TPTE 486 made a difference!

Before taking TPTE 486, I thought I knew quite a bit about the technology world. After I began working in class I soon realized that there was so much I didn't know especially in the little details about pixels and things of that nature. I also noticed I knew even less about educational technology and software. 

Now when I work with technology I notice if small details are wrong or if the pictures aren't named. These things matter when you get your own class and there is crazy and hectic things going on all at the same time. I will be grateful I learned how to essentially make my life easier through this class. I can also say that I learned how to be a better future teacher through creating technology that my kids will learn from and enjoy. With how much technology is integrating into our society, it is necessary to become equipped with the tools to keep you current. 

So yes, interactive white boards and flipcharts were the death of me, but I gained so much experience and I would much rather do that now then when I am stressed out in my own classroom with 20 other kids. 

Making Movies Matters!

I have a macbook so I have definitely seen the imovie application before, I have always seen it as hard to use and I never really needed to use it. I thought all you could do was make a movie load it onto the program. While taking TPTE 486, I was able to learn how to use the program and that it could have many potential uses in my future classroom.

I created an imovie about traveling to New York so that children could take a virtual tour of sorts. This could be used in Geography studies, cultural, or even exploring differences in where we live. The application, imovie, could also be used for instructional videos, classroom videos of projects the students have done, or even meet the teacher videos. Students could have a lot of fun putting together slideshows of pictures to music to explore their artistic side. 

Digitally Done Right!

As far as digital diagrams go, the most experience I have ever had with that is on a sheet of paper my teachers printed called a concept map. It is not surprising though, that with the digital age morphing into a technology giant there would be digital and eye popping versions of these. In school I wish I had this version of a diagram like we created in TPTE 486 on Inspiration Software.

There are so many possibilities and ways to really draw a students attention. Children learn differently so talking through lessons, while having a mapped out version of the concept in an attractive and enriching way can really make a difference for a child who would not have gotten the concept with just reading about it. Going the extra mile to make sure every student gets their needs met is hard work, but when a child finally sees the connection within a topic due to your digital diagram it is very much worth all the tool manipulation, color changes, and font selections. 

Using these in my future classroom would be super easy. I could use them on complex topics with sub levels so that students could visually identify relationships. I could also let the kids help me fill out some of the levels on the topic by leaving some blank to see if they have synthesized the information correctly. In addition, having the internal link to an extra website is helpful to give students a supplemental angle to look at the subject. 

Research Really Does Matter!

As a professional in this field staying current and up to date on research out there is imperative to being an effective teacher. You want to make sure you know the latest and greatest information so your students receive the best education they can. In TPTE 486, we are learning about Interactive White Boards and how to use them properly. However, understanding how effective and the best uses for them is crucial so you can make the most out of such a great tool. 

I found many things interesting in the article on the research done on these white boards. Something that stood out to me was how ineffective they were on lower level students. I previously thought that something with great visuals and interactivity would be really helpful to them. Having this knowledge though, will allow me to find other ways to teach those that are struggling, instead of using something that won't help them that much. It was also great to learn that using clickers to "poll" the class on quizzes/informative assessment or if we are learning math, making graphs on favorite items, is really the best use of the white boards. As a teacher, you want the best for your students so reading this type of research ensures that you enhances your students learning experience, but in the best way possible.

Wonderful World of Websites

I am so excited about how my website is turning out! In the past I have designed websites on free sites for organizations that were chaotic and unorganized, but I had not used Google sites yet. The interface is simple to use and allows you to create to a decent amount of specifications. 

As a preservice teacher, having the tool already to communicate with my class and their families is a huge time saving step that I am so glad to work on in TPTE 486. Going through and creating all the tabs like web tools, supplies, and content subjects is so useful for my future classroom to capitalize on the internet run community we live in. It is also great to have everything my students need all in one reliable place. 

I know that I will utilize this in the future once I get my own classroom by expanding on the tabs and really creating and becoming the accessible teacher to my class and the community. One example I thought of was homework posts just in case students forget or their parents can understand the assignments given that day. They will be more successful because of it and the parents can really feel apart of the class as well and know what is going on daily. 

Digital Images Done Right!

Look up, copy, paste, and re-size are the steps I used to follow to use a digital image in my documents. I looked up the image on Google images and simply re-sized it using the corners to drag and stretch or shrink it to the desired size after I copy and pasted it into the program I was using. Practicing this skill the right way in TPTE 486 has allowed me to understand that there is so much more to digital images than I previously thought.

I had no idea about pixel number and why some images look blurry when you stretched them. Reading about the Raster and Vector really made it clear. Another thing that I hadn't considered when using digital images before was copyright  laws. There are tons of sights where you can get free un-copyrighted digital images instead of Google. Once you got the photos and want to share them, I learned how many tools there are for sharing them! Tools like Flickr, SmugMug, and Photobucket are great tools, along with the main one we have used in class called Picasa.

Teaching students to make their work more exciting by adding images, but not telling them the proper way is like playing a game without the instructions for the first time. You just won't get the most out of it even though you may be able to figure out how to play. Turning the lesson on digital images to a scavenger hunt similar to the one we did in class, by finding the objects in real life and then making an album where we have to re-size and rename was a good exercise that students could have fun doing by being the photographer. You could also have the students make collages of different things you are trying to teach and see what different perspectives you get and it lets students collaborate together as well.

Resources are really useful!

Even though I am just starting out in my endeavor as an educator, I have heard many times that collaborating and getting ideas from other teachers is a great way to get meaningful work to your students and it can build your repertoire as a teacher as well. Until I had taken TPTE 486, I had only considered sharing worksheets or project ideas. Of course with the shift in focus to technology, it only makes sense that I would learn about how to share valuable websites, webquests, and resources.

Using my prior knowledge of website evaluation and understanding how the basis of wikis work really made the process of sharing and creating pages in wiki really easy. I could really hone in on great tools for students. While searching for different content areas in Elementary Education I got to see what is out there and and pick the best for my future students to help them build skills, have fun with what they are learning in the classroom, or learn about a new topic we have yet to cover in my classroom. However, the internet is a vast portal of unlimited resources so it was great to create a wiki with more valuable resources from other pre-intern teachers that I wasn't able to find, but are just as wonderful. Working together gives the best outcome to our students in the future and hopefully they will use the tools I am finding now. Obviously, I will be using the resources I have found for many years to come and hopefully I can build onto more resources and maybe create a collaboration type wiki at my future school so that my colleges can share in the future.

Invested in Inquiry Based Projects

Exploring, investigating, and understanding are fundamental to school. Teachers have children do these things in a variety of ways, but after completing an Inquiry Based Project of my own I have discovered how useful and effective it is at doing all three of these things. 

Basically, an Inquiry Based Project or IBP, is a great tool to use to allow your students to explore a certain topic determined by the teacher and then do research or investigative work on it via the internet to answer question you pose as the instructor. The is not only a great tool for students to get acquainted with the web better, but I could also use this to introduce a new lesson to help formulate a basis for understanding or I could use this as a way to enhance material we are already learning about in my future classroom. The flexibility on subjects are vast as well. There is a plethora of options when it comes to websites and since I now understand how to evaluate one I can be fully confident that my students will be learning something. 

Completing this activity allowed me to do many things that a teacher would do in a classroom. I thought creatively about a topic that I thought my students should learn and used a textbook as reference for standards and depth of subject. I also was able to find a useful website and design questions and an assignment appropriate for a certain age group. This really helped me get a sense of what I can expect when I become a teacher and I will definitely use this tool when I get into my own classroom. 

Wading Through Quality Websites

As a student in school, I have heard time after time that I should make sure I pick a reputable and reliable source. As a future teacher, it is so vital that I also pick sites for my students that I can rely on and are trustworthy for my students to use too. Going through a website evaluation in TPTE 486 has given me the tools to fully understand how to go about properly evaluating any website to make sure it meets both my needs and the needs of my students. 

There were several components to the website evaluation. They included items like what type of browser or plugins were needed and the accessibility to most students including internet speed, alt tags, and cost. Some other things we considered were the author/publisher and their reliability and the accuracy and currency of information as well. Something that we evaluated that I did not consider when thinking of evaluation was the actual design interface of the website. This element is so important, however, because your students need to not only feel comfortable using the site you are asking them to use, but also they need to be able to use it easily without any confusion or clutter problems. Practicing evaluating a website has really given me a great idea of what things to consider when asking my students to use websites and explore the internet. The internet is vast so narrowing it down for my future students to only easily accessible, clean, and reliable sources is so crucial. 

What about Wiki?

Recently, in my TPTE 486 class I got to utilize and really explore using a wiki. The first real and only experience I have ever had with a wiki was using and viewing Wikipedia. Even as I was using it, I did not fully understand the concept of it. Anyone can just edit over what someone else wrote? How does that work? What if I edit it simultaneously with someone else? All these questions were answered when I learned to use Wiki and what exactly a wiki was. 

Wiki is a great tool that can be used for many different purposes, but basically a wiki is a website that allows its users to edit and change it making it much simpler to use than emailing to get responses (see picture to the left). All you do is write what you would like and others can help edit or alter it. For example, in my class we used it to hold a bio page of each of my classmates with a main directory page that is constantly editable. Learning how to use it was easier than I thought with a very simple layout. There are three main things to remember when using a wiki:Write, Edit, and Save. Once you have that down you can turn it into anything you would want. So then I got to thinking, how can I use this tool in my future classroom? 

Learning about wiki in TPTE 486 has allowed me to think about collaboration learning in a whole new way. I think collaboration on this scale could go a long way in group learning or whole classroom learning. This could be a great tool for English where we could write a classroom story together or write a document about a historical event that happened, taking us back to that time or place. We could also use it in math, where we could collaboratively solve a problem together or each student could post a single question on a topic that comes together to create a study guide for the class. Another use could be as a tool for you as teacher. You could use wiki to create collaborative lists of supplies needed for classroom, party, and field trip sign up that connect parents and involve them in contributing. This way, each student and parent could feel like a partial author, each contributing his or her part to the wiki. There is an air of caution that a wiki in general is meant to be constantly editable so teaching your students appropriate editing and use of this tool is necessary before you get started, but once you do you will want to Edit, Write, and Save every day! 

My Technology Education Expectations

My name is Lauren Owsley and I am so passionate about becoming a teacher. I am going through classes to fulfill my dream at the University of Tennessee in the Elementary Education Program. I am in the Urban/Multicultural cohort so there is a big passion for equal opportunity and enriching lessons. I am always looking for innovative ways to liven up the classroom, which is why I really love technology. I can remember using all sorts of programs when I first started to dabble into advanced technology of the time like Paint, Word, PowerPoint, and others to make my school projects creative. As I have progressed in my education through college I am excited to see that there are so many more resources out there! I have used web design in my own student organizations, I have used an exciting presentation tool called Prezi, created fliers and brochures with pages, and I have even tried to create shared documents in the cloud for classmates and study groups. So I have had my fair share of introductions to technology, but after choosing to take Theory and Practice in Teacher Education 486 (Integrating Technology Curriculum) I started to really explore all my possibilities when it came to avenues for children to learn with! I have learned to use several tools thus far that are going to be so useful to me. They include this blog, a website, and a wiki. I am really excited to see what other tools are out there that I can take advantage of. 

My expectations for this class align with my excitement. I really want to learn how to use these and other tools in a basic way, but also in a way that allows me to help my students get excited about what we are learning and can teach them in creative ways. As the world progresses in it's scavenger hunt for technology, being a teacher means that today you will have to understand those tools that students use and be able to implement them into your own classroom. You also have to find ways to connect your students with the material in a way that is fun, useful, and enriching. I would also like TPTE 486 to guide me into using more collaborative tools so students can help each other and we can work as a cohesive unit, but also educate me on ways to connect my students to me and useful materials that can help them succeed on subjects they may be struggling on. I hope that this class will provide me with not only instruction on how, but the confidence to come up with a few neat ideas of my own!