Self Reflection #4

In this new age of being environmentally safe, in which we are taught to constantly recycle, to turn of electricity when leaving the room and they are developing new hybrid cars to help pollution. Why not become more paperless? I believe one of the biggest advancements in education and communication between students and teachers is the use of the Dropbox. For those who don’t know, a dropbox is a program that I discovered in college. My professor had the whole class download this dropbox program, then to demonstrate the ability of it he took an article he wanted all of us to read placed it into the dropbox and suddenly it appeared on our computer. According to the Powerful Learning Practice website the Dropbox program is a multifaceted tool used to connect a group of people, it is used to sync and share documents and data between computers, tablets and other personal computing device. I believe that the creation of the dropbox, is a very convenient way for a teacher or professor to share documents with their students, whether its homework or even used to help with homework. The best advantage is also that students can also drop things in the dropbox to share this way sharing ideas are much easier and simpler, this way the day of class moves a lot faster and smoother.

 

http://plpnetwork.com/2012/08/10/dropbox-a-superb-classroom-tool/

Self Reflection #3

Growing up, science was never a strong subject for me because I was always asked to visualize and look further into experiments and other ideas that I could never actually figure out. I feel like too much of science is left up to the imaginative mind of the student and it could lead to a miss interpretation of information. While researching new technology for teaching I came across the idea of probeware. Based on the http://www.wisegeek.com website probeware is a computer program that is now being used very often in many science class rooms, to collect, organize and analyze data. I thought to myself, this would have made classes like chemistry and biology much more easy. To have a dependent program or software to not only correctly collect data but to help me analyze and find certain relationships and behavioral patterns. I feel like the use of probeware eliminates the imaginative aspect of science classes. Certain experiments that can’t be done or finished because of the time constraints of the class session would be helped with the use of probes. According to http://www.guide2digitallearning.com, the website took a survey to determined how students who worked with probeware computer programs did on test compared to those who didn’t and the results showed that those with probeware scored much higher. The website http://www.wisegeek.com stated and example of the effectiveness of probeware, they described an experiment in which a probe would be attached to a cylinder filled with a liquid and the probe would catalog the temperature changes through each experiment. In the end i believe that the use of probeware should be furthered in every science class.

 

Click to access Vernier_white_paper.pdf

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-probeware.htm

Self-Reflection #2

Social media websites like Myspace, Instagram, Facebook and Vine have become the new craze and driving force of the new generation. It has some what taken over as the number one source of socializing for the youth and the number one way to connect to others and express emotions. Social media has also earned a reputation as a destructive force that is killing any type of social skills kids have once they are face to face with a real person instead of sitting behind a computer, but I bet those people never thought of using social media as a teaching tool. What if you could use the very aspect that is considered a waste of time to reach out and help the kids further their education? That has become the new idea among teachers and those involved in the education system. Those who are stuck in the past and believe that social media cant be used to help education are fighting a battle they are sure to lose. Social media is an ever evolving tool and the best thing to do is not fight it but learn to curb it and use it for the betterment of education. Jennifer Davis a teacher once believed herself that the advancement of technology was inevitable and humanity would be lost in the scramble. In her article “Out of the Darkness and into the Digital World” she tokes about trying to fight technology by forcing the kids to appreciate the arts before technology like Charles Dickens books and she never used technology in her lessons. She also remembers a time when she had to order a book off amazon and she sat in front of the computer completely confused. “I’ve come a long way from those early days of feeling that I needed to keep myself pure for my students’ sake — untarnished by technology’s ugly oxidation,” Jennifer claims. She now uses the sharing software of Google Drive to share documents with her 9th graders, and to also grade and comment on their papers. Even the teaching company Pearson has done its research and has explained that they know how important it is to stay educated on the latest social media websites and options to use them for the best of education. The best way to reach the youth is not to fight the tide of the newest technology or advances in social media it is to get ahead of the curb and learn how to control and adopt the use of these websites are social media concepts and use it for the best education.

 

Davis, J. (2014). Out of the Darkness and Into the Digital World. California English, 19(3), 9-10

Mike, Moran. Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today’s Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media. Pearson, 2011. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535130.pdf 03.March 2014

Self Reflection #1

The high school I attended was rather small and some what out of date. A lot the classrooms did not have a smart-board, the computers were old and limited and more times then none this lead to a rather boring class session. The one thing I can say is that, the teachers I had were good and able to grab the attention of the students and make the class pretty bearable. I believe that even though times are changing and the classroom is becoming more advanced everyday and soon enough it will look like Tony Stark’s house (for those who don’t know, Tony Stark is Ironman) I still believe that without a good or even great teacher to grab the attention of the students and make learning enjoyable, technology would be useless. With that said the advances in technology moving forward in the classrooms are great. I believe the smart-board is a great game changer. I have seen teacher’s use it and the way they are able to control the board from a simple panel, and can write certain terms and word definitions that are important and students should pay attention to throughout the film and then show a movie or documentary on the same board is awesome. Instead of having to roll in that big dusty cart, with the out of date VCR or new DVD player no one knows how to work, and spend about 10 minutes trying to get the screen to the right output to sync up with the DVD player everything is controlled from a simple panel.

In one of the stories I found on educationworld.com I about a teacher named Malissia Bell who taught second grade. She recalls a student whom she had who was very shy and would either not participate or would answer in one or two words. Until she set up a podcast for her students in which they could talk and share thoughts on books they read. The young kid was so active on the website and spoke so fluently that she could not believe it was him. From this story I gained a better knowledge of the use of podcasts in the classroom, and I truly believe it can be a very innovative way for not only the teachers to reach out but for the kids to reach out and express their thoughts.

Bafile, C. “School races to Promote Reading through Podcasts”. Retrieved from  http://www.educationworld.com/