Kate's+Journal

 **What are some effective methods of using the Internet in your classroom?**
When taught and used effectively, the Internet opens up so many windows for students and teachers alike to enrich the day-to-day classroom experience. Websites such as YouTube and TeacherTube can provide short video clips with which to enhance class. Appealing to a variety of learners through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities through interactivity makes the Internet an invaluable tool in the classroom. As an English teacher, I could teach my students how to construct websites or wikis and produce author or book projects, engage in a student-controlled creative writing exercise, or create their own electronic response journals. I think the idea here is to teach students how to be critical Internet users, whether it is through a blog, wiki, or something else. A class blog would be a great tool for students to help one another with classwork, and I would be able to monitor it. The Internet, of course, is also an expansive research tool that students can use for projects, papers, and presentations. WebQuests can be great teaching tools, and they also require students to use the Internet effectively and wisely when completing the question or object of the lesson. (I'm done, now.)

Reflect upon the process of learning and using the Web as a classroom tool.
Using the Web as a classroom tool opens up so many possibilities for student AND teacher learning and exploring. When working on my portfolio piece, however, I could not get past still wanting to incorporate some sort of book or print source into the lesson plan to create that mix between print and the Internet. In English, I think it is important to learn and teach using actual books, showing students the importance of having that print source, but to also open their eyes to the Web and everything that it can be used for. I loved being able to link everything to one central page without using a scrap of paper. The Web is simply a great and easy tool to use when wanting to avoid a million handouts with instructions, rubrics, and everything else; using a Wiki, for example, allows for posts, work, and changes, to be done quickly with the click of a mouse. I know this is going to sound a bit obvious, but teaching and learning on the Web make the experiences much more fluid and connected, as you can navigate quickly to different sites. I think it is important not to become dependent on the Web as a classroom necessity; while it does enhance the lessons and classroom possibilities, learning is about discovery and mastery, not about clicking from one site to the next on the Internet. (done.) 

**What are some effective methods of using the Microsoft Office Suite in your classroom?**
I think that the usefulness of Word for a classroom can go without saying. Considering it is the primary document-composing software, both teachers and students alike become familiar with the double-spaced paper format very early on in their academic careers. Publisher is a great program to use for making class/student calendars and newsletters. If a teacher uses a lot of cooperative grouping in his/her class, it might be fun for the students to publish a newsletter stating which groups have improved at the end of each week. (There's a ton about this in Slavin's cooperative grouping book that actually seems like it would create a pretty cool classroom environment and community.) I'm a huge fan of student accountability and self-regulation so I have a feeling Microsoft Publisher is going to be a great tool for me to create student assignment calendars. Power Point is a great tool for presentations. I'm thinking along the lines of student book, poetry, or author presentations, but it is a great visual to use to keep the class involved. I've had teachers who have presented everything in Power Points, which I have found to be a bit mundane, but I think they are a great teaching tool if not used all the time; or possibly all the time with really cool animations and sounds. I'm really excited to become more familiar with Excel in the next couple of days, because it is a fabulous grade book method. For a science or math class, it is perfect for creating graphs, charts, and lists; something a bit different than the old graph paper and straight-edge method. (done)

Reflect upon the process of learning and using Microsoft Office as an effective tool.
Microsoft Office is awesome. I don't really know what else to say. I really enjoyed learning about Excel and what I am able to use it for. I used Excel graphing in my geography class during undergrad and really did not connect with the usefulness of the program. I know that there are about a million other things to do with Excel than just make gradebooks, but I really feel like my teaching life is going to be a lot easier knowing how to create a computerized gradebook on Excel and not having to learn a million new programs. I realize I'll probably have to do that anyway, and not like it's hard to learn how to enter grades, but still. As I mentioned in my previous entry, Power Point is an amazing tool to use for presentations, inside and outside of the classroom. At work next week we are doing a teacher training for this program implemented in some of the elementary schools in Metro, and the bulk of it is presented using a Power Point. Pretty handy too, how the program allows you to print 3 slides per page with corresponding lines on which to take notes.

Now here's a little thought that just occurred. I can't help but stay on this technology vs. old school sort of battle going on. Obviously I love Word and all of the other programs in the office suite, but when typing documents or slides or newsletters, I never really worry about my spelling because I know that Spell Check can just take care of it for me. My sister is a freshman in high school and I wonder how well she can actually spell considering she's been working on a computer since she was pretty young. Spell check is a great tool and while I know that it is not only found in Office, I wonder if it is doing more harm than good as far as maintaining those spelling skills we had to work so hard on in elementary school. Still though, I'd rather have spell check than not, so really I'm not complaining too much. (Done)  ===July 22, 2008  === ===What are some effective methods of using digital imagery and video in your classroom? === In tenth grade we read the Odyssey and instead of being tested on it, we were assigned to groups and given a part of the story to act out in a video. It was pretty awesome because some groups used themselves, some groups created clay figures; we used a plastic sesame street house and some barbies and such and made a pretty funny video. It was great because we had free reign over how we wanted to execute our scenes and doing it through a video gave us so much freedom. Now we did not have fancy software to use for editing, but filming everything just right takes some work. Using video in class gives students an option that does not involve Word or any kind of paper writing. Allowing students to put the effort into something they are interested in, and develop some film/camera skills will just expand their mind and perhaps create a new appreciation for education.

Digital imagery falls into the same "outside-of-the-box" category. I'm a huge fan of student choice when it comes to assessment. Not choice as in do whatever you want, but I believe that providing students with several acceptable, challenging options allows them to take control of their learning and assessment and express themselves the best way that they know how. Creating a digital portfolio for the year is a pretty cool idea. Photoshop is a great tool to use to manipulate text and images to create some awesome pieces of work. Especially in the secondary grades, I feel that students are looking for more than the information. They are on a bit of a self-discovery journey as well, I know my teen years were all over the place, and it was great when I had the opportunity to try new things at school. Digital imagery and video are fabulous tools to incorporate into the classroom because chances are, they will be encountered in some capacity in college, should the students choose to attend. I'm all about keeping things interesting and unpredictable in class; these are two great ways to do that. (done)

Reflect upon the process of learning digital imagery and video.
This was a really cool week for me. When doing our video, it was so great not to have to film everything in sequence because the editing process will just take care of ordering our material exactly how we want it. It was nice, too, to have somewhat of a camera expert in our group because she took care of getting the best angles and shots for what we were doing. Making a video, while not my top choice of project when given other options, really is not as painful as I had believed it to be. Maybe I am just stuck in the days that I spoke of in my previous journal entry, but programs like iMovie allow the filming process to be much less stressful and pressurized. This can do great things for the classroom because (again with student control) the students get to decide what is in their video and how it is executed as a final product.

Digital Imagery is pretty great, too. Being able to manipulate images and text on one document can allow the mind to get pretty creative. I really like the idea of the PostSecret project. I can see, though, how one project could take weeks to perfect because there are so many small details that must be attended to. Like the magnetic lasso tool; awesome, but totally frustrating because sometimes it just goes all over the place and you have to trace the image about 30 times. As a teacher, however, I think it would be really cool to see even just one student really connect with digital imagery or video and actually WANT to put the time into making the project something awesome. (done)

Brainstorm other effective uses of technology not discussed thus far in class.
Something that might be cool to do is create a podcast. For those students who are absent, it would be a really easy way for them to catch up on class if a video or tape is not made. Having that as a project for the class might be something that the kids would really get into also. Creating a song or rap would be a cool project with an audio/music program. This teacher made an educational song about the concepts of the program that I work for to the tune of "Party Like a Rockstar." If the "RECAP Masterskills" aren't implanted into the student's head by that song then I don't know what will work. The song/rap project would be really cool to coincide with a poetry unit or something. Even just putting the words to music through speaking could turn out pretty neat. I know this was just a general tech class, and I am not studying Special Education, but even a demonstration or presentation on the technology available to kids with special needs would be really cool/useful. We do get a lot of that in our SPED class, but I'm sure there are programs or software we can use that are not the big, bulky devices that students may need to carry with them or store in the classroom. (done)

Reflect upon this class, its effectiveness, its content, and your place in it.
Aw, the last journal entry. Sad. This class was definitely more than I hoped for. I had heard stories of doing a bunch of projects that would be hard to cater toward an individual classroom. I really enjoyed that this class was more of an independent study type deal and that we got complete control over what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. I appreciate that the grades were fair and the rubric was not tricky. I'm not a fan of tricks. I have to admit that during the first class I was kind of underestimating my ability and creativity when we were given complete control of our projects. I really believe that I got the most out of it that I possibly could because I was the one making the decisions in terms of what I wanted to do. I thought that all of the "units" were very useful and we got to know the technology that could most often be used for any age group in any classroom. I feel much more comfortable with technology in the classroom and I like that everything we did was actually FOR the classroom rather than creating a website with our teaching philosophy posted on it. (done)

Extra Credit

 * 1) How would you change the pacing of the course? I think that the pace was a little bit quick and we just got an overview rather than a good understanding of the programs. While I did feel comfortable in Excel to explore on my own, Photoshop and the Web were quite intimidating so I feel like I didn't get a really good understanding of the potential for each. Maybe spending a little more time on the first day going over the features of the program and actually having us do it with you would be a good way for the students to actually learn the programs.
 * 2) How would you change the basic schedule of the course (one software idea a week, with one day for instruction and one for work)? I really liked that we had one day for instruction and one for work when you were here to answer our questions. I know with my work schedule it was really helpful to get most of my classwork actually done in class. As previously stated, I think that it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend some more time on the instruction day going over the material and maybe invite students to email you for the next class session stating questions about the programs that they would like to know more about that you could quickly go over on Wednesday (or whenever the work day happens to fall).
 * 3) What material should have been included, but wasn't? I think an audio piece would have been really cool to do. Creating songs or something would have been a really cool thing to do AND to stretch everyone's lyrical side. (Creating songs is pretty much the only thing I'm familiar with, so that's why I used that as the primary example).
 * 4) What material do you think was unnecessary? I don't think Photoshop was completely unnecessary, but I do think that it maybe was the weakest of the material that we did study.
 * 5) How would you have taught the material itself differently? As far as teaching it differently, I don't think there is much that I would have done different. Even though it was assumingly there, maybe having us email or write in our journals for Tuesday one aspect of the material that we are curious about would have been helpful because I would have definitely given up some work time to learn more about cool tricks in the programs. I mean if I had had a pressing question or really wanted to learn about some detail, I for sure would have asked; I don't mean to say that it seemed like we couldn't ask you questions because the class environment was very open and welcoming. Overall, this class was awesome, thanks so much!!! (done)

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