Quotable

Upon browsing educational quotes, I came across one that really made me stop and think:

"The individual learning model is a foreign territory for most Net Genres, who have grown up collaborating, sharing, and creating together online." ~Don Tapscott in Growing Up Digital

I have not read his book, but it would appear to be that the Net Genres would be the students of today who have grown up with the genre of internet (net) as a key aspect in their lives. Or perhaps 'genres' is an abbreviation for generation, but either way, it refers to the students we are currently teaching.

Some may question how much our students know about and use technology. Allow me to provide you with a few examples. During the summertime I nanny children of a variety of ages. One household I work with there are two boys, ages 3, and 5. Their television is hooked up to an external hard drive, has wireless access, and is also used with a play station 2, a Wii and a blue ray player. Yes, it took me a few times to master switching between the devices. Could I do it, yes, it just took some time and understanding of what wires went where in order for the device I wanted to use to be turned on and hooked up to the right sources of power. The three year old and the five year old can and do switch between systems at a rate much more effective than I can. Do they use technology? Certainly. Another child I sit for told me that he has a time limit of five hours a day of video game and online computer playing time. Five hours?! He is certainly using technology on a daily basis, much more so than I. One of my students asked to be my facebook friend the other day. While I politely declined her invitation I wonder what reason a 10 year old has to have an account on a social networking site. I suppose it is the same reason I have an account-to keep in contact with other people. Our students are using technology.

Thinking back to the classrooms I grew up in, the teacher was lucky to have a computer in the classroom. Many classrooms now have at least three computers, and this is a good thing. But are they being used? Using computers simply for students to take Accelerated Reader tests is a waste of such a resource. There are wonderful sites online that challenge students to learn by making learning fun, and bringing it back to a format they are familiar with. We no longer have to teach students how to read a website, they grow up learning that. We have to teach them how to read a newspaper and look up a number in the phone book, because those are the things teachers grew up learning, but students today lack understanding in.

Blogs are a wonderful avenue to express thoughts and exclaim in wonder over new-found knowledge. Obviously, I am using it as such, but do I take the time to show my students how to effectively blog? I could have integrated more of that into my student teaching. Had I more time, I could have made our blog into a conversation of literature, rather than a method of reporting. A blog can be used for both, that is part of the beauty of it. I would like to try that with my first class, provided there are resources available to do so.

I would also like to try setting up a classroom wiki with my students. It would be a page where parents could track what is going on in the lives of their children while at school, as well as a safe place for students to discuss educational related material with each other. The students of today need to be able to learn in groups, it is how they grew up learning, and will be a stronger method of learning for the majority of them.

Does this mean that individualized learning has no place in the classroom and should be entirely thrown out? Certainly not! Students also need to learn to work on their own, as life will require that of them at times as well (it certainly does in higher education). I value the individual learning model, so long as it is used in conjunction with the cooperartive learning that is likely to become the norm for students. Education needs a healthy balance of both to be effective. Who am I to teach solely one way when my students learn in so many different ways? It would be selfish for me to do so.

Wrapping it Up

My last full week in the classroom with the students! We have a lot of wrapping up to do. This week we will listen to the podcasts the students made about the regions of the United States of America and taking quizzes on them, encasing eggs in various materials in an attempt to keep their fragile shells from cracking, graphing Lucky Charms (and various other data), and wrapping up our literary essays. Busy, busy fourth graders!

I am still in the classroom Monday and Tuesday, but my mentor takes over again (which I'm sure will feel different for me, as I have been planning and teaching the class since February). Almost everything for Illinois State University is done and uploaded, so things are coming to a close all around. Two projects left, but they involve me unleashing my inner creative mind, so of course, I will have a blast.

Saying goodbye to my students will not be easy, but I feel I am ready to embark on the journey of continual learning through a classroom of my own. Applications are in and I am trusting in God to lead me to the school I will be best suited for, as I know He will provide!

Graphing and Technology

Great Kid Friendly website to enter data and make graphs:

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/

Multi-Step Project

I had previously written that my students are doing a research project on various regions of the United States of America. The students are recording their research in a class blog. Many are coming along nicely, some need to be revised and some need to be finished.

Since this is an online blog, no names are posted. The security is very strict, as I had to create a guest user name so that others could read our blog (mainly family members). The site is www.kidblog.org and the guest user name is: FamilyMember with the password being wilson Should you be interested in seeing how these are coming along, you can view them at that location. Because it is set up as a guest account, you can not comment on the blogs or edit them. It is a read only account. I love this about the particular blog site I chose to use.

We have also begun the pod-casting process. The students are excited about this level of the project. Once they are finished and posted on the classroom website, I will post a link for you to listen.

It is a challenge with various groups at different stages of the project. Our classroom is fortunate to have 5 computers in the classroom to use, but with a class of 26 students, it is difficult to get them all done in a timely manner. I have developed an extension activity because of this. I am new to using a blog within the classroom as well as a podcast (the one I made to tell the students how to use it was my first ever!) I love that my school has the resources to be able to incorporate technology into the classroom!

There are definitely challenges, but all in all it is coming along nicely. Today I wanted to have three or four of me in the classroom, as many students had questions about various stages of the project-yet that is all part of the fun. Trying to juggle all the questions and help everyone in a timely manner. I am thankful my mentor teacher has been leaving the room and leaving this up to me to handle by myself. I know this will prepare me for when I have a classroom of my own-which I hope is soon!

Wordle

I learned about Wordle while I was browsing a new blog. Currently I am brainstorming ways to use it in my classroom. The "sticky notes" on the site (thanks to fellow diigo users-a universal bookmarking site that also has many other features) helped me to understand it. However, before I use it in the classroom, I need to make sure it is used in a meaningful way that is more than just fun. What did I create my first wordle on? This site! Click here to see everything that is this site and the neat way wordle puts it together.

Life without a Smart Board

So the projector on the smart board went out a few days ago. We are suppose to be getting a new one, today, we shall see.

This has forced me not to rely on technology to aid my instruction. The students had to look at their worksheets and follow along on the page as I explained it, rather than look off of the document camera-shocker! *laughs*

The timer for timed tests was on the Smart Board (I had to improvise last second, because I didn't think of that until it was too late). Good old fashioned clocks work just fine, though!

My biggest adjustment was writing on the white board (which had been covered by the Smart Board). I slant my words upward unless I am really thinking about it. My students call it "the wave". As I tend to get writing, forget about it, then remember and come back down. One told me yesterday, "Good thing we are so smart we can read the wave", I'm glad my students have a sense of humor-because they certainly need it with me as the teacher. I'm not sure what my new student thinks of me. Probably that I am either a big goofball, because of the projector missing or that I am a Nazi, as the students have been rowdy of late.

Give without Spending a Cent!

There are some websites I have come across that allow you to give without giving a cent! By simply using them, they will donate to charitable foundations. The one I like best is a search engine powered by yahoo called goodsearch.com. You pick the charity and every search they donate one cent. The other two are education based: www.freerice.com and freepoverty.com. At each site they donate either water or rice to countries in need. All you have to do is correctly answer questions. This is a great tool to use for extra practice in the classroom! Plus it promotes helping others out.

Blogging and Podcasting in the Classroom

So I am planning on integrating blogging and podcasting into an activity post Illinois State Achievement Tests. It will be in conjunction with our unit on regions of the United States of America. Hopefully the integration of technology will excite the students and give them that drive to want to learn (that is so hard to achieve sometimes).

How do I feel about this? I had a professor that required us to respond regularly on a wiki and blog as a part of the class (the blog was apart from this one, and actually inspired me to begin this one). So I feel I have some experience with this. But enough to teach students how to do it? I will do my research, set everything up ahead of time and all will go well, I hope. I do realize restrictions will need to be placed on the blog so that all the postings are monitored. But all in all, this should be an exciting endeavor and I will keep you updated as to our progress in this exciting step forward.

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire

I just found an excellent website where you can make your own questions for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. In my classroom I am using it as an assessment, as each student will be writing down the answers to the questions, while only one is in the "hot seat". Once you have created your game, it gives you your own URL to view it in. I made mine on perimeter, volume and area, with a few questions thrown in there just on shapes. Click here to view my game.

Current Events

Today a fellow student teacher clued me into a great website. If you have students who are interested in rap, this website could be your link to engaging students in current events. The makers rap the week's current events. This week it was everything from the aftershock of Haiti to the California mudslides to the solar eclipse to Scott Brown getting elected to the Massachusetts Senate position. The rap is done via a video and also shows news clips.

Whoops!

This week is the first time I "officially" took over one subject in the fourth grade classroom. I have been teaching lessons since fall, but seldom had I planned and taught mostly on my own. I say mostly because my mentor teacher is wonderful and helps by guiding me (helping me to determine how long to spend on a topic) and offering me resources.

This week I am implementing math. It is probably the subject I am most hesitant about, as I do not view myself as a strong mathematician. The way I see it, by starting it first, I have that much more time to learn how to teach it and sharpen my mathematical skills. Today our lesson was on quadrilaterals. I had a neat SMART board lesson planned with interactive activities throughout the lesson in addition to a flow chart on various quadrilaterals. I had looked online to see if the SMART tech website already had a lesson on quadrilaterals before I created my own. I did end up using one slide from another teacher's creation and I added to it what I wanted to cover. Upon getting to school I realize that the flash drive I had saved my SMART slides on was still in my computer back at my apartment. Whoops! Thank goodness I write lesson plans so that a substitute should be able to pick them up and read them. Because of this, I had the questions and material on each slide written into my lesson plans and I was able to improvise. It was not as fun as I had planned, but it worked and the students learned the information. The students were able to do the sort the quadrilaterals slide, that I had used from the SMART tech website, so not all was lost. And I have a great SMART lesson on quadrilaterals for the future :D

Website in the Works

Watchknow is an educational website that is getting started. Its aim is to organize all the best educational videos so that teachers and can have them at their fingertips with ratings and additional information concerning them.

Much thanks to Teacher's Musings for sharing this site with me via her blog.

Technology

One of the things I have been really trying to do in the past year is learn about new technologies and how they may be used in the classroom with students.

I have found quite a few wonderful things. I have always had in the back of my mind that when working with technology we need to be conscious that sometimes it breaks or refuses to work properly, for whatever reason. But the idea has been brought to the forefront of my mind since last night-when my cell phone decided to go crazy.

The phone, itself, works (meaning that if I know the number I want to call, I can dial it and make the call). But the screen is mostly black, with a few rainbow streaks and a few hairline cracks. I know what you are thinking-hairline cracks? you probably dropped it and broke it. But, that is not the case. Unfortunately, AT and T does not cover internal cracks and a messed up screen on the warranty, so I am stuck with a phone that does not work like it is suppose to, at the current time. I can not get to my contact list (because I can not see them), I can't take pictures, listen to music, send or receive text messages (a service I am paying $20 a month to have unlimited access to). I also no longer have an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. The funny thing is my phone was working fine, it was in my pocket and I was texting people ten minutes before I pulled it out to call a friend. That was when I found the screen was black with rainbow streaks (thankfully that friend was on speed dial, so I was able to call her).

These little things are convieneces to a cellular phone, yet I am frusterated that I had to ask my roommate to make sure I was up before she left for work and that I can hear my text messages coming in, but I have no way of letting the person know that I can't recieve texts or respond to the message.

Lesson learned? Do not rely to much on technology, because it can (and at sometime probably will) let you down.