Interactivity #3

When starting this activity, I was a bit skeptic about the group work that it involved; however, now that I take a look at the outcome, I am glad that this was a group activity. At first, I found myself struggling to understand what kind of technologies were the ones required; therefore, I began by putting those that I definitely would use myself in my classroom and that I have been advised by my teachers to use. Through research, I was also reminded of some technologies that at first may seem obvious or familiar, but that as future teachers, we rarely think about using. However, after looking into my group’s findings, I realized how many of the technologies that they contributed with, I have myself used as a student and as a student teacher. They also provided technologies that I was instantly enthusiastic about using, like Slideshare and Mindmeister. 

The technologies that I am most thankful for from the list that we came up with are Google Documents and Evernote. Although, I did not think of Evernote at first, this weekend I decided to give it a try. I used Evernote to type an essay for READ 411 on my Ipad and then print it out on the computer. Evernote saves a lot of time because it does not require internet to type your notes, but then when you are at home, the upload is automatic. As we all know, the best technology out there and the one used for this specific project is Google Documents. We are all busy in our daily routines, but Google Document offers us the possibility of doing group work without all of us being present in the process because everyone contributes with their own ideas and just updates the document as they go. 

Integrating Computers in my Everyday Lessons

Through doing research on handouts in the Teachers Network website, I found many articles on how to integrate technology in the classroom. However, the one that caught my attention the most was one called "Differentiated Learning Using the Computers" by Ann Stephenson. Stephenson writes about many ways in which we can ask students to use the computer, to reinforce learned material, to expand their knowledge on computers and to make sure they are engaged in the lesson. Nevertheless, the strategies that pertain to my subject area are those of making a classroom newsletter every week, making databases on student information like emails and phone numbers, tracking attendance and making bar graphs of it. The above stated activities will not only serve them as practice for English, but will also serve them as practice in math and computers, while also providing the teacher with documents that could be hanged around the classroom and shown to parents in parent/teacher conferences. Because my second certification is in ESL, I also liked the idea of making pictographs in the computer and asking the students to write a word that explains what each picture stands for, like in the picture below.

 Activities like these, will allow the students to develop good and useful vocabulary that will eventually be used in other classes. These pictographs can be used in my classroom, not only to reinforce vocabulary for ELL, but also for monolingual kids who are learning specific vocabulary words, or are learning about a specific time period, author, or novel. I do not think that things like this can be done every day; however, through substituting it has been my experience, that it is very hard to engage kids when it is a Friday and they are thinking of things to do on the weekend. However, things like these can be great things to make the classroom environment less tense and to reward those students who are trying hard and completing the work, while also giving me time to talk to individual students about their performance during that week.

Interactivity #2

     Through watching the video on the visual history of technology, reading chapter 2 on  “Rethinking Technology in Schools” and through the supplemental reading, I found myself struggling to decide whether my chosen technology had impacted my content area for the better or for the worse. Through this historical context, I have come to the realization that film has been the communication technology that has impacted English the most. Like many other technologies, film seems to have made a crucial impact on English for the better. Through reading about Grace , her experiences with film and those of her mother and grandmother, it is obvious that in some aspects film has had a negative impact in education. First of all, in some ways, principals and other administrators believed that films were less boring substitutes for teachers and that they were more lively ways for students to really learn (Domine 44). However, films were also used in Language Arts and other classes to illustrate correct lip and tongue move­ment for pronouncing words (Domine 45). This could have been especially helpful to English teachers because they could enhance the pronunciation of difficult vocabulary words, while also teaching simple, basic words to newcomers who were learning English.

In the video, I also saw that some of the small clips they made and showed the students were on how to build your vocabulary. Lessons like those can be very helpful to students and can serve as a reinforcement of something already taught. However, like Grace’s grandmother states, it is better to study “film and radio programs as texts to be critically analyzed rather than celebra[te] the machines themselves (Domine 44). In these situations, when films served as supplementary materials to the lesson and not as substitutes for the teachers, I believe they served as beneficial inventions and that the only time when films were negative, was when the administrators tried to substitute the knowledge of a real human for that of a machine. In every other case, like in the creation of programs like Sesame Street, film has had a beneficial impact on technology and on the English classroom. For all this, I believe that as a result of the creation of film, we can now show movies that were created from books like Beowulf, The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter and its modern version Easy A, etc… These movies do not teach the students the complete story, but serve to reiterate the plot and as visual forms of what they have learned through reading the original books.

 

 Every good book, must then become a good movie 






Works Cited

Domine, Vanessa. "A Social History of Media, Technology and Schooling." The National Association for Media Literacy Education’s Journal of Media Literacy Education 1 (2009): 42-52. JMLE. Web.

 

Domine, Vanessa. "Rethinking Technology in Schools Primer." New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.

Technology: A tool of improvement

Today my husband and my sister in law gave me the most amazing present I could have wished for. Knowing that I am entering a system that is greatly influenced by technology, I have been wishing to have an Ipad for a long time, and today, I was finally surprised with one for Valentine's Day and for my coming birthday. As soon as I got it, I began to explore the immense amount of applications that this gadget has for education. First of all, I added gradebooks, whiteboards, attendance sheets, and other applications that would be fun to use to teach literature. Although I wished I could add many more, I stopped myself because I do not yet know what grade level I will be teaching. However, having this technological tool has opened a lot of possibilities for me.

                           
This is when I realized that our world is entering a new time in which whoever does not know about technology is missing out on a valuable tool. In fact, nowadays, technology has a very important role in our lives as future teachers. Almost every school is now employing the use of smart boards, MACS, Ipads and many other technological tools that will aid the teacher at engaging the students in the lesson. This week, I realized how important it really is to keep up with all of these gadgets because if not, we will be missing out on a lot of wonderful things.

Moreover, in one of my education classes, we were talking about how fast new technological gadgets are coming out to the market and how technology is getting its way into our lives, making it far more simple to do many things. For instance, back when I started college, we all had to buy books for our classes, and there was no other choice but to carry those books around all day. However, nowadays, students can buy a tablet, or an Ipad and get the books online. Every day, new books are becoming available as e-books and someday, as we predicted in my class, everyone will have the option of buying all of their books online and reading them in their Ipads or tablets. To me, this is simply amazing and wonderful for those students who take advantage of this tool.

On the other hand, like I have stated in many of my blog responses, if this tools are not used to our advantage, then we are harming ourselves. I have known of people who tell their teachers they are looking at their computers because they are reading the books or readings for the class, and in reality they are signed onto Facebook, chatting, doing other homework, and even shopping. Like anything else, technology, as helpful as it may be, needs to be used for the right reasons and at times may also become a dangerous tool for teachers. When dealing with technology, our eyes have to be really opened and always aware that our students may in fact be doing things on the computer than are not school related.

Interactivity #1

                            My Experience with Technology

 My entire life, I have been exposed to new technology and although at times I have used it for entertainment, I have also used technology for educational purposes. The three most influential communication technologies in my life are my cell phone, my laptop, and my fax machine. All three technological devices have helped me learn new material in different ways. In fact, I do not know where I would be if it was not for these three devices. The first device that I am constantly thankful for is my cell phone because at times, when I have been absent to a class, I have been able to call a classmate, put him/her on speaker, open the note taker in my phone, and copy down the things that the class worked on on that day. I could use my cell phone anywhere and anytime, as long as I have wi-fi connection. Also, during my college career, I have taken a couple of online classes. One of them (Women Gender Studies) required us to hear the professor’s pre-recorded lectures posted on blackboard and then answer a set of questions. I had to work a lot during that time, so my cellphone was the tool I used in order to complete these assignments and to listen to the lectures. I found myself downloading the lectures to my cell phone and listening to them while in the car, bus, at lunch, on my break, etc...Also, I would then open the note where I copied down the questions and answer them on my phone. I have also used my cell phone to take pictures of class notes that were covered on days when I was absent, teacher notes that were written on the board, but which I did not have time to copy down, and other related notes that would take me too long to copy. After, I would simply send the pictures to my email, print them out and I miraculously had all the notes that I needed without too much effort.

The other device that would be very hard to live without is my laptop. I write all of my essays there and read all of the online teacher assigned readings in it. Moreover,  every semester, I make an online notebook using Microsoft One Note and I keep all of my class information in there. Furthermore, I use programs like Outlook to constantly check my emails and set reminders of  things  I have to do, which are connected to my phone and email. In addition, I have used my laptop to have video and audio conferences with classmates about a project when we are not able to meet in person because all our schedules are different. Also, I have had video conferences instead of a class meeting on snow days, when my professor did not want us to show up to class, but did not want to cancel class either. Lastly, I also use my computer to write my thoughts, homework, due dates and a lot of other things that I would lose if they were on paper.

Lastly, I also use my fax machine a lot. At times, when I have not been able to buy my books for class, yet have assigned homework due that same week or the following,  my fax machine allows other classmates to send me a copy of the pages due for homework from their houses. Also, I have used my fax machine to correct my group members’ papers and to send them mine for them to check. Lastly, I constantly use my fax machine to send class notes and at times also receive class notes from students in my class through fax.

In comparison, the students in the two videos and I use computers to read, to work together within our groups and to figure out what we can do with what we have through the use of computers, and we also use our cell phones to take pictures of projects. However, one thing that astonished me and that made me want to try was an idea that another student in the second video mentioned, about learning a new language in your computer. Also, the devices that they use are mostly like mine, but they do not use the fax machine as a way to communicate through technology. Overall, it was very interesting to see how these young adults use technology to their benefit, just like I do every day.