2 Articles

Don't Fear the Digital:
Using a computer to type something up is much easier than handwriting something down. It's easier and it saves paper. But when I sit down to type a paper I get distracted by soemthing like facebook. I am sure most college and high school students can agree to this. Today when Trudy came into our classroom we saw that the majority of the class would rather watch a video over readinbg or hear a lecture.

The Multitasking Generation:
This articlle is about technology and how it impacts children and families, and how multitasking impacts as well. using media helps children interact in the classroom. I think as future we need to incorporate multitasking in our lesson plans to help with higher level thinking and fit the characteristics of our students. This article shows do's and don'ts' for parents. For example this article says do take the time to hang out with your kids, and do set limits and monitor content. It alsos tells parents don't let technology steal your kids from you and don't be a screen sucker.

Articles

I read 2 articles this week, "The Multitasking Generation” and “Don’t Fear the Digital.” I enjoyed both articles and found them very interesting. I thought the multitasking generation was incredible. A family was observed for months and most of the time the family was separated even when they were at home. The son was usually in his room, online and IM-ing his friends while listening to music and doing homework. The daughter was on her laptop and talking on her cell phone. The parents could hardly manage to get their children’s attention. I feel like this is something that many families deal with. I know in my family, we try to keep our gadgets off for some family time. It seems to me that this family needs to set up something so they can actually have some time to talk to each other.
The second article I read was about how the digital is rapidly becoming more prominent in our generation. We do not need to fear this transition because everything changes sooner or later. The argument that was proposed in the article was that many people will not be able to do things like write legibly any longer. I think that this could be true, and in many cases it is. My grandmother has beautiful handwriting because she was forced to practice for school. My parents both have decent handwriting but you can tell that it can be a little sloppy. I feel like my generation has horrible handwriting. Typing on a computer may be faster but I think that practicing both typing and good penmanship is important.

Articles for Chapter 10....really this time!

When I was about seven years old I had a computer program called Jumpstart. It incorporated learning with fun games. It worked on spelling, math skills, and second language skills. In an article about children using computers it says that children should start using computer around the ages of 3-4 because it helps reinforce what they are learning. Children younger than three should not be using computers because they need to learn using their senses. Even when young children start to use computers, computers should not be their main way of learning, but more of a levy to keep the information they have already learned. Even though schools should be incorporating technology into the classrooms even more, studies show that only a fraction of teachers have had any training on how to utilize them. I found this to be extremely interesting since I will be in elementary education, this is my freshman year, and I'm taking the technology class now. So what I'm wondering is....are schools sending out unqualified teachers just to have them graduate?

The second article I read about how many teachers aren't creating a classroom environment conducive to critical thinking. A way to rectify this problem is to have media tools in the classroom: televisions, computers, radios, even newspapers or magazines. The standard sit and read from a text box then fill in a A, B,C or D bubble just doesn't work for this generation. This generation have been brought into a world where they are constantly bombarded with media images and are use to having to comprehend at a faster level. This is a lot more from even when I was born. I have a niece that is three years old and knows how to work a cell phone. She knows to press the green phone to call and the red phone to hang up, she doesn't know the numbers that well, but she knows that if she wants to talk to me or mommy or whoever, she has to press them.

The last article talks about how there are several different types of teachers. There is the teach from your gut who believes with absolute certainty that what they're teaching is right, but cannot explain why. The is the teach from the gut with reason...they have the same ability to do the right thing in their classroom and can explain why, but they don't use educator vernacular.
Another type of educator is one who can explain things in educational vocabulary but common language as well; they also have the positive qualities of the first two types of teachers. The last one is the type of teacher who knows all the right words and all the right things to say, but for the life of them cannot tell you why you should learn. From these theories stated above the best one to be would be the educational translator. Or hey, maybe you should try to find your one type of teaching style that works the best for you.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 was titled Designing and Planning Technology Enhanced Instruction. Teachers who want to create effective instructions must consider everything that needs to happen in the classroom and during the lesson. The Dynamic Instructional Design (DID) has six steps to it and they are know the learners, state your objectives, establish the learning environment, identity teaching and learning strategies, identify and select technologies, an perform a summative evaluation. Bloom’s taxonomy was addressed in this chapter which we discussed this in the classroom. To use for out lesson plan.. Support technologies are a great tool to use in the classroom and some examples of them are the radio, videotapes, and computer hardware. These technologies is a way that teachers can enhance teaching and learning strategies.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 dealt with the importance of creating lesson plans that are well organized and thought through. Not much is learned from a teacher who is unprepared and does not know what he or she is going to talk about. This whole section really spoke to me personally, because I tend to be one of those people who will throw something together at the last minute and then stumble as I present it. This is not how a good teacher should act. Being prepared is a very important thing for a teacher.

Articles for chapter...2?

The first article I read was entitled Technology and MI. The article started with a narration of Ramonda Van Winkle and what would happen if she were to wake up in school from a 50 year nap. While inside the school she wouldn't notice much of a difference technology wise, but outside there would be an explosive of new technologies being used. The fact that technology has encroached into all aspects of life, except school systems. Has technology worked a lot in high schools as well as lower grades? There has been uses such as the Internet and Cds, but considering the amount of technology we use in every other part of our life, what students use in school is comparably less. How could technology help accommodate to various types of learning styles?
The second article I read was about IMing and how it effects students academically. Some instructors argue that any reading and writing is good for a student and that text/IM language is just an example of how language is always changing and evolving. I have to disagree. Yes language changes, but some text and IM language is so mentally dumbing that it makes me cringe to read it. For example: "Yo,Waz haps. Nmhjc U L2G 2 movie 2nite well, g2g txt bk s00n!" That was an incredibly mild version of text/IM language and I hate it. I am one of the people that puts punctation and capitlzation and spells things out. Does reading and writing help a student...yes. Does whatever that language is help...no.
Last but not least my third article is called What does Globalization mean for Education? The main sections answer that question: it means increased opportunities to learn with and from global community, it means wonderful collaborative projects for students and teachers and it means wonderful opportunities for students to be involved in global projects of their own. I have to say that I think this is very true. There are so many resources that allow someone in a small town in Indiana ( ok me) to talk to someone in say Ireland or Paraguay. The communication tools that are now available to students kind of allows us to be in more control over how much we learn outside of the classroom. Before we were fairly limitied to what resourced the teacher gave to us, now there are free lectures form IVY League schools available.

Interchapter 8

When a teacher thinks about making a classroom website, they should put the following information on their site: Teacher information, Class/course information, Daily/weekly information and homework, Information for parents and information for the community. They need to make sure their site meeds the basic guidelines. Teachers need to be sure that their site isn't too visually irritating. If a website has too many fonts and bright colors on it, it may take away the message and/or professional feel of the site. Teachers shouls go to the Bubbly online portal to test the usability of their site for students who are disabled. Teachers should make sure that their whole site is working. If the site doesnt work correctly, then it will confuse students and other people who need to read or know the information.