Week 7

Reading this chapter has shown me many ways that you may use technology in the classroom. One interesting tool for writing is called callaborating writings. It gives students the opportunity to write and share documents between one another.

Powerpoints can be very distracting, espically with all the bells and whistles that can be added to your slides. When making a slide oyu need to keep transitions simple and the same that way your audience isn't attempting to guess your next transtion. Keeping animations short and either and the begining or very end of a slide can cut down on distractions as well. I thin keeping powerpoints simple, with a color scheme, and small amounts of extras is the best.

Technology is becoming a very important part of today's education and i believe that powerpoint is still one of the bigest facets in learning. It is so important to know how to use, for creating lesson plans and other presentations.

PDA's

PDA’s are personal digital assistants which are essentially small handheld computers. They store information, access information and important documents, as well as the internet. Using PDA’s in a classroom could be very effective because they tap into so many unused resources. As a teacher you could be anywhere in the room accessing all your documents, power points, and presentations and be able to present them to the class using your projector. I think student utilization would be another wonderful purpose for them. As students during a lecture or presentation you would have access to the information on the screen in your hands. This would make presentations more interactive.

Online surveys are used to collect data. Online surveys are helpful in the classroom because they give us the opinion of our students as a whole. I think a good time to use them would be after a selected reading passage. Many times students don’t like the readings selected and would have chosen something else. I think that this information would benefit the teacher to see why they made that choice and to help them make a student friendly choice in the next selection. 2 good rules to follow are to be unbiased and to keep your survey length short. Bias is obviously bad, but with lengthy survey students could become uninterested.

I think that technology isn’t used enough in classrooms. Students today have a hard time staying disconnected from their technology through a class, so using it is a great way to keep students focused on the lesson. I can see myself using many forms of technology in my classroom, from online surveys to PDA’s to my personal favorite, an Ereader.

Jonassen, D. Howland, J. Marra, R. M. Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River. NJ. Merrill Prentice Hill.

Week 4

Excel is a learning tool that I think is under taught in schools. Everyone is required to take a computer class where they learn the basics, but this program is very helpful and I think deserves more than just a quick glance. I am not sure that I would use it in the classroom being that I am an English major, but the program is useful to know in the world. To be able to utilize the Microsoft Suites programs opens up more job opportunities.

As teachers we use spread sheet to show models, graphs, and spreadsheets. Spreadsheet is more useful than a calculator because you can see mulitple calculations at once, changing one part of an equation is more simple, just astetically speaking the calculations are color coded, and the math is done for you so as long as your equation is correct you don't worry about miss typing a number.

Sorting, Calculating, and presenting information are the three primary functions mentioned in the book. I think it is very correct. Excel doesn't have many uses, off hand I can think of the three, but the way you choose to use the three are limitless. Sorting- alphabetically, alphanumerically, and others I don't use as often. Calculating- the number of functions are endless. Presenting- this is a newer one to me, I never thought about making a spreadsheet presentation until class today. the matching, webs, and timelines give spreadsheet a new use entirely for me!

According to the textbook, it mentions the three primary functions of Spreadsheets.

I can't really think of another use for spread sheet because Like I said, up until class today I had never given thought to using it for a presentation. Overall spread sheet is useful, but I feel more as something to learn for life skills rather than to use in the classroom

Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 3

The video shows you the uses for Inspiration, and it has several features that I like. This seems like an intresting classroom tool, espically for an English teacher like I hope to be. This seems like a very simple way to view student work and help them rearrange, collect, and review their thoughts.

I think that creative writing or Journalism would make the best use of technology like the Inspiration program. I am not really a fan of peer review, because some students are stronger writes than others, and though it is a good way for other students to see what a good writer looks like, it also shows them what they are not. If i were to use peer review in my class room it would be anyonomous, and online. Students would be required to make one online peer review per night during the course of the writing assignment starting with student diagrams through their final paper.

The first time I taught a new topic I was teaching someone to PowerPoint I think. I was pared with a student who had never used a computer before. It was very strange because I had never known a time without one. In the beginning it seemed easier to just do it myself, but in the end I realized it was better to teach him even though it took longer to do. At the end I didn't really have a better understanding because I wasn't teaching him anything at the cusp of my knowledge of the program just the basics.

Hi

Hi, My name is Alyssa Post, and I am an English Education major here at TAMU-C. I live in Sulphur Springs and spend most of my free time reading for my classes. In my what little spare time I have left after that I enjoy spending time with my little Princess (our dog Cadence, she's a Boston Terrier) and my boyfriend Matt. We spend most of out time together cooking, reading, or working on our homework together.

There they are!(: