Part 2.

I think it is important for all teachers to integrate technology in their classrooms regardless of the subject they teach and the age of the student because the use of technology is everywhere and no matter what future path a student goes down they will have to use technology to get there.  Not to mention the earlier you start using technology the easier it becomes.

There are barriers for technology integration.  According to the website https://sites.google.com/site/thedigitallibrarian/barriers-to-integrating-technology
the most impacting ones are a lack of recourses followed by teachers lacking the skills or knowledge in order to use technology in a way that is effective and in fact will promote a better learning environment.  
In some cases there can be a number of teachers that are unwilling to change and it is in their beliefs that students are not benefiting from the use of technology but rather it gets in the way of learning.  Some teachers believe that it is not worth the time it takes to teach the students how to use technology and that the subject matter is better learned with a more hands on approach.  However, no matter your beliefs it is time for those teachers to be educated on the benefits of integrating technology in the classroom and be taught how to use the technology as well.

The best web 2.0 tool in helping with integrating technology are blogs.  I think that blogs are a great way to integrate technology in a classroom because it can open up the lines of communication to a large group of people and keep them on the same page and also, they could all learn from each other.  However, in the classroom I think that a great tool is having students do a webquest.  Doing a webquest    can teach a student how to use technology along with teaching the student about any range of topics you can think of.

Part 1.



When I started this class I did not have any real prior knowledge of what school was like from the angle of a school teacher.  Not to mention, I was out of the loop on new technology and its role in the classroom.  So, as you can imagine I have a lot to learn and it is in my opinion that I have come a long way from someone who is far out of the loop on technology and education to where I am now.

As a class we had discussion questions that helped us learn about being an educator and how to use technology as a tool in order to enhance learning.  We moved on and began learning how to use the tools in a classroom setting.  We created blogs and posted our assignment on them.  We made a lesson plan that used technology to enhance the lesson.  we learned how to use diigo, which is a bookmarking site, and tagxedo that can create word clouds.  We made a digital story that could be used in a class to tell a story to your students and assist in teaching them or even set the stage to make a current lesson plan more exciting for the students.  Also, we did a class observation that gave us some real world experience and we got to see technology being used in a classroom.

The project our class has been working on lately is a webquest.  The webquest is a digital lesson plan that takes the students on a digital educational experience that will enable them, with the use of a computer, to go through the lesson and learn through the use of technology any subject you want.  For my webquest I chose to teach a lesson  on the American Revolution.  In the lesson they go through the webquest and complete the tasks I created for them and at the same time they get to learn about the American Revolution in a fun way filled with on line quizes, video, web searches and creating word clouds and other online activities that would help both teach the subject and also teach the student how to use computers.

The most important thing to know is how all of these thing will help me as an educator.  The answer is simple.  I can now do a whole lot of great things that could help teach students and the most important thing for me is I got to see the applications used in classrooms and interact with teachers that are using these techniques in the classroom and got to learn from their experiences to better my understanding of what it takes to be a teacher.

Hi class,

Here is the link to my webquest. http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=224033

Here is a copy of my field experience I had at Goffstown High School

Kevin Pellerin

11/20/13

EDU-533

Prof. Sullivan

Class Observation

For my class observation I went to Goffstown High School and observed an Algebra 2 class that used technology in order to engage the students and help them learn in a way that made sense to a broad range of learners.  It did not seem to matter if the student was a visual, audio or a kinesthetic learner they all seemed to get a better grasp of the materials through the use of technology than they could have based on other forms of teaching strategies.

The teacher did this with the use of a video that set the stage for his lesson.  The video was an experiment that a fellow teacher at the school and himself made that consisted of the use of diet Coke and Mentos.  The video was very entertaining demonstrating, in a simple but humorous manner, that the more mentos they put into the bottle of Coke Vs. the size of the hole drilled in the cap, made the guyser get up to a certain height.  The students watched the video with open eyes and minds and after they were done were ready to work on the math that explained the video they had watched.  

They then were instructed to each grab a TI-84 Plus calculator in order to create a table then graph the Mentos Vs. hole size guysser.  The teacher, with the use of a smart board, went over how to use the calculator.  On the smartboard there was a program that put an exact working TI-84 Plus calculator with working buttons and all on the board so the students could see how to operate the complicated calculator on the board and work through it together.  The whole time they are doing this they are having a group discussion and logically working out the problems so that the problems make sense to the students and they can understand the answerers they are getting and not just making tables and graphs that have no meaning.

After the lesson was over I interviewed the teacher about the lesson and asked him questions that pertained to his perspective of the use of technology in the classroom.

• The first question I asked was what were the types of technology they used at Goffstown High School?  He answered, “We use Smartboards, TI-84s and all the teachers are issued Mac’s that have access to Moodle were the students can go online and work together.  The class can also reserve 15 computers that are on carts if we wanted to do a class project and the students can access the library computer lab if they need to do school work outside of class that required the use of a computer or internet.
• I then asked him what are the benefits of using technology and what are the disadvantages?  He went on the say that he would be “lost without his smartboard  the use of the boards save a lot of time and the different uses makes it the best teaching tool I have”.  The disadvantages he thought of were the costs.  He did not feel that it made sense to give every student a laptop or ipad and thought that the current amount of technology was more than enough to meet the needs of his classroom and he also, went on to say that the use of smartphones can sometimes cause problems with students sharing too much information.  Such as test taking and things like that.
• I then asked about the future of technology in the classroom?  He then said that the most teachers are not ready and that a lot of the teachers that have been around for a long time do not embrace the use of technology.  He made a video for his class that engaged the learner and others at the school would not even think to do that and he also said that a lot of the teachers use the smartboard as a white board and do not use it to full capacity.

Conclusion

After observing class that uses technology it is my belief that it is best used as a tool to engage students.  The smartboard are a very impressive tool in making the teacher's job easier, help students cover more materials faster and also helped engage the learner with a more colorful way of presenting a lesson or even students presenting their own personal projects.  However, I observed a high school math class and could see other subjects getting to use technology for different things.  For example, students in a history class could use a search engine to do research for a paper, students could have an online discussion about a topic of debate or do a web quest in order to have students want to learn and seek out knowledge through the use of technology.  Students could do a group project and present it using animoto or do a prezi. All these types of learning are important not only to teach the subject they are in but to teach students to become comfortable using technology and be capable to take the next steps in life. Whether it be furthering their education or their careers technology is used to accomplish many goals.

Copy of 533 Digital Story

Copy of 533 Digital Story

I think this version of the story is a little better.  I forgot to originally add to the story of where Ben came from.

533 Digital Story

533 Digital Story

I chose to do my digital story about my dog in order to try and educate people about adopting a pet. I hope you like it.

I just realized that we were supposed to post our lesson plans to our blog.  Here it is.  My first attempt at making a lesson plan for 8th grade social studies.

.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xzMIxaMciPHiZjowOwWgcLGzuQA-w59aimWPfgpRyzk/edit#