Reading Rocket Podcast Link

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Teaching a child to read can be challenging. It is important for teachers and parents to be enthusiastic about books in order to get children excited about reading. Dr. Maryanne Wolf discusses some of the behaviors all parents can employ to help their child become a successful reader. Wolf also emphasizes how important it is for parents to realize the positive impact they can have on their child at a young age, because they are their child's first teacher

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Week 5 - Reflections

Christine Bowen    Week #5

                First of all, real learning occurs when a student knows the end objective and the teacher presents the means in which the student can reach that end objective.  Referring to behavioral objectives, maybe the teacher didn’t make the learning objectives know.  Just because students have access to technology 24/7 doesn’t mean that they understand what the objectives are.  Chapter 3 states that sometimes teaching objectives are too vague to impact student learning.  I actually can see that.  We need to tell them the big picture right up front and then give them the small pieces that make up the big picture.  I have been in classes myself where the teacher assigns work without telling us how it relates to anything.  Do this because this is the assignment.  Maybe that is one reason why the project failed.  If the teachers were giving daily work and the student’s didn’t know their big picture it could explain the fact why it had such a small effect.   

Secondly, I think that recent developments in technology over the past decade could actually be a legitimate reason as to why the project failed.  It is hard to change teachers and their practices.  Especially, when they are technologically challenged.  Teachers are used to having 100+ students looking up to them on any particular day as the one who has all the answers.  Many teachers are not big risk takers when it comes to trying technology in the classroom.  They let their fears get in the way and teachers take the easy way out.  As the teachers in the project were all core class teachers this could be the case.  I am learning some valuable tools in this class and I know some veteran teachers could use this same information but they are afraid to challenge or change their ways.  It could also be the district’s failure to provide teachers with adequate guidance as to how to integrate the new technology.                                                  

 Thirdly, a reason why the project failed could be related to the section in the chapter about instructional television.  The teachers may have required the students to watch videos without any assignment to go along with it.  If teachers are showing video for instructional purposes then the teacher must have an assignment to accompany it or the student will not apply anything in the video to their learning.  The teachers may have thought that they were assignment the greatest video as class work and it will not have any significant impact if there is not some type of assignment to hold the student accountable for their learning.                                                                                                                                                             

 A strategy that would have made an impact would be using technology to present and share information among students and teachers.  There is a variety of projects and assignments where students can create answers to different questions. Homework could be posted into folders and projects could be shared on-line.  The objectives in the core classes would have to be clearly defined so the student could understand how the little assignments all relate back to the big objective to the unit.  Teachers could send messages quickly at any time of day so that students could check in and see where they are at and what work was due the next day.  I think it would be great to link students to a forum where they could post questions and students could answer each other (similar to this class).  I think it would be great to post video for students to watch with an assignment.  I would do this now if students had access to the internet at home.  It would help the students who take longer to do assignments to have more time and it would certainly help with an absent student where they could come back with some of their missed work completed.  I believe that these are just a few strategies that could make 24/7 access more effective. 

                                                                                                                                                                      

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Week #4 Reflections

Christine Bowen – Week #4

Chapter 1
Chapter 1 was an okay read because it reinforces the fact that technology in general is always changing and education is trying to keep up with what its role should be.  Educational technology seems an appropriate name to me. 

I pulled my district’s policy on students using the network.  It is a two-page agreement that the student and parent have to sign.  There are 20 items in the agreement.  Our technology department titles their course Business Systems & Technology.  I copied the course description below straight from the school’s website.   It is interesting to compare it to definitions in Chapter 1.  

Course Description:

BST I provides basic computer training for all students that are either post-high school education and/or entering the workplace. Students will use a variety of software in Windows, including Office 2007, which features Word (word processing), Excel (spreadsheet),, PowerPoint (presentation slides), and Publisher (desktop publishing). Units include Internet activities, document formatting, and business presentation skills. The curriculum used follows criteria in Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Exams. Students may also use digital cameras and scanners. Open to grades 9-12. Credit .5.

Social Bookmarking

I have worked with delicious in the past in a professional development meeting.   At work, I just save sites to, “My Favorites”.  A pro to delicious is that you can access all of your favorite sites anywhere.  Therefore, I have started to play with the delicious account to see how often I go to it. 

It is valuable to see what sites other people are using.  I really like that it lets you know the number of people that have bookmarked particular pages.  Now, that doesn’t mean the page is good but usually the numbers let me know that there must be something about the site that could be useful as so many people have bookmarked it. 

I am not sure about using this with students.  I don’t know if I trust some of my students (I teach Alternative) to drop sites into delicious from anywhere.  I don’t think they would mess with the Wiki because that posts assignments but I am a little apprehensive about the delicious. 

I did a search on delicious.  My next unit is the Great Depression.  I entered it into the search box and came back with 170 hits.  I will look at some of these this week.  I think it does a better job of filtering things for educational purposes than Google does.  Most of the posts seem to have been done by educators.