Reflective Post

Final Post

At the beginning of this post, I have to say that I see a lot of technology around me every day since my husband works with computers, networks, and much more modern technology.
     It was very interesting to learn many things about technological tools and websites and other sources in this class. Some of the tools and sources were new to me and some of the things I heard before but never had a chance to play around with them. It is amazing to see how schools and learning material develop with the technological age. I never used a computer or internet or any other technological tool in school until my first year of job preparing school in Germany in 2002.
     Referring back to my very first blog entry for this class, I said it is enormous and amazing what schools do now to teach children with technology and how much young children already know about computers and other technical tools. I also talked about the "Igeneration" which is the children who never saw a world without computer and modern technology. I can imagine that it is hard to believe for them that there was a world around me before, who did not have all those modern tools and technological help in school. When I became a teacher and started having my own classroom and the responsibility to plan how and about what to teach this class, I learned to find my resources online from Pinterest, Toddlerapproved, Facebook, diverse teacherblogs for teachers and other online sources. Some of my material comes also comes from books from the library and magazines that I bought, but most of it comes from the computer. This makes also for me hard to believe how teachers found their material before all this technology use. Computer use makes everything a little easier for us as teachers and for our students.   When we discussed about educational technology best practices/recources, I found out about that website pbslearningmedia.org and now I research with it sometimes to find videos or other websites about a specific topic I plan for my upcoming week to talk about. 
Here I found a video that compares traditional teaching with integrating technology into teaching. It says that teaching with technology is more interactive and let students remember things easier by working actively instead of sitting and listening to a classroom lecture. 

 

I think my favorite project in this class was the creating of the webquest. I found this Idea because we recently had a solar eclipse visible around europe. When I observe our afterschoolers and their activities they do outside sometimes, I see that they are all interested in what happens in the sky. This made me think about creating a space activity. Even our little VPK students are interested in seeing the moon, stars and other planets in stories and on pictures. I was about to use questgarden when I got a helper and a suggestion to try a website creation by myself. I got introduced to joomla! and instructions how to start a simple website and a chance to try out. It was fun and a nice way to use creativity and learn more about where to find teaching material for children and how to use it in a new way. 

     The lesson plan project was also interesting. It was somewhat new to me because I just started a couple of years ago to teach VPK and the only standards I am familiar with are the Early Learning Standards for children ages 4-5. It was a nice experience to take a look into common core standards and other different standards for different agegroups and grades. It was good to see different layouts and build ups of lesson plans while researching about it.It was a little challenging to find example material to teach older children than a VPK class. 

     I just went back to my post in the topic Technology asstisting ELL students and I just thought about that I was an English learning student once in High School. When I was 16, I went to a High school in New York to complete 9th grade. I wasn't an exchange student. My older Brother lives in New York and I came to live with him and improve my language skills in English. It was hard at first and challenging to follow the material taught in school. The teachers gave me extra instructions and let me use my dictionary for translating problems. After a while I found friends and took part in a performing arts class with 2 plays in spring and winter. Technology wasn't very far at this time. I remember that I just started sending my very first E-mails and visiting a website for the first time in this year. Some businesses started to publish first websites and online presentations. Teaching and test taking in schools took place with almost no technology at all. I remember that they had a computer class and a student newspaper class that used technology. 

I found a video that shows a timeline how technology grew over the years in use for education.

     About the book, I can say that all the chapters were detailed and interesting and let me think about methods that I use in my classroom and how technology grows. Also, I did not buy the traditional paper copy of the book, I chose to rent the book electronically using amazon kindle. It was much more cheaper to rent the electronic version of the textbook for a few months instead of ordering and buying the paper version. It was also much more quicker. When I ordered my textbooks in the past, it took 2 weeks to arrive in my mailbox. The electronic version was downloaded in between 5 minutes on my tablet ready to read.
     Finally, I have to say that it is fun and interesting to see technology grow into classrooms as an every day learning medium. The children integrate easier into learning lessons, they can work independently, their thinking skills are enhanced and their grades might improve too. But how much time of computer use is healthy for them? I work with afterschool children who would love to use the computer all day after school. Our classroom only provides one computer and sometimes more than 10 children sit around the screen and fight for a turn on researching, playing games, or watching videos. I just established a new rule for our afterschoolers to use the computer in a healthy way and for just a short time a day so that they have time and effort to do other things in the classroom. I give out time-tickets that allow them to use 2 times 15 minutes of using the computer. No more than 3 students are allowed to sit in front of the computer. When someone breaks the rules, he or she will loose the second 15 minutes. This teaches them that we also have other fun activities in the classroom and the ability to share and take turns. I just started it and it works nicely. We, as teachers, should watch carefully how much time our students spend on the computer in free time work. Here, I found an article about computer use and children's creativity. It is called " is Technology sapping children's creativity?" by
Valerie Strauss.

 There should be a healthy mix of traditional material use and technology use in schools so that students learn that the world is bigger and has much more to offer than pictures on a computer screen.

This class, as I said, was very interesting and fun to learn and explore different tools to create Online presentations. It also helped me to find more information to use in my classroom. I am sure I will remember and use some of the things I have learned here.

 citations:

 www.Joomla.org

 www.pinterest.com

 SimpleK12 (2011) Rethink Traditional Teaching Approaches -Integrating Teachnology in the Classroom (video) retrieved from Youtube.com

Smart Technology EMEA(2011), The history of technology in Education (video) retrieved from Youtube.com

 www.toddlerapproved.com

Strauss, Valerie (2012) Is Technology sapping children's creativity?" retrieved from The Washington Post 

Freitag, Julia (2015) Word picture, retrieved from Wordle.com

questgarden.com
 

Digital Blog Post L

Chapter 12

The beginning of this chapter talks about an educational change because of technology integration in classrooms. Yes, there is a change. Technology can be used in so many different varieties and makes teaching and learning so much easier. I also agree with the book when it says Technology integration and educational change do not automatically occur just by including computers in a lesson and in a classroom. It should be well thought when providing technology to children. The book describes 2 elements of working with technology to create successful learning. The first is Teachers mindset. A teacher need to think carefully about how to use technology in the lesson plan. It should be planned before use. The book says "content must come before technology", I agree because otherwise students would have to much free using time with it which might lead into seeing age inappropriate content through the Internet.
     I sometimes use youtube to find songs for the children. We also have CDs and tapes with music and stories for the children, but with the help of Youtube, the variety of songs and educational material and stories grows bigger. One of my favorite songs to show the children is the compound boogie by Dr. Jean. This song is fun to sing for children and teaches them compund words. The video shows pictures of 2 objects that will be put together to form the new word and they will see a picture of that word too.

     The second element is multiple pathways. The book says there are an ever increasing number of  ways for teachers and students to use technology and achieve important learning goals. New teachers tend to assume that effective technology integration happens only when schools have one computer for every student. I agree with the book that states that exciting instructional activities can occur using only one or two computers. Also it explains that technology integration is more about how technology is used by teachers than about the amount of technology provided. In our class, we integrated a small group time because the class contains 19 children total. 15 minutes of the day, each teacher gets 9 or 10 students to sit together doing projects or learning a new concept. The computer is perfect for use in our small group time. It lets us adding educational videos and games into the lesson or concept that we currently talk about. The 10 children can sit in front of the screen and watch a small sequence together while learning about a specific content.
     Next, I am talking about the section "Technology Integration Stages and Issues". Teachers today do best if they have some basic skills in using technology to integrate it in teaching. It need to be chosen wisely how we can introduce technology to students as learning material. The book defines a technology using educator as someone who makes informed choices and uses technology wherever it increases students involvement in learning and not using it for boring, confusing class activities. I think, computer use should mostly be teacher directed or at least with rules made up before student use. For one of my lessons that I planned, I let the children watch a short sequenced video about a specific topic, for example recycling, and after that let them draw a journal entry about what they have learned and remembered from the video. After that, they can explain one of the teachers in their own words what they drew. This promotes listening and thinking skills and helps to enhance vocabulary knowledge for our preschool children. A technology using educator also explores technology. Students learning with a technology using teacher are not just consumers of technology but creators and critics of it as well. They are aware of technologies power to improve education or impede it. Technology offers a wide variety of tools to use in classrooms. This class taught me even more tools than I already have seen before. It is amazing what kind of different possibilities we have to integrate in lessons. A technology using educator promotes change  at the classroom according to the book. I think, technology can make teaching and learning more creative and more colorful. We can move away from the traditional blackboard/worksheet learning experiences and start reaching learning goals interactively.
     I have learned there are different opinions between people about using the computer in classrooms. In our school, I try to limit the free use of the computer for children to one day of a week because it will result in a large group of people sticking in front of one little screen. After a while they would start fighting about taking turns and watch and play different things. Now, every Friday I will give turns to small groups of students in our aftercare program to explore and play with the computer. We told them to follow some rules we have made so the computer use is safe. Some teachers told me the computer is considered as a center and can be used on a daily basis. Our new director was very sceptic when I told her that I integrate the use of a computer for educational purposes into our VPK wrap up circle sometimes. She would like tapes and CDs more than pictures and videos on a screen. I think, we have to watch closely what our children do within the free computer use time. We allow them to play educational games and watch some educational cartoons like the magic school bus. We gave a limited access to Youtube for them and always ask them to let us know what they watch. It is very important to keep the internet use safe.
The article "Do Computers in the Classroom boost academic achievement?" from the Heritage Foundation, written by Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D, discusses if it is really effective to use computers as a teaching tool.    
     The next section I am talking about is "using the technology you have successfully". The book says that there is no single formula for what to do best, just because technology is not evenly distributed among schools. Some schools have access to multiple computers and some schools have access to just one or two computers per classroom. Some instructional activities will work well with multiple computers will be impossible with just a one computer access. I agree to the book that as a teacher, you have to think carefully and creatively about how to use technology that is available to achieve maximum learning potential. The book suggests to ask other teachers what they do and ask students what their experiences are. A teacher should always be curious about the most effective ways to maximize the potential of the tools. I have 2 boys in my Afterschool group who always want to be planning helpers. They give me suggestions about what they like to try out at School off days, or they tell me their favorite activities that we did in the past and ask if we can repeat them. I do fun experiments, directed projects or creative food activities with the children on No-School days. They always have fun with it and they mostly talk about them weeks and months after we did them. It is a good thing to integrate the children into planning and ask them what they like because at the end it is them who will be the main people in this lesson because they try, explore and learn from it. We shouldn't do different with Technology use. Let them decide what they remember from before and let them help choosing fun games and activities. While using so much technology in classrooms we still should remember that their is a variety of things to do away from a computer and those things should not be forgotten. A Teacher should find a healthy, fun mix of traditional teaching lessons and electronic teaching lessons to keep the day interesting and free of stress.

citations

Beeblebrox01-Kindergarten(2010) Dr. Jean - Compound Boogie (video) retrieved from Youtube.com

Freitag, Julia (2015) Computers integrated in Lesson Plan vs. No Computers integrated in Lesson Plan (Mindmap) retrieved from Bubbl.us

Johnson, Kirk Ph.D(2000) Do Computers in the Classroom boost academic achievement? retrieved from The Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org

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.

Schoolastic.com/magicschoolbus/ , The Magic Schoolbus (2015)

Digital blog post k

Chapter 6

While reading the opening of this chapter that talks about "Fostering online Learning with educational Websites and Apps", I thought about my beginning steps in being a teacher. I am still kind of in the beginning steps. the book says that no new teacher will walk into a classroom and starts teaching extemporaneously. You will find yourself continually researching and reviewing curriculum topics and plans everyday. And that is what I do. Every week we have to think about a new lesson plan with a new topic and new ideas, new activities and also new material. The material should be always changing to keep up students interest and their motivation to learn. This Article from Teachthought describes 15 examples of new Technology in Education.

We observe sometimes that the children get bored when they always have the same material to work with. Our VPK room includes 18 children from which 15 are boys. Sadly, some material provided to them gets thrown around or broken quickly if they get bored with it. We need to redirect and change material pretty often to keep them from reacting like that. 

     In today's times, we are lucky to have the Internet as a big helper in finding teaching material. I wouldn't know what to do at earlier times with just books and magazines as recources for finding appropriate material. This does not mean I, as a teacher, am completely depended from the Internet when planning for my class. I use a lot of mailbox magazines and educational books to get ideas. It is just quicker to push a button and find what you were looking for rather then flipping several pages in books or magazines. The Internet is such a huge source to use. The book says that one part of the job of a teacher is learning how to use a computer in the classroom. It states that students and teachers can work together while learning and teaching.

      The next section I am talking about is "Managing information electronically". The book states that teaching requires constant learning about the subjects or topics you teach and find interesting and engaging for students. I think it is fun to research and look around for new interesting lessons and activities for preschoolers while I am planning my weeks. All learning goals for VPK must be wrapped up in fun, interesting lessons and activities for students so that they get engaged in it while playing. The book talks about an elementary school teacher who always searches for new science information that will intrigue, amaze and engage young minds. She wants students to understand how adult scientists investigate questions. I think science experiments are a great way for young students to learn how material reacts together. I love to find different ideas for science experiments for preschoolers and try them with a small group of children in my class. The children have fun thinking about what would happen next while I build up small experiments. There are several materials out there to use for experiments with children.

 One of my summer activities was to create a lava lamp from a plastic water bottle. The children brought their own empty water bottles with them and we filled them half full with a mixture of half oil and half water. Then we dropped a small amount of food coloring in the water oil mixture and I added an antacid tablet to the bottle which made colorful bubbles coming up. The bubbles look similar to those in Lava lamps.

Here is an example of how our experiment looked like. 

 I already found several ideas on pinterest or other social websites about how we can use simple material for children's science experiments. Most of those materials we all have in our kitchen. Flour, salt, baking soda, oil and water are ingredients I use pretty often to build science experiments with the children. 

     The next section I would like to talk about is "Webquests, virtual field trips and videoconferencing. When I started to think about how to build up my Webquest for this weeks assignment, I had a helper who suggested to provide webspace for me to set up a webpage for my webquest. I started learning some basics how to create and present content on a website. It was interesting and fun to explore the different steps of starting and putting together some useful information. I learned how to add additional things like pictures and links to my written text and format and design everything to look clear and easy to navigate. It took me several hours to finish this little learning project but now I think this information is good to have for the future.

Here is a video about the tool I used to build up my Webquest.

     It is amazing what modern technology can help us be able to do in today's time. I actually come from Germany and when I was 16, I moved from Germany to New York for a year and visited a High School. I tried to keep in touch with as many friends from Germany as I can during this time. The only popular way to stay in touch these days was a telephone or the regular Airmail. The telephone was to expensive so we stayed with mailing letters from Germany to the US at least once a month. It was always good to hear that little time about my friends. Today, I have already been here for more than 10 years and I still have friends in Germany. Now, the ways of communication have changed thanks to modern technology and the Internet. Apps like Skype or Whatsapp make is easy to contact Germany every day if we need to. The book talks about virtual field trips which reminds me that I have sent small videos to some friends over the Easter weekend. I was in the middle of the small fishing pier at Cape Coral Yacht club recording a video for some friends to give them an idea how the Yacht Club and the beach look like. I sent this video with the help of Whatsapp to Germany in no time. This is a very nice feature to use in todays times and makes us stay closer together even if we are far away from each other. Today's communication is far easier and cheaper than the traditional way of the telephone. Many different ways let us talk to people who are far away from us even with a picture in a webcam. These tools are also nice to use to build up a virtual classroom. Students and teacher can hear and see each other and exchange material without leaving their own houses. It is amazing to observe how big the world of communication and learning has changed.

Citations

Teachthought staff (2013) 15 examples of new Technology in Education, retrieved from www.teachthought.com

Joomla!(2012) What is Joomla? retrieved from Youtube.com

physicscentral.com (2015) Homemade lava lamp (picture)

Freitag. Julia (2015) Teaching, Creating and Learning with Children every day and watch them grow is fun and rewarding, retrieved from Wordle.net

 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.

Digital Blog Post # J

Chapter 11

While reading chapter 11 "Engaging students in Performance Assessment and reflective learning" I thought about how different all our students are and that you, as a teacher, have to be able to observe everyone of them and their progress in class work. Our VPK students are getting ready to enter Kindergarten and have to know letters and sounds, shapes and colors, sight words and positional words, beginning reading skills and counting to 100. Starting in December, every 3 months we have to do a VPK assessment with them where they hear simple questions and point to pictures, letters or words or have to remember sounds and definitions of objects.
Here is a video that I found that explains more details of the VPK Assessment

I don't like those kind of assessments very much because those questions are standardized and teachers tend to focus on and teach the contents of those assessment questions.
The whole VPK session gets focused on those questions and words in it and people forget that we work with creative curriculum and mostly hands on learning. Children should learn by doing, interest and stay focused by their natural curiosity and not by following questions in a test booklet. Thinking of this I refer to the opening text of the chapter where Tracy, the young teacher, lets her students build digital portfolios about what they have learned and uses this outcomes as a learning assessment. I agree that this is much better than a standardized test because it includes the students interest and is fun and engaging for the students to create. I found the article "Here's why we don't need standardized tests" by Greg Jouriles that talks about that standardized tests are not necessary and why.
Chapter 11

The book says that the building of digital portfolios affected Tracy and the students' growth as learners in two key ways: The first is self-reflection. The book describes it as an important skill for students at every grade level. I agree that students need to find out by themselves what they are able to do and what they need help on. The best way to do it is working independently on a specific topic to create a learning portfolio. I remember when I was in school, I had fun in creating my personal learning folder for a history class. Creativity and extra content in the learning folder earned a better grade. It was interesting to find out extra material and new information about the different topics and it was even more interesting when the Internet became more and more popular to use as an information source. The second key point the integration of digital tools enables self reflection that support learning. The book says that performance based portfolios are not the only way for teachers to involve students in learning assessments. It explains democratic teaching practice invites students to be active shapers of the learning environment from rule creating to presenting information to peers or evaluating their own success. We start integrating our young children in planning and rule creating so they can learn what rules are for and can be able to tell me about their interests in school.
     While reading the next section "The Role of Assessment in Teaching and Learning" I am thinking about how challenging and how much work it is to plan for the week so the students will learn effectively. The book talks about 3 elements of Assessment. The second point describes student assessment. It explains that as a teacher schools expect you to provide ongoing evaluations about the learning process of every single student throughout the year. Most schools expect to see report cards, test scores, family meetings and oral and written feedback and recommendations about a students progress. As a teacher, you need to be able to assess yourself too. The book states questions like, "What strategies work well, what did not?" Why did the approach work well on one student and did not on another?" What activities work best for which lesson? All those questions sound familiar and I have to ask them too and try to find answers. Just as we know , as teachers, we have to do everything we can to let a student succeed we need to know that we can only do so much. This means that we too, are only human beings and not miracle makers. There is students with weak points and students with strong points. We can support and work on weak points with all the help we offer and strengthen and outgrow the strong points with all the help we can give but we can not turn someone into a a genius from one day to another. There will always be students who need more work on success than others. I have a little 5 year old nephew who started learning and repeating long before he can even talk. He had all the support from home and a rich 24 hour learning environment and now at age 5, he is able to read and write. I see same age children every day who have trouble to remember the alphabet and just started counting. It is a matter of support from home and interest of the child to learn and be successful. Teachers are there to help and support. In our school, we create portfolios for the children and add their artworks, writing works and other fine motor material to that. I think, this is much more informative as the questions and pictures every 3 months in a booklet.
     As I am reading the next section "Digital Teaching Portfolios" I am thinking about how I went to my very first interview at a preschool. I had a few small experiences from a school who let me take over a small group and do little projects with them. I took pictures and descriptions from this small experiences and I brought them to the interview along with my resume and past other work experiences. It was nice to at least show some proof to the school that I already have worked in a small group of children. I like the idea of creating a digital portfolio. It is convenient to send just a link to it to schools of interest if possible instead of bringing a whole folder of many different papers to show. I like the idea that you can create a whole story about yourself and the experiences with children and teaching. In my past time of teaching I found out that it is fun to do small science experiments with children. This makes them use all their senses and work all together in a small group to see what happens to material if we do or add certain things to them or combine different material together. They can see the process of material changing in form or consistence. I like to use material like flour, baking soda, vinegar, salt or sugar to make activities from. They are in everyone's household and cheap to get. One of my teacher friends suggested to create a blog that describes activities using these kind of materials. She says she sees me very often using these things and started to like it. I always take pictures of my small group lessons and I might save and use them to build a blog soon. I like that idea and you never know if this might be useful later in time. Its really amazing how far technology is today. It makes it real easy for teachers to find effective learning procedures and students have much more fun and show more engagement to learn than just with papers and pencils.

Citations

Conley, Ashley(2014) VPK Assessment final project, retrieved from Youtube.com

Freitag, Julia(2015) Think, Create, Plan.... (Picture) retrieved from www.wordle.net

Jouriles, Greg(2014) Here is why we don't need standardized tests, retrieved from www.edweek.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.

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