Reflection #8

What?
The other night in my Tech. Ed. class I created my own gradebook at gradeconnect.com. I made up three classes including an art class, math class, and a social studies class. This assignment helped me become more familiar with keeping track of grades online.

So what?
Even though this was a required assignment for our in-class time, it was very helpful being able to interact with this program. I think every soon-to-be teacher should practice with a program like this in order to become familiar with online resources for grading. It's so helpful!

Now what?
I will probably use this program (or something similar, as suggested by my school) in my future. I really look forward to setting up something like this with my actual teaching classes or course work. I feel more qualified to use a program like this, simpy by exploring it and creating several classes on it this week.

Week 11 Post (Required)

I recently read the online educational blog, "Teachers Love SMART boards." It's about various features one could use on the SMARTboard. I left a posting on the blog entry "SMARTboards and Playing with Fire" about a flame feature that educators could use to make cool backgrounds for their SMARTboard presentations. If I hadn't stumbled across this blog I would never have known about it, so I'm glad I read about this tool. I think educators could get a lot of good ideas from this blog. My comment (click here to read it) is about another website I found this morning about making art online for kids. Hopefully educators who read my comment will then want to also access the National Gallery of Art online where their kids could create other art pieces and display them on the SMARTboard, or even create them on the SMARTboard. I hope to use the flame feature someday for a SMARTboard presentation, as well.

Week 10 Post

Questions for NU Educator Panel members:
1. What is the hardest part about your job?
2. What valuable piece of advice would you give to new teachers?
3. How has technology specifically changed your job in the past decade?

Assignment #4, Part 1: Technology Project Plan

Project: I will be creating a lesson about art for this project.

Ideally, I would be able to use this lesson in a fourth grade classroom to teach a unit about famous artists and their artwork within history. Although I am an Elementary Education major, my specific endorsement is in social studies. Therefore, this project has a historical bent since it would involve reasearch on people of the past. I will include two kinds of technology within my project: I will create my own SMARTboard presentation to introduce the unit to students and I will also create a weebly account for them to have access to information online about artists. Following my presentation, each student would be assigned a specific artist mentioned to research. They would then be able to access the weebly pages and find links to information which they could then use to put together a powerpoint, or some kind of presentation, to present to the class at the end of the unit.

Basically, my technology project, involving the created SMARTboard lesson and weebly pages, will serve as a launching point for students to begin research of their assigned, prominent artist. I have never made my own SMARTboard presentation before, and I am excited to embark on this endeavor. Although I have made a weebly account before, I will make a new website for this assignment. I hope to use this lesson someday within an elementary classroom.

A podcast introducing this assignment can be accessed by clicking on the following link: Vocaroo.

Reflection #7: Photo Story

What?

For this reflection, I created a photo story based off a picture that I took at the zoo in St. Louis last summer. You can click on the video above to view this picture and tag-along words in four parts.

So What?

I wanted to create a photo story that involved a riddle. This could even possibly serve as a funny introduction to a lesson on zebras, or other zoo animals. It is very simple, and if I was actually going to use it, I would probably add music. It would be a creative way to introduce a subject along these lines.

Now What?

Now that I have created one photo story, I know that I could do more. I also saw some of my peers' photo stories that they created, including one about chocolate chip cookies and one about a giraffe. There are so many different things that could be created! I want to play around with this feature and make more sometime when I have the chance.

Assignment #3

Toolbox Assignment: Resources for Elementary Teachers

There are many helpful online sites that can enhance learning in the classroom. As an upcoming teacher in today's era, I believe that all teachers should be encouraged to incorporate technology and online resources into their lessons to some extent, if not as much as possible. A compilation of some websites that would be helpful for teachers to use are available at my website. You can view my website and the compiled Teacher Toolbox by following this link to Miss Lauryn's Website.

Since I believe that education is a gift that should be available to every person, I thought of the phrase, "From every tongue, tribe, and nation...people experience the gift of education." I made this the main focus of my website, and included pictures of people throughout the world on my home page. I also have two other pages on my site, one of which includes my purpose statement and the other one has the Teacher Toolbox.

In the toolbox, I included 10 websites regarding the teaching of math, in addition to the other educational online resources. I think the main reason why many students don't like math in secondary grades is because they never built a solid foundation of understanding. I really enjoy math and I want my students to enjoy and use it, as well. Therefore, teachers could incorporate some of these math websites that I've listed into their teaching plans in order to better enhance the teaching of math within the classroom. Overall, all of the websites in the Teacher Toolbox would be helpful for teachers of any subject to take a look at.

In compiling my website, I realized that there are so many excellent sites for teachers on the internet that should be used for additional ideas and lesson plans. As a teacher I know I will refer back to the sites I have chosen to include in my toolbox, but there are also many more available on the web. One of my favorite sites I included has SMARTboard lesson plans on it. If I am teaching at a school that uses the SMARTboard, I would ask the teachers there if they knew about this site, because it has very useful lesson material for all grades. In addtion, if I someday have a class blog for my class and parents, I would also want to include a link to Miss Lauryn's Website and let other teachers know about my website for ideas and online teaching resources.

Within this blog post, I reviewed three of the math websites in my Teacher Toolbox:

Proteacher.com
This website is very helpful for teachers who would be looking for lesson plan ideas regarding geometry and measurement concepts. It seems to be geared more toward upper elementary or lower secondary classes of students that are beginning to immerge themselves in these concepts. The website offers a collection of resources concerning geometry activities including area, perimeter, a fractals unit, lines, angles, circles, congruency, rays, reflective symmetry, geometry art, and a Pythagorean puzzle.

Teachervision.com
I love this website. It is full of inspirational ways for educators to teach math at any grade level. For elementary school teachers, there are specific resources grouped into either K-2nd or 3rd-5th grades. The goal of the website it to provide many math lesson ideas that teachers can use to challenge their students creatively in the realm of math. In order to keep students interested in the subject area of math; however, this site encourages teachers to incorporate other subjects into their math lessons. For example, the site includes ways to connect the subjects of art and math as well as history and math. I think this is an excellent resource for teachers to use when planning their math lessons.

Math.com
This site is a place where teachers can explore various lesson plans, classroom resources career information, math worksheets, national standards and more. There is also a link to a problem of the week with which teachers could challenge their students. I think it would be great for elementary teachers to pose a math problem every week on the board for their students to creatively solve.

Week 9 Post (Required)

I was absolutely blown away by all of the fabulous ideas in Bob Spankle's article "Caught on Video." In this article, he advocates for using video cameras in school to enhance learning. While many may agree that this concept could be helpful to some extent, you almost can't help but enthusiastically agree with him by the time you've finished reading the article. All of the ways he suggests a teacher could use a video within the classroom are very practical, reasonable and sensible for the sake of education. This article makes me simply ask the question, "Why not?" A video camera and footage throughout the year would be an excellent way to accomplish learning objectives, help students get involved and see progress, inform parents of classroom activities, capture the year on tape, and create an exciting and interactive environment. In my opinion, an inexpensive video camera (if it was allowed by the school district) would be a huge asset to any classroom setting!