What do you think of blogging technology in terms of teaching and learning?

First, I want to point out that I am blogging on a strictly class-related blog. This supports the instructional use and value of blogging in the classroom arena. A blog could be used as a platform to answer review questions verses the traditional paper and pen. I think blogging also supports the Flipped classroom model so that students can now complete tasks online, at home via virtual classroom tools. Blogging is also a great tool to spark debates and idea exchange amonst students and professor, even used as a discussion board. I think that the best use would be to have students keep their own personal blog, maybe as a writing or sceince journal, to reflect on at the end of the year. For discussions a classroom website wouldsuffice where there is a discussion corner for students. Ideas? What would you add ?

Reflection: PowerPoint Presentation

This week I took the same lesson plan and created a PowerPoint presentation as if to present it to my classroom. I have done PPs countless times in class before so the program was not as difficult as putting the actual lesson on slides. In this assignment I had to be aware of how much information was on each slide so not to overload a single slide and to make it pleasing to the eye of my audience. Since I made this lesson plan for a 2nd Grade class, I made my slides very basic in color so to highlight the key points to keep students on track. I also included lots of pictures and sounds to both relay the music lesson as well as keep the students attention. One thing I particularly liked about my PP was that I incorporated classroom activities, games, and a class project. I am eager to try this method out to see if having "breaks" for activities and games does well with the classroom and helps them retain the lesson better.
The only problem I encountered was emailing the file because the file size was too large. Other than that, I'd say I enjoyed this assignment and will really be using PP in my everyday classroom for lesson plans.

Reflection 5: Integrated Lesson Plan

        My Reflection: I chose to make an integrated lesson plan for a general music class at the elementary level. I recently created and executed an actual lesson plan for such class and “tweaked” it to this specific assignment to become more technologically integrated as well as to include the use of a spreadsheet. All this was to say, the majority of my research came from experience in k-4 classrooms and physically testing this lesson plan out. The challenge was finding a lesson that could easily be modified for the younger ages yet remain a challenge for the older ones.
        The assignment I went with was over the musical elements of dynamic and tempo. Beyond the actual lesson, I had the children find these sounds in the classroom and think of everyday objects outside of the classroom that also fit the different dynamics of forte, mezzo forte, mezzo piano, and piano as well as the different tempos of adagio, moderato, and allegro. Then to integrate technology, I had every student use the computer to research a song that they know that fits these specific elements. Every student signed up on a spreadsheet, a sort of table with the dynamics listed on the top and the tempos listed along the side so that each child had a unique combination to go with. For example, one kid might have had "forte, moderato" and would then have to find a song that was played loud(forte) and at moderate speed (moderato). They also had to find the sheet music for it and indicate where exactly the element combo was present in the song. For the assessment aspect , I had them present their song by playing it and showing their sheet music findings to the class.

        What I learned from this assignment was that really any lesson could be integrated with technology and/or a spreadsheet. Originally I did not teach this lesson using the help of the computers/music files/spreadsheets, but I feel those factors make the learning more about the child's experience verses the teacher's lecture. I learned how using technology can contribute to an open-ended learning environment and I think that kids actually would be more interested in the lesson! I will actually use this new-and-improved lesson plan in future music lessons.

Reflection IV: Project Proposal

 So for my ELED final project, I have to put together a classroom website as if it were the real thing. Now through our lessons, I have found that a classroom website is an essential communication tool as a teacher and also great reference point for my (future) students. I dont actually have the website up and live, however I did submit a proposal discussing what pages and links would be included on my personal classroom site.

I decided that since my classroom will be second grade, there are five crucial pages to include: a home page of course, a students portal , a parents corner, community news section, and a class calendar. I found links from multiple sites to include so far including school prep tips and filler activities for students at home. Although its very "in-the-making", I feel like by the end of this project, I'll have a great foundation to build my actual teacher site from. Website name to be posted later... look out!


Also I am not sure what platform to do the website on, any suggestions? Free website creators would be appreciated..

Refelction III: Creating a Spreadsheet

Reflection III: Creating a Spreadsheet

    For this unit, I created a grade sheet using Microft Excel documenting a fictious class of ten students and then graphing their class averages. Now I use Microsft software in my daily life and was no stranger to the program; what was new to me was making a graph to represent the data recorded. So, what I did was list out each students assignment grade, calculated their average, and calculated the class average of each subject. I feel the graphs would be a great tool in the real classroom environment to see a visual representation of strengths and weaknesses. For example, in my graph I could easily identify that History had the lowest class average of all the subjects and could use room for improvement. As a teacher, this woud help me notice areas I need to emphasize more with my class or even develop a new teaching method for.
   I find Excel the best, hands-down, for calculating sum and averages (both crucial to the grading process). It was not difficult to create my own formulas either, which will come in handy for grade curves, weighted assignments, bonus work, etc. I hope everyone else found this to be as valuable of practice as I found it to be!


*Under Construction* Ms. Young's practice spreadsheet to be  u p l o a d e d   s o o n

Discussion II: Enhancing the Classroom

Unit II, Discussion II:  Discuss how this tool/resource can enhance your own teaching and learning in the classroom. Give at least 3 examples of how you would use the Internet to improve teaching and learning in your classroom. Make sure at least one of your examples focuses on how you would use blogs in your classroom.
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Since I dont have my book yet, I have put the first discussion off- to be posted soon! So for this discussion, I want to first point out how technology can be used really ANY way in the classroom. That is, for introdcuing new lessons, providing real world examples, interactive classwork, testing and evaluating skills, or even larger project assingnments; all can be done on the computer, interactive whiteboards, or personal equipment such as an ipad.
Three specific example on how technology can enhance learning in the classroom would be: One, visual lesson plans can be more effective to students, especially younger learners. I want to make sure I have many powerpoint presentations to introduce lessons and offer students to bring in a thumb drive to bring home notes. Two, the use of interactive whiteboards is a great way to get the students involved right then and there. I can see the use of these in skill-based games styled after Jeopardy where whoever writes it on their board first gets the point. I think this is great, also, to see their work in math problems. And Three, blogs can enhance learning by keeping the students more connected with both the teacher and other students. I can see having their own blogs, under my classroom page of course, being useful in group projects especially.We dont always have time to get together and compile a posterboard of the latest assignment, but with a blog students can access their partners and post information virtually anywhere anytime. Even if its a way to say hey meet me here at this time to work on the project, that open communication allows more to be done.

Reflection II: Creating this Blog

Reflection II: Reflect on your experience creating your blog. I know it's only been a few days, but attempt to reflect on the implications blogging has on teaching and learning.

I had a great experience creating this blog. The "Blogger" program.. organization...(?)... is very user-friendly and made it pretty easy to create a blog and personalize it accordingly. The only thing I was confused about was the organizational layout of it all. As in, posts being sub-catagories of the parent blog. When I tried blogging before, I kept making a new blog for everything.. instead of just making a new post under the main blog. If that makes sense? I'm sure this was annoying for anyone reading it.. but I think I got the hang of it this time around. I am glad I am getting this practice in blogging! When I do get a class of my own, soon, I want to immediately create a virtual classroom with my own blog and sub sections for each class.I feel the implications of having a blog would definietly make the students feel more involved in their own learning and could potentially bring parents and the community closer as well. Kids are so dependent on technology, I really dont see any other way to effectively connect with students.