Blog Post # F

(Created via Canva by Amanda Sweeney)

Being in a classroom certainly has its challenges. One of the biggest, and most widely known, is the fact that funding for education isn’t as high as it ought to be, which begs each teacher to be creative with his or her curriculum and use their resources wisely. I found three concepts in our text this week that relate to being resourceful by using technology both in the classroom and behind the scenes for the instructor.

The first concept that struck my attention is virtual field trips. I must admit that I have a bad experience with something similar to this when I was in elementary school: One day my third grade teacher informed the class that we would be going on a field trip the following Monday. She reminded the class every day that we were going to go on an exciting adventure come Monday morning. The classroom was a buzz talking about this surprise trip, how we should dress, what we would have for lunch- everything was speculated. I remember telling my mom about it and she was confused- she worked at the school and didn’t recall my teacher mentioning that there was a class trip. This was my first indication that something different was happening with this trip. Come Monday morning the class was surprised- our teacher was in a dress, like she normally was, and heels, also like she normally was. Wouldn’t she have dressed more comfortable? Finally she told us all to close our eyes because we were getting ready to go on our trip! Confused, we did just that. It was then that she described to us our “transport back in time to the DINOSAUR ERA!”…uh…what? This was our big trip? We read from a book about dinosaurs for another hour or so and then moved on to other material. To say that the class was disappointed is an understatement.  With that being said, I feel like the teacher’s approach was all wrong in my personal experience. With the possibility of virtual field trips now easily accessed online, students can again get excited about going on a trip and not actually leaving the classroom. They can fully submerse themselves in the new location with great visualization and in many cases, the ability to “explore” a city, museum or Wonder of the World through the advanced technology of 360 cameras and live feeds. In fact, as our text points out, many options are available for virtual field trips. You can involve the whole class, or portions of a class while the other portion works on material they need extra help with. Here is an example of an Amazon Rainforest virtual field trip through YouTube:

(via YouTube.com)

With the example of virtual field trips also comes my next focus for this week- Technology Integration Issues. Not all schools have abilities to display online content on a large SmartBoard, for instance, or have the ability to assign each student to a computer as they navigate new material by their own exploration on the internet. In my personal experience, the school district that I will be teaching in does not have issues with technology integration. Lee County School District has seen the immense value that having technology in the classroom has and therefore has equipped majority of classrooms with more than enough technology options for the instructor to use with the students. Other Districts have not yet incorporated this important advancement yet, however. And, even if every district were able to afford technology integration, other barriers stand in the way of teachers using technology.

For instance, as our text points out, teachers may have an unwillingness to change their lesson plans to incorporate technology (Maloy,2013 pg. 303), and teachers may also be unconstructive with the technology they do have in their classrooms- possibly by using it as a reward or punishment which isn’t an optimal way of using technology for an educational venture.

(via Pixabay)

The final, and I feel most important, technological aspect of our reading this week is websites for educational use and networking. In my experience in a similar field, networking is a huge component of not only developing strong connections with others in the same career. Here is a Prezi presentation that I made showing some of these valuable resources:
Resources:

A. S. (2016, April 24). Dinosaur trip [Digital title for blog]. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from https://www.canva.com/design/DABxapD2bxQ/wX2815aTvpTxP0B72h6wKA/view?utm_content=DABxapD2bxQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton  

Pixabay. (2016, April 1). [Commuications, internet, icons]. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from https://pixabay.com/en/communication-icons-internet-media-1296385/

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 #E

Video in the Classroom

Online content continues to grow and grow- social media has exploded and just when you think the programs that are popular right this minute will forever be the king of online space, another social media trend sweeps audiences to their feet.

A newer social media trend that has continued to grow is YouTube. YouTube initially began as an idea between three friends to better share video content online with acquaintances (YouTube, n.d.), and has turned into an explosive blogging, advertising, and informational staple of the internet.

Teachers began catching on to this trend and used it to their advantage. By incorporating videos that instructors can “hook” students with, and have the ability to pause and rewind as much as desired, instructors valued these new video options as unique learning experiences and their popularity grew (Maloy, 2013).

As online videos progressed and YouTube has become so easy that anyone can do it, teachers have begun to create their own videos tailored to their classroom of students and the subjects that the instructor is providing.

Here is a demonstration of how easy it is to create and upload a YouTube video:

(S, 2016)

 

PowerPoint in the Classroom

Our text this week points out some very interesting, thoughtful information about PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint presentations are something that college students are very familiar with. PowerPoints can be very informative and easy to interpret, but I bet every college student remembers one particular, prominent thing about any PowerPoint they have seen in a classroom: they can be undeniably boring.

Even if a speaker is riveting, usually the PowerPoint presentation that is running in their background is less than interesting. Many people use a “less is more” tactic to creating a PowerPoint which sometimes begs the question: why even have a PowerPoint?

Adult minds generally have an element of automatic respect to them. Adults in a classroom or business meeting where a PowerPoint presentation is being used make it a point to stay engaged out of respect and self-discipline. I think that PowerPoint presentations in a classroom should be avoided primarily because students don’t yet have the maturity to lock themselves into a series of minimalistic screens and give them any value.  I think these students will tune out very quickly to a PowerPoint series of slides.  If some educators insist on using PowerPoint as a tool in the classroom, I think they should liven up their PowerPoint presentations with GIFs, discussion questions and bold, attention-grabbing arrangements on the slides.

Lesson Plan Development and Integration of Technologies

I had never worked on a lesson plan prior to our previous group assignment to create an inquiry based lesson plan. I honestly could not believe the amount of time spent on putting together a thorough lesson plan could take. I certainly have value in the organizational tool of a lesson plan, but I really did not think they were that in-depth.

Our text this week outlines not only how lesson plan development flows, but also how to incorporate technology into the year’s plans. One of the biggest components to incorporating technology into the lesson plans is the internet. The internet has such a wide range of options available, a lot of which can be flexible enough to fit into majority of the lessons that may be planned for that year.
Many lesson plans have the ability to easily be enhanced by adding a technology component to them. Programs through the internet are one of the easiest things to incorporate, and offer thousands upon thousands of opportunities for students to interact with them material they are learning.

Resources: 

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

S. (2016). EME blog. Retrieved April 03, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgvy0_PZSkI

YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved April 01, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube