Class 9/19/07

This past semester when I was student teaching, my 4th grade students were creating their own books about anything they wanted. I had a similar assignment when i was in 4th grade, so i asked my mom if she still had the book I created. My mom being a teacher too, saved basically everything that I had ever done as a child. It was so amazing to see everything I had done....and it even gave me some ideas as a teacher too. I think that a lot of the time we need to incorporate technology into out lessons but I also feel that it is ok to make things the old fashion way too. Sometimes it means a little more when objects are hand-written instead of word processed!

I really liked the program that we used in class, where we could share and edit with our peers. ( I of course can't rememeber the name of it) I think this would be something that you could do either as a whole class together or with another class somewhere around the world! It would create a peaceful and friendly environment and would also help with keyboarding skills too! Depending on the cost of this I think that it would definitely be something schools should look into!

I Spy

I had so much fun with creating the I Spy activity in class. I am really looking forward to the entire powerpoint that the whole class will be making this week. I think that this is a fun way to incorporate rhymes into the classroom. However, I know that my particular school that I student taught at, didnt let students check these books out because they were not considered educational. I have looked at these books numerous times and I never notices the rhyming (maybe something is wrong with me). I can understand both sides in this case. We did use this activity in a fun way that worked with different reading aspects such as rhyming. But that is basically it. Other than that I dont feel students are learning much. This is a great example of how the teacher needs to incorporate this activity into the classroom appropriately!

Handhelds

In a class I took last semester we got to work with the Palm OS’. On those Palms’ there was a program that would help a teacher when giving students DIBELS tests. This was a very neat program that I think would be so amazing to have and to use in school districts. At first I was a little skeptical because I didn’t know how to use the program and figured it would be confusing to learn. However, it was a very self-explanatory program and found it to be very useful and helpful. This is my overall feeling about handhelds. I think that if the program is self-explanatory and easy to use then it will be very beneficial to students and teachers. That is I feel one of the major uses of technology, ease of use. It is easier to type a paper than it would be to hand write one. So we should make sure that this applies to all parts of technology.

Keyboarding

I honestly believe that keyboarding should be apart of every elementary student’s curriculum. I to this day remember when I had keyboarding class. I feel that without that class, I would still be a slow at typing. I would also have to constantly be looking down at the keys. I can now freely type any notes that I need to take, while sticking focusing on my profession. When I was in the keyboarding class, I remember not liking it very much. It was always a competition between other students in the class to see who can get the most words per minute correctly. But, it is my own personal opinion that there is nothing wrong with a little competition. That healthy competition pushed me to try harder and to learn to type better. Sometimes guided practice is the best way to learn how to do a task.

Storyboards

When I was younger, the 6th graders always got to make actual books about anything they wanted. It was something that everyone looked forward to doing. When reading the article about storyboards, I realized that they are definitely getting expensive to make. Using PowerPoint to create these stories is a wonderful idea! I would love doing something like that, and I am sure the students would love doing something like that as well. The students would be able to easily create these stories and use this in the future. I have had to create many PowerPoints as a college student, so knowing how to use this program would be very beneficial to the student. I also believe that it would not take a lot of time to teach the students how to use this program. It is a very easy to use program and students can teach themselves how to use it.