Digital Blog Post #I

Chapter 4

As I am reading the chapter, I am thinking about how challenging it is to plan every month, than every week and than every day for a class to learn successfully. You have to know students interest and students pace of learning to teach successfully. I recently took over the leading of a class since the previous lead teacher left us for another job. The fact that our class is made up of 17 boys out of 20 students age 4 and 5 years old makes teaching have its daily challenges. The first section of the book I am talking about is "Thinkfinity: Online lesson development resources. I am always looking for educational resources which made me look up thinkfinity. This website lead me to a website called wonderopolis.org which I thought looked fun and interesting. It shows different questions that children might ask and explains the aswer to it. The questions are called wonders and they are sorted in different grade levels and subjects. The first question of the section about thinkfinity is "What do I teach Monday morning?" A question familiar to me. I start my planning a week ahead which gives me enough time to think about theme, resources and learning lessons. One of my favorite Website to find homework review sheets for the children is called www.kidzone.ws
The next section I would like to talk about is "enhancing lesson development with technology". I found an article from Concordia online education called "How to use technology to enhance a lesson". it describes how to change textbooks, notebooks, pencils and chalkboards, the traditional teaching materials, to modern technology tools like projectors, whiteboards and computer games. The book divides lesson development in to 3 different parts: Academic content(what to teach), Teaching goals, methods and procedures(How to teach) and learning assessments(knowing what students have learned). The book explains academic content as the choices teachers make every day about how to share facts, concepts, ideas, skills and understandings. It also says that school system guidelines and state and national curriculum frameworks define or mandate what will be taught. Teacher must connect their plannings to local curriculum frameworks which are aligned to state and national standards. As a VPK Teacher, I follow the "Florida Early Learning and Developmental standards for 4 year olds". These are the goals of what our children need to learn and we integrate and mark them in our lesson plans. The book describes goals as the reasons why a lesson is being taught. The book also describes the section "How to teach" as the answer to "what to teach". Teachers decide the goals, methods and procedures they will use to teach. Methods are the instructional strategies teachers use to convey academic content to students. Procedures are the scheduling and grouping of students during a lesson and the decision of how much time to spend on each activity. Like I already mentioned earlier, our VPK students learn mostly by hands on learning lessons. They have 45 minutes a day to work individually on teacher made lessons on trays or in baskets that are provided for them in the classroom. Like I mentioned, 17 boys are a challenge to keep occupied. For this reason, I use a lot of technology in my learning circles. I have one in the morning and one at the end of VPK time. The morning describes day, date, month and year, a morning procedure of singing songs and the discussion of the theme. The closing circle wraps up the day and tells about the next day. If the boys can't focus between the time of wrapping up and lunch time, we sit in front of youtube.com and find educational songs about counting, spelling and compound words. The variety is big and the boys have fun singing most of the songs. According to the book, the part "Learning assessments describes the knowledge of what students have learned. It says that Learning assessments occur before, during and after teaching lessons and enable teachers to evaluate students knowledge, understanding and performance. Our VPK students have to do an assessment at the beginning of the year, in the middle of the year and towards the end of the year. The assessment is in a catalog in form of questions and pictures that teachers read and show to the students to find out if they have learned their goals. The questions are about letters, numbers, language understanding and speaking. In my opinion, I am not sure if those standardized tests are the right method to assess 4 year old children since they can be in different moods on different days or don't want to talk or answer even if they know the questions and the contents. This makes us have lower results for students who actually work and understand more during classtime. I believe knowledge should be measured during actual lesson time.
     The next section of the book that I want to talk about is using technology in lesson planning.  This video explains how technology can be an aid in creating lesson plans.

The book points out that the internet provides vast electronic resources for supporting lesson development using the student learning objectives and understanding by design approaches. It also says that already assembled lesson plans on virtually every topic and innumerable ideas for designing engaging learning experiences for students are available free at educational websites. I started to be a teacher when all this technology was already available for us as resources and I think this is a great and convenient way to find ideas and material for lesson plans. I could never imagine a way of just flipping pages in a book and going around art stores to find ideas. Since we live in the technology age, life is made easy for teachers. However I also use magazines, books and school material to plan my lessons. I just got a hold of different mailbox magazines with tons of different ideas for each month and each season. I also use social network sites to share and pin ideas from and to other teachers. Also, I think if we research online for teaching material, we need to be aware of the sources and the websites we use as material for teaching. The material should come from teaching websites and should be age appropriate and safe to use for the specific age group we teach. I have fun with planning and researching. I love to look for small science projects for the children to try out. It turns exploring with them into a little adventure and it is always trial and error. We never know if our experiments work or don't work. finding the right, appropriate fun things makes planning fun and teaching and learning fun.

resources:

 Concordia online education (2011) How to use Technology to enhance a lesson, retrieved from http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/tech-ed/how-to-use-technology-to-enhance-a-lesson/


 Florida Early Learning and Developmental Standards for 4-year Olds retrieved from http://www.floridaearlylearning.com/parents/parent_resources/floridas_early_learning_and_development_standards_birth_to_five.aspx

 Freitag, Julia (2015) plan, learn, teach, fun, research...(picture) retrieved from wordle.net

 www.kidzone.ws





Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

NDTV (2014) How can Technology aid a teachers lesson plan? retrieved from youtube.com

 www.wonderopolis.org








 

Digital Post # H

Chapter 9

While reading chapter 9 "Expressing Creativity with Multimedia Technologies" I realized how much opportunities students and teachers have today to create learning material. Technology made an enormous jump since the time I went to school. I remember starting to use computers in a classroom when I was in job training schools. In the section "Multimedia technologies in school today" the book describes Multimedia as multiple media - text, data, voice, picture and video - in a single application or technology. The book also says that multimedia in education occurs when multiple media support teaching and learning in classrooms. Examples are computer presentations that combine words, pictures and sounds or viewing material from websites, CD ROMs or television programs. Also, downloading podcasts or vodcasts or watching musical and theatrical performances that combine video, light shows and music with large screen simulcasts are examples according to the book. Students nowadays are very lucky to have all these modern learning opportunities to explore. During most of my school time, I had to get information from books and write the majority of school and homework by hand while today most of this can be typed. I started to use the internet for school in 9th and 10th grade and I saw, Like already mentioned, the first computers in classrooms during job training classes in Germany. The book says that there is an educational advantage to using multimedia. I agree, I think modern technology helps a lot while teaching and learning. I found an article called "Teaching a Course - Using Technologies in and beyond the Classroom" by "The Teaching Commons" it describes more creative ways to teach and learn with technologies and points out how teaching materials in classrooms changed more and more. 
Another section I would like to talk about is "Powerpoint and next-Generation presentation tools". I think, Powerpoint is probably the most popular presentation tool used. The book describes it as a multimedia presentation software package. It is a standard feature of many of today's computers. I use Linux as my operating system and LibreOffice Impress as my presentation tool. It works very similar to Powerpoint and I use it very often to create presentations for my college classes. When I was in my first year in a job training school in 2001, I used Powerpoint for the first time and learned how to do presentations. Now, I am sure most students know how to use Powerpoint. It is interesting and amazing to see how schools presentation tools changed from a simple blackboard and chalk to overhead projectors and now to a digital projector to present teaching material in a large version of a computer screen on a wall or a Whiteboard. The book says Powerpoint features are useful for teachers at every grade level. They help students learning and studying too. My last class provided printouts from powerpoint slides as study material and my last Powerpoint about Otto von Bismarck I created, was for one of my history classes in college.

     The next section I am talking about is "Video in the Classroom". The book says videos are widely used for Classroom instruction because they offer ways to present information multimodally while redirecting the method of instruction from teacher to screen for part of the classtime. also the book says, although the technology has changed from television and VCR's to computer and internet, video remains a popular and effective teaching tool. The book describes 3 reasons why it is still popular. First it says that it gets students interest. A student responds differently to videos than to teacher lectures and written material. A video is more interesting and exciting for them. Videos as resources: The book says that there are high quality video materials available in libraries. Also the book describes videos as a unique learning experience. It says, high quality videos provide visual learning experiences that would not be in any other way.
I sometimes use Youtube videos and educational movie material in our preschool classroom. For example, when we talk about a specific topic for a week, we show the children short 5 to 10 minutes long videos about the topic. After that, the children sit down with their journals and draw a scene that they can remember from the video. This enhances their thinking skills and helps them remember material that they have learned. Here is a video I have found which describes 10 reasons why to use Youtube videos in Classrooms.

Since we have a VPK class where the majority of children are boys, the class gets very active sometimes. When we have difficulties to engage our boys sitting and listening in circle time or group learning activities, one of us sits with a large group at our computer and plays songs and short stories about educational material found on youtube. The children love that and sing and dance to the short video songs about letters, numbers or other teaching material. This helps to keep them focused and prevent them from getting too active. I like the idea to use short videos and educational movies but we should watch the lengths and the amount of providing movies or videos in school. It should also be enough time left to do other hands on material away from electronic pictures.

Citations
 a schurg (2009) 10 Reasons for using Youtube in your classroom, retrieved from www.youtube.com

 Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

The Teaching Commons, Teaching a course - Using Technologies in and beyond the classroom, retrieved from https://commons.georgetown.edu/teaching/handbook/using-technologies/

Freitag, Julia (2014) Otto von Bismarck, PowerPoint presentation

Freitag, Julia (2015) Multimedia mindmap, retrieved from bubbl.us 

Digital Blog Post #G

Chaper 10

Promoting success for all students through Technology

The section technology for teaching diverse students talks about the challenge that increasing diversity brings to class. Students are from different backgrounds, their families from different cultures. Multicultural education is a term used to describe how teachers go about affirming the expansive diversity of student interests, needs and talents. Each child regardless of gender, social class and ethnic, racial or cultural characteristics should have an equal opportunity to learn. I agree with that. Everybody should have the opportunity to go to school and learn. Our school is in an area where many people from different backgrounds live. Mostly Spanish speaking families apply each year for our VPK classes. We welcome everybody regardless of background. We have Spanish speaking teachers to make it easier for parents to understand and integrate their children into our school. We also work with services for low income families to make it possible to get proper education for their children. The parents are encouraged to read English books and watch English TV with their children to learn English as a second language easier. We use CD players for music and storybooks on CD, We have a TV for short educational movies and we have a computer in each classroom to give the children access to learning software. I use the computer often with the children to show them small education videos and stories about particular topics we talk about during a month. A computer also gives more access to learning songs and stories to show to the children. The children love to listen and dance to counting and spelling songs we find on Youtube or other similar websites. I believe, Singing is a fun way to teach English as a second language. I found a song on a CD that was played in English and than in Spanish. I learned the words and now the children love to sing it almost every day with me. When they have free computer time on our "Fun Fridays" we encourage them to use fun educational games to practise their spelling and counting.
     The second section I am talking about is Adaptations for Classroom learning with Technology. The book describes that every teacher is an instructional designer deciding everything from seating arrangements to instructional activities. Yes, I agree with that. A teacher needs to be very creative in designing projects, classroom layouts, lesson plans and monthly decoration. Our VPK classroom has different centers with different materials offers for the children from math, language, writing, reading, manipulative toys, science and art. All those centers and the material are color coded to make it easier for the children to clean up their work in the right places. We have season area that is decorated with different themes every month.

     The book says, technology offers two main routes for designing the classroom so students with diverse learning needs can readily access key ideas and concepts. First, it supports changes in classroom activities and second it supports changes in how the curriculum is delivered. I think that is true. Technology is a great way to teach children English as a second language. We can offer picture cards, word walls, matching letter games or different math games to teach counting and number recognition, but learning software is a new exciting way for children to learn which finds the way to our classrooms in big steps. While during my school time technology included TV and Tape recorders, today s children have the great opportunity to learn with modern fast technology.  They can work individually with those educational games and be able to hear spoken words and see written words at the same time. for english language learners we could find games that work bilingual. Our class has bilingual books and word-cards. Teachers are encouraged, if possible, to say the Spanish word and after that the English word when talking to the children so that they can get used to the new language. For learning technology, bilingual learning software could be used to let children hear stories or games in both languages. This video shows and describes 21st century learners.

     The next section I would like to talk about is using the technology with linguistically diverse learners. This section of the book suggests websites to use for students to teach and learn English as a second language. When I started college here in Fort Myers to receive my AS Degree for Early Childhood education I also had trouble to understand some of the things I learned in some reading and writing classes. This made me to use Online language translation services like the book suggests to use. There are dictionaries available online for every common language to translate to English or from English into another language. I also remember when I took a beginner writing class as a prerequisite to composition classes, I used Multilingual Web resources like the book describes and suggests to use. The book states that increasing numbers of educational websites provide material in more than one language. As an example, the book uses wikipedia which provides entries in many different languages and during research for essays I sometimes use a German and an English version of a topic from wikipedia to compare the information. I played around with the Newspaper map website that the book writes about. It shows newspapers from all around the world. But I have to say, if you know the website adress and the location of your different language newspaper, it would be easier to go directly to the website or enter it into google, that looks much less confusing. I found an article called "Using Technology to Help ESL/EFL Students Develop Language Skills" by Renee Ybarra. It talks about teaching English as a second language to students. The article says that the author believes that computers can play an integral part in providing ELL students with valuable language experiences as they learn a new language. This article focuses on how computer-assisted instruction (CAI) can be a supplemental teaching tool for teaching English language learners. Additionally, a discussion of the benefits that have been found in using CAI with ELL is also provided.
I agree strongly that learning a second language with technology can be exciting and fun for students but teachers should find a healthy line between technology learning and pen and paper handwriting learning to be sure students keep track of both.

 

citations

  

 Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Nessbitt, Barbara (2007), A vision of K-12 students today, retrieved from www.youtube.com

Ybarra, Renee (2003), Using Technology to Help ESL/EFL Students Develop Language Skills

Freitag, Julia (2015), travelling around the world with computers (image) retrieved from www.canva.com