New School, New Classroom, New Technology

If I had just been placed in a brand new school building, a brand new classroom, and had the opportunity to pick out whatever technology I wanted, I would be one happy teacher.  There are so many different choices in today's culture for technology use in the classroom.  One of the first items on my list would be a Smart Board.  Smart Boards to me are an easy clear way for students to follow along with the lesson, as well as being interactive with the lesson.  Sure you could use a dry erase board or a chalkboard to give the students notes, but let's face it, sometimes that gets really messy and hard to read and follow.  Why not use a piece of technology where we can organize our thoughts and have it be clear and visible for the students.  It also is a great way to get the students involved in different interactive games and activities to help them soak in the information.  Another piece of technology I would request is an Iclicker.  An Iclicker to me will be essential in my classroom.  Not only will it quiz my students on what knowledge they actually know and what areas they need to study harder on for the test, but it will be a great way for me to evalute myself on how well I am teaching the material to my students.  I also would request to have computers in my classroom along with a printer.  This would allow me to monitor my students work and work ethic.  Also by having the printer in the classroom itself, it would help minimize the hallway traffic, and hopefully help result in less fights and other classroom disruptions.  Those would be my top four technology devices on my wishlist that I feel would help my students gain a quality education.

Internet Fraud?

When doing school work, students use the internet for multiple reasons.  As a future teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to give my students some sort of insight on what is a reliable source and what is not reliable.  Most students do not realize that not all the information on the internet is accurate, up to date, or biased.  Without the guidance they may never know and may be feeding false information into their brain.  In order to give them thhe proper guidance, I would plan a lesson before giving them their first big assignment where internet access would be used.  In this lesson I would give multiple examples of websites that are reliable and ones that are not.  When using these examples, I would point out the different flaws in all of the unreliable and point out of the information and kep points on the reliable pages, such as the url. When evaluating a website, the students should look for six main key clues; the author of the site, who it was published by, the main purpose of the site, who the intended audience of the site is, the quality of the information, an how all of it adds up.  Personally I do not believe all websites need to be evaluated, however if the website just ends in a .com or is a wikipedia website it should be evaulated.  For example, wikipedia is a website full of a lot of great information, but at the same time it is able to be altered by any person who feels the need to change what is already there.  Therefore it may not be as reliable anymore.  If a website ends in .edu however, it is more than likely to be written by some scholar or a well educated person.  Therefore I will make sure my students are well educated so they do not struggle with turning in papers with false information.

Can You Feel The Beat?

Music, to me, is very calming and peaceful.  It puts me into a state of mind where I can just focus and think.  In my classroom during free homework work time, I plan on playing soft soothing music.  I feel that it will help the students relax and not feel so tense or caught up in everything else around them.  Instead I hope it helps them clear their mind.  When listening to a song I have heard before, it normally brings back the memories to the time I first heard it.  If I have not heard the song before, I like to listen to the lyrics and feel the beat and tempo.  These are all memories that come back to me that give me the sense of relief everytime I turn on the radio, CD player, or Ipod.
In my classroom, however, I will not just use the music to get their mind off of things so that they can focus on some of the work, but yet I will find engaging music that goes along with the lesson plans to help them learn the material.  A lot of students learn better when something is to a beat rather than a drowned out lecture or video.  I would then find a wide variety of music to hopefully grasp every student at some point in time.  One of my assignments could be to find a song or create a song to relate it to the lesson that is going on; what a great way to not only get the students minds going, but also to give them something enjoyable to do for a project.  This I believe would motivate the students more on some of the assignments and to help them get their grades to improve.  Like I stated earlier, anything with a beat is a great way to get some information memorized because it gives a beat to move along to.

Activity Let Down

Unfortunately I am unable to take my students to an art museum due to school funds.  I am really disappointed!  However, I came up with this really awesome other idea in order for them to still have the same amount of fun and educational experience.  I found some of the same artwork that the students would have been able to see at the museum online.  I used the poster making machine in the graphics lab to make the images larger.  I then posted them all around the room to make our own museum.  I found a virtual field trip online that I could have used my Smart Board for, but instead I thought that my students would enjoy their own museum in the classroom seeing how it would be more hands on and moving than sitting and watching the virtual field trip.  I feel that they sit and listen to teachers speak all day long that they would rather be up moving around and exploring.  Plus when you turn the lights out for videos and other related activities, the students tend to become more tired and not focus.  Although, during the virtual field trip, the students would have the oportunity to have a 3D experience on the different pieces of art rather than the flat visual aid with the posters.  I feel that either the school museum option or the virtual field trip both have their ups and downs so either of them would be a great choice.

"Information Overload"

In today's society with all of the internet access, sometimes there tends to be way to much information out there for students, teachers, and anybody else to view.  Even though many people think that there can never be to much information out there, I personally believe that with all of the information out there, how can we really know what to believe is true.  All of the websites out there for us to see could be full of false information, but also could be full of true facts and statements.  When taking that into consideration, it makes me think that there is to much information out there on the web.  This could cause many people to just search the internet for random information rather than only the specific information they need.  I mean seriously, how much of the information they are skimming is really true, and how much of it is false.  For some people who do not look in detail for specific facts, they could be getting false inaccurate information.  For those who are looking for specific information and facts, most likely will be paying attention to how credible the source really is.  People who pay attention to site credibility are the ones who are not consuming all of the extra unecessary information.  Often students, and occasionally some teachers, are the ones who consume all the false information from not narrowing down their sources.  When students are on information overload and are not paying attention to how credible the sites really are, and in the end it tends to show.  It would be extremely hard to put a stop to all of the extra false information on the web.  However, schools can help out a little bit by having their technology person put blocks on some websites, such as Wikipedia and other sites, which can be altered by any person who feels the need to change or add to the existing information.  Teachers themselves can help put a stop to it as well by having a lesson on website credibility and giving the students a list of websites they can use for projects.  Both of these options will defiantly help put a stop to browsing all of the available websites for information on a certain topic.  Hopefully one day there will be an end to all of the extra information on the website which is not needed.