistants are mobile hand-held devices that help you with computing and can also be used for information storage. It can be used for personal or business like benefits. It's often used for keeping a schedule handy as well as an address book. In the classroom is can be used for keeping track of due dates, assignments and also grades.

We use online survey tools for calculating online data and collection processes as well as to ensure complete accuracy. In the classroom it can introduce students to a more educated and well professional type survey. For professors it can be a great professional way to make a survey. A couple of good rules for writing a good survey is being specific with your questions that you ask and make sure you ask a good number of questions not just one or two.

PDA's and surveys are becoming a big tool for students in the day in age. It’s easier to format a PDA file of a class schedule. A lot of assignments are done online, especially in college so having knowledge of how to use online tools makes it much easier to use.

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Spreadsheets

I think very highly of using spreadsheets. I didn't use them much growing up but they can be very useful in education as well as a great teaching tool. When using spreadsheets that can help you recalculate information quickly to get a project done. I would ultimately use this program in a classroom setting.

As teachers, the reason we would use spreadsheets is to calculate our class' grades quickly and easily like that assignment we did earlier in the week. As soon as a number is placed in a slot it is easily recalculated to another number due to a function. The three primary functions of a spreadsheet are storing, calculating and presenting information. When you store information with calculated form you can present the information in a spreadsheet or even in a graph.

As stated above spreadsheets are a great organized program that can get work done efficiently.  With spreadsheets you can make averages that can allow you to post graphs to see even better. Using spreadsheets can be useful  in a math class as well as a typical classroom.

Citations:
Jonassen, David, Howland, Jane, Marra, Rose M, Crismond, David. (2008). Modeling With

Technologies, Meaningful Learning With Technology, pp. 88-89, Columbus, OH: Pearson

Prentice Hall

Week 3: Word (Citations was late)

According to the website I found a way to make my outlines more efficient and faster. This is a great creation to conducting a better form to writing a paper. I was very intrigued by how many different ways you can go about formatting a paper. I found a map, diagram and a tree like way of outlining a word document.  The tree like diagram interested me the most because of how you can move a “branch” to another “branch”. You can use this in any form of classrooms not just English or language arts classroom. I would find this program very beneficial to a student in all grade levels.     

            The best type of writing activities would be the brainstorming writing activity.  Most students have trouble with coming up with ideas to write about, with this program it allows you to be at a computer that may be accessible to the internet which you can browse the web for information about a particular topic.  Having one teacher revise and edit so many papers at a time is an issue. To organize time management you will need to implement peer editing. This will not only allow the teachers to do more of what they need to but it will increase responsibility for students for their own learning, and improve writing skills. You can use the tool that was introduced in this program. It’s easy and it doesn’t allow you to use pen and paper which could be beneficial to the younger kids with poor hand writing.  From past experience teaching on hand to my fellow classmates always helped me.  If you can teach something that means you are well aware of the material enough to teach someone else.  I knew the material well enough to teach it but I knew it even more after I taught it.  When teaching something it’s not only repetition but you may pick up on a step you might have missed doing it yourself.
            The program that was introduced to me today is an amazing program that I feel should be used on all levels of education.  Education technology is something we need in our schools and this program is one that I feel will be a big part in bettering or youths education.

Citation: Video that was given, Chapters 4-6 in textbook.

I think blogs can be very informational.  They can be useful to education by allowing students to view blogs that teachers post in case of a missed class. I would respond to the comment by saying this, technology education is at an all time high.  We don't necessarily need blogs but the can be helpful to keep a document of whats being taught for that class day.