Podcast Reflection #12

The tech chicks are so helpful! This podcast gave many resources for teachers to use to stay organized and to use in the classroom for free. They talked about the use of videos for both teachers to show and for students to create. There were a few sites they mentioned that are free for teachers to use which is what I’m all about. There are lots of resources I would love to use but we all know how limited a teacher’s budget is so free resources are the best. This podcast also talked about using tutorial videos for students to watch instead of or in conjunction with giving directions for things. This would be a perfect example of accommodating students who may need visual and/ or auditory directions. Another great thing about tutorial videos is one can stop, rewind, fast-forward, etc. as much as they need!

Podcast Reflection #11

This podcast was an interview with a teacher in Australia who uses technology in her classroom very often. This teacher spoke about digital story-telling and how she has been able to use it in her classroom. Not only does digital story-telling help engage all types of students because of its non-traditional story-telling, but for students who have trouble reading written words it helps them understand the story. She also said that kids who come to her school from other speaking countries find digital story-telling beneficial because they can better understand what is going on than if they were to have to read stories in a language not of their own. I thought a lot about this and realized how great it would be or those students who were in need of these types of modifications. I plan to use digital story-telling for students in my classroom who have trouble reading whether because they are from a different country or not.

Podcast Reflection #10

I have always heard of websites you can use that will save videos to your computer so that you can just open them up off of your computer rather than having to go to the actual videos website. For example, if a teacher wanted to use lots of videos from YouTube, they could use a certain website or software to be able to save those videos to their computer. One of the software’s talked about in this podcast is MPEG Streamclip. This software also allows people to trim videos so that they are shorter. This would be beneficial because sometimes videos I have found are way too long to actually use in the class and then you have to worry about starting and stopping the video where you want it to be at. Another benefit is that some schools block YouTube or other video sites, so by using this software you can save the videos to your computer and be able to use them.

Podcast Reflection #9

This podcast, EdTechTalk, spoke about twitter and how some schools are making teachers use twitter. Dave Cormier said that schools are literally forcing their teachers to do use twitter and I definitely do not agree with that. I am not against twitter and I do check my twitter every so often, but I do not see how or why teachers would really make use of it. I would be extremely curious to hear why schools truly believe every single teacher should use twitter and to see if they know stuff about twitter that I don’t. I don’t see how teachers using twitter would be that beneficial to students. I could see teachers using it as reminders for students but that it about it.

Podcast Reflection 8: Learning Today

As I listened to the podcast, Learning in Hand, it made me wonder how long doing projects on apps would take and how much they might cost for the iPhone. I thought the idea of driving questions was a good idea for projects, but not all students learn well that way so it’d be important to allow for students to do their project a different way. I don’t know how I feel about project based learning because not all students learn well and can perform well based on projects. I think some project learning can be very beneficial, but I think it’s important to have many other learning opportunities rather than just projects. This teacher talked about rubistar.4teachers.org and I really want to try this site out sometime. I think it’s important to incorporate your students input in their rubric so this site would be great to use.

Classroom 2.0 Reflection

Classroom 2.0 is an amazing social network for teachers to get ideas from! I think it's important to have these sites for teachers because we are constantly trying to engage students by changing things up and making everything much more interesting for them. Teachers get the best ideas when they feed off of eachother! In Classroom 2.0, I went to 4teachers.org and I found a lot of great use under the family tools section. The first link I looked at was the pbl checklist which is a site that allows you to plug in information based on the subject area and grade level for evaluation sheets or rubrics. The second site I looked at was classroom architect which gives you a blank grid to work with and you can place parts of your classroom on it to completely construct it! What a great way to really see the best environment your students will learn in.

EduTecher Reflection

My first impression from EduTecher was that is doesn't have as many resources as many of the other teacher sites that are out there. After searching around, though, I did find some sources that may be beneficial. I noticed that this site is very specifically for those who are willing to use technology. One site that I think I would use for my class one day is 21centurylit.org because it focuses on skills students will need to be sucessful in school and in the workplace. I think this will be great for literature classes because it obviously is relating school work to work in the real world and that is something students will actually pay attention to. At 4shared.com teachers can file share to students so that space issues do not arise on one computer and so that you don't have to deal with a flashdrive. I like this site because I've always liked my computer files to be organized and easy to find so I think this would be a great way for students to access them and for both the teacher and student to find them easily when they need them. The last site I really enjoyed was 4freephotos.com and it would be great to find and post pictures up for students. Sometimes searching google images is not very accurate and it's touchy on what subject you search so this site will be great for finding pictures that apply to that topic you are trying to show. EduTecher made me extremely excited and I can't wait to really dig into it that summer before I start my first year of teaching to make use of its great resources!