Day 11 Evaluating The Internet of Technology on Teaching and Learning

Lead, Don't Lecture was an amazing article that made me have a different perspective in the way I teach. My school is a Reading First School. We pretty much do lectures of 15 to 20 min. then the students work on their own while the teacher works with a small group according to their needs. After reading this article, I realized that I can have students working in teams instead of on their own. I also thought about a way that I can use the three computers in my classroom to integrate technology.
After reading the article Transforming Learning with Technology, I realized that I need to incorporate more technology in my classroom. I use technology everyday but I am the one that utilizes the technology in the classroom. I would like my students to do more project-based learning using technology. Even though the article was about High School students utilizing technology I believe that first graders can use technology as well. The only thing is that I have to do more planning and I will need to give my students more help and more time to finish their project. I am very excited now. I can't wait to begin the new school year!

How Do Teachers Become Tech Wizards?
This article really inspired me because most of the characteristics that the author mentioned I possess. I am always trying to learn new things. I am open to new ways and new ideas. I also like to figure things out on my own. While taking the classes EDT 545 and 546, many people commented that I was too to my self and that I rarely asked for help. I guess I just don't like to ask for everything. I like to figure things out on my own because that is the way I learn. I learn when I do it.
The only thing that I need to work more on is determination. I am a goal getter don't get me wrong but sometimes, when things get rough and don't go the way I expected them I tend to just let it go. Which has been proven not to be the best thing.

1 to 1 Supports Transformation of Maine Classrooms.
Maine schools got a wonderful grant. Every student and teacher received an i-book. The process of getting this grant was very extensive but that was not all. After getting the laptops the real work started. Teachers and administrators were required to commit to an ongoing professional development to make the best use of their technology tools. This was a huge time commitment for teachers and administrators but it was worth it because it was confirmed that the laptops helped them better individualize their curriculum to fit their students' needs.
Teachers also mentioned that students are more actively involved in learning and the quality of their work has improved. Even parents commented that their students that never did homework before now they stayed after school to finish assignments.

I think this type of grants are very good for schools to get, the only thing I'm concern about is that some teachers might not be willing to go the extra mile required to incorporate technology in the classroom. What will the administration do in this case?

Day 10 Evaluating Web Sites and Standards

On the article Evaluating Information Found on the Internet I found very useful information about how to evaluate what we read on the Web. One of the most important things our students and ourselves have to consider is: Who wrote it? Most of the time, students, think that if someone has a web page is some body they can trust. They don't even have to question what that person is saying. Which is something else we have to consider: The publishing body. On my opinion, I believe this is one of the hardest things we have to teach our students because they have to be critical and analyze the information they are reading on their own. The article Tree Cow is a perfect example for this type of criteria.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Some things that we can do as teachers to not overwhelm our students with assignments are:
- Provide the URL ahead of time so students don't have to go through the trouble of analyzing all the information given by their search.
- Plan ahead. Some we come across teachable moments but when using the Web we really need to make sure that the web site we are looking for still there or we have to be careful what we type and search because it can cause many problems.
- Don't take for granted that students know how to search. Most students have taught themselves how to use the Internet but that doesn't mean they know how to direct a meaningful search.

Implementing the Standards into Projects.
I know how excited it is to have our students participate in projects. We know that students learn better when they participate in hands on projects but first there are several things we have to consider:
- Look at the standards first. What are the standards that I'm covering with the project?
- What is the main goal of the project?
- What am I trying to teach with this project?

It is very important that we are familiar with the standards that we need to cover in our curriculum. This is something that I take very serious. Every new school year I print the State Standards and I put them in a binder by category and I use them every time I do my lesson plans.
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Day 9 Building Global Learning Communities and School Websites

An Internet Tour of your School was mainly about taking pictures of your school and make a virtual tour, which I think it's very interesting. I have never done a virtual tour of my school using pictures that I have taken. It would be a very good project to think about in the future.

A Collaborative Internet Project reminded me of what we talked about yesterday in class about having the students teach their parents or grandparents to use a computer and use different types of multimedia. In this article Middle School students entered a project called "Trading Spaces." The project consisted on having elderly partners from a Village near by their school. While the students were riding the bus to the nursery home they brought up a conversation about how the first session would be just to get to know their partner. They conducted interviews and informal talks. The students of this school won a trophy and six new Dell PCs.

Building a School Website was very easy to follow. This article gives you step by step directions on how to build a website. It even teaches you the importance of file structure. I guess I should have read this article at the beginning of this class.

The other article about Making a School Website has almost the same content. Step by step directions but I think these directions were a more confusing for me. I am a very structured person. I need to focus on one thing at the time. While I was reading this page I had several links to read and then go back to the main page to follow what I was reading first. I just think it was a bit confusing for me but it did have very good ideas and directions like the first step is asking yourself different questions like: Who is your audience?, How often will you be updating your website? and other important questions that one should ask before building a website.

Day 8 Equity Issues

Caught in the Digital Divide was a very interesting article. Being Hispanic myself and working in a low socioeconomic school, the contents of the article didn't surprise me at all. Last school year I had 25 students and only two had a computer at home and out of those two just one had access to the internet. Even so, these students have access to computer technology through the school and the public library, which brings me to the second article Recent Reports on the Digital Divide. According to an informal survey I conducted in the classroom, all of my students had an account at the public library and all of them at one time or another had used the computers there. It is true what the article says about schools and public libraries making a big impact closing the Digital Divide. The article also mentions that in 2002 the Department of Commerce conducted a survey about computer and internet in the United States. The report showed that there had been growth in the use of technology and that Latinos are even acquiring more computers and using the internet more than Whites. This reminds me of something that I know about Latinos or Hispanic. We are all about entertainment. We like to buy the newest technology like T.Vs and DVDs, furthermore if computers and internet are the "new thing" we don't want to be left out.

Day 7 Information Literacy

Teaching Information:Tips and Resources

This article has summarized all the information we have been talking about. Teaching our students to become literate people is not easy. It's a long process. Even adults have difficulty finding information and evaluating it. It is very clear that the Internet is not designed for structured people. You are reading  one page and then there is links with in the text that take you somewhere else. All of the sudden you are lost and you don't remember what was the page you started with. Thank God for the "back" button.

Going back to the article, it is true that we as informed teachers have the responsibility to model and guide our students through what they need to learn about searching the Internet, recognize reliable resources, plagiarism, and give credit to the sources.

Fact or Folly: Authenticating Online Information

Everyone and anyone can post information on the Internet. They all can seem experts. So what students have to learn first is hoe to find good information online and how to evaluate it. To find information students need to use dependable sources like bookmark collections from the library and educational sites. It is very important that students also learn to make effective searches, which is something that we really have to teach our students because they think they know "how" to search but in really not all of them know. We also need to teach our students to evaluate the information they find. As one of our previous articles mentioned,"We need to create infotectives, which is a student thinker capable of asking questions about data to convert it into information and eventually insight" 

Day 6 The Internet: Surfing Safety

I really liked the article "The Safe Passage" I think this is a good resource for parents and teachers. It was very informative with links to understand how the Internet works and what a web page is. I also noticed that the article links to a web page that teaches how to search the the Internet. This is a very good article and I will add it to my sites for parents and teachers.

Day 5 Tehcnology Transforming Education

On the Big Ideas Better Schools: Ten Ways to Improve Education I loved the video that shows how students work on a Project- based learning. As the article says the students were energized, focused, and challenged. The technology tools were facilitating the learning. I don't know if it was the administrators idea or the teacher's but the teachers were working together integrating the same project. The math, the social studies and the language arts teachers were all working on the same project but doing different things according to their subject.
I would love for that to happen in my school. The problem is that we are too individualists. At my school every year we have a "Learning Fair" towards the end of the school year. We have to come up with a project-based learning where students work in groups to answer the big question (we start we the abstract) The only difference is that we are not too far advanced in using technology yet. It is hard for students to get into the computer lab and we just have three video cameras and four digital cameras.