TECHNOLOGY GEEK!!

Well the term has come to an end! My first year as an education student is complete! Its crazy how quickly the semester as well as the year went by. 

Over the course of the semester in ICT, I have been taught so much about technology. I have learned many different tips and the amount of programs I have been introduced to is amazing!

I had always known that integrating technology in the classroom was important, but it wasn't something that came easy for me to think of what KINDS of technology to use. Mike has taught us some pretty neat programs that I think will be very engaging for the students. My favorite program that Mike had shown us was Prezi, this is such an awesome app! Instead of your standard boring old PowerPoint presentation, prezi allows the presentation to come alive. I have never really realized how much you can integrate technology into the the room with simple little activities. I know for myself, technology is going to be something I will try and work with for my students as I can remember going to elementary school and how cool it was when we got to use the computers or lap tops!!

This class has been very helpful for myself, since I wasn't always the technology geek! Since we will be applying for jobs in approximately a year, and technology is becoming an even bigger thing within the classrooms year by year, it is important for the Faculty of Education in universities to be keeping the future teachers up to date with technology changes and advances. Once I receive a job in teaching, I know I will keep my technology up to date by taking some professional development courses!!

 

New ways to Learn!!

This week we were able to view our classmates videos they had made. The videos were hilarious and we could all tell that we had a great time making the videos. As I mentioned in my last blog posting, videos are very engaging and make a fun activity for students in the class. I can only imagine the types of video and the amount of fun they would have making them, plus its a bonus teaching the students different ways to use technology to tell stories.

We had also shown the class our final group projects for the term. These presentations were very informal and allowed us to learn new apps and programs to help us integrate technology into the classroom. My favorite presentation was the one about using prezi to teach social studies. I have never heard about prezi until Mike had shown us, but I think this is a great program which has much more affect than your standard powerpoint presentation. I definitely know that I will be trying to make more prezi's in my class to get the students more engaged.

I also really liked the skype idea, I use to use skype a couple years ago when I was going to school in the states to talk to my friends and family back home and had never really thought of it as being useful in the classroom. Skype is a simple calling program that allows you to video chat with anyone across the world. This would be very useful in the classroom especially when learning about social studies since we look at all parts of the world.

Our group had done our presentation on activties on the smartboard, there are soo many templates that are simple to use and alter to your liking. I love using the smartboard when teaching and I know the students enjoy it as well. I have never really thought of using a smartboard for physical education classses but I had found many templates that are easy to use and can be integrated into the gym class quite easily.

Since I am an ipad user, I enjoyed learning about the different apps that are out there for teachers to use for many different purposes such as recording lessons, this is a helpful tool for kids that are away and need the notes and even if I'm away!!

Since technology is ever so changing, it is important for us as teachers to keep up with the advances!!

Movie Making!

This week, we got the opportunity to make our own movie! Our group chose to make a video about a daily life of a student. We had filmed our video from the beginning of a students day to the time when they leave the school. We shot many different short clips from many different angles.

We were allowed to use any of the video making programs that we were exposed to. Our group chose to work with the apple computer and therefore we used the iMovie program. Mike gave us a short introduction of how to use the program which was very helpful because neither myself nor my group members had ever worked with this program. We found the program to be quite easy to edit and put together our clips.

This was a fun and neat tech task to get our hands in and experienced. This type of technology can be very useful in the classroom today and students today are much more involved with these types of programs which I'm sure they will be able to teach more to me about the programs!!

Changing the face of our classrooms!

This week I have learnt about more programs to create digital stories from several different pictures. I chose to work from the program photo story 3 which is a program that can be easily installed on the computers at school. I believe this program will be useful and meaningful for a number of different ways in my future classroom. For an example I could have students create their own digital story for themed topics in the curriculum. When I was student teaching in the fall, my cooperating teacher had let me in on a tip, when trying to plan activities and to hit the curriculum outcomes it is much easier to have "themes" behind every idea. With the advanced apps and programs today, we can collect or even take pictures at that moment and either caption it with text or even better have the students record their voices of what they would like to say about their picture or pictures. What I think would be an awesome way of using the recording system is having a picture or multiple pictures that relate to each other and show the class this with no sound or voice recording, then have your students work separately and record their own "story" of what they believe is happening in the story.  After the recordings are all finished I would have them send their videos to me and we would view them all as a class. I think this would be a very neat and engaging activity to introduce something new to the kids where it gets them thinking!!

Since iPads are a huge part of technology in the classroom with myself included using one I have listed some apps to download for digital storytelling:

Haiku Deck- is great for early years, quick access of storytelling. It can also can pictures right off the iPad and also searches images you are looking for and references the picture for you. 

Sonic pics- is an awesome storytelling application. You can put images in and record with the iPad to tell the story.  

Appsgonefree- is an app that shows you all the free downloads for the day. Is very useful and the apps can be deleted if you haven't used them or don't think you will once you check them out but can be accessed through your iTunes again for free even if they have s charge. 

Also here are some links to check out about digtial storytelling in the classrooms!!

http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/teachers/guides/Pages/digital_storytelling.aspx

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

Digital Technology

Digital technology has been one of the major changes we have seen within our schools today. From laptops to iPads and even cellular devices. There are many ways for us as teachers to deliver information to our students today. I have not been known for a person to keep up with the ever so changing technology uses and programs but being apart of this class has helped me tremendously with learning about new programs. The latest program we were introduced to was prezi, this digital storytelling program is much more advanced than your standard PowerPoint presentation. I believe this program is much more engaging and because of the special effects it includes will be something of Internet that even the students will be able to use when creating their own presentations. 

The smart board technology use has become much more advanced then from when I used it back in high school. There are many different presentations and games that are open for anyone's use. Like everyone always tips us future educators, "why reinvent the wheel". I believe the smartboard templates will Beverly helpful when looking for ideas and games to keep the students engaged. 

It amazes me how much digital storytelling and digital pictures can be that much more meaningful and really make an impact on people. Digital storytelling can be either funny or serious. Below is a link of digtial storytelling with humour that was shared in class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IjUkNmUcHc

Literacy with ICT

This week we had the pleasure of having John Finch come into our classroom to discuss Literacy with ICT. We firstly got started off by discussing the technology we used in our elementary and middle years school experiences. I remember we used computers strictly for research projects. Today's schools, the students have the privledge of using laptops and ipads. I believe that in my teaching future, the technology usage is going to be that much more advanced. The main focus of Literacy wtih ICT is choosing and using ICT responsibly and ethically to support critical and create thinking about infromation. John made a very important statement which stuck out to me the most: "We need to teach the students HOW to learn and simply not the facts". This is definitely something that will stick out in my mind when preparing lesson plans and unit plans for my students. John had said if we teach students the facts they are never going to know because the facts can change on a daily basis which is something every teacher needs to take in consideration, especially teachers that use the same material from year to year.

Our class has started to design a wiki, I have never used the program before and I cant say that I will be a fan of it especially with my students. We had the opportunity to ask another class about the program and what they disliked about it so our class had an advantage before we started to create it. The problem with wiki is that if you have each individual group working on their part of the project and they end up writing on the same page and you refresh it it can delete someones part of the project. If I were to use this program with my students I would have them first write their information in a word document and then paste it on the the wiki page so we wouldnt run into problems of deleting each others information. The part of the wiki that my group is working on is about digital citizenship which I believe is to be a very important aspect. Digital Citizenship is a very important tool to teach to our children today especially since using the computer has become almost an hourly thing. Before I introduce my students to using technology we will be discussing digital citizenship which is the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use. There has been many recent cases that are affecting young children that have to do with digital citizenship. When we look at the case about Amanda Todd, her picture who was sent to a personal "friend" was leaked across the internet worldwide that haunted her forever and eventually ended up committing suicide. We have to teach our students the appropriate uses of the internet before we give them free range of using this tool.

Social Media

This past week of school we were able to work on our classroom websites. I enjoyed working on it with the help of our instructor, Mike. My website is almost completed in which I am very excited about. I believe by having a classroom website in my future will help myself, the students and as well as their parents to be constantly aware of what is going on in our room. As a future educator I plan on having my classroom website fully running and updated on a weekly basis. I also like having the idea of having extra links or videos for students and parents to checkout!

I recently started using google docs prior to this course. I had actually started using it while student teaching because the school divisions has hotmail blocked. I don't use it very much but I think it's a very neat tool for sending things over the web. Particularly for older students this tool could come in handy when sending papers or presentations quickly and efficiently. In class we did our presentation about social media. Although there were many pros and cons of using social media our group was for it. My biggest concern for social media is cyberbullying. We had watched many videos about bullying over the Internet last term. One girl committed suicide because she was being bullied so bad. I believe that there are many cyberbullying incidents that we do not even hear about. My first priority in my class when integrating technology will be to have a bully proof classroom. Kids are so much or think they are so much more powerful over the Internet which can be very scary!! The biggest positive about social media in my mind is the communication between people all over the world. I believe that I will try and use as much social media in my classroom, but at the same time I am very concerned about the negative affects it can cause. 

What do you guys think about social media in the classroom!?

Tips for Free

During the second week of classes, we had the opportunity to take a look at a few e-portfolios. I am looking forward to starting my e-portfolio for the term! Our class was able to make up a list of what we thought our e-portfolios should consist of and how they should be layed out. We also had the pleasure of having Andy & Darren show us some interesting ways to express our feelings about a specific topic. For an example we had to pick a word that had something to do with education where we would fill it in with the "what" matters. I chose the word Respect, so my slogan was "Respect Matters". After we decided on our word we had to go onto www.compfight.com and type in our "what" word and decide on a picture that best explains our "what" word. I had learned that when we take pictures say even off of google, we should be citing the URL to give those photographers credit which I have never really thought of before! whoops!! Once the entire class had our pictures done, we had to send them to Andy and Darren through dropitto.me which was a fairly neat process! As soon as the class sent their pictures, it was added into a slide show immediately and we got to view our pictures as a class! I found this type of procedure to be very cool and definitely something I would like to try with older students!! Their presentation was full of tips and strategies to get the students involve with technology while keeping them engaged!

Keeping an Open Mind!

Hey everyone and welcome to my blog for ICT!! I am eager to learn and explore new techniques about technology and how to incorporate them into my placements and future classrooms. I also am worried that some of the technology might be too complex for my technology skills so I am a little on the hesitant side but I'll be keeping an open mind!

During the first week of classes, I learned about simple technology activities to introduce the students to engage my students. The first task we did in class was a word splash, I found this website to be very cool! The word splash can be used for practically anything and could be displayed as posters for in the classroomm as well! I have decided to use the word splash on my classroom website that consists of things that are important for me to have a successful room. With technology being at the tip our students fingertips I believe this website could be used for simple activities to express students thoughts and ideas of particular topics.

Looking forward to reading some other blogs of what you guys think!!