Blog #5

Hi Class!
Using powerpoint in the classroom can have a great impact on students and teachers alike. The impact powerpoint can make on teachers in the classroom is amazing. Powerpoint allows teachers to not only become organized while teaching a specific lesson, but it can also help engage the students in the lesson they are learning. If you’ve been in the classroom this part is very important! A great example of the power of powerpoint in the classroom actually came from a chemistry class I was taking here at Cal State San Marcos. I am definitely not a chemistry whiz, but the professor used powerpoint in a very effective way for every lecture. The powerpoint helped me organize my own notes so I could actually understand them and I was able to get an A (wow!) in chemistry. The students that we will be teaching in today’s classroom are very familiar with technology (at least most of them), so the use of powerpoint is something they would probably find very engaging. Pointpoint can be visually stimulating and can help those students who learn this way. Although I have never thought about using powerpoint in my own classroom (because I will be teaching first or second grade), I will probably reconsider using it. The part of Erika’s pointpoint about powerpoint, where she talks about using graphics made me start to think about how the powerpoint itself along with the use of age-appropriate graphics could help students even as young as 6-7 years old. So, powerpoint has the ability to not only improve my teaching but also my student’s learning.

Bloom's theory about developing higher levels of thought processes to everyday classroom reading makes a lot of sense. In Bloom’s theory he says that it is important for students to be able to obtain knowledge and comprehension, and to be able to apply this by evaluation, analysis, and synthesis. These are important concepts because it’s one thing to know and remember things about what you’ve learned but it a completely different thing to be able to comprehend what you learning and why it is important. So, an important part of teaching is knowing how to be well-rounded in all of these necessary areas of learning. One way we can do this is to ask the right questions to our students. I liked the examples of questions that were given about Goldilocks in Bloom’s theory. If our students are able to answer all of them we will know that they don’t just know the facts but the meaning behind all of them!

Oh, the Changes We've Seen in Technology

Hi Class! The article we read, Oh, the Changes We’ve Seen, was about how technology has affected the way students learn and teachers teach. As we’ve seen in this class so far, and from all of the articles we’ve read I can definitely see this to be true. Technology has an amazing way of getting students interested in the learning process. The article stated that, “Technology was not a fad, but a tool providing possibilities that we could only imagine 30 years ago.” (p. 7) I find it amazing that 30 years ago my parents would never have been able to introduce me to technology the way I have been able to introduce my own children at the same age I was back then. Kids today have such a big advantage having technology in their lives. The article states that students are able to take on many roles by using technology, which include; Learner of facts, programmer, problem solver, editor, designer, collaborator, adventurer, sense maker, and much more. Given all of these roles, anybody can see that technology is and should be a big part of the school experience. The real-world story that was mentioned on p. 16, talked about how when students can relate and start to care about what they are learning, they are a lot more motivated in their learning process. I can really relate to this statement. In my previous blog I talked about how my daughter was studying whales in her third grade class and it wasn’t until they constructed the body parts of the whale on the computer that all of the information they were learning about whales was able to sink in. They really took the time to construct their whales on the computer and because of this they really began to care about how the project looked. Once they finally printed the project, they all gleamed with such pride.

I learned a lot this week from the assignment we had which was constructing a newsletter. I never knew that Microsoft Word had so many of the awesome tools that it has, including making the header and using a drop cap. I always thought I had to use a program like Printmaster to create a piece like the one we did for the newsletter. I think the newsletter is a great idea for teachers to do. As a parent, I like to know what is going on in my child’s classroom as well as being reminded about things that are coming up. I don’t know about you, but the newsletter took me a while to construct. So, I was thinking that once I have created the first newsletter for my class, I could save it on the computer then each month it would be easy to go back to it and make the necessary changes for the new month. My final thought on the newsletter is that is looks very professional and being that we are going to be teacher’s, professional is the way to go!

Technology and Tools

Hi Class! I thought the tools we learned about this week in class will definitely be useful to us as we enter the classroom. First of all, I think its great how Yahoo offers an account to anyone out there for free. Like Erika said in class, teachers need free tools like Yahoo so we don't have to spend even more money out of our own pocket. I also liked the idea of using ListServe to get more information about practically anything we want out there. I think it's awesome that all we need to do to get free lesson plans is to sign up with a group. How easy is that? I will definitely be taking advantage of ListServe. Another tool we learned about this week was the Bookmark area of our Yahoo Account. I honestly did not know the difference between Bookmarks and Favorites. I think Bookmarks would be very useful for us and for our students to use, especially if we are writing an essay about a certain subject. The Bookmarks can allow us to write comments about each website, that way, when we go back to them for reference we can easily see which site has the information we need on it. The Bookmarks tool will definitely be a time saver!

The reading, Teaching for Understanding, pointed out how in order to truly understand what we are learning we need to be asked to truly think about the things we are trying to learn about. The article stated that we need to learn from experience and in order to see that our students truly understand what they are learning they need to be able to show us. I can totally see this to be true. It’s one thing to say that we understand, but it’s another thing to prove it. One way to have our students prove to us that they have learned and understood an assignment is to use technology that will show us their outcomes in a timely manner. Teaching for Understanding also states that technology has the ability to improve student achievement and one way it does this is by being able to adapt to different leaning styles that preside in the classroom. In my daughter’s third grade classroom I saw this to be true. They were doing a unit on whales and it wasn’t until the students were able to use the computer to see a visual picture about what they learning about in order for the information to sink in. Metacognition is another issue that Teaching for Understanding talked about. Basically, metacognition is knowing what you know any why you know it. If we can get our students to control what they are thinking they will be able to concentrate and understand more about what they are learning.

All of the tools we learned this week can make learning more fun and a lot easier!