Final Reflection

What?
In Instructional Media I have learned how to create a class website, using Google tools and applications, create and use blogs, share documents over the web, tap into the online social networks, create WebQuests, and create Digital Stories along with countless other little technology must haves along the way. I have taken three main ideas from this class and will summarize them here:
1. Technology in the classroom is essential.
This might be my biased opinion but we live in a technological savvy era where most kids know more than we do about many of the technologies available to them. I think as teachers we can best teach them and they will best learn through the use of technology in our classrooms including computers, the Internet, cell phones, music and video.
2. Class websites can help keep students and parents informed while keeping assignments and due dates organized and clear.
I have really enjoyed learning how to create a website that is user friendly and allows me to keep my students and their parents up to date at all times. I feel this is an essential part to getting parents involved in the learning process and letting students take the responsibility for their learning.
3. Students need to be aware of the risks involved with technology as well as how to keep themselves safe.
Internet predators and cyberbullies are real and students need to be able to stay safe and use technology wisely. They need to be made aware of the dangers and know how to act if they encounter questionable situations. Also parents need to be made aware of these dangers as well and be educated about their children's choices and activities. I also want my students to know how to use technology in a legal and ethical way.

So What?
This course has been one of the most useful courses that I have taken. I feel that I have learned so much useful information about the different technologies available to me as a teacher. I feel that all of these things will make me a better teacher and help me to better connect with my students. I feel prepared to create a real class website and connect with my students. I feel that I am very well prepared to start teaching and to meet the NETS standards. I'm well on my way to designing and developing digital-age experiences and activities that will be useful to my students. I also feel very informed about Internet safety and feel strongly that students should be taught how to stay Internet safe. I feel that I can now meet some of my professional goals and create meaningful learning for my students.

Now What?
I will definitely have a class website available to my students for each course. This was one of the main reasons I was excited to take this course. I want my students to be able to access assignments, assignement descriptions, schedules, and announcements 24/7 through our class website.
I'm also looking into using the WebQuest and Digital Story as a final project for my students at the end of the year. I want them to be able to apply the concepts that they have learned throughout the year and create a fun project displaying to me and others what they have learned.

Digital Story

What?
Digital Stories combine pictures, music, and narration to create feelings, tones, and meaning that cannot be brought together through other media techniques or teaching styles. Meaningful learning is more likely to occur through this collaboration of music, moods, and visuals. There are many different movie making programs available to teachers, students, and anyone that wants to make a movie about something. I chose to use Photo Story 3 which is a very simple and user friendly program. I really liked the ease of putting together a movie with this program because students could use this program with very little instruction to create assignments and projects for their school work. I think Digital Stories are great for most any content area because of the infinite possibilities that can be produced. However, subjects such as history and language have some really moving topics that work well with Digital Stories and can really get the students involved.
It was difficult to find a topic to create a Digital Story about mathematics. Although not unachievable, it does require much thought and creativity. I chose to take a field trip with my students and show them some of the geometric shapes in the real world. I thought this would be affective to help create interest at the beginning of the year in geometry as the students could see how geometry plays a part in their world. I would really like to show this video as an introduction and then assign the students to create something similar relating mathematics to their lives and portraying that through a digital story.

So What?
Through this assignment I once again had my eyes opened to the endless possibilities and different teaching techniques that are out there and available to me. In all of the many math classes that I've been through, never once has a movie been played that helped me better understand my content area. I like this idea of digital stories because it is new and fresh for the students of today and can grasp their attention using the things that they so love, technology.
Through this experience, I was able to really work on developing my skills with creating digital-age learning experiences.

Now What?
One of my professional goals is to teach math in a way that has really been used before but that is also very effective in order to help students really learn math. I think that digital stories could be a good way to really get them engaged in the learning process and expecially in application type problems. I will also continue to stretch my creativity in order to help students best learn and connect with the concepts that I will be teaching them.

WebQuest

What?

WebQuests are activities used by educators that allow their students to think, analyze, and work through information using different sites and resources from the Internet. This is a great way for students to work through things and discover content material on their own or in groups. This kind of discovery learning is more meaningful to the students. Because of the variety of information that is available online, WebQuests are very versatile and can be used for any content area. Using online interactives and games is also very fun and engaging for the students and can help keep their interest for topics that may otherwise be a little dull.

I think that I could use WebQuests in my mathematics classroom from time to time to break up the monotony of the traditional lecture style instruction. I think there are some great topics in math that the students could definitely discover and learn about on their own thru the use of a guided activity such as a WebQuest. I choose to do a WebQuest about the uses of mathematics in the real world so that I could use this during the first few days of class in order to help students to make connections and see the relevancies of the material we will be learning to the uses in their own lives.

So What?

This assignment has really helped me to branch out and find the other resources that are available to me and my students to make their learning a meaningful experience. I feel like this is a great assignment to help students use math in ways that are most like how they will use math after high school. Teaching my students to use technology, specifically the computer and the Internet in a safe and ethical way, is a very important aspect of my job as a teacher in these times. I feel that it is my responsibility to help them think through things and be able to logically reason through different problems so that they will be prepared for problems that they will encounter in their lives.

For this specific WebQuest, I feel that I’ve found some very good resources for my students to go through and find new information that they may not have thought about before. I was able to find several different interactives that will give them a chance to work with the math skills they previously have acquired and see how they are applied in the real world.

Now What?

Part of the reason why I wanted to be a teacher is to help others gain a love for math and see the possibilities that are out there using mathematics. For this reason, I choose to create a WebQuest that helps the students to see the bigger picture and see just where they are going with the different concepts that they will learn through their high school math experiences. Another reason that I wanted to create a WebQuest of this nature is because of the different interactives that are included that allow the students to see that not all math is boring and useless. They will also hopefully gain a greater appreciation for the different varieties of mathematics in the real world. I hope to accomplish these goals even further by always helping students to see the bigger picture and realize all the many applications that there are without completely overwhelming them.

Google Notebok

So I just wanted to tell you all about my latest adventure on the web. With a new big assignment waiting for me to conquer, I have started using Google Notebook to keep track of all the websites and things that I want to use later in the project. It's great because instead of bookmarking a whole bunch of websites or writing down a bunch of URL's, I just paste them into a "notebook" that saves them for me and let's me comment about them and keeps them all organized for me. I can label the different websites or start another notebook. It's great! I wish I would have known about this tool sooner. Oh and the other awesome thing about it is that I have Google Notebook added to my iGoogle page so I can easily access it from one spot! Way cool! Give Google a try...you're bound to love it!

Microsoft PowerPoint

What?
Microsoft PowerPoint was the program of the week. Practically every person has seen a PowerPoint presentation at some time in their life. As students we see them sometimes all too often with some being fantastic and some being very boring. I've created PowerPoints before and so as we began to learn about PowerPoints, I wanted to learn something new and something that would make my PowerPoints more interesting and helpful. I wanted to know what makes a good PowerPoint. Less is more was probably the best tip that I learned. I now know that I don't need to put everything on the slide that I'm going to say. This helps the font to stay a good size that everybody can read and also points out the main point of discussion.
PowerPoint presentations can be everything from basic and blah to professional and fancy. The tools and manipulatives seem to be a little bit more difficult to work with for me in this program than in others because of the variety that is available. There are many things that you can do to spice up each slide such as creating different ways for your text to come onto the screen, colors and background, sound effects, adding in media and video clips, etc. You don't want it to be so extravagant that your students pay more attention to the graphics and sounds more than they pay attention to the information which is what we really want them to learn.

So What?
As a math teacher, I don't think that I will use PowerPoint as my main way of putting out information because it's not practical for solving math problems and typing in so many numbers and mathematical processes. There are other programs and ways to use media that are more useful. Although I do think that it would be a good way to mix up my teaching style from time to time in order to keep student interest and help those students that have different learning styles. Other content areas will use this program more often than math teachers do/will.
The strategies and techniques that we talked about in class are very important to keep student interest as well as helping them to get the information without being distracted. We want it to look nice but we also want to be professional and useful. I like that students can get my class notes and print them out to study and work with from my class website or email. This is helpful for students that have a hard time taking notes during class or for those that missed class altogether.

Now What?
I would like to be able to find and learn some equation editing tools and applications for programs like PowerPoint in order to be able to put math equations and processes in my presentations more quickly and easily. I will need to look for ways to integrate it into my math class and teaching style because I do think it's useful and helpful for students.

Inspiration and Publisher

WHAT?
This past week we learned the basics of Inspiration and Microsoft Publisher. Inspiration is a great program that creates outlines and concept maps. The ease of this program is great! The buttons and controls are very easy to manipulate with a simple click and drag of the mouse. It's a great way to prepare for any subject and any topic in a organized fashion. I liked that we used this to outline our projects. I was surprised to find a program that was helpful in this way. I like that you can organize in any way that helps you for example, color, shape, ideas, etc. Another great feature is that the program will create a typed outline from your concept web so there's no need to enter in the information as you go. As I was creating my concept web, I liked that you can work on the map as a whole and add to it from any side as you go.
Microsoft Publisher is a template program that contains templates such as brochures, flyers, newsletters, etc. With tools and features all similar to other Microsoft programs it is fairly easy to navigate for even an amateur. I'm sure there are tons more fabulous things that you can do to spice up your projects but I'm just learning. I wish that I would have had this program for past projects. It's great to have templates that you can use as is or manipulate to fit your needs. I really liked that you could choose your own layout and design colors. For assignments or projects like our media campaign, it's nice that the layout and designs are the same for each kind of project. (i.e. brochures, flyers, newsletters all having the same basic design to look uniform)

SO WHAT?
As a teacher, I think Inspiration is a great program for every content area. I would use this program to outline on a large scale the school year and the topics to be covered and then on a smaller scale outline each unit and the topics to be discussed. It would even be useful to outline each lesson and get down to even the details of the lesson so that I don't miss anything. It would then be useful to keep them stored online to refer to from year to year.
For my students, I think Inspiration would be a great way for them to outline projects and assignments as they plan out how to execute the project at hand. It's great way for them to see what they have as a whole and where they're going with the topics they have. They can then also see how things are relevant or irrelevant to their topic.
Publisher is a program that would be very useful for campaign such as our assignment or for schools or departments to put newsletters and flyers together for students and parents containing information about anything and everything possible. I would like to make a newsletter for my students' parents about assisting their students with their math assignments. I could then give them resources and tips to getting homework done that they're not sure about how to complete themselves.
Students could also create projects using programs such as Publisher, for any content area. Math may not have as many choices but in other content areas it would be a great way to complete such assignments.

NOW WHAT?
I feel like I caught on pretty well to both of these programs however, with Inspiration I could use some more practice using the other features of the programs since I only created a concept map. I'll need to play with it a little more to be able to figure out how to make the outlines and be able to present this program to students. I would like to spend some time filling out an outline for a unit and see how it all works together.
Microsoft Publisher is such a rich program, filled with so many different capabilities that I don't know that I would ever be able to learn everything it has to offer, however I feel that I know enough to make some really good products to use in my classroom, school, and personal life. I need to practice manipulating the pages and being able to spice them up a little more creating more professional looks.

Internet Safety

Although it may seem that the risks out way the advantages when it comes to using the Internet in the classroom, I definitely think that the Internet should be used in the classroom. Our students are going to be using the Internet whether we use them in our classrooms or not. I think by using the Internet in our classrooms, we can then teach our students to be safe and responsible users. By teaching them safety techniques and good searching skills, we can open up the world to them through the Internet.

There are so many advantages to using the Internet in the classroom. The best reasons to me are real time data and simulations that we can get from the Internet. While the rest of the world is living and learning in a virtual world, I think it's very important that we teach our students how to interact, grow, and develop in the virtual world as well. If you know much about math you will know that although we can teach equations and formulas to our students, there is much more going on in the background. With the use of technology, programs and websites have been developed that display this background knowledge and the bigger picture. These tools are exactly what we want our students to learn through because they lead to meaningful learning. I am excited to teach in this day and age where technology can be so advantageous to the learning of math.

As teachers, we must evaluate the sites we want our students to use. Through evaluation we ensure that our students are getting the best, most accurate information that is relevant to the current topic of discussion. We can also make sure that the information is appropriate and written for their knowledge level. In order to make sure that my students are being safe while surfing:
- I can use the Advanced Search Tool that Google provides to limit the sites that they are searching for certain assignments,
- spend some time teaching them Internet safety and making the aware of the rules that I have set for our classroom, and
- be apart of their learning through observation while walking around the room during their searching time.