Bonus Points for Listening...

Listening is always good. This week - it leads to brownie points.

Monday's presentations included a cool lesson plan on teaching children about railroads. She taught us about a neat, interactive website all about trains and railroads that would really get kids involved in railroad safety.

Also, we learned a lesson plan about chemistry. As science is not my strong area, it was cool to learn about a site that is made just for teachers. The website has premade lesson plans to guide teachers in the best way to teach this complex science subject to many different minds and students.

I had alot of fun presenting my lesson plan. My mock trial idea I thought would be fun, and it will help students remember the novel long after it has been shut.

Soooo overall, I think Monday's presentations were pretty informative.

Raising your voice...

While reviewing this week's assignment, I discovered a nifty new tool- voice threads.
I don't think it can be used in our lesson plan this week. However, I do plan on using This tool in my future classroom. I believe these threads are an excellent resource for student who require a more visual or audible form of education.

Stepping into the Playing field...

This week we focused on our future careers. We used desktop publishing to create our teacher brochure - about our education philosophy- and also our resume.
I am familiar with desktop publishing, so the program itself was an easy one to use. The philosophies, however, are new material, and it was interesting to see where I fit in.
Also, I have never created a professional resume. This was a good experience because it helped me know what to expect when searching for a job.
Overall, this week's assignments were fairly easy for me to understand, and I am glad for the experience they gave me.

Working Together...

This week has been focused on PowerPoint. I am familiar with these presentations, however, a group presentation has not been one of my experiences. I teamed up with Collette, who is one of the most positive people I know.
Our topic is the influence of web-based learning. We are focusing on the types of online tools available for students, and how these tools are educational not only for online students, but traditional students as well.
She's a hard worker, and she doesn't procrastinate, at least not as far as I can tell. Her slides have been excellent, and I am actually excited about working with her on this project. In all of my group experiences, from grade school to college, I have usually been left holding the ball. This week, I almost feel like I'm not doing enough.
She has kept me updated, which unfortunately I haven't done enough of, and she's thorough.
As a student, Collette is awesome. As part of my team, and I would like to say a friend, she is amazing. As a future educator, I simply wish I could have studied under her.
Kudos, Collette...you earned them!

Keeping up in this fast-paced society...

Classrooms have become much more advanced in the 15 years I've been in school. I can remember 2nd grade Apple computers, the old word processing software, and now I am working on Macs, light as a feather, easy fast software, and so sleek!
However, no matter how far the classroom environment has come, students are still more technologically advanced than the majority of their teachers and professors. As a society we are discovering new tricks every day. This curve is almost impossible to stay ahead of. However, I believe classrooms should undergo an update every year to make sure students have technologically available to them that will prepare them for this ever-changing world. Most schools wait every four years, as to make sure the students aren't learning new software, but it is pointless, because students learn new software every time they purchase a new PC or Mac, buy a new cell phone, or upgrade their MP3 player.
ETEC is the first class we have used online chat in. If it is well monitored, such as on the campus website, I think it does no harm to classroom instruction. It comes in very useful for group projects, especially for those students who find it hard to schedule study sessions.
The debate among many professors is the value of an online education versus traditional instruction. Most instructors believe an online class could not possible provide all the benefit of a lecture course, but on the contrary, through online video messaging, the speed of delivering a lesson, and the efficiency of delivering assignments, the percentage of online students has increased dramatically in 5 years. These students take the same exams traditional students do, and there is no gap in their scores. I do believe, however, that online classes are beneficial to certain group of students. Unfocused, unorganized students with poor time management skills should not take online classes.
Pod casts goes hand in hand with the online instruction. I believe it is beneficial, and just as effective as a lecture, seeing as how a professor hardly lets you interrupt his hour-long presentation of historical events. Just as you can stay and ask the professor after class, you can always shoot the instruction or speaker in the podcast an email to explain or expand on a certain point if necessary.
I personally have never been a gamer. I have three younger brothers and a fiance who are all intense video gamers, and in all honesty, they did not excel in academics as I did. That could be due to other factors, sports, girls, etc., but to me, video games become a distraction, something to do OTHER than the assigned home work.
On the flip side, I do agree that video games, certain strategy ones, can hone your logical and your creative minds. Overcoming obstacles is a big part of games, and this skill can be used in real life or in the classroom, if applied correctly. I would not assign video game playing as part of my classroom instruction, but if my students were interested, and they managed their time well, I would see no harm in playing video games.

Delicious!

The discovery of an online bookmarking site is amazing to me! I am a huge fan of bookmarks, they save me a lot of stress. So now that I can save these bookmarks online, and access them from any computer, makes me happy! :)

I think in the classroom this site will be useful because I can bookmark sites necessary for class and easily access them in the classroom or at home. This will save time for me, and since they are accessible to anyone, I can leave these bookmarks available to my students.

Wikis, Students, and Clashing Personalities...

I have never heard of Wikis before this week. Of course I have repeatedly used Wikipedia in the past, put I never realized that you could set up your own and edit the information.
I do understand now why professors look down on Wikipedia as a viable source of information. If anyone can edit it, how can you ever be sure it's correct?
As far as setting up my own, I think it would be a fun experience to set up a private Wiki for my classroom, where they could edit each other's material and converse about a project. I think a Wiki would be more efficient than a blog when it came down to a project.
I don't believe conversing in learning communities to be MORE effective than traditional instruction, but I do believe it to be a necessary part of teaching. Conversation helps people retain information, and relate it off several people's opinions.
I'm not sure you could prove if learning communities were more effective than classrooms. I suppose you could judge online students' scores versus traditional students scores, but then, you have to make sure to give the exact same assignments and testing standards (which alot of professors don't do with their online classes).
I strongly agree that your learning type is directly linked to your personality type. I think knowing my students personality types would help me become a better teacher, making sure I could reach every student.

Spreadsheets R' Us

I have always been able to complete basic steps on spreadsheet, but this week was a bit more challenging. Making a material aid was something quite foreign to me, and frankly, I would have never guessed it was made in spreadsheet!
I've learned about many different applications to Excel now. As a teacher, I can see where it is utilized. Grading, ranking, lesson planning...all of these are vital functions to the curriculum. Now that I understand it a bit better, I can use Excel for time lines, puzzles, or diagrams.
Spreadsheet over calculators makes the grading process smoother, more accurate, and easy to understand. Calculators, while useful, can be time consuming with 20 plus students! With a spreadsheet, you are 2 mouse-clicks away from a student's semester average.
As I said before, as a teacher, I would definitely use Excel, more now than before, now that I understand more of the capabilities of the program!
I'm am psyched about what I am learning in this class; it makes me feel confident that I WILL know a bit more than my students in the classroom! Ha!

Inspiration on all levels...

Walking through the tutorial for Inspiration 8 was amazing! This is the technology I WISH the teachers would have had access to when I was in class.
This basically outlines the important information for students and teachers, while making it interesting and interactive for both.
Perhaps on the the strongest tools Inspiration brings to the tables in organization through technology. Now, teachers NEED to be able not to only teach their subject, but to be able to guide students through learning basic computer programs as well. Inspiration gives the students the opportunity to organize their thoughts and become used to the idea of interacting their thoughts on a computer program.
I think that research projects and general prompts would get the most use out of this program. Because you can go so far on a single idea, the program helps you expand your points and get an outline going on what you want to mention and/or include in your writing. The program is ideal for group projects because everyone can contribute to the idea of what needs to be discussed.
I agree peer feedback is vital to the revision process. In my early writing classes, my papers were edited by another classmate before being submitted to the teacher. This gave us the opportunity to fix basic errors while also teaching us the editing process.
This could also be done online, though, through the student blogs we discussed last week or perhaps using this new "inspirational" tool for writing. Students could upload their outlines or email them to a classmate, get the new edited version emailed back, and see the changes. This is a lot of what we do in journalism. While old school pen and paper is always trusty, its sometimes not timely.
All in all, it seems educators are jumping on the technology bandwagon and finally figuring out that if they want to keep up with the education curve, they have to become more interactive. I believe Inspiration 8 proves just that.

My thoughts on blogging...

I've always been a strong supporter of blogs and personal web sites. While I am not a techie and I could tell you JAVA or any other type of code, I think grabbing your own slice of the World Wide Web is important.


For starters, you know what's going on around the world, in other people's lives, and how they view ...well, everything. You can see raw talent through poems or short stories or songs that people all over the world post.


Using blogs in the classroom, especially a classroom centered on using technology in the curriculum for future teachers, is logical. If there are any students taking this class that have never blogged or never set up their own site, then it will be good to have a personal experience before delving into a classroom where knowledge of the high-tech world is ever-changing.


There are tons of options for lesson plans and curriculum tools that I think would benefit my future students. I'm a strong supporter of PowerPoint for lectures; it's more efficient for the teacher, and handouts of the slides can easily be copied for the students, allowing them to have access to the important points, and write down notes of their own.


Also, I think interactive demonstrations help students retain vital information. For example, if I am teaching grammar, interactive computer games and/or simulations can guide a students through the different methods of punctuation, sentence structure, and those lousy prepositional phrases.

As far as using blogging as a tool in the classroom, I would consider it. For my journalism students I would encourage an online website for the campus newspaper, since students are more likely to view a website or FaceBook than actually read the paper. Writers could blog about news, opinions, or even post videos of current events on campus.

For any English curriculum I would encourage personal web sites and blogs to sort of publish their own works, whether it be short stories or poetry.

All in all, I am very excited to learn about the many options I will have before me in the classroom, and the tools that are created every day to help students learn.

Life as I know It....

Obviously, my name is Annette. I'm 23 years old, a junior at Texas A&M University-Commerce, and a Journalism major with an English minor.
Eventually, and hopefully sooner than later, I will be in the classroom teaching high school kids wondering, 'Was I really this dramatic?'
I love writing, reading, watching old movies, and just hanging out at home with my fiance and the most lovable dog in the world, Socks, creatively named for her knee high white socks on every leg.
While I created this blog as an ETEC assignment, I hope to maintain this and share my crazy, sometimes ditzy, but otherwise totally relevant views of the world.