Chapter 11- Student and Teacher Self- Reflections

             Chapter 11 is of the textbook “Transforming Learning with New Technologies” is entitled “Engaging Teachers and Students in Learning Self Reflection”. This chapter focuses on how both students and teachers can keep track of their performance. This is needed because without tracking, neither the student nor teacher will know if they are being effective.

Digital portfolios, something called electronic portfolios and web folios, contain much of the content traditional portfolios include but present these materials in digital format. Digital Portfolios are great because they offer an effective way for teachers and students to assess their teaching and learning accomplishments. For example, if a teacher wants to look for another job, they can easily access their digital portfolio, which will give the people interviewing an understanding of the teacher’s learning practices. Digital portfolios allow students to track and demonstrate their growth over longer periods of time. While paper portfolios get stored or discarded at the end of a term or school year, digital portfolios can remain available and easily accessible to students, parents, and educators. Some other advantages of a digital portfolio include accessibility, portability, creativity, and technological self-confidence. However, at the same time there are a few disadvantages that come with digital portfolios. The disadvantages include that people who do not attain the proper skills and knowledge requirements will not be able to use them and waste time on confusion, time and energy, and expensive equipment. Hopefully, in the future digital portfolios will be cheaper and easily accessible to make it fair for everyone to use.

            While Digital Portfolios are beneficial, it is important to acknowledge that teachers must know what and how to communicate in order to measure or document the assessments. What this means is that unfortunately, there are no assessments that work 100 percent for all, however they should always try and experiment with the assessment and evaluation ways in order to benefit their students. 

Three Questions

1.Are there any apps available for phones or padlets that act as digital portfolios and are easily accessible for student

2.Should regular portfolios still be created as a backup the the digital ones?

3.What are some other ways the both students and teachers can use to reflect upon their work?

Chapter 10- Success Through Technology

     Chapter ten of the textbook is entitled "Promoting Success for All Students Through Technology". This chapter focuses on how computer tools and technologies can create and strengthen opportunities for students and teachers. The opportunities would include learning opportunities and would help meet the learning requirements for all students. For example, technology tools can be highly beneficial for students that have disabilities or special needs. This allows them multiple techniques to learn material and also helps teachers incorporate all their students into a lesson. This is a great way of differentiation.

        The chapter also focuses on ideas for integrating technology into the teaching of writing. One of the ideas given is that as teachers we are to convince students that they are writers and that they must believe that the words and pictures that are in their heads are interesting. This allows students to be creative since imagination will be helpful in retelling a story or analyzing a story. Inspiring and energizing students to write is highly important and it means individualizing the parts of writing.  What this means is that writing should be not all mumbled up together, but it should be separated and organized. One way to do so is to read aloud a story and meanwhile explain to the children why they the author used the type of grammar they used. This made me think of a method that I use with my students called RISE. RISE” is part of pathways to comprehension and stands for: Read the story, Illustrate your favorite part of the story, Sequence the pictures, and Enact a scene with your group. This method is a creative to have students retell the story in written or oral language.  Retelling helps readers recall what is happening in the story, develop a sense of story structure, and become more accurate in monitoring their understanding.  This can be incorporated with technology as many websites offer great note taking ideas.

     Teaching children with several technologies can benefit them in many ways. I believe that every teacher should include more learning styles or technologies when teaching a lesson if available of course. One thing that stood out to me was how the chapter noted that when calculating, you use different methods in teaching your students how to calculate and not have them relying on calculators. This stood out to me because as I was older, all my math classes relied on using calculators and it was needed as an everyday tool. While technology should definitely be integrated in the classroom, I do believe there can be too much use of it as well.

Three questions to ask
1)What apps or technology tools can I use in the classroom to increase ideas that students develop when writing?
2)How can I make sure that the tools and technologies will not cause a distraction in the classroom?
3)How can I use technology to incorporate diversity in the classroom?

Blog- Chapter 7

            Chapter 7 of the textbook “Transforming Learning with New Technologies” is entitled “Exploring Problem Solving with Software, Apps, and Games”. This chapter focuses how educational apps, web-based tools, and more can be beneficial when promoting problem solving and inquiry learning. Problem solving and inquiry learning relates to educational activities where students make predictions, ask questions, and try out theories. These types of activities are important because it allows the student to explore and discover new ideas by themselves. Some of the steps in inquiry learning that can be strengthened with use of technology include:

-Problem solving with many possible solutions

-Goal of functional knowledge with cognitive flexibility

-Self-directed learning

-Collaboration

-Taking ownership with active, engaged learning

-Building a habit of reflection in all learning experiences

Technology can be useful in increasing this points because educational softwares, such as EvaluTech, StopBadware.org, and Edudemic Directory, can all be used to support problem solving and inquiry learning. Even basic softwares such as Microsoft Word and Excel are extremely helpful when composing and calculating ideas. For example, using Word and Excel can increase levels of proficiency in each area in elementary and even secondary school. Another website that truly fascinated me when I was younger is Google Earth, and I believe it is a great interactive tool that kids can use. With Google Earth, students can browse casually on their own or engage in structured inquiry-based explorations individually or in teams. The data that is found on maps can be used in combination with any other data made available to the students to increase inquiry-based learning. I would love to use Google Earth in the classroom especially because it is a great site that would definitely spark student interest. I find it interesting how some of the sites that I used to use and like, are great ways of expanding inquiry-based learning.

Inquiry-based Learning

Questions

1. Should students be aware when they are using inquiry-based learning? or should that be kept to the teacher?

2. How can I try to implement inquiry-based learning at home and not only at school?

3. Can I have students involve in designing, using, and evaluating technology in all lessons?

Social Bookmarking in the Classroom

            Chapter 6 of the textbook is entitled “Fostering Online Learning with Educational Websites and Apps” and focuses on using web-based information to manage digital content, including social bookmarking and cloud computing. Social bookmarking is a way for people to store, organize, search, and manage “bookmarks” of web pages. Users save links to web pages that they like or want to share, using a social bookmarking site to store these links. There are many resources and apps linked with social bookmarking; a few of them include Delicious, netTrekker Search, and Goodreads. I never heard of these sites, except for Goodreads. I actually do use Goodreads to keep track of my books that I read as well as what books I want to read in the future.  I never thought of using this site in the classroom, however it would make sense to use it as it allows you to organize your favorite books online. This would be a great tool for students to keep their reading books organized, as well as the levels of the books so that improvement can easily be seen. Another resources for social bookmarking is Delicious. Delicious is a website that allows students to catalog their books and therefore keeps track of the books. Even though I never thought of using online libraries in the classroom, after reading this chapter I believe that it is truly beneficial for students to use especially because it is user friendly and a great way at being organized. These websites are great to use as reading logs, but I think this may be a more resourceful way to get students motivated and it will keep me from dealing with the student who lost their reading log.

Questions I Have

1)Can I make a Social Bookmarking class limited just to one class?

2)How can I encourage student use of these websites and apps when reading a book or story?

3)Can I make Goodreads or other websites available to parent use as well in order to allow them to know what their child has to read?