1. As an educator, what are your present strengths and weaknesses in technology?
2. How do you plan to use your strengths?
3. How do you plan to address the weaknesses?
I feel that I am up to date on most technology available for classroom use. I just completed my Masters in Curriculum Design with Technology and used quite a bit of technology. My strengths are that I have used an overhead projection system that enables what is shown on the computer screen to be projected onto a large screen. This gave the ability to display a web site or show a PowerPoint on the large screen. Also used was a document camera that projected the image of whatever was under the camera to be displayed on the large screen. This was very helpful with manipulatives and writing assignments. I also used a writing pad that enabled what was being written to show on the large screen through the projection system. This was awesome when checking worksheets. The best technology item in the classroom was clickers. these are hand held answering devices for the students so that they can answer questions from the screen and punch in their answer. The device will tell the student if the answer they chose was correct or not and it also was able to provide a printout for the teacher of how many questions each student answered correctly. Ipods and handheld tape recorders were also used in the classroom.
I plan to use my strengths to enhance the lesson plans with interactive work for the students to help them learn while being engaged and having fun. The clickers can be used to practice multiplication problems on a time limit, take pre or post tests, story tests and play Jeopardy for review of Science or Social Studies material. The document camera will be used to display student work and then have other students do grammar corrections. Also demonstrating under the document camera with small items that would be difficult to see by the students would be implemented. The projection system would allow the students to see the large screen from their seats, so there would be no need to crowd around to see pictures. So pictures or streaming from the internet could easily be shown to all using the projection system. Handheld recorders were used to record directions and rubric requirements for those that have a language issue or those with a lower level of reading. this would enable the student to listen to the instructions and rewind and repeat , if necessary, without having to disturb anyone to ask for help. For the rubric, being able to listen to what is required before, during and after the project sets the student up for success meeting those requirements.
To address my weakness, which is wanting to use all of the above mentioned everyday, would be to make sure that it is appropriate for what the goal is. It is not helpful to the students to just use the technology because they can, but to help them reach a higher level or better understanding of a difficult concept. I also would need to educate myself on the newer technologies and decide what would provide the most benefit and not just request or purchase every new item that I find. So to help my weakness I need to educate myself and see what would work well with my students along with what will enhance the technologies we already have in place.
PART II:
The technology director has given me $10,000 to use on handheld devices for my library. I am going to tell you what I am going to purchase and why.
MP3 Players
25 ea. @ $200.00 = $5,000
There are many uses for the MP3 player for my library. Having 25 will enable me to have a class set so that students can listen to pre-recorded instructions, they can use them to record audio interviews for a class project, record audio reports from a field trip or use to record data for an in the field experiment. The MP3's can also be used for library lessons with a call number that the students have to find the book to demonstrate they know how to use the library.
E-book Readers
5 ea @ $400.00 = $2,000.00
E-book readers have an increased size screen for viewing newspapers and journals. They can be used to teach the students how to find a current event using the latest journals and newspapers. The readers can be used to preview books before making the commitment to purchase. The students could also view preview books and choose which ones they prefer for the library.
Portable Media Players
6 ea @ $500.00 = $3,000.00
Portable media players can be used with voice input for any special needs student. The student can read and have their voice recorded or can have the player "talk" to them.
If connected to the network the librarian can download a file to his/her device and then have the students download the file during class time. Then the students can follow the directions given for the assignment. The players can also be used to record data from research or experiments. Since the devices are small, the student can easily move around the library.
These are the three items that I would spend my $10,000 on to improve my library.
PART III:
This discussion will be about the youtube video The Machine is Us/Using Us. This video can be viewed at this link.
Web 2.0 - What have you learned and why do you think that Professor Wesch gave this title to the video?
Web 2.0 is a term used to describe web services and applications with an emphasis on collaborating amongst humans. There are several tools that are associated with the term Web 2.0. A few of the more popular are :
- Blogger
- Wikis
- Google Docs
- del.icio.us
- Flickr
- MySpace
These technologies allow for people to share their opinions, personal information, videos and pictures using social bookmarking sites, video casting, picture sharing, social networking and podcasts.
The above mentioned video describes how we started communication with pen and pencil and then moved into text based internet and has now developed into a social device. This device that is about us and created by us is also created by the the internet itself. The more information we give the computer the more the computer can give us information.
I believe that the reason Professor Wesch named the video The Machine is Us/Using Us is because the computer is so involved in our lives and is an integral part of our daily lives. Therefore the computer is us. The computer is using us for the information that we input into the computer. The more information that we put into the computer, the "smarter" the computer becomes for us.
PART IV:
We have been discussing the term Web 2.0 and the implications for libraries.
I believe are more people adding content to sites these days. The one things that is important to keep in mind is that this information is posted by people, which means it may or may not be totally accurate. When using a site that has information posted from many different people, I personally would not use it as a sole source. I would make sure that I had other information to back it up. It is hard to know if what is being posted is correct if there is no double checking. Once you find sites that are consistently accurate, then I would bookmark them or "tag" them and use them often.
I believe that having access to blogs and wikis and such is awesome and it would be a great benefit for a librarian to use. It certainly would make the information regarding the library more accessible to students and parents. I have already created blogs that list new and upcoming releases of books. It is something that has to be updated regularly, but it is easy to find for the students and keeps them in the know.
I have tagged some sites so that I can go back to them later. I'm not sure if this is really any different than bookmarking them in your favorites. I guess if you have a lot of sites, you could tag them so that all the like ones are together, but you can also do this in your favorites by creating a new folder to put all the similar sites. I haven't decided yet if tagging is better than bookmarking at this point. There is one total benefit to tagging them, you would be able to have access to them from any computer, where bookmarking limits the access to that particular computer. So I guess I have answered the question; because you can access from anywhere I would say that tagging is better.
PART V:
I will answer question 3 for the final section.
I have specific plans to implement the blog that I creatd with the newly relased and upcming bks. This blog will give access to this informatin fromthe library web page fr parents, students and staff.
I also will be implementing a mashup from the library website that will display the books that will be highlighted each month. These may be theme, special author, etc. for the students to view.
I have previously written in Part II of this blog about the new technology items that I would purchase and how they can be used.
I believe that tagging would be something that I would also implement. This could be helpful for the students and the teachers to find sites easier.
There are many other technologies that I need to study on but will probably implement at some point.
I have learned a great deal about technologies that are available to use in the educational setting.
