Using Technology in the Classroom

            Technology is becoming more and more important to the classroom today. Teachers need to use technology to teach and get students involved. Teachers should not just lecture and expect their students to do well in the 21^st century. Today in the 21^st century classroom teachers should utilize things like: Jing, Wordle, Edmodo, and Twitter. That way students will be better prepared to go into the real world and be able to do well in the 21^st century.

            Jing is a tool that teachers can use to take screenshots of something they want their students to see. They can then edit those screenshots by adding arrows and text. They can even record themselves talking while they are doing these things. The video can be up to five minutes long. This video can even be uploaded or emailed to someone. This is a great way for teachers to use technology to teach students. This is a video that describes how to use Jing.

            Www.wordle.net is a free website that teachers and students can use to create pictures using words that you type in. It then creates a picture with all of the words in different colors, shapes, fonts and size. Wordle selects the words that appear the most frequently to decide which words to use. You can change the Wordle by using different colors, orientations, fonts, and colors. You can then share these Wordles with the class, or the students can share their Wordles with the other students. This would be a great way to get to know students at the beginning of the year. They could tell the class about themselves and what they like to do using a Wordle. Students could also use Wordle to decorate their class notebooks, and jazz up other class projects. This is an example of a Wordle from the US Constitution.

            Www.edmodo.com is a great place for teachers with older students to create a classroom website that all of the students can access and post to. Thisis a video on what Edmodo is, and how to use it. Edmodo is a little bit like Facebook, but it is much more safe and secure. The teacher has to give the students and their parents a code to even access the page. Teachers and students can “connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications.” Edmodo is a great way for students to submit homework, take quizzes, and see the calendar of when everything is due. They just have to upload their homework to a link on the classroom page and then the teacher can see it and grade it. The student will then get a notification that their homework has been graded and then they can see their grades. Edmodo also has an app that teachers, students and parents can download so they can get real time updates with their homework and grade updates.

           Twitter is another great tool that teachers can use to interact with their students outside of the classroom. Twitter is a “real time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting.” Teachers can tweet about interesting things that are happening in their classroom. They can share links to things that they want their students or parents to see in the community. If teachers do want to use Twitter in the classroom, it may be a good idea for them to create a new Twitter account for their students to see, and one for their private life. This way it will be harder to mix business with their personal thought, opinions, and ideas. Twitter works well as an opinion poll for the class; it can also help direct students to good articles and ideas. Here is alink on ways to use Twitter in Elementary schools. I think that if teachers are going to use Twitter, then they should be extra careful with what they tweet about and follow. They can get in a lot of trouble if they make one false move on Twitter. I think that Twitter is a better tool for college students.

            When I start to teach I think that my choice of technology in the classroom would be Edmodo. Edmodo is a great tool for both teachers and students. It is user friendly, collaborative, and it is an online grade book. Parents can also use Edmodo with a special parent code. That way everyone is informed and up to date with that is going on. I also think that Jing is a great tool to use in the classroom. If you are trying to show students how to navigate a webpage it is probably going to be more helpful to create a Jing video to show them so you can walk around and make sure they are on the right step than it would be to show them then and there how to do it. It is important that teachers are very careful with all of the technology they use in the classroom. Technology is an important aspect in the 21^st century classroom so teachers should adapt and use technology to teach their students as many ways as they can. 

PBS Teachers Blog

PBS Teachers is a great resource for teachers to use in planning and teaching because there are so many ideas and resources incorporated with this site. This is a free resource that teachers can use in all grade levels across all subjects. They offer lesson plans, teaching activities, videos, and games and simulations that teachers can access and use in their classrooms. These things are interrelated with the state and even national standards that teachers need to meet. This is very helpful for teachers since they can get ideas and know exactly what essential question and what standard it meets. Some of the subjects that PBS Teachers has are: math, science, reading, language arts, computers, and other strategies for teaching. All of these things help teachers have more ideas and activities and new ways to teach to help improve student learning and retention.

            In second grade math one of the things the students learn is fractions. Fractions can be complicated for students to understand and learn so it is important that teachers teach them in a way that is easy for students to understand. Lesson plans like this can assist teachers in making fractions easier for students to learn. Online fraction games like this can help students learn fractions outside of the classroom. A teacher could assign homework like this so students can learn fractions better and become more familiar with them. Parents and students can also get help learning fractions through websites like this one. This shows why students have so much trouble learning and grasping the concept of fractions. All of these links are free resources that anyone can use in order to teach, learn or assist a second grade student with learning and understanding fractions. This video explains how teachers use the PBS Teachers website.

Internet Safety

                Internet safety is a very important topic for a parent that has a child of any age. Children may not understand that something they are doing on the internet is unsafe. It is important that parents teach their children how to use the internet safely. The internet is a great source of information and learning for kids. The knowledge that the internet provides may help children in school, and later on in life, but the internet does provide unsafe situations for children.

                The FBI has a website geared towards kids learning what is safe to do on the internet or computer. Remember never to give out personal information such as your name, address, school, and telephone number in a chat room or on bulletin boards online. Never send a picture of yourself to someone on the computer that you do not know. Never write to someone that has made you feel uncomfortable or scared. Do not meet someone or have them visit you without your parents’ permission. Tell your parents right away if you read anything on the internet that makes you feel uncomfortable. Remember that people online may not be who they say they are.

                Parents of younger children should sit next to them while they are on the computer. They should ask their children to share their user names and passwords with them. If the computer is in an open area then it is seen by other people as they walk by, this is another way to ensure that children are not doing things they should not be doing on the internet without supervision. Children should only be allowed to use monitored chat rooms on kids sites. Parents can set up a limited user account on their computer so kids need permission to do certain things online. There are games online that teach children what they should and should not do on the internet. Parents should let their children play this game in order to gain useful knowledge on what to and not to do on the internet.  These are two videos I chose that parents can show their children on what is appropriate to do on the internet and what is not. Parents can show their kids videos like this so they have more knowledge on what is allowed and what is not online.   

                In order to keep their children safe parents should agree on what types of sites are permissible for them to be on and which ones are not. Parents should also give their children situations on the internet and ask them what they would do in that situation. Netsmart gives some examples of this for this on pages 2, 3, and 4. It also tells parents what their child’s response should be. Parents should also set limits on when and how long their child can be on the computer for. Parents should make it very clear that their children must not give out personal information to anyone on the internet without the parents’ permission. Parents should restrict and monitor what their children watch online as well as what they download off the internet. Parents should also try to explain to their children what viruses on the computer are and how to prevent getting them on their computer. Parents can also come up with an internet contract for their kids to sign so that they know their children are willing to follow their rules.  

Since the internet is used for more things now it is especially important that parents know what their children are doing online. There are many ways to control what kids see on the internet. Children should not have internet on their cellphones. They do not need it for anything of importance. It just distracts them while they are in school, and it could lead to them being exposed to things that they should not be exposed to. Parents that have young children should turn on their content blockers and filters. This allows children to only search for certain things and it blocks sites with bad material. The filter scans websites and blocks images, words, or phrases that are not appropriate. Parents can also install tracking software so they can see exactly what their kids are looking at. Parents should also talk to their kids about what to do if they see something that is inappropriate on the internet. 

Using Technology During My Education

I went to a small private Christian school throughout elementary, middle and high school. Because of that, we did not have as much access to technology as other schools may have had. It was not that the teachers did not want to use technology to further our knowledge about a subject; it was just more expensive to come by.

In elementary school the only technology I can remember us having and using were overheads, TVs, and computers. In Kindergarten we had a computer. We were only allowed to use the computer if our “bear” stayed in the honey pot that day (a classroom management behavior chart). Obviously from this picture, since my bear is missing I would not have been able to use the computer to play games on the day this picture was taken. The computer had phonics and other learning games that we could play if our behavior warranted that privilege. Since there was limited use of the computer, the teacher taught with a hand on approach, which is a more effective approach to teaching Kindergarteners.

I think that my first overhead/ projector experience was in first grade. My teacher used this so we could all see what she was doing. It made teaching easier for her and gave us the opportunity as students to stay connected to her teaching. She did not have to continuously erase the board every time it filled up. Instead she just grabbed a new sheet of laminate and kept on teaching. Up until high school, and even in some of my high school classes, teachers taught on the overhead. I think that we had a computer in the classroom every year.  

One good memory is that every time we walked into the classroom and saw a TV on a cart; it was going to be a great day. A TV on a cart meant that at some time during the day we would get to watch a movie. My elementary school classrooms did not have TVs in them, since we were just in small Sunday school rooms that got turned into classrooms on the week days. On days that we had computer class our whole class loaded up a bus and took it to another school that had a computer lab. We would learn from the teacher from that school. When we were done we would go to PE class and then we would ride the bus back to our school where we would finish out the day with traditional teaching time. We moved into a new school building when I was in second grade and we had a whole floor for second through eighth grades.  

The new building we had a TV in every classroom. Teachers showed educational and informational videos on it to aide in the teaching and learning process. We also watched movies on days that it rained or on special occasions. Since we had bigger rooms we were now able to have two computers in every classroom. Students were not really allowed on the computers unless they had completed all of their work for the day. We also did not have to take the bus to PE and computer class anymore since we had our very own computer lab and our own computer teacher. Middle school allowed me to do more projects on the computer and we learned how to produce PowerPoint slides and prepare Excel spreadsheets. As we began using use technology more and more throughout late elementary and middle school. We were also expected to type our papers and projects and turn in a hard copy to the teacher. In middle school you were cool if you had your own email address so you could email all of your friends. The coolest part of having your own email address was using AIM to instant message your friends. I would beg my parents to get off the internet so I could get on and talk to my friends on AIM. Once I was on there, it was very had to get me off.

When I changed schools to go to high school, there were two computer labs, one for the high school and one for all of the other grades. All of the classrooms had TVs and VCR or DVD players in them. Most teachers taught with PowerPoint, but I had one or two classes every year that still taught from the overhead. Teachers expected us to give presentations using PowerPoint or some other form of electronic visual aid. We were assigned video projects to prepare and present to our classes. In my Bible class we all had a laptop to use for the duration of the class and then we would put it back for the next class to use.

As my high school years progressed, my use of technology increased. My friends had MySpace which eventually led to Facebook social media pages. We would work on homework and projects together on the phone. I had chemistry labs that needed graphs and Excel spreadsheets. When I got my first cell phone when I was sixteen I texted my friends all of the time, and a land line was a thing of the past.

When I came to college I got my first laptop. I was on the internet way too much because that was how I communicated with friends from home. My laptop was where I did my homework, and it was where I checked my grades and kept a calendar of everything that was due. Technology has definitely changed the way that I do my school work (it also does a good job of distracting me from doing it sometimes). I do not know what I would do without technology today. When the internet or cell phone does not work for five minutes I do not know what to do with myself. Technology has greatly changed my everyday life.

The only negative aspect that I see to the use of technology in education is that it allows the user to be easily distracted. Since everyone and everything is on the internet now, that is a negative and a positive. I think technology has changed things for the better in my life because has made it so much easier to do things quickly and stay connected to the world beyond me.

The future of technology in education is hard to think about because there are so many things that could happen. Technology is only going to advance and become more important to have than it is now. Young children are already being given cell phones, which puts the world in their pockets. I think down the road students may not ever have to buy notebooks, pens, paper, or school supplies at all because all they will need to have is a computer or tablet to use in the classroom all day. Very far down the road elementary students may be able to stay home and be in school virtually and take all of their tests online like some college classes are today. In the future classrooms will have to adopt new technology all of the time because they will not be able to teach effectively without doing so. This is how colleges could be in the future. According to this article, this is how colleges could be in the future.

This is a great video that shows where the classroom one was, and where it is today and where it will be in the future.