Final Exam

The final exam tonight was more difficult than I expected. Our group worked very well together, came up with a great idea pretty quickly and came up with what I think are great activities. Time was a challenge for us for some reason - we're the last to leave the classroom!

The assignment was definitely a good way to demonstrate what we've learned through the semester. We integrated technology, 21st century skills and collaboration along with our content areas.

thanks to my group members! We rocked!

Nick Donofrio

As a speaker, I thought that Mr. D'Onofrio was as good as I've seen - he was dynamic, entertaining and made perfect sense. I especially identified with the concept of education resulting in "T-shaped" people as opposed to the "I-shaped" people who have been the norm for so long. After working for so many years with Engineers, I can absolutely see that we tend to know a whole lot about very little. In our 21st century world, we need to know a lot about some things, but at least a little bit about a whole lot of things! What I took from the lecture was that we need to change that focus - I just would have liked to hear some suggestions on how that can be accomplished, especially with the constraints of time, space and budget that teachers are faced with!

Last Class

Unfortunately, this is our last actual class. I am so glad to have had the opportunity to take this class - it not only taught me about technology that is available, but also sparked my interest to continue and explore technology that may be available in the future. I said in my reflection in class that I would love to be able to take similar classes throughout my teaching career to see the newest technology as it emerges.

Although we kind of skimmed over it quickly, Wordle really got my attention. I told my son (a 7th grade English teacher) about it because I thought it would be a great tool for students to write something describing either themselves or something that they read or discussed, and see it turned into a work of art!

Copyrights, etc.

I had no idea how much was involved with copyrights and what can and can't be used in classrooms! I guess I was one of those people who thought that whatever was on the internet especially was fair game and am shocked to learn otherwise. I know that many of my kids' teachers have certainly fractured a rule or two, probably without even giving it a second thought. It will certainly make me more careful in the future.

On another note, I was interested in the Second Life part of the class. Before I started this class I had no idea what Second Life was or how it could be used in an educational setting. Then I did an article review about it and learned a bit about it, but was still skeptical about using it in school. The lesson this week made me see what opportunities are available like exhibiting student work. I'd certainly like to learn more about it.

Inspiration

I enjoyed this week's class - it was great to see everyone's presentations and the differences in how technology is being used in schools. I'm hoping that some of us who end up in the schools with less technology available can be creative enough as a result of our class to come up with ways to expose our students to new ideas.

I really liked Inspiration too - it is a tool that makes it easy to organize ideas, either as a teacher or with the entire class. It can help the class be part of learning, which makes it more likely that they will remember what they learn. Thank you to Liz for learning the program and teaching it to us - you made it very clear and easy to learn!

Digital Storytelling

I had a lot of fun tonight - teaching my classmates about Photo Story 3 and learning about Windows Moviemaker. I checked out everyone's photo stories on the Discussion Board and I have to tell you I was so impressed with not only the quality but the imagination and variety that were displayed! I really enjoyed all of them!

I'm looking forward to spending some time playing with Windows Moviemaker and getting comfortable with it. I think it can be fun, and another tool to help students express what they have learned.

Rubrics

I know that Prof. M-G said that we didn't have to blog for tonight's class, but I just wanted to say that I never realized how much work went into creating a rubric. Our group tried to be as specific as we could, but there is so much to think about! I'm hoping that it's one of those things that you can get better at with practice.

wikis in the classroom

I wasn't really comfortable with the idea of wikis - I wasn't familiar and didn't see how they would be useful. After seeing what was out there, I was very surprised at the number of teachers using wikis, not only for sharing ideas with each other but also using them in their classrooms. When I started my wiki, I had no idea what kind of things to put on it, but I'm starting to open up to the idea and actually getting some inspiration from some of my classmates' wikis. I have to say again that I appreciate being exposed to so many technologies that are new to me!

3 for the price of one!

I actually think that the idea of "stations" is great - it gives us an opportunity to explore three different topics in the same time period. As usual though, I really wanted to spend more time on some of the activities. I was so engrossed in looking at the multitude of wikis that I forgot to post one for our classwork and had to do it when I got home that evening. I also ran out of time at the end of the Sketchup activity and had to complete that at home after downloading the software. I understand that time is in short supply and I appreciate the fact that we are being exposed to so many different ideas, but it can be a little frustrating at times when you are trying to finish a task.

Elluminate and I-chat and Skype...oh my!

For the first time in this class, I was a little overwhelmed today. I have seen and heard of Skype, so I was a bit familiar with it, even though I have never used it. Elluminate was a different story, as was i-chat. There was so much there that I was having a little trouble following along. I can see some value in these programs - I like the idea of having "experts" talk to classes and I think it would be great for math classes to hear from people like engineers or economists who use math in the "real world". Skype seems like a great way to do this.

Podcasts

I wanted to comment on two podcasts that I really enjoyed from our class project.

Jeanne and Patrick had a really good idea connecting To Kill a Mockingbird with the American Civil Rights movement - and did a great job incorporating audio clips from people involved in that movement.

I also thought that Marc, Greg and Marta did an excellent job with the audio editing - even commercials! I was definitely impressed! The only suggestion I would have made is that if you had been able to find a scientist or mathematician of Hispanic descent, it would have incorporated an element of that culture to further tie in with the Spanish component.

Both of these podcasts met the goal of being entertaining while educational.

I'm Feeling SMART!!

I really enjoyed using the SMARTBoard in class, but it made me want to know more! I've downloaded the software and have had fun exploring a little bit. I would definitely be interested in learning more, because I'm sure that there's a whole new world available in terms of how the board can be used. We have barely even scratched the surface and I can't wait to find out what's out there!

Thinkfinity...

...is awesome! I was familiar with some of the partner sites (like NCTM's Illuminations), but to have so much information compiled in one place, organized so that you can access what you want quickly and easily is great. I especially liked the link to the NYS standards, which for math give links to specific activities geared to many of the standards. This will save so much time when looking for an appropriate activity.

Podcasts

Wow - class this week was fun! I really enjoy learning new things, so working with Audacity and learning about podcasts was so interesting...I'm still trying to come up with ways to use this in a math class, but I'm sure there are lots of ideas out there. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I think that the students would enjoy doing this so much, it would be worth a little effort to make it work. Maybe even a multi-discipline approach, like a math history project.

I'm looking forward to learning lots of new things like this over the course of this semester!

Electronic Quizzes

I was really interested in the electronic quiz concept we talked about in class this week. My only concern with the Excel quiz was that the student's answer has to match the answer the teacher enters exactly. This could create a problem if the spelling, punctuation or format is slightly different, or for example the student answers USA instead of United States. Even math problems could be problematic (no pun intended!) if the format isn't quite the same. I'm thinking about ways to get around this problem, such as pre-formatting cells for numbers, or using multiple choice questions where the student would only have to enter a single letter or number in the answer field.

It's definitely an option I'd like to use in my classroom if possible, so I'll definitely work on ways to make it as fool-proof as possible!

Day 1 in Computers

I think that this will be a very important class for us as future teachers. We will be challenged with teaching students who are most likely far more tech-savvy than we are, and we will need to find ways to keep them engaged by using the available technology while still covering our required curriculum.

From the class outline, it seems like the class will exceed my expectations. I came into this expecting to learn how to use tools like smartboards, but never expected to learn about virtual worlds, wikis, and all of the other technology that our students might be familiar with or that might be important tools to use in the classroom.