How My Students Will Learn With Technology

Assessing students' progress is an important part of being a teacher. Assessments help educators know the degree students are learning what is being taught. There are many technology tools that can be used to measure students' learning. If you use rubrics with your students, Rubrician.Com offer a list of educator submitted rubrics and Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators has lists of rubrics and graphic organizers which both are great sources to use when building your own. Qwizdom is an interesting concept where students can participate with their personal clicker to answer questions without interrupting the lecture. The teacher can take the information collected to evaluate the lessons as well as the students' learning. Inspiration software that gives visual learners a variety of strategies to organize and analyze information, but this site works best for older students. For K-5th grade students, Kidspiration would be a more appropriate tool. These sites offer students graphic organizers, outlining, Venn-diagrams, and many more tools that allow students to utilize visual strategies while effectively organizing their thoughts and ideas.

When looking back on this semester, I have learned about many technology tools to help me and my students process, organize and effectively deliver information to others. There is so much to take in and I want to use so much of that information. Of course what I use is dependent upon what I teach. If I am teaching general education K-2, I will be using interactive online story books like Tumblebooks or Story Time by Barnes and Noble, I would use Kid Pix to build their writing confidence and expand their communication abilities, and Symbaloo to organize all of the class websites to make it easy for students to easily access approved on-line tools. For general education 3-6, I would use Kidspiration to enhance organization of students' thoughts before writing, teach and model proper Netiquette, while helping them understand Copyright and Fair Use laws. Now if I am teaching students with severe disabilities in Elementary Special Education, I would want to use Starfall which is a fantastic site filled with games that will enhance my lessons of letter recognition, phonics, and promotes early reading.

This is just a drop in the bucket. I will be using technology to keep track of my students grades, their work, my work, to help my team create newsletters, send personal letters home with my students, keep up to date in the latest in education, and the list goes on and on. I am almost overwhelmed thinking of all the possibilities. I will slowly incorporate what I can when it best suits my students and hope I can effectively guide them toward a successful learning experience.

Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills

TEKS for Technology Applications, Grade 3-5

(7) Solving problems. The student uses appropriate computer-based productivity tools to create and modify solutions to problems. The student is expected to:

(C) use a variety of data types including text, graphics, digital audio, and video.

Students should have some experience with computer-based tools by 3rd grade. This TEKS is to make sure students learn to utilize the computer's tools. Adding a variety of data to a research paper is an important attribute to learn. As students grow in education, more will be expected from them. Here is a good way to prepare them for those High School and College research papers as well as on-line projects. Its best that our students are learning the proper way to use these tools through us rather than learning them the hard way or the wrong way on their own.

TEKS English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 3

(16)  Reading/Media Literacy. Students use comprehension skills to analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater depth in increasingly more complex texts. Students are expected to:

(C)  compare various written conventions used for digital media (e.g., language in an informal e-mail vs. language in a web-based news article).

 I chose 3rd grade because I will be interning there next fall, but also because it is one of my favorite grades to teach, and Language Arts because it is one of my favorite subjects. The topic of formal and informal language is taught beginning in Kindergarten. By 3rd grade they should have the basic understanding of how to write a personal letter. I think it is 4th grade when they begin learning how to write persuasive and augmentative letters. With this TEKS, 3rd grade students will learn the how language can differ between an informal e-mail and articles found on-line. A casual e-mail will be personalized between the sender and the receiver, while an article will be information based and to the point. This is an important concept to learn because the interpretation of what is being said depends upon the reader understanding between the two languages.

TEKS for Technology Applications, Grade 3-5

(3) Foundations. The student complies with the laws and examines the issues regarding the use of technology in society. The student is expected to:

(B) model respect of intellectual property by not illegally copying software or another individual's electronic work.

I believe the TEKS above is the most important concept our students must learn before they continue expanding their knowledge in technology. Students should understand the usage law of electronic work before they can properly use internet sources. As educators, it is important to teach and model to our students respect of others' work. Students start researching on the internet beginning in Elementary school, and as they move on through school and into College they will use internet sources more and more. By beginning to install the laws regarding the use of electronic work while still in Elementary school, students can build on these expectations and properly give credit when needed. Anytime I am teaching a lesson that will end with the students doing research, I will, not only model writing the paper, but also include this important information in the lesson. With the projector on, I will be able to switch between my on-line search and the paper I am writing. I will show them how to read the information, take the information needed, put it on paper in their own words, and then give credit to the source. 

Visualizing with Technology & the Learning Process

How do I feel about it? Awe, come on! With the teaching tools we have available to enhance our lessons now only a click away, this is a great time to be a teacher!

Technology brings learning alive. It gives students the opportunity to explore and manipulate the basic concepts we teach. Play is an important learning tool for younger students, why not continue that concept for older students? Allow students to have fun while instilling important concepts and learning valuable information. There are so many amazing web-sites that aid in the learning process and they are getting better every day! And technology is not just for the visual learners. Verbalizers can aid from technology tools, too.

Drawing and paint software is a great way to helps kids express themselves beyond the written word and expand their communication abilities. Many of these allow students to add print to their drawings, too. Now students can write a story and add pictures to support it. The Kindergarteners where I work write a research paper on their favorite animal (simple pages, E.g. "My animal is a tiger. Tigers eat smaller animals. Tigers hunt at night.") When they are finished, they use KidPix to draw and/or stamp a picture, then type all of their sentences under the picture. The K students always do a great job!  Sketchcast is for students a bit older and allows them to make a movie of their drawings.

Looking for a way to put excitement into Math data and patterns for your students? Key Curriculum Press offers software called Tinker Plots that is designed to help the middle grade students understand data and recognize patterns. For high school students, check out the Fathom Dynamic Statistics software. This site also offers Geometry help with the Geometer's Sketchpad. For Chemistry, Wavefunction, Inc. has software called Spartan that students can use to, not only see molecules represented with different materials, but allows them to experiment with different bonds to make new molecules.  

What better time to be a teacher, or better yet, a learner, than this day and age of vast selection of technological aids? I love the face to face interaction I have with my students, I also enjoy the group interaction when teaching them how to use new technology tools, and best of all, I love watching them use these new ideas to teach each other.

Putting Prezi in Your Presentations

Prezi.com is a web-based program that puts excitement into presentations. Check out this video for more information on how Prezi can spruce up your presentations.

I took the information from the Emergent Technology project I wrote earlier in the semester to design my first Prezi. I can't take credit for this idea...it was an assignment, but I did enjoyed playing around with this unique, on-line presentation tool. Check it out here...& remember, this was my 1st attempt. I welcome feed back, but please be kind. 

I'm not sure when I will have the opportunity to make my next Prezi, but I have so many great ideas on how to improve it by what I've learned so far. I just didn't realize how much better I could have made it. Hummm....sounds like a challenge to me!