Janelle’s Blog

This semester I followed many RSS feeds that have supported my professional development. A lot of the feeds are pod
casts or blogs, which are very helpful, and they give good advice and information about technology and education. By following these RSS feeds on a regular basis it is helping me to stay up to date with the recent news in education.

I have viewed and read several different RSS feeds that might help me in the classroom one day when I am a teacher. I read an article about the power of digital storytelling to help students understand immigration, sacrifices and war, from the Moving at the Speed of Creativity website. It discusses a group of teachers that create videos that tell the stories of families who have immigrated to the United States or have served in a war. This would be very valuable to show my students because instead of just lecturing about immigration and war, I could show these videos that have actual families that have experienced it and can tell their story which is a way more interesting way to learn. The use of images and other types of media can really extend the learning opportunities of students and making the lesson more personal through use of storytelling can help the students remember better. Also from the Moving at the Speed of Creativity website, there is an article about VLE versus MLE, VLE stands for Virtual Learning Environment which is a software system that is meant to support teaching and learning in education. A VLA is usually over the Internet and it provides tools for assessment, communication, uploading assignments, returning homework, peer assessment, and grades. This is like when we use Blackboard in class, we can look at our grades and submit assignments online. This is good information for me to use as an educator because this kind of software would be very useful in the classroom and it would make things a lot easier for me. I would just have to be careful not to let that replace interaction with students.  

There are many other articles I have read and pod casts I have listened to that discuss different technologies or interview educators. I think that all of this really assists me with my professional development and it keeps me up to date with everything going on in the world of education. It helps me stay in tune with all of the most recent technologies and what is good and what isn’t. The interviews are very useful because it gives another educators opinion or point of view about a certain topic. A lot of the articles I read give advice and very useful information that I will be able to use in my classroom one day.

Technology can be used to affirm diversity in many ways. There are many different websites that teach students about a specific race or cultural group. If used appropriately in the classroom, these websites can be very useful in making students aware of diversity. Students need to know about their own history and background but also the history and background of other nationalities. Also, they should know that everyone is different and diverse in some way and that there are many different types of diversity.

A website that I believe really affirms diversity is Native Words, Native Warriors. I think that students could get a lot out of this website because it teaches the history of a very underrepresented culture, Native Americans. The website offers a lot of interesting information. There are 6 different chapters to choose from, each with different stories to choose from. One of which I found particularly interesting, Code Talking. It explains how during World War I the government recruited Native Americans to send messages in the Navajo language so that the enemy would not be able to understand them. I never knew this fact and I think that students would find it very interesting that the Native Americans played a large part in the war. Another thing that I like is when a page is loading on the website, it translates different Navajo words into English words. All in all, this website affirms diversity because it makes students aware of the Native American culture and teaches them a lot about their history.

Assistive technologies are very important for learners with special needs.  I have witnessed first hand how much these technologies can help these students.  I did an independent study in high school working in the special education classroom and one student was non-verbal and she had an advocate that had different pictures on it which would express what she wanted to say.  There were different sheets that you could put in such as one for school, one for home, one for lunch, etc.  This really helped her to communicate with everyone and express what she wanted a lot easier.  Assitive technology could be used for a variety of different things to support learners with special needs.  Another example is an adaptive keyboarad.  The keyboard might have bigger keys for students with limited hand mobility who have difficulty handwriting things, or it might be color coded to help memorize where the letters are. Since I am majoring in Special Education, this information is very important for me because I’m sure I will be using a lot of different types of assistive technology in my classroom.

Technology can be used to support higher order thinking because it helps students understand a concept better and it can provide feedback to what they are learning.  I think that feedback is a very important thing for kids when they are learning a new concept.  It encourages them to keep going when they receive positive feedback and when they don’t do something right they should be corrected.  With technology, students can take the information that they learn and apply it to the real world.  Technology can really help students to understand more complex problems.

I went to the Illuminations website which has many different online math activities for all different grade levels.  I found an activity called Equivalent Fractions which I think supports higher order thinking.  The activity gives you a square divided into a certain amount of pieces and a few of them are shaded to represent a fraction.  What you have to do is come up with two different fractions that are equivalent to the given fraction and represent your new fractions in two different squares given.  It provides feedback when you don’t answer correctly and when you do get it correct you go onto the next problem and there is an option to keep score.  I believe that this activity supports higher order thinking because it climbs Bloom’s Taxonomy from Remembering to Understanding to Applying and then to Creating.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=80

This article by Dave Nagel introduces a new online math tool called QuickTables which is made for grades 3 and up.  It provides math practice and assessments on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  I choose this article because I think that this is a really good way of getting students to enjoy working on math.  The program offers fun math games that I think the younger kids would really enjoy.  I also think that this would work really well with the students receiving special education because it will engage them in math and motivate them to continue working.

http://thejournal.com/articles/22026

 In Bransford’s article “Technology to Support Learning,” it discusses different ways that technology can be used in the classroom to enhance student learning and achievement.  Technology has the potential to help students in school, but only if it is used correctly and appropriately.  Inappropriate uses of technology can delay learning.  There are so many new technologies and they can help students to understand difficult concepts.  I think bringing real-world problems into the classroom through use of technology is a great idea for students.  This is a way better approach to learning than just lecturing or assigning readings.  Science classes could get a lot of use out of technology.  Scientific visualization software gives students access to the same research tools that scientists have.  This gives students a lot more to work with then just a text book.  

Scaffolds help students to solve problems.  I think that the article gave a really good example to help the reader understand what scaffolding is when it compares scaffolding to the training wheels on a bike.  Computer scaffolding helps students to do advanced activities that they could not do without support.  These tools make it possible for students to learn in more intricate ways than before.  They can boost a students performance when used in the curriculum but there is no guarantee.  Feedback is very important for students and technology is making it easier for teachers to give students feedback on their work.  The program Classtalk is a good tool for larger classes.  The teacher can post problems that the class is working on and the students can enter their answers.  The program collects the answers and will display a histogram of all the responses.  This gives the students and the teacher feedback on whether the concept is being understood.  This program can be used inappropriately though if the teacher uses it as an attendance taker or a tool for giving quizzes.  Those purposes would not give the feedback that the program is meant to give.  

A good way to get parents involved in their children’s schoolwork is the “transparent school.”  This new technology uses answering machines to give the parents information on class assignments and what is going on in the classroom.  Parents can call whenever they want and get the information they need.  Another way parents can be linked to their children’s schoolwork is through the Internet.  Teachers can post calendars and assignments online for parents to access. 

In conclusion, technology has become very important in the education world today and if used appropriately, it can be very successful in promoting higher learning for students.

I am a junior at CMU majoring in Elementary Special Education and minoring in Child Development.

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