PDP~ My Beliefs

I believe we all need to incorporate technology in our classroom. In all of our education this semester we have been exposed to many tools that will be helpful in our future classrooms (and it doesn't include a fraction of the available resources). Not only because there are so many resources that are helpful and fun in a classroom, but because technology, so why not educate students about the benefits as well as the dangers oftechnology use. I feel it is our duty to educate students on technology to the best or our abilities.

PDP~ Lessons Learned

PDP~ Strengths and Weaknesses

On the UNI survey I scored as an apprentice in almost all areas because I havent created learning activites for he classroom. I have not been able to create learning activites and therefore I have not been able to reflect on my abilities as a teacher in those areas. I feel like I personally can do almost anything required of me on a computer, and if I can't, then I will figure out how. That is one of my biggest strengths in this area; I am always willing to try new things and I know I can do anything I put time and effort into.
In my lesson planning for other courses I have made an effort to add in technology use and presentation. It is an important part of the NET standards to incorporate technology in planning and designing learning environments and experiences. With a changing world that lives and dies with the newest and greatest, we as teachers of the next generations must stay on top of it all. If we are aware of and able to use technology, students will see what we are teaching as more related to their lives. That will be one of my greatest strengths as a teacher as well; my ability to and desire to instruct my students in many different ways will help me later on.

Digital Cameras & Picasa

We learned about using digital cameras and Picasa to edit those pictures taken on our digital cameras. It was very interesting to see all the different things that can be done in Picasa that other photo editing tools cannot do. My sister uses Picasa religiously and swears it's the best but I have never really played around with it like I did this week. I definitely downloaded it to my own computer so that I can learn to use it even more. It is important to be aware of the different functions available on our digital cameras as well. I am a big picture person and love snapping all sorts of different types of pictures. I have played around with my camera quite a bit and I feel like I know it pretty well, but getting to know Picasa better will benefit me for classroom use as well. The tools available through Picasa make it very easy to upload and share photos on my blog and classroom website, and is a great tool for students to be able to use as well.
Students using Picasa for assignments in all different types of classes is definitely a possibility I see in the future. I think it is important to offer different types of media for students to express themselves while still teaching the content area you are working within. It is always exciting to learn and discover new tools that allow students to be individuals and learn in their own way.

Internet Safety~ March 28

In learning about Internet safety I was very impressed with the importance to educate our students about the dangers that come when using technology. While there are many benefits to using the Internet that we can teach students the negatives need to be clear as well. It is important for our students to know about the unlawful activity that they sometimes unknowingly engage in. By creating the different medias of information for our students to gain information about Internet safety we can more effectively teach all the different things we want to. The newsletter can be given to parents and the brochures can be more quick reading for students to get the facts quickly, while the flier could be posted around the school or passed out to spread awareness.
By giving students more information about Internet safety we will be able to stop a lot of the activity that students engage in that is inappropriate and damaging. By spreading awareness many of the things that students do when they are younger and unaware can be eliminated. I am looking forward to educating students about this in order to create a more safe environment in my classroom and in the school in general.

March 15~ Digital Stories 2

Last week we learned more about Digital images and copyright laws. This information is very helpful, because as teachers we can't expect our students to not plagiarize if we ourselves are doing it. While for the most part our educational resources will not be checked by a board of people seeing if we took material from other sources, it is important to bring new ideas and activities to the table. We can use some material, images, etc in our lessons and examples for students as long as we give credit to those sources. As long as we are doing our best to not cheat the system we can expect the same from our students.
In creating our digital story we have found ourselves filled with ideas that will take up a lot of time and space, and we are trying to figure out how to weed down our ideas. In searching for pictures for the story we have had a little difficulty getting away from the Disney pictures, but having more mythological images will help make it more realistic and take the students' minds off of the Disney version as much of the little mermaid. We are still trying to figure it out, and trying to keep those copyright rules in mind!

Digital story 1- march 7

This week we learned a little bit about digital stories and how we can use them to evoke emotions and teach our students about the things we want to. It is helpful to use emotions every so often in the classroom especially in language arts because deeper conversation will occur that can cause new thoughts and greater learning. As a future english teacher I plan to use emotional learning and connections with my students to create foundations of trust in the student-teacher relationship; once that relationship is founded students can feel more comfortable with me as their teacher as well as in the classroom community. I enjoy focusing on more light hearted things for the most part so our digital story is going to be evoking those happy emotions in those who see it. I hope by putting a happy spin on this assignment we will be able to be a more enjoyable and fun for the students.

Vidcast- March 1

Post- Production:

I created a vidcast with Rebbecca Moreno about Shakespeare as an introduction to starting one of his plays. We created a photostory to create a more professional presentation of the information we were giving. In studying Shakespeare the class will cover many parts of the core curriculum, most strongly in Standard 1, objectives 2 and 3. We will be analyzing his words used in his plays, the format in which he presents those words and what it all means to us today. In studying the historically relevant works of Shakespeare we can bring in modern ideas and words that come from his work over his lifetime. Everyone is able to find meaning in Shakespeare's works that relates back to them in their lives, I hope that through this small introduction we can help students to slowly find their own connections after further study. We wanted to choose a topic that we would actually use later on in our teaching careers. Shakespeare is a safe bet for a subject covered in a Language Arts Classroom. In creating something so modern to teach about someone that seems so gone in the everyday lives of students we can use technology as a tool to showing that Shakespeare does in fact live on today. In making it as short as we did we will be more likely to keep students' attention than if we had created a twenty minute presentation for the same topic. Along those lines though, we do lose a lot of information in cutting the vidcast so short. Shakespeare deserves much more than under two minutes of our time, so it would be our responsibility to treat this only as a short introduction, not necessarily as a learning tool. I hope to create more vidcasts for my classroom to utilize in the coming years, as I see it as something that students can benefit from seeing and creating themselves. It would be interesting to have students create something like this for one of their assignments. If this had been slightly less formal I think it would lend itself to allowing students to show more of their personality through their work, while still meeting the criteria.

Pre-Production

In creating this vidcast I felt that we learned a lot about all the different tools that are available to us as teachers. There are so many options that we can use in many productive and effective ways to teach our students and to benefit all different types of learners. While there are any ways that we could have taken this assignment, we have decided on an introduction to content in which I believe we will be using a photostory. The other devices taught to us in class also seemed like they could find a place in my classroom. By having so many different tools being used and available to us, we are better able to keep students engaged in the learning taking place and the content being covered.

February 13~ Podcasts

In class we learned about podcasts and were able to create and post one in under 30 minutes. It was really neat to see how simple something that seems so advanced like this can be. Although the sending process took us longer than we wanted it to and than it should have it was great to learn about this. Podcasts are basically a way we can give free audio to our students, anything from a lesson we gave that they need to hear, to free music. I think that this is a great tool to have under our belts!
This is important because we can give our students many learning opportunities that they might not otherwise have without this tool. By making things accessible to students in this way in addition to power points, written directions, etc we are helping students who learn better and more effectively through audio listening. Podcats are a great way to get a lot of information out in a more personable way than an email or written list.
After this short activity I could see myself using podcasts in my class throughout the year with my class and just as the teacher as well. I could send parents a welcome speech along with an email for their students that are a part of my class which makes me as the teacher more of a person than if I were to just send the email. I would definitely have my students make their own podcasts as an activity for learning and sharing with one another.

UEN Reflection

UEN has so many tools that can and will be used in my future classes. Having a site geared specifically for teachers and students creates a whole new area of learning that can be had without interruption from other things found on the internet. While there are many scholar related websites, I have yet to see one with as many resources as UEN offers. There are usually websites that are one track minded in what they are for and what one can use them for. Having the variety of tools that UEN does all in one place is like finding a whole new educational world.
The Pioneer Library can be used in any content area by any level of student. In giving students this tool we are giving them the opportunity to focus on their writing, presentation or whatever we are asking them to deliver to us rather than asking them to spend and waste time looking for sources that they can use.
Even without having an assignment Pioneer Library can be a fun and easy tool just to discover and learn about different things in ways that students want to. Having a totally online educational source such as this creates an environment that students are becoming more and more accustomed and comfortable with, and we must give them more tools in order to learn within that zone of knowledge and comfort.
The interactives that UEN offers are great for younger kids in my mind, although some of the games and activities are geared towards older students. I would see myself using these every once in a while in order to change up the instruction and allow for students to play a little bit within my content area. The lesson plans offer many ideas and fun things for students to participate in. I think it would be interesting to ask the students how they want to learn a specific topic after looking through the lesson plans. If the students took the time to look through and choose their lesson that they wanted to be taught then they may take more ownership of that content and therefore learn it better because it would become more exciting to them.
The core curriculum is something that I have become more and more familiar with and so that I don't have to look through it in order to find an objective, but I know it now. A tool used in education is telling them what you're going to teach them, teaching them, and then telling them what you taught them. As a teacher I could see myself asking my students to assess their learning and knowledge in the different parts of the curriculum and then again at the end of a semester, unit and/or year. By letting them know what I'm trying to teach them they can more easily reach those goals rather than trying to trick them or teach them in a more sneaky way that only I know what I'm trying to get from them.
There are many media options that I liked and that I think are important to become familiar with as a teacher. There are so many opportunities within UEN that we can use that will help visual, audio, kinesthetic, etc. learners to relate to our content more easily. There is no reason that we shouldn't be utilizing multimedia in our instruction, as it is a part of every one's daily lives. We as teachers need to be at the forefront so that we can impress our students with what the internet, and media in general has in store for them as learners and students. I am excited to see how some of these tools will be able to be used and take on their own unique purpose in every unique classroom.

February 1- Google Part 2

What? We learned about google sites and creating them. I wasn't able to make it to class last week so I was trying to figure out everything by myself. I'm sure it took me way longer because I missed the instruction on it, but I feel like I figured most of it out pretty well and that I really know it now. There was a lot of different options that we used in order to make the class website.

So what? I think this is a great tool for us to become familiar with as teachers. Having our own classroom website for students and parents of our students is a great way to create a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable. This keeps parents involved in what is going on in our classroom and a gives them a little hole into the type of teacher we are and what types of activities their children are involved in on a daily basis.

Now what? This is something I definitely would like to become more comfortable with and so that I can create a great website that is something the kids and parents want to and feel like they need to stay updated with. This is great for us to be able to use in our future teaching careers and I plan to keep mine updated so that my students can have a bunch of great resources and so that I can get to know them better as well as then getting to know me on some level as well. I think that all the different pages that you asked us to create are great and make for a very full and helpful website for students. It is important to keep everything clear so that it is easily accessed by all of our students.

25 January~ Google Part 1

In class this week we learned about google and all of the different things that we can do on it. We were able to use google calendar, docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. It was great to see all of the different options and tools we had at our disposal. It is important for us as teachers to know how to work these things so that we can teach and allow our students to use them as well. We would be uninformed and under prepared if we didn't try and educate ourselves on any tools that we could use as teachers. Any resource that we can use as teachers will be important for us to learn and about and see if we can or want to use it in our future classrooms.
The google docs are a great source for students of all ages to work on projects with other class members or alone. By using this later on we would be able to edit students' work throughout their writing processes and give them tips as well. I definitely see myself using that feature as an English teacher later on. Also, the google calendar can be a helpful tool for students to have access to so that they are able to have a copy of the schedule of the class at all times and so that they are always informed about what is going on and where they should be in the class. Having free tools such as these are helpful no matter where we are teaching. When we all become teachers we can use this regardless of SES of our students. They can use google docs, presentations, spreadsheets, an the other tools in place of programs that cost money and offer basically the same thing. I'm excited to become more comfortable with some of these tools so that I can feel like I am adequate enough to explain it all to my students as well.

January 18- Introduction

I decided in High school that I wanted to be a teacher. I had had great teachers that made me want to come to class, other teachers that made me want to never come back to school, and teachers and coaches who had a passion for what they did and what they taught. I always had excelled in English and in Math, and I tutored both for years. I always felt like those that I helped with reading and writing I was able to find a deeper connection with because of the content area. We were able to discuss our thoughts and feelings about certain characters, events and ideas. Because of the greater freedom in teaching Language Arts I turned my focus to them when I first went to the University of Utah. From there I have had more amazing teachers that ignited a love and passion for literature of all kinds that I still enjoy reading and studying now.
I also plan on coaching volleyball at a high school level. I have played volleyball since I was eight and after finishing up playing at the University of Utah I have coached at the club level. I have learned so much about teaching, politics, parents, and the game itself being on the other side of the whistle. I look forward to having my own English class that I can make into my own environment of learning and enjoyment.   
I hope that from this class I am able to become quicker and more knowledgeable about computers and creating  websites especially. I am pretty computer literate, and I am always learning and up to try new things, but it would be great to not have to think about every step I do when creating web quests and hopefully a classroom website. I have heard great things about what this class can do for us in the teaching profession and I look forward to everything I have to learn.