Dropbox and DropitTome in the Classroom

One of the big negative effects of being a teacher is the amount of paperwork that a teacher has to deal with and at times, it is hard to be organized with so many papers on top of their desks. However, nowadays, this lack of organization does not need to be a problem anymore. Teachers can now use Dropbox to store and access their files from any device that is connected to the Internet. Although it may seem like Dropbox is for those teachers that are very good with technology, even those less tech-savvy teachers can use this easy tool. If you download the Dropbox client to your device, you can just create, upload and delete files and folders, and as soon as your device connects to the Internet, it will automatically synchronize your updated content into all of your other devices.

Pros:

• Store all of your lesson plans and handouts into a folder that can be private or shared.
• Share a folder with your classroom by having them create an account. Then, they can have access to the content of those folders and also be able to add their own documents to it.
• Students can share research documents and turn in assignments. 
• If you want to show the students what another student did another year, then you can just print the document from Dropbox instead of having to type it, or store it in file cabinets.

Cons:

• You might not want every student to create a Dropbox account.
• You might feel like students can see each other's work and therefore copy off each other.

 

How to solve cons:

• If you do not want every student to create a Dropbox account, you can use a service called DropitTome. This service provides the students with a web address for students to access with a password to upload files to their teacher's Dropbox. This makes the sharing a bit more secure because students cannot see other files within the folder.

Teaching Shakespeare through Technology

As I was doing some research on how to incorporate technology in a lesson plan that I am creating in my Methods course, I came upon this video that I thought would be very good to share. It is amazing how this classroom teacher used technology to help the students understand Shakespeare's play, "Macbeth." As it is, it is very hard for students to understand Shakespeare, but I feel that by creating this rap song, the students had to really do in depth research about the play and make sure that they were summarizing the events in a chronological and clear way. For this reason, I think this would definitely be an addition to my Shakespeare lesson plan.

Note: This was part of an assignment in a Shakespeare lesson, in a public school. These kids went above and beyond to create this wonderful video and I was just shocked at the way in which they related Shakespeare to modern life. It it is definitely true that if taught well, Shakespeare can be timeless.

Interactivity #5

The teacher I interviewed is a 9^th grade English teacher in the Hackensack School District. Although her school is considered to be public, it is also a magnet school for kids who are particularly talented in the Arts. In order to get into this school, the students need to apply, be tested on their abilities and then accepted or rejected, depending on their scores. Hackensack is part of Bergen County and therefore the province that I am particularly studying in this interactivity is Bergen.

Based on the responses to the eight survey questions, I noticed that the teacher I interviewed was extremely knowledgeable about NETS. According to her, technology standards have been implemented in the Hackensack School District for a few years already and NETS is one of those initiatives that the school district reinforces. In order to increase the students’ technological awareness and media literacy, her school district has posted the National Educational Technology Standards for teachers and for students on teachers’ online curriculums. In addition, every teacher is evaluated on their observations according to those standards. In order to increase the use of these new technology standards, her district also includes training as part of professional development and teacher workshops.

I was extremely surprised at my interviewee’s responses because I did not expect this teacher to be so familiar with NETS. As a matter of fact, she was surprised about the questions I was asking her. My interviewee explained to me that NETS are standards that all teachers in her school are extremely familiar with and that it is natural for her to include them in her lessons. Also, I did not think that this school district worried so much about their students’ technological awareness. In fact, what surprised me the most was the fact that in order to help the teachers implement NETS, this particular school’s English Department bought 40 IPads that were to be used within regular lessons. Moreover, according to my interviewee, most English classrooms have Smartboards that teachers use to make the lesson more interactive.

As a future educator, I would definitely implement NETS in my own classroom. Truly, NETS can enhance any lesson because the use of technology facilitates and maximizes content learning. Furthermore, if the teacher uses NETS for Students, she/he is conscious of using some of those standards within his/her lesson and in that way, there is a higher possibility of technology being part of the lesson. Also, as a future educator, I would speak to my colleagues about the many advantages that NETS has to offer. Lastly, I would also seek technological help from more knowledgeable faculty about different and more innovative ways of using NETS in my own classroom. 

Interactivity #4 SpreadSheet 

Using Google Earth to Enhance Your Lessons

As many of you have already read in my previous posts, I received an Ipad for Valentine's Day/Birthday. Therefore, since I received this wonderful tool, I have began a quest to finding applications that help me come up with better lessons. Today, through reading some of the newest articles in Education World, I was introduced to the fact that Google Earth has been given a 5 star rating from users and critics. Therefore, I started to do some research about what I could do with Google Earth in an English classroom and these are some of the stuff I came up with.

1. Set the scene for literature
2. Show the students where a story takes place, by pointing at the location in the map.
3. Show the students the passage or trail that the characters in the story have to travel/ have travelled
4. Create postcards comparing places from the past and how they are today.
5. Fun ways of students keep track of the different parts of the world where they have read novels from and trying to fill in the whole world map with books written by people from those countries, or books set in those specific countries.
6.  Show places where authors were born, lived, and died, which can also show all the places they were in in a lifetime (great for teaching Mark Twain).

If you can think of other ways to use Google Earth in the English classroom, or anything that can relate to English, please feel free to add to this post.