My Beliefs

I have learned since elementary school that technology is important and as I got older it became a greater part of my life.  As a future teacher, I want my students to understand that technology isn't something to be scared of or something to be taken lightly.  I want them to see what it does for us and how it can enhance their learning.  

I believe that without technology, life would not progress.  We would still be in the dark ages were people died because of disease and only the wealthy were educated.  I want them to realize that technology doesn't just mean things that are electronic because that is what most people believe.  I people that technology are things that have been invented to make our lives better.  For example: electric lights, TV, cars, prescription classes, laser eye surgery, heaters, indoor plumbing, etc.

I want my students to appreciate technology as much or more than I do.  I want them to be able to use it in everyday life and to teach  others how to use it.

Lessons Learned

Videos:Millennial Generation - In this video, high school students are asked questions about technology.  They are asked what they would like technology to be, how their parents deal with it, and what it would be like in the future.  Some of their ideas about the future were really amazing. The idea that their could be no identity theft because fingerprints are used for everything is really cool and amazing.  It would be awesome if some of their ideas actually came true.  Some of them are coming true now.  One student suggested that we will be able to control things with just the movement of our bodies.  Now companies are coming out with gaming systems that react to your bodies movements without a controller.
Wow this movie was really eye opening.  The fact that China is one of the smartest countries in the world and one of the biggest is amazing.  It is amazing at how much is going to change over the next fifteen to twenty years technology wise.  It’s kind of scary thinking that the students I’ll teach will have jobs that haven’t been invented yet.  It was also interesting to see how much the job turnover rate was in the United States.

Create learning experiences that are realistic, rich, and relevant.  We are now using what is known as 3rd generation or 3G networking.  It will soon be changing to 4G.  Getting whatever we want, whenever, and wherever we want to is making our society enter a downward spiral of lost expectations.  May put assembly line education out of its misery.  Using a ClassAct Portal or a classroom website will help the students learn about a specific topic.  There can be links to sites about the topic, student work on the topic, and even a blog.


There is more technology in our homes than in schools.  It makes learning more enjoyable and keeps the students focus for longer periods of time.  It also helps with management issues.  It is a great way to get current accurate information and talk to experts.
Many teenagers do not believe that writing with technology (IM’s, email, texting) is connecting to their writing for school.  Many say that they do not see a difference in their writing if they do it on a computer.  Many do, however, edit and revise more.

Strengths and Weaknesses

After looking at the UNI and the NET Standards, I have a lot of strengths in technology.  I know how to use it well and I know how to integrate it into a classroom.  I can teach students how to use different form of technology.  If I don’t know how to do something than I know how to find out how to do it.

In the UNI Survey, almost all of my answers are at Apprentice and in the NET Standards I can do everything except number two.  This is because I have not yet been able to design a learning environment or activities to teach my students about computers although I am sure that I could do it with a little bit of practice and further instruction.

I can use UEN to find different resources to help me create lessons to teach my students. I could also borrow lessons from other professionals.

Reflection

1. Provide demographics of school, number of students in class and who your cooperating teacher is.

• The students are in the fifth grade, which is approximately ages ten to eleven.
• There are thirteen girls and eleven boys
• There are five Hispanic students, four of which speak Spanish at home and are in resource for help with English. There was one Pacific Islander who does not speak English at home, she too is  in resource for English. The rest of the class is Caucasian and speaks English.  Another student comes into class, checks in with the teacher and then goes to resource for the rest of the day. He will sometimes come back for computers, PE and science. One other student goes to resource for math.
• There is one high functioning Autistic child, one student that gets pulled out once a week and taken by his father to visit a psychologist ( this same student has a peanut allergy), and one student that is diabetic.  
• Our cooperating teacher is Barbara Steele. She has been teaching for the past five years but received her degree about twenty five years ago.

2. How is your relationship with your cooperating teacher? Explain. I really enjoyed my time with Mrs. Steele. The first time that we met, a week before field, she seemed excited to have us and asked us what we needed to fulfil our assignments. When we told her that we needed to teach five social studies lessons she told us that she was getting ready to start teaching a unit on colonization, specifically Jamestown, the Mayflower voyage and Plymouth. She asked if we would like to teach the entire unit. She also gave us stacks of resources to help us develop our lesson plans.

• When we finished teaching a lesson she would meet with us after and ask us how we felt it went, then give us her feed back. She was wonderful to work with and I really learned a lot.  She was very open about certain situations with students and asked us for ideas on how to help the students to feel better about themselves and what they could accomplish in school.  She enjoyed talking to us about becoming teachers and how we could become great ones.

3. How does he/she feel about the technology piece you created? We had not finished our digital story but we showed her our own personal vid-casts. She liked them. She thought that a digital story would be a fun way to start a lesson or unit.  

4. How does he/she feel about the lesson you completed? For our digitally enhanced lesson we took the students to the computer lab and assigned them certain activities to complete on the  http://plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html web site. For our last lesson I created a Jeopardy game using jeopardylabs.com . If you would like to see or play the game go to jeopardylabs.com/play/enter-title24772.  We were able to use a smart board for the Jeopardy Game.  It was fun to use and see how we each understood how to control it.  The teacher said that she really enjoyed the jeopardy game. We had the students feel out a survey listing in order of most favorite lesson to least favorite lessons. The two lessons that were the most enjoyed were the plimoth.org and the Jeopardy game.

5. How did the the training session go? Explain. The training session did not go as well as I had hoped. I have never used a mac before so I didn’t know how to work iMovies and our teacher who owns a Mac didn’t either.  Krystal and I both brought in our lap tops but we couldn't get Internet access to show her how to find pictures and put them into a digital story. We tried to show her by using pictures we already had on our hard drives but she basically said that she didn’t think she would ever have the time to do something like that and to not worry about trying to show her anymore. Her room is full of technology but she said she would be the first to admit that she didn’t know how to use it very well but that she wanted to take some classes to help her learn it better.

6. How do you feel about this service-learning experience? I really enjoyed my time in field. It was fun to watch the students explore the plimoth site and get into the Jeopardy game. I loved working with the students and I already miss them.

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7. What did your cooperating teacher gain from the experience? I think that our teacher learned that not only does she need to expose her students to more technology and different varieties of it but that she needs to learn more about it her self.

8. What did you gain from the experience? I learned that I too need to become more familiar with different kinds of technology. I want to take as many continuing education classes in the field of technology that I can and until then I need to keep using, playing with exploring the things that I have been taught.  I really, really want to learn how to use a Mac.

9. Was it worth why or why not? This experience was definitely worth it. When you teach someone else something new one of a couple of things can happen. You become even better at the thing you are teaching or you realize that you don’t know as much as you think you did. I had a little bit of both. I can’t wait to continue to learn and grow both as a student of technology and as a teacher of technology.