PDP: My Beliefs

I believe that using and integrating technology into the classroom will be a great tool for me as a teacher because it will help me to be able to find the best resources for my students to learn best. It will provide them with accurate information and many sides from a subject. Instead of reading information out of a textbook, students can read information online and do online activities to best help them to create projects that will enhance their creativity and learning and helping their other classmates to learn well too.

I think that it will help them to be better researchers, better thinkers, and have more of an idea of what they want to become and be more inspired and free-willed as to what they want to be when they grow up. It will give them the resources and the advantage to learn and to become more excited about what they want to learn. They can learn more and find more resources on their own of what they want to learn.

In the end, it will be beneficial for them and will help them to be successful in their lives. It will allow them to be able to hopefully attain more skills and help them to become more diverse learners. I just hope that I can do my best in preparing them to be the most successful they can be.

PDP: Lessons Learned

I learned some new things reading these articles and watching these videos. I learned that technology is an amazing tool that can give us access to almost anything within a few seconds, and there are so many things that are at our fingertips that we can have access to and it is just going to get more and more technical as the years go on. I think that with having these many devices, there is no reason why someone would not want to learn and be taught. I can see more and more children becoming curious and smarter through gaining this kind of information so easily.

What I thought was fascinating is that when our students become adults, many of the jobs they will be receiving haven't even been invented yet. I thought that was incredible and yet so true. What I thought when I was younger of having a c.d. player with c.d.s playing was one of the best inventions that I could ever think of having and then iPods were invented, downloading songs, movies, t.v. shows, and streaming them online, I would have never thought possible! What It's amazing how far we have come in a short amount of time.

I thought another point that was interesting was that everyone is using this kind of technology. It is unbelievable that messages can be sent to anyone in the world in seconds. Technology is a great tool for providing people with so much information that there is no way that it could all be read. It is unbelievable to me and it would be beneficial to all students to be taught from experts online and other great resources.

PDP: Strengths and Weaknesses

For the NET Standards, I felt that my strengths were more of being able to find online resources to enhance students' creativity and higher level of thinking. I feel that it would be easy to access that kind of information and read if it is a good source to use from other teachers who have used it and use that knowledge to help navigate my way to what I think my students may benefit most from it. The weakness for me fell into how I would assess them using technology. I can use technology to help me in my lesson plans, but I would have to research and experiment to try to find ways to assess my students using technology better.

As far as taking the survey, I felt that I was mostly falling into the apprentice role of the results. I feel like I know most about emailing, making newsletters, and sending information out there, but as far as creating things with technology, I felt a little unsure about doing that because I only have a little bit of experience doing that. I feel that that is an important part of what I would like to learn and integrate into my classroom. It would help my students to learn more effectively and give more power to me and to them in the long run if I were to create my own things for them to learn from.

I felt that keeping updated on that eschool news page would help to feel like I can be up to date on the technology that is out there to help me with what I need to do better in my classroom to help my students learn and be most affected by this certain technology. I felt that I can learn many things on a computer, but using flipvideos, iPods, and other gadgets and type of technology would be very beneficial as other ways to learn rather than just the computer.

Reflection #10: Field Experience Service Learning Project

Ashley Hansen & Rebecca Dalsing
EDEL 3250-03
December 2, 2010

Field Experience Service Learning Project

a) Demographics
Our field experience was completed at Edgemont Elementary located within Provo School District. Edgemont contains students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Students are primarily white, with approximately 20% considered minority. We were placed in Mrs. Rigby’s 6th grade classroom. There were 32 students within the classroom, the demographics in her classroom fit the overall demographics of the school.

b) What is your relationship with your cooperating teacher? Explain.
We couldn’t have asked for a better relationship with our cooperating teacher. She saw us as fellow teachers, and treated us as such. We were able to use our creativity and style while teaching the class, but she offered her comments and past experiences to help us improve and grow. She also made herself available when needed so we were able to bounce questions, comments, or concerns with her.

c) How does he/she feel about the technology piece you created?
She loved our digital story, she made sure to get a copy. She was excited to see an educational piece of technology that she could use year after year. She was impressed by the classes reaction to the digital story and how enthralled they were with it.

d) How does he/she feel about the piece of lesson you completed?
Overall Mrs. Rigby was impressed with our lesson plans we created. The overall concepts worked really well. We believe the lesson plans worked well, but we did encounter some classroom management challenges while conducting some of our lessons.

e) How did the training session go? Explain.
Though Mrs. Rigby really liked the digital story, she didn’t have time for us to train her fully on how to create one. Since they have Mac computers in the classroom, we created our story using iMovie. This allowed us to get familiar with the program Mrs. Rigby and her students had at their fingertips. Even though Mrs. Rigby didn’t have time for a full training session, we were able to share some tips and hints for iMovie we learned along the way. She appreciated these tips and hints, and it appeared it gave her a little more confidence in the iMovie program and her ability to produce movies and/or digital stories.

f) How do you feel about this service-learning experience?
It was a great experience. We were able to learn more about ourselves and how technology can really be used within a classroom. We were even able to see some of the challenges a teacher actually encounters, such as time constraints. The overall concept of introducing teachers to additional technology is great, and as future teachers, we can see how it is important to stay up to date with technology and how it can be used within the classroom. Having someone come to your classroom and teach you sounds ideal, but while we were there, Mrs. Rigby was finishing up a term and getting ready for parent teacher conferences. This was not an ideal time for her to learn and fully dive into the technology we were trying to show her. While we were there to teach her new technology, we were first and foremost there to learn and observe. It was a balance trying to teach her some technology while respecting her time and other commitments she had for the time we were there.

g) What did your cooperating teacher gain from this experience?
Mrs. Rigby was surrounded by technology. From our observations, she only used it minimally throughout her day. By observing our lessons and watching specifically our digital story, she was able to see more uses for the technology she had at her fingertips. Even though we had a short minimal training session, she was able to see what iMovie was capable of, and she learned some quick tips and tricks to make it easier for her to create her own digital stories.

h) What did you gain from this experience?
Since we had to do an abbreviated training session, it allowed us to focus on the most important features of iMovie and some of the shortcuts that can be used. Not only did we learn a new program, we learned it a little more in depth in order for us to teach someone who was already familiar with the program. Not only did we gain technical skills, but we also learned a lot about ourselves and our potentials as future teachers. Mrs. Rigby helped point out things that worked well as well as things that didn’t work as well. We will be able to take our time we had in field and working with Mrs. Rigby and her class and become better teachers for future students we encounter.

i) Was it worth why or why not?
Yes, it was definitely worth every moment. Being in field and working with Mrs. Rigby and her students was a joy. It allowed us to learn more about ourselves and improve/refine our teaching skills. We also were able to get real world experience in a classroom and experiment with using technology along with other concepts we have learned throughout this semester. We learned what can work well for us, as well as how to integrate what we have learned into a student’s learning experience.

Reflection #8: Digital Story 3

What am I learning? What assignments am I performing? I have been learning a few things in the classroom about what we can use in our digital stories. It seems like these students are very interested in technology and for learning new and fun things. I think it will be a good idea to do our digital story on the entertainment of Ancient Rome involving the chariot races and gladiator battles for our subject in our digital story.

So what does this mean to me as a student, teacher, colleague today? It means that I can be able to use different lesson plans or units by using digital stories for these lessons. It can make it interesting and fun for students to each get a different feel for what they think the chariot races and gladiator battles would have been like. They can infer what they think would have happened at these events and why people wanted to attend them. I can explain to students of what entertainment events we attend and why and what makes it fun and interesting for us. I can help students relate to the Ancient Roman people of what they liked to do for fun.

Now what does this all mean to me as a future teacher? I think that creating a digital story like this and for other units where its applicable, will help students to feel and see what the event may have been like by using pictures and music. It helps them to expand their creativity and what they may be already learning in the classroom and in their lives. I hope that by doing this digital story, they will have the desire to create their own and be excited about the unit and lesson that they will be taught and will hopefully remember for a long time.

Reflection #8: Digital Story 2

What am I learning about? What assignments am I performing? I have been learning about copyright laws and how they apply to learning how to create digital stories and in other areas and uses of technology. I have been learning how to use it appropriately and how I can students copyright laws too and other forms of plagiarism.

So what does this mean to me as a teacher, colleague, and student today? Why are we doing this? What does this technology mean to me? It means to me as a student to know exactly what I can and cannot do as far as copyright laws go. I am going to be using many pictures and parts of lesson plans that I think will be appropriate and useful for me and my students. It's good to use them, but I need to know if I am allowed to use it and in what way to give credit for their work. This type of knowledge is what everyone needs to know and they can use it to reduce less problems that occur in the school such as cheating and plagiarizing. It helps all of us to know how to give credit for sites and pictures that we could use in our work.

Now what does this technology mean to me and my future students? How does this new information change my current schema? How will this type of information change me as a future teacher? This technology helps me and my future students know how to use the correct way to give credit to other people's work. It also helps me to teach them that whatever they put or display on the internet is their very own copyright. It helps me to encourage my students to learn how to use and choose their own copyright laws on the internet too. It teaches them and therefore, they will know to what they can and cannot use as far as copyright laws go. It helped me to learn what I can use and what I can't. It also helped me to find images on Google search that are fine to use, but they have certain copyright laws. Now I feel more safe and know that I can and cannot use.

Reflection #7: Digital Story

What am I learning? What assignments am I performing? I have been learning about digital stories and how they are beneficial to use in the classroom. I am learning how they create emotion to enhance learning by using pictures mostly rather than using text.

So what does this mean for me as a teacher, student, and colleague today? What does this technology mean to me? Learning and creating digital stories helps me as a teacher to better teach my students a unit where I want it to have an impact on them. Not only that, I hope that it helps them to remember the information and be more involved and want to learn more about the subject by watching digital stories. It helps me as a student to learn how to make digital stories so it will help me to add one more skill that I could have as a future teacher. This technology helps me and students to learn about very important subjects in the history through a different way of teaching. It helps them to remember and feel the emotion from the pictures, music, and video.

Now what does this technology mean to my future students? How will this information change the views of what I want teach in the future? It helps my future students to be able to learn more and truly connect with events from the past or the events that are already happening today. I want them to be aware and feel how other people did during those times. I want them to be able to connect with the stories and have them look back and still remember how they felt. I want to teach way to my students. I want them to walk away from that year in my class remembering not only what they learned, but mostly how they felt. I want them to be able to share with their parents and friends what they learned about and how that changed their perspective. I want my future students to also learn how to make digital stories so they can contribute and show their classmates, friends, and parents and we can all learn from each other that way too.

Reflection #6: Vidcast Key Assignment

Vidcast Key Assignment Reflection

The podcast series “National Parks” is a series that my team members and I have created to tie to the 4th Grade Core Curriculum: Standard 1: Students will understand the relationship between the physical geography in Utah and human life. Objective 3: Analyze how human actions modify the physical environment. One of the indicators helped us choose our topic. The indicator states: Outline the development of recreation in Utah since 1900 (e.g. sports, tourism, state, and national parks).
We chose this topic to help students understand the importance of the environment, and with Utah being very diverse in many different environmental regions through plant and wildlife throughout the state, we felt it was important for them to learn about these national parks and what they can find there. We believe students will benefit learning about national parks because it helps them to understand what species of plants and animals live there and what they can learn about different rock formations and regions within the different parks.
This assignment can be linked to “helping customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources” in the NETS Standards because having them use digital tools and resources can allow them to learn how they learn best. They can express their learning through visuals (images), audio (voice recordings), musical (music playing for appropriate assignment). We hope this assignment by using visuals, audio, and music will help all the diverse learning styles of students to learn about the national parks in an interesting and unique way.
Also, we hope “to apply the curricula to students across multiple content areas” as INTASC Standards states. We hope that learning about the national parks will open up other areas of the curricula such as weathering and erosion, different types of rock formations, wildlife and plant life in different regions, etc. These things are part of what makes up a national park and it opens up many doors for teaching the other standards and objectives in the curriculum.
Potential drawbacks for using this series could be that I could be teaching in a different state, let’s say in New York for example. The students can watch the vidcast, but it won’t benefit them much because they do not live near Utah and it is not in New York State’s curriculum obviously. I wouldn’t be able to use this lesson for them, so I would have to use something else that would fit their curriculum. Another drawback is that the objective could change where they don’t learn about Utah National Parks anymore, so I would have to make changes or not use it at all.
What I wish to do for the series is create other national park vidcasts. Maybe I could create individuals ones just about California or Arizona National Parks. I could also make it interesting and more diversified by combining all of the eastern states national parks and talk about each of them and why each are so unique. I could address their similarities and differences in region, wildlife, and plant life. I plan to increase my abilities better to effectively study and research and possibly visit these national parks with my students so they can know of the importance of the environment and national parks in general.

Reflection #6: Dance

What new insights do I have regarding creative dance and what it offers to students? I think that I was really surprised how well everyone worked together. I learned that everyone got along better and were willing to do things because they were doing it together. There wasn't much worry because everyone else was being creative in their dance and what they interpreted it to mean. They were able to feel safe and willing to be creative in what they were learning. It allows me and very likely my students to retain the information better from doing and thinking creatively and working together as a group.

So what does that mean for me next week's preparation and for field? It will help to allow students to feel safe, comfortable, and confident in expressing themselves. Everyone is unique and different in how they express emotions and different shapes. It allows them to feel more freedom and not feel so restrained to do what others want them to do. I wish to encourage the class and my students to use different levels, pace, and rhythm in creating different shapes. It will help them to learn the curriculum in a more fun and interesting and memorable way.

Now what do I need to incorporate these skills and knowledge into my classroom? I will try to incorporate many subjects into creative dance in order to help students want to remember those important lessons for the curriculum that they need to be tested on, but I want them to be able to remember how they felt and how much fun they had in being able to show their creativity. If I can enhance their creativity, then that will stimulate creativity to do well in all other subject areas.

Reflection #5: Vidcasts

What am I learning? I have been learning about vidcasts and how they are very useful to use in the classroom. We have been learning how to gather images, music, sounds, and putting them together using Photo Story.

So what does this mean for me? It helps me to be able to teach the curriculum in a more creative and useful way. It's more enjoyable and it actually shows real photographs, music, and recordings that I can have right there for my use. It allows me to be creative and be able to express and teach the unit how I want to teach it using my own music and recordings rather than learning it out of a textbook which someone else has already done. It helps me to enhance my creativity and pictures and script, so I can teach the students what I want them to learn.

Now what does this technology teach me and my future students? It will help me to be able to teach my future students how to teach them how to use vidcasts. They can create their own vidcast for a project, report, or presentation. I think they will love creating them because its their own creation and project. They can create their own music and recordings to teach me and their fellow students the Civil War or the Native Americans. It will help me as their teacher to be able to help them understand the unit by showing pictures and sharing the information about the unit. It is fun and interesting and I think kids will love doing it and learning it!

Reflection #4: Podcasts

What am I learning? I have been learning about podcasts and how you can use podcasts to record and upload your recordings to the internet. They can also be downloaded onto your iPod, iTouch, MP3's and MP4's too. It's a really cool tool and it's so easy to do it, we uploaded our podcast recording to the internet by recording a public service announcement.

So what and why are we doing this? I think this has been an awesome assignment to do for school because it can create so many ideas to do with students. It will be so easy for them to be able to use this as well. They can use it for digital stories, downloading music, movies, and other things onto their iPods and other devices for reports and presentations. They can create their own recordings which they will be so proud of doing. I can also do it for them as their teacher to model how to record and how podcasts can work with all different kinds of assignments, plus, I think they will have fun with it.

Now what does this mean for me and my students in my future classroom? It means this that there can be more resources used rather than textbooks. They can create their own work and be creative in that way. They can work in groups and have fun with their classmates creating projects using podcasts. It will motivate them to want to do these assignments and be ones that they will remember. They can always have them and so many years down the road, they can look back and still listen to their recordings for the projects they did in school.

Reflection #3

What am I learning? I have learned about how to create Google Site for my new teacher page for me and my students and their parents. I have learned how to add announcements, homework assignments, and resources to help them too.

So what does this mean to me? This has really helped me to organize the information I need for myself and my students. It has all of my items in one place so I won't be confused and they won't be confused about where to go to find all of the information needed. It helped me to post my announcements and assignments so my students will know exactly what they need to do if they are sick or if they are going on vacation, they can know ahead of time what to do. It will save them time and their parent's time if they can find it all online.

Now what does this mean for me and my future students? It means that they can already have a syllabus for themselves and their parents. They can find resources and know more about the subject in greater detail and depth. It will help me be able to have everything in one place and allow me to be able to upload things often and be able to remind them of upcoming things. It gives them an opportunity to know me and their parents as well. All around, it is beneficial for everyone!

Reflection #2: Google Docs

What am I learning? I am learning about Google Docs and being able to create documents that can be shared with other people to collaborate and work on the same project together while being anywhere in the world. Also, I have learned how to create a Google Calendar to organize my time and my husband's time very efficiently. Google Docs has been a great tool to use to save other people time and my time as well.

So What? So what does this mean for me as a student, teacher, and colleague today? This means that I can be able to communicate with my classmates on student projects on a regular basis without having to set up a time to work on it together. We can work on it at home whatever time is convenient for us. It saves us time, money, and our sanity! :) This would be great to have the students use Google Docs as well. They can work together in groups this way, they can follow their own calendar as well as my (their teacher's) calendar so they know what's due on certain days. This allows them to do their work at school or at home. They just have to pull up the internet and it's saved. It is great to be able to share documents with other teachers in the same grade level so they can have input on assignments or lesson plans and they also know what you're teaching their students too. It is a great tool and everyone can benefit from it in the classrooms and school.

Now what? What does this technology mean for my future students as well as I for their teacher? This is a great tool and I can see so many possibilities with it. Students can correspond with each other. They can change and fix things on a report or presentation before having to turn it in to their teacher. They can be sitting at home doing it and they can do it when it's convenient for them. I can see them giving feedback to other students and adding in or changing a few things to make the presentation better. I can see my students getting along really well and having fun doing this with each other. For me, I think that I could create so many lesson plans using Google Docs. I can create a math assignment or quiz online and they can print it off and we can go over the assignment together. I can post a question about the reading, another student will answer and then they post a question about the reading too. This cycle will go on till the whole class has had the chance to answer and post a question for their class. There are many things you can do and I think you can do almost anything with Google Docs!

Reflection #1: Why I want to be a teacher?

Why I want to be a teacher? I have known that I have always wanted to be a teacher because I love helping people, especially little children. I have always wanted to be able to make just a little part of their lives a little better by teaching in the right way and in a way that will help them remember, but not only that, I just want to be a good influence for them. I want to help inspire them to follow their dreams and to know that their future is bright. I want to make a difference in their lives for the good. That is why I want to be a teacher.