Week Eleven: Lessons in Technology

There is so much that you can do to incorporate technology! It used to be so daunting to me, but now it's second nature! You can use technology to present the bulk of your material through interactive boards and presentations, you can teach via videos from TeacherTube or YouTube or TED, you can use these same methods to simply hook the students and get them interested, you can use technology research for research projects, you can add sound and music to lessons, you can read books online, you can answer questions in the moment through the vastness that is Google, the list could go on and on.

There is quite a difference between integrating technology into other subjects and teaching technology. You can integrate the use of and the education of technology within other subjects. For example, if you assign a paper to be written, here is an excellent opportunity to discuss things such as Word, setting up a page with headers, footers, margins, spacing, dates, etc; or how to look up the right material for the paper using the appropriate sites; or how to decipher what might be valid and truthful and what might be false; or how practice typing. Or if your project is research, you could teach how to setup a PowerPoint, how to create note cards, how to look up definitions, how to cite internet sources and find out if they are credible, how to save photos so that minimal distortion takes place (right click on the image, click Save As, save as and where you want, open new image from where ever you saved it to). And all of these opportunities within the context of an English paper or a science presentation.

The other side of this is a class time or period dedicated to teaching the tech skills, not the content. Here the importance is to know about Word or PowerPoint, not so much the material used or presented. This is more beneficial for teaching typing and basic skills with a computer, not on integrating it or using it with what it will be most beneficial for.

English paper

How to properly setup the page.

The purpose is to write a good paper, not to know how to setup the page, but to be able to easily read the paper it must be set up properly and therefore this is a very valuable lesson. The point is not to teach the set up, but the English content, however, both are needed.

Science Presentation

How to know if a site is credible and worthy of time.

The purpose of the presentation is to research, to communicate well, and to gain information. But knowing which information to include and which to discard takes practice and understanding that must be taught. We don't always know what is incorrectly written. Therefore, we have an excellent opportunity to teach students to look up multiple resources and take the info that is the same in all.

Math Facts Games

How to opperate websites and games online.

There are many educational game websites out there. Some very useful ones revolve around math facts. Some students will come in knowing how to access the site that the appropriate game is located on, some won't. Here is a good opportunity to teach how to access the correct site and how to play the game. This is not the purpose, but necessary for the purpose to come through. If the student doesn't know how to operate the site, s/he won't know how to play the game and won't gain the information necessary.

Assignment 3: Toolbox

I have been gathering sites that I thought looked even remotely useful since the beginning of class when we went over the assignments. The sites on this list cover a range of topics and most of them I have used with in the last few weeks. Basically, I just gathered sites that I have used and know to be useful to teachers and complied them by category. I found sites for making websites or blogs, gathered sites that I've used in the past to learn subject matter, sites that are helpful in teaching, sites that I found through bigger resources like the library.

I think that just by working to compile this list, I discovered the most useful part of this and that is learning how much is really out there for me to use as a teacher. I have some friends who've taken the course in the past and we are going to swap our lists so that we have even larger lists of websites to use that have been complied by people we trust. I think that the way I have set it up, my toolbox is pretty navigable, and just letting other teachers know about it is the best way to share the wealth. I certainly don't have everything, but the things that I do have I have found useful, and that would be enough for if I were on the receiving end. I think that also having the toolbox on my website, or a teacher chat or bulletin board could be a cool way to spread the knowledge. If a school just had a blog or wiki dedicated to resources like these, that would be a great way to share these things, too.

My three favourites:

1) Sheppard Software

I have personally used this site to learn information and I have found it extremely useful. I really like the set up, the wide range of subjects, the easy navigability, the overall ease of the whole site. I think that for mathematics, sciences, and geography in particular, this is a really useful site. There are games with varying levels of difficulty, informational material, and history within subjects. I really like the geography games because they provide a brief history of the countries, regional information, introduce the maps, provide three levels of play with the maps, and have every country in the world incorporated in their system.

2) Wordle

This is a cool site that allows you to input words and it outputs a word cloud. I created a Wordle for a writing lesson to help provoke thoughts and give the students a base of words. It could be used to group vocabulary--spelling or subject, resources, brainstorms, months, jobs, etc. for a variety of uses. It's a fun way to present material that can engage students so much more than a simple, black and white list.

3) TED.com

This is a really cool site with an extensive gamut of videos of professional speakers on an extensive gamut of topics (I even found a video of the collision of Chinese and American food tastes creating a whole new culinary genre). This can be useful in hooking the students or educating the students. I found a video of Aimee Mullins, a woman with prosthetic legs, that could cover a wide range of topics. She talks about how children are naturally curious and not afraid of new and different but rather inquisitive; she talks about what beauty is; she talks about what a disability is; all of these topics among many others. There are so many opportunities for education within her one one ten minute speech on Ted.com. (There are few images within her presentation that would need to be screened within the classroom.) One short clip has left me inspired on a number of different lessons!