Post 11.23.10

Blog Posting…………..11/23/2010

When and how do teachers act as designers?

          Teachers act as designers each and every day they stand in from of their students.  They must design the lesson that they are delivering to their students.  They must decide what goal they are trying to reach, they must design steps, activities, and projects to reach the goal.  They must motivate the students to reach the goal.  Finally, they must teach their students ways to “design” their study habits in order to be successful in reaching their goals.

Select one of the following and explain how it can be used in classroom:  SketchUp, Trebuchet Simulator, Model Car Design, Scratch, iStopMotion, Impromptu.

          iStopMotion as received very positive feedback from educators.  “It teaches soft skills such as teamwork, structural thinking, planning and provides immediate satisfaction (Boinx).”  iStopMotion can be used by students in classrooms to let them show what they have learned about whatever they are studying.  For examples, if students are studying gravity in science they could make a movie showing the effects of gravity like Sir Isaac Newton did in his paper about falling apples.  This would create excitement for the students, and  it would also create memories to help the students retain their knowledge of gravity.

Explain “Digital Storytelling by Kate Kemker.”  What do you think it would work in your classroom?

          Digital storytelling could be very educational in most classrooms providing that it is used correctly.  Since I plan on coaching its benefits for me would be somewhat limited; however, I could use it in some ways.  I could have students make a “story” of making and missing freethrows in a basketball game.  They could then study their story to see what they did each time they made the point.  Hopefully this would transfer to consistently correct shooting from the freethrow line.

Mathematics is one of the most abstract subject-matter domains.  Helping students to visualize mathematical concepts is very useful in helping students make math real.  What other methods suggested in the textbook will also help make math more real to students?

          Mathematics is very abstract, and today one of the easiest tools to use to help students “see” concepts is the graphing calculator.  The graphing feature allows students to immediately see the difference between linear and quadratic functions.  Also, computer software such as the programs described in our text allows students to easily draw and manipulate figures so they can visualize what happens when the change data within the problem.  One of the relatively new things used in math classes is Algebra Tiles.  Before long these will be used in an electronic format, and students can have access to them anywhere they have internet capabilities.

Is it possible to learn from TV alone?—that is, learn how to do something merely from watching TV instruction?

          The answer to this question is yes and no.  I believe that it is possible to learn something from watching a TV program or video, but you must get the tools and practice.  Take for instance “Step Aerobics”.  Would I learn to do “Step Aerobics” just by watching?  Probably not, but if I got a step and attempted to do the routines along with the TV then I would probably learn something.  Also I know a friend that learned to do calligraphy from watching a program on PBS.  She watched a couple of program, and it caught her interest.  So she bought the necessary pens and practice along with the program until she could do calligraphy.  Watching alone does not teach you, but it does give you ideas and instructions so that if you try and practice something you will be able to do it.  I also believe that you can learn facts from watching educational programming.  For instance I would have never known that polar bears are not born white if I had not watch a National Geographic program on polar bears.

References

“Charting a course for technology in florida by dr. kate kemker #pbtechconf.”

          Moving at the Speed of Creativity.  Retrieved from

          http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2010/03/26/charting-a-course-for

          technology-in-florida-by-dr-kate-kemker-pbtechconf.

“iStopMotion.” Boinx Software.  Retrieved from

          http://boinx.com/istopmotion/overview.

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crissmond, D.  (2008).  Meaningful

          learning with technology.

Kemker, K.  “Creating desktop movies in education: diffusing the innovation.” 

          Retrieved from http://www.coedu.usf.edu/itphdsem/eme7938/kk800.pdf.

Week 11 Blog--Gee's Principles

          As I’ve mentioned before I plan on being a coach and of all of James Paul Gee’s Learning Principles I think the following three would be the most useful to my students:  (1) Active, Critical Learning Principle, (6) “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle, and (12) Practice Principle.  The first one, Active, Critical Learning Principle, is important because to learn to do a sport the learner must be an active participant.  I can watch all the video on shooting a basketball, read all the books, and watch all the games on TV, but until I get out and practice and learn the moves I am not going to be able to play the game.  Similarly a child can watch a teacher add numbers, but until he experiences it for himself he has not learned the skill.  So being an active participant is the learning process is very important.  The second principle I chose was the “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle.  This one will be very important in my field because not everyone will be able to perform the skills at the beginning.  I must build an atmosphere where the students can feel free to experiment, fail, and still keep trying without losing their self-confidence.  Michael Jordan once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  This is true of students, if they are not willing to try new things and be confident that succeed or fail they can still learn then teachers are not doing their jobs.  The third principle that I selected as being important was the Practice Principle.  It is very important for an athlete to be able to do things automatically without having to think too much, so practice is imperative to being a successful athlete.  As a coach I must show my athletes the importance of practice and teach them that to be successful they must practice correctly.

          The activity that I would simulate is teaching children to shoot a free throw in basketball.  First I would show them videos of some of the game’s best free throw shooters like Chris Mullen, Mark Price, and J.J. Reddick.  I would then take them to the gym and break down the moves and let them practice each move individually.  Last be not least I would have them practice, practice, and practice some more.  I would have some competitive games that would keep practice interesting and try to not harp on the students who were having a hard time.  I would teach the students that shooting free throws is very important, but not everyone has an easy time of it.  I have the students encouraging each other and make the games based on teams and not individuals so that a student that is having a hard time would not necessarily lose.  The more fun I could make practicing free throws the more successful my players would be.

          I think Mr. Gee’s principles are very valid.  In my educational psychology class I’ve learned that the most important thing in teaching a child is to make it interesting and to get their attention and hold it.  If teachers use Mr. Gee’s principles and make learning enjoyable then I think they would be successful

References

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crissmond, D.  (2008).  Meaningful learning with

          technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill-Prentiss Hall.

Learning principles.  Retrieved from http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmith/jamespaulgee2print.html.

Mallard, T., & Ahmed, S.  (2008, March 19).  Gee’s principles.  Retrieved from

          http://www.newman.ac.uk/Students_websites/~t.mallard/theories.htm.

Week 7 Blog: Writing with Technology & Power Point

Week 7—Blog Posting

          What kind of writing activities would I use in my classroom to make the best use of technology?  Well, it would depend on what class I was teaching.  If I were teaching an English class I could see using blogging to keep a daily journal for writing ideas and thoughts, and because most students write more when using a computer I would let the students use a word processing program such as Microsoft Word to write their creative writing papers and essays.  I would have to be sure students knew they still had to proofread and edit their papers because the computer doesn’t catch everything.  If I were teaching a history class I would have the students do research and then use a word processing tool to create reports.  From there I would have the students create a Power Point presentation from their reports to get the information to other students.  I would encourage them to use sound, graphics, pictures, etc. to make their presentations more interesting.  If I were teaching other things such as science or art I would probably be doing about the same as I would for history.  I plan on coaching and teaching physical education (PE) so I might be able to incorporate a little writing in the PE classes by having the students do research on different sports and games and then write reports again using the word processor.  If I worked on a campus that had teams of teachers we might get together and do a unit that involved all the classes.  For example, we might do a unit on basketball.  The social studies teacher could have the students do the history of the game.  The math teacher could do the statistics involved in the game.  The science teacher could do the physics or the trajectory that needed to be used for people of certain heights to make the basket.  The art teacher could make posters for an upcoming game.  And, I as the coach could have the students give presentations to other grades using the information gathered in the other classes and use Word and Power Point and have them do physical demonstrations.  That is how I would use technology to produce writing in my classroom.

          Power Point is a wonderful tool to use during presentations, but the speaker doesn’t need to let the Power Point presentation distract the audience.  From being in the audience during presentations using Power Point I know some major things to avoid.  In the presentation the font needs to be large enough so that people can read it from a reasonable distance.  In other words, you can’t put too much on a slide.  Another thing is that the Power Point creator needs to make good color choice for the background and text.  For example, yellow text on a white background is very hard to see from the audience.  One also doesn’t want the background to district from the text.  It is sometimes hard to read text if the background is too “busy.”  Sound is good in a presentation, but one needs to be sure that it is not distracting or irritating.  For example, I was in a class with a student who used the sound of breaking glass each time the slide changed.  It was totally irritating and by the end of the presentation I was ready to slap the young lady doing the presentation.  Finally, the number one thing that annoys audiences is for the presenter to read every word on every slide.  The important words, yes, but every word, give the audience a break!  I believe that I can avoid most of the pitfalls in the actual Power Point, but I might have a little trouble doing the actual presentation itself.

          I can see the value of using technology to stimulate writing activities in the classroom, and I see the value of teachers using Power Point in the classroom.  I enjoy my instructors using Power Point.  However, do I envision myself using technology in writing activities and Power Points a lot when I teach?  No, not really, because I plan on coaching and teaching PE.  If I am assigned to teach in a regular classroom setting I will try to get most of my lessons on Power Point and I will have the students utilize technology as much as possible.

References

Johassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crismond, D.  (2008).  Meaningful learning with

          technology.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill-Prentiss Hall.

Week 6: Investigating With Technologies—Blog Posting

Week 6:  Investigating With Technologies—Blog Posting

          Personal Digital Assistants, also known as PDAs, are basically mini hand-held computers.  PDAs can be used in many ways in a classroom and more ways are being developed every day.  Teachers can use them to distribute information to students, such as lecture notes and class assignments.  Some schools are choosing to utilize electronic textbooks and down load them to separate PDAs for each student (For college students this might be a tremendous way to save money!).  Students could use the device to write papers and check their spelling, take notes for class, and do research if internet access is available.  Students could even work on group projects without having to physically get together by using the communication devices in some PDAs (Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond, 2008).

          Online surveys are a quick inexpensive way to get information to help make informed decisions.  We use them to get feedback on different topics to help us know what is happening and how we can make decisions to make things better.  For example, a teacher could take a survey on how his/her students feel about different stories and books they have read the first half of the year, and then base the second semester’s readings upon the results of the surveys.  The students have more fun and learn more if they are interested so the topics could be geared toward their interests.  Teachers can also use online surveys to get input from parents (Dyck, 2001).  Sometimes parents have great ideas but do not have time to come to the school and talk with the teacher.  If the teacher reaches out to the parents with surveys he/she can gain valuable information to help the students.  As well as gaining information for the teacher, it can also be a learning tool for the students.  For example, when studying elections in a social studies class, the class could do an online survey, study the information, and make predictions about the elections.  One could even use an online survey to hold a mock election or class election, and the students could see democracy in action.  Two good rules to following when creating an online survey are to keep the questions simple and easy to understand and to keep the survey short and to the point to keep people from clicking out and not finishing it.

            Personal digital assistants are great tools, and it would be wonderful if all students had access to one.  As costs come down I feel that they will be used more and more in classrooms.  With many cell phones having most of the same capabilities it won’t be long before most students have one, especially at the upper grade levels.  Online surveys are a great way for schools and teachers to gain insight to their student body and community.  The only drawback of online surveys is making them available to parents who do not have internet access at home.  In this day and time, most people think everyone has internet access at home, but unfortunately that is not the case.  In conclusion, I guess it would be pretty neat for students to have online surveys for a project and put them in their PDAs, and then they could go out into the community and gather data by doing surveys.  When then finished they could use the data they collected to draw conclusions about the projects.

References

Dyck, B. (2001, August 24). 'whassup?' in the classroom. Retrieved from

          http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr36.shtml.

Jonassesn, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crismond, D.  (2008).

          Meaningingful learning with technology.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:

          Merrill-Prentiss Hall.

Week 4 Blog

Tyris Dowell

Blog Posting Week 4

Fall 2010

          Spreadsheets are very useful tools when one is keeping track of data that involves a large amount of numbers.  One way that a teacher could use a spreadsheet is as a gradebook.  It can store the grades, and one can place a formula in a cell to average the grades that have been stored.  I, as a teacher, would probably not use a spreadsheet for this purpose because most schools have electronic gradebooks that basically use a spreadsheet format, but the teacher only has to enter grades and the gradebook program would do all the calculations without having to enter formulas to do the calculations.

          Spreadsheets have a major advantage over calculators because once you set up the spreadsheet and insert the formulas they stay there until they are changed.  For example, if I wanted to use a spreadsheet to keep track of basketball statistics for my team I could set up a row for each game, a column for each free throw made, a column for each free throw attempted, and then have the next column compute the free throw percentage by dividing the first column by the second column and multiplying it by one hundred.  I could also total the column and computer the free throw percentages for the entire season.  With a calculator I would have to re-enter the data each time.  So the spreadsheet would be much more time efficient.

          In the book Meaningful Learning with Technology, it says the three primary functions of a spreadsheet are storing information, calculating information, and presenting information (Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond, 2008).  I totally agree that a spreadsheet makes doing these three things much easier and can save a tremendous amount of time.  Other than those three things I readlly don’t know of anything else a spreadsheet can do.

References

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crismond, D.  (2008).  Meaningful learning with techonology.

          Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill-Prentiss Hall.

Blogging @ School

Tyris Dowell


Using Blogs is something that could be useful if it is done in the right way, but it could also be very damaging to people if they are used incorrectly. Blogs could be useful in education if the teachers are able to maintain tight control and the students do not post things they should not. I could see blogs being a good way for students to keep learning journals. Again if they use them correctly it could help them study for tests, keep track of important events and assignments, and it could help shy students get to know their classmates. If someone asked me if it would be a waste of a student’s time, I would have to say it would depend on the student. The blog would be a tool, just like a notebook or calculator, and if a student used it correctly it could be an asset, but used incorrectly it could just be a high tech way to side-step doing work.

Being a student majoring in kinesiology and planning to teach physical education, I don’t see a lot of use for technology. If a school district had the money I think it would be great to have some interactive games that the students could use such as the Wii Fit system. It would be a fun activity for the students to use sometime. But as I said the school would have to have enough systems so that the kids wouldn’t waste most of the period waiting to have a turn on the Wii. I could see blogs being helpful in academic classes to post and keep notes and journals. But, I also see this as a pitfall for poor students. Unless a school has the means to issue each child a computer and internet access, many children would not get to do the things on the computer outside of school like the more privileged students. That being said I guess it would all depend upon the school district, because some have the money to provide these things while others do not.

Tyris Dowell

What's up class this Tyris. I'm new to this blogging so I will most likely be confused or lost.