Scenario

     Technology in the classroom is something fairly new to me. Growing up, I had overhead projectors and tvs in the classroom, whereas today students are accustomed to clickers, laptops, and advanced projectors. As a result, one thing that I will be challenged with is capturing and maintaining student learning through the use of technology. That being said, one way that I know I will have success is by utilizing the many tools that Google has created. These allow students to be interactive with homework, tests, or even videos, while allowing teachers to control things like attendance and test styles. More than that, though, I am glad that I have been taught how to properly use Mac and accessories that come with Mac. It is extremely student friendly and contrary to popular belief, working on a Mac is very fun and easy.  

     With the thought that I do not know a lot about how much students know about how to use tech stuff, I have to say that I am comfortable with finding ways of how to learn how to use and integrate new software. The teaching community is very friendly; it is all about helping each other out. As a result of new software, I would simply go to some certified teacher's blogs who discuss the latest and greatest in educational technology. Cyndi Danner-Kuhn has a great website that links to many different blogs, so I know that there is a wealth of information that will help me learn how to use something. In addition, I realized that one of the best resources for learning how to use a new program is simply by going to YouTube and looking up "how-to" videos or podcasts.

     The technology that I have learned and utilized this semester has tremendously helped my school work. Tools like Google Docs and Prezi have allowed me to communicate with peers in a new way while also utilizing the latest technology and making presentations a lot more fun (and easier to collaborate on). These tools have not only effected my learning here at K-State, but these are now things that I am anxious to implement into my classroom in the near future.
      In my opinion, the best way to get teachers up to date on what is good for their classroom is to simply encourage them to take professional development classes that focus specificically on technology in the classroom. It is at these meetings or whatnot that teachers listen to experts as well as other teachers who have used the class. In addition, teachers need to experiment. Learning is an educational process and so teachers will not learn how to use these things if they do not play around with them first and get the hang of them before they implement them into the classroom. At the same time, it is up to the teacher to decide how much stuff they implement; for example, if a teacher is not comfortable with having his or her students utilize iPhones in the classroom, then he or she needs to make sure that they come up with some other way to reach out to the tech savvy students.

My Wow Moment

      My "wow" moment in this class came when I saw the front of my website. It was a moment where I was thinking, "Okay, I'm kind of officially moving into the 21st century of teaching". It was a crazy moment where I realized that future potential employers AND students will look at my website. It was a moment where I felt very grown up and responsible. At the same time, I knew that there was a lot of work to be done to make it how I wanted it. 

     Putting together my website actually turned out to be less stressful than I thought it originally might be. I think that my website turned out well for using the free Google Sites creator. Of course, as a teacher, I am constantly looking at how I can tweak it and change it to make sure that I am reaching my audience in the most effective way possible.

    If I were to do this project over again, I would organize my pages better so that I don't just have clumps of things in one page and have other ones empty. It is hard to know exactly what to do and who will want to see what and where each thing actually fits.      

Podcast Favorites

    Just as with the websites, I was very unfamiliar with podcasts. I had only listened to a few previously, and those were just ones for entertainment! Little did I know that the thing I would learn most from podcasts is that there are so many people out there who can help and there is so much out there that I need advice on!

     Seriously, there are podcasts for everything. I was surprised, but at the same time really glad that now I know of so many different resources. I believe the one that I went to the most was Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand.

    He discusses not only different resources for things students can do on computers, but he goes as far as to demostrate different things for iPods, iPads, and iPhones. I won't lie, the thought of students having these things in my classroom is really weird because we did not have any of these. I like his podcasts the best because he has video for a lot of them and he really understands things that would be good for elementary, even secondary, teachers.

Semester Favorites

     The amount of sites that we have discussed/visited/looked at/played around with is truly staggering. To be honest, I had never even heard of some of these sites or seen them used in action. As a result, I was pretty overwhelmed when I first heard how much we would be doing. However, there are a few sites that I have to say that I am excited to use in the future.

     The first website that I decided was one of the most important resources is EduKan. This is one of the coolest sites because it is like a gigantic briefcase of teacher essentials. My favorite thing is that it can be used as a student resource center. Teachers can post announcements, homework, tests, photographs, pretty much anything and the students can go on and access it all right in that area. This would definitely cut down on the amount of lost papers. I think that this tool is also smart for the students because, let's be honest, they grew up in a time when they were constantly surrounded by computers and they are probably more familiar with them than many teachers and may feel comfortable doing more stuff like tests and work online. Along with the student center, I also loved ThinkFinity. At this website, I found the alignment search tool most useful because it is hard to create lesson plans that align with the standards, but this site gives you tools to do it. I will definitely use this in my future teaching.

     The other website that I found really cool was Prezi. We all grew up when PowerPoints were the best way to present anything; science reports, history or even literature reviews. Well I will definitely use Prezi for a few reasons. First, it allows much more movement to allow students to remain engaged. Second, you can actually have videos in your presentation rather than simply providing a link to a video. Third, it allows for a lot more customization so students can feel like they have more buy in and ownership. Finally, students can group the information into segments that simple slide shows cannot. This is my example of a Prezi!

Water Conservation on Prezi

   

Podcast Reflection #12: iPad; Smoke and Mirrors?

       In this podcast, "The Ipad; Real Potential or Smoke and Mirrors?" Kevin Honeycutt is “carpooling” Tim Holt. The two of them are discussing administrators and collaboration in the workplace. Tim brings up the good point of how every single career has to deal with collaboration. Even computer programers he states. I enjoyed the topic of how when someone gets hired, even educators, people stick with that career and never network outside of it. Today, through technology twitter, delicious, etc. all can be great resources for teachers.

Podcast Reflection #11: Learning Networks

       EdTechWeekly is a great resource because it always has multiple perspectives and people. This podcast, "Learning Networks: PLEs, Free vs Owned, Google Apps", has a couple different people discussing different resources used in the classrooms and used in education. In this specific podcast they talk about their new layout for their talk show, which includes more specific links about what they are talking about and how they are having guest speakers now. They talk about delicious tags, and how resourceful educational technology tags are. I believe a teacher could use delicious as a great resource by checking for tags. In this podcast, they all talk about different resources on the internet that can be helpful for a teacher or in educational technology. The one link I thought was interesting was PLENK. PLENK stands for personal learning environments network and knowledge. It is basically an online course that could be a great resource for a teacher. In the course the “student” does not have to remember a whole bunch of things for the course, but rather do many activities that are based on the web. It would be a great resource for a teacher because it teaches them things that are out there and it is a flexible course that could be very useful.

Podcast Reflection #10: The DIY Episode

        This is my first time listening to "The Tech Chicks"! In this podcast, the tech chicks first talk about their tech club. Tech club is at one of their schools which is bases off an application process. Students apply to be a part of the club to get a learning experience with technology. The two women give tips and tricks for teaching 21st century students using 21st century skills. This is called the DIY episode because it's the Do it Yourself episode. One of the interesting resources they talk about is the microscope for the iphone. If you buy a microscope and attach it to the case it gets a x45 magnification. Its a quick way to take a picture and magnify things.