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Area

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My presentation is a review of what area means and how to find the area of square.

Presentations

This weeks topic is about Presentations and what makes good presentations and makes presentations not as strong. For my work, I have the responsibility to design many presentations for different events. One thing that I have learned is that font size and color is the most important thing. If the audience can not read what you are presenting, then you are going to have problems. We use the software called Abode Connect which lets live audiences view the presentation from any computer (with an access key). This software allows one to record the presentation for later viewing. I believe that it does similar functions as google documents. 

In the classroom, I could see how having assess to presentations could be beneficial to the students. For instance, lectures could be recorded and put on the internet. The students could view them from their own house for extra help from the lesson. Or if a student misses a day of class, they could just log on and view the information for the day. I see this happening in older classrooms, especially in our college classrooms. Some classes are strictly all based online and you may never know what the professor/teacher looks like.

Elementary Learning is going to consist of different presentations. The presentations may be used for parents to see what is being learned in the classroom and keep them posted. Or they be used in staff meetings. Right now, the methods for teaching elementary education is not "PowerPoint" or lecture base, so presentations may not be used very often to teach the students. 

picture/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Google Documents

Google Documents/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Google Documents is a place where author's can put up their writings and invite other people to share their work. The author can choose whether or not they would like the viewers to just view or edit the writing as well. I think this is a great  way for students to work together  outside of the classroom. For instance, I have the experience of working in groups for projects were every sends each other four different versions of the powerpoint or word document. Now, everyone can just be working off of the same document where everyone can see the changes that they are making from their own computer.

In the classroom there are many ways in which a teacher could incorporate this into their lesson plans. For instance, if the students were doing a science experiment in the classroom. Instead of the teacher making this big large chart on the board where everyone fills in their data then each person copies down the data, they now can all go into the Google Document to add their data. This way each student will have access to the work and can edit if they need it. 

In my classroom, I think I would have students type their stories or upload their writings in Google Documents and have them share them with me. This way I could see the process of each students writing without having 30 documents printed off or sent to me through e-mail. I can go in as I please, without the students knowing when I'm going to be looking, making sure they are staying on task. 

What does Technology mean?

Before this class I had a misconception of what it meant to use technology in the classroom. I thought that it meant that you had to use the newest and greatest inventions and incorporating them into your classroom. Technology does have to be a computer, a cell phone or video games. Technology is really anything and how are you advance what you do with it. Overheads have been around forever, but how can I develop or incorporate this into my classroom enhance learning. What can I have students do with textbooks, paper, pencil or markers? Those are technologies too. Using technology in the classroom is changing the way that you think about what you have in your classroom and how are you take it up a level for the students.

Now with that being said, of course ideally I would have all of this advance technology, such as computers, smartboards etc would be in my classroom. It is the up and coming thing and students love technology. But we need to remember, if we were not in a school were the expensive technology is available there are still some ways to get some stuff into your classroom.

Video chat

In my placement, the students engaged in a skype conversation with another class in South America. They had translators to help the students understand each other. The students before prepared questions to ask about their school, life and activities they liked to do. The student's showed their classroom and talked about things they do in school. The students found that they were pretty similar to the students in South America.

The thing that I loved about the chat was the students were learning about culture from native speakers and students. The only thing that would have been better would have been going to South America. My students loved seeing the other students and loved hearing how they do things differently. The student's then wrote an e-mail (using the smartboard) and sent to to the class in South America. The letter was about how they had so much fun learning and talking to them. Then they arranged another date in which they are going to chat. The teacher's goal was to chat every other month. This goes along great with Social Studies GLEC's!

skype / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Smart boards

 

The technology that I would like to look at this week is the SmartBoards. My CT has one however they use it as a projector and that's pretty much it. I have played around around on it a few times and found so many cool ideas but I know there is more to do with it. 

The formal name is called SMART board interactive whiteboard. It's idea that combines a touch screen, computer, a whiteboard and projector for an interactive learning experience. The SMART board will work like a computer (by touch) then act like a white board in the since that you can write on it and then erase what you wrote.

Advantages for the technology are endless. One thing is saving paper and resources. Instead of making "overheads" a teacher can create a document then use the SMARTboard to edit or go over the document with the class.  Another advantage is that it allows the teacher to save what the class is working on for later reference. The teachers are able to record a lesson for the students to review later (even from a different computer). Students are able to learn through sound, visual (reading, pictures, graphs) and touch. This allows students to become more engaged and take responsibility for their learning. I believe this will help teachers stay organized. They no longer have to think about where they left off the day before, they now can save it. Then compare year to year each day what they had done for certain lessons. Also, doing everything by computer will allow teachers to be able to do quick edits and then save for later uses.

There are programs that have been develop to enhance students learning through the smartoard. For instance, there is a place where students can share documents which they can view from the board, edit and change. Concept map generate where they have installed a hand writing recognition.

One flaw that I have been reading about is writing on the screen there is a delay. This causes hand writing to become messy and hard to read. As well as the eraser is hard to erase only a small amount of the text causing it hard to do a quick fix on the board. As well as the teacher needs to be able to create and develop lessons, worksheets and ideas on the computer. If you do not know how to do this then this will be more work then saving you time. As well as, if your class does not know how to work computers or do not have computers in there home, it could limit the amount that you can do with the smart board. 

smartboard/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Slide Show

  

Here is my slide show! The pictures are first the picture that I was playing around with figuring out how to use picnik.com (one with the heart). The second picture is the picture of my screen-shot, which was edited just to see my web-browser. The third picture is where I changed the size and created a black and white photo. The last picture is the original picture before any changes were made!

Hand Writing

Handwriting/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

While at the School on Friday, I made a comment to the Technology teacher about how some of the students can type faster than they can write. She made a comment about give it some time and nobody will write anything done anymore. This comment stuck with me all day, are we really moving towards a society that does write anything down? I know personally I have lost my ability to write in cursive in a fast and correct manner. While taking notes I can type faster then I can write as well. So what does this mean for society? Will we eventually lose writing and is this a good thing?

My Picture

Megan's Picture / CC BY 2.0

Here is a picture that was taken at the Chicago Aquarium when I went on New Years Day. The star fish was in the children center where one could take the star fish. I saw how excited the children were (and my boyfriend and I) to be able to touch some of the under the sea life. I created this picture with Creative Commons!

Spring Fever, I Think So.

 In response to Spring Fever on Scholastic's blog (http://blogs.scholastic.com/gifted/2009/05/spring-fever.html), I enjoyed that the Jill White talked about the problems that students face at the end of the school year. I understand as a student that the excitement for Spring Break, Summer or graduation starts to grow. Here suggestion to sent up a blog at the end of the year, which she hoped would keep students engaged because it's something different, I really enjoyed. I think the second half of the year is a great time to incorporate new technologies because students are often getting bored. 

In my second grade classroom, the students are now typing up their stories after spending the entire first semester handwriting them. I can see how excited the student’s are when they get to hit the "PRINT" bottom and she their ideas in published format. It seemed as if the students were getting tired of writing and a few were saying that they didn't have any more thoughts to write about, however now the students are excited for writing time. I see them going through the editing process more carefully as well. The use of technology at the end of the semester will help keeps the students excited about what is occurring in the classroom.

The push on technology, is it a good thing?

I love that technology is being pushed into the classroom. I think that it brings wonderful things and different ways to present materials to the classroom. However, I do have my doubts on some things. I am wondering if too much technology will bring away from the teacher-student interaction, teacher-teacher interaction and teacher-parent interactions. Face to face interaction is so important for the development of students and it just shows that that the teacher cares. In this day in age, everyone is so "busy" to really take the care to sit down and talk about the situation. It becomes very easy to push students to the back in our lives and this is something that we do not want to happen.

Recording... who would have thought!?

flikr Carla Gomez Monroy/ CC BY 2.0

In my classroom, they have technology twice a week. Where the technology teacher brings in lap-tops or using the smartboard with the students. Right now the students are working on publishing their writing right now. She suggested that on the class website that the students post their typed masterpieces on the web. That way their parents, grandparents or anyone can access students work. I thought this was a great idea because this is just another way to improve parent involvement and for students to feel proud of their work. When she said this, the class got excited and started working extra hard on making their papers perfect. What a great way to keep students in excited about their learning and keep technology alive in the classroom.