Sarahfrith429's Blog

Response to our last Paddock Addict class.

sarahfrith429 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:14:41 +0000

So, today a few people brought up the question of the role of the teacher in the future, especially if technology continues to progress. Will we be obsolete? I like to think not! Although a virtual teacher may be equipped with the content knowledge and never make mistakes that is not all that teaching is about. Apart from being instructors, teachers are also role models, guidance councilors, friends, and mentors. The rapport that occurs between a teacher and a student can greatly affect how well that student does in the class. How can a virtual teacher really create an effective classroom community if theyare not PRESENT in the classroom. Also, we have been drilled over and over again about being able to ADAPT, ADAPT!!! I wonder how well a virtual teacher or that Japanese robot teacher would be able to adapt when problems arose in the classroom. Or what would happen if something were to happen with the technology (although we all know that technology NEVER messes up!!) and the virtual teacher was unavailable or the students were not able to get to her.

Our role in the futuristic classroom is to utilize the emerging new tools to create engaging new activities for the students. We can use the virtual world but only as supplemental, not as the whole classroom. Student collaboration is one of the aspects of technology in the classroom that I think I will enjoy most. Our job is to create activities and projects that will allow students to collaborate (in class and online) to create a unique, creative, insightful response to literature.

Response to class on 6/29/09

sarahfrith429 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:51:54 +0000

I really enjoyed the SMART board activities and I think that it will be really helpful in my future classroom. There are so many more engaging ways to give a reading quiz or a vocabulary quiz than just by having students fill out a worksheet or answering questions on a piece of paper. My brother is a middle school computer technology teacher and he often uses his smart board to play Jeopardy with his class and his class really enjoys it and has a lot of fun with it. He also uses it for intraclass competitions between his students. They have a typing contest and each student has their picture in a little car on the board and as they progress their cars race forward and the first one to make it to the finish line wins. Clay (my brother) then prints out their picture (with the car) and pastes it outside the door on a little olympic style podium. The kids get really into it and he said that it makes them try really hard to get their picture outside. They end up doing the homework more and really practicing on their typing skills. I think something like this could easily be done in a English classroom in HS. Older students still like competetions and like to be recognized in the hallways.

On a different note, I absolutely LOVED the Shakespeare videos we did in class. Not only did we learn from making our own videos, but we were able to learn through watching our classmates. After class I asked Amanda how her group did such cool stuff to their Romeo and Juliet video. It was also a cool bonding experience for the class (not that we really need to bond anymore…we pretty much love each other already!).

Having students work in groups on a multimedia project also allows shy students or less social students to participate in a group setting without the pressure of performing in front of the class. It will also, hopefully, help these students come out of their shells and bond with their fellow classmates.

I would have to say that I would prefer to watch all the student videos before I show them to the class just in case I find there is inappropriate material in the video. It wouldn’t be a good thing if students used inappropriate songs or images in a video and then you show it to the whole class.

Response to class on 6/24/09

sarahfrith429 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:10:04 +0000

I have to say that I really enjoyed playing with Photo Story and movie maker today. If I had that much fun in class today, then I know that high school students will have a lot of fun. It was really encouraging to watch the videos that Roe’s student’s made in her past classes. They looked like they were having so much fun, they created really cool videos that they can have forever and most importantly, and they were interacting with a text and were engaged by the text! I was always that kid in class that would make a video for a project instead of standing up and performing in class. I wanted to make it perfect and I didn’t want to be nervous in front of the whole class. Our videos could have been so much more creative if we had this technology when I was in HS. I know Roe brought up the fact that some people worry about cheating, but if the projects require such a high level of creativity like Roe’s, there is no room for cheating because the products must be so unique. I heard someone say something about speeches being filmed and then played for the class and I have to say that I disagree with this. I think projects are fine for filming because you can use the tools to make something creative, but with something like a speech, you don’t need to fade in and transition music, etc. I think that a part of giving speeches is dealing with the nerves that come with public speaking and that all students need to experience at least once in high school. When does technology move from a supplemental tool for creativity and engagement to a crutch?

Response to class on 6/22/09

sarahfrith429 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:36:04 +0000

I thought that I pretty much knew everything there is to know about powerpoint because I’ve been using it since high school. Today, though, I learned how to embed a youtube video onto my slides and to link to other pages in my slideshow. I think this will be really useful in my classroom because I plan on using a lot of videos to supplement my mini lessons and other things. I know powerpoint presentations can be super boring, but the challenge is to create one that students can get interested in and be engaged. My favorite tip was to write a script. That makes it more like a story and will hopefully create more interest for the students.

I played around with the smilebox feature. It was cool to play with my pictures and put them into scrapbooks, but I was not convinced it would be a really effective instructional tool. It could definitely snazz up a powerpoint presentation, but it isn’t necessary. It would be really cool to use this to allow students to get to know each other and the teacher as well.

The visit to Spring Valley today was really beneficial. It was cool to sit in an actual high school classroom and look at the technology in the room. I could better visualize myself as a teacher in that room and I could feel more in touch with the technology because I could see it in use in the classroom. I think our visit today was a good way to show us both the practical uses of technology (grade book/ attendance) and the instructional uses of technology (Dark Knight activity).

Google Docs Rock!

sarahfrith429 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:33:25 +0000

Okay, so I would like to say that I LOVE google docs! I think that I am really going to use the survey thingy in my class all the time. It’s a great way to monitor student reading instead of giving little quizzes on paper and to me it just seems more fun. The only thing I’m worried about though is cheating. Is it easier to cheat on this type of quiz or test? I would be worried about students getting onto google chat or something and asking each other about the questions. Is there any way to disable that while they are taking the test? Or do they even have to have a google account to take the test/quiz. Also, I think you said there was a way to give several different forms of the test. How can we do it so that the questions numbers are scrambled everytime they take the test? That would be an easy way to cut back on cheating.

As far as the WIKI goes, I think I will like it once I get to know how to use it better. I can definitely do the links and insert pics and videos which I think really will be cool in the classroom, but when it comes to managing a whole classroom project on a wiki, I think I’d be really confused. How can I expect my students to do something on Wiki if I’m not even really sure how to do it myself. Will we get to learn more about how to manage other people on the wiki? Like how to run a Wiki for a class project?

Response to class on 6/15/09

sarahfrith429 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:24:20 +0000

Okay, so I am officially on Twitter….I dk yet if this is a truly good thing. I did actually really like Diigo because I think I will really be able to use that a lot in class. It’s really helpful to be able to share articles with students online like that and be able to highlight for them and ask them questions AS they read instead of after they’re finished reading. I love that!

Response to class on 6/10/09

sarahfrith429 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:18:56 +0000

Okay, so first of all, I would like to say that I’m a bit scared about having ninjas/swat teams drop down from the ceiling of my classroom to arrest/kidnap me for using copywrighted material in class or for having ‘inappropriate’ material on a social networking cite…whatever ‘inappropriate’ means!! After thinking about it, however, I calmed down and realized how highly unlikely that is, especially if I’m prepared and forwarned/ forarmed! So, I would like to say thanks to Carol and Jason for warning us today and making sure we could protect ourselves in the future. It would have never occured to me to check the school board policy concerning my actions online. I was thinking about ‘inappropriate’ behavior online, but in regards to our future students. What would we do if a student came to us about cyber bullying or ‘sexting’… If it was happening off school grounds, what power would we have to put a stop to it? I know we would go to the principal for help, but I was wondering how much authority we have over that kind of behavior?

Response to Chaos to Form (Blog #1)

sarahfrith429 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:50:36 +0000

Some of my lingering questions from class revolve around how to ‘troubleshoot’ when technology goes awry. What would I do in my classroom if I’ve set up this wiki or something for the students to use for a huge project and then the class laptops go down or students accidentally erase things….can you accidentally erase a bunch of work on these websites? Or how do you deal with the students that aren’t really tech savy and have a lot of trouble working online?

I think the wiki and ning are going to be really useful tools in my classroom. The project examples that Mr. Paddock showed us in class seem like they are really effective and I think it will really engage the students because technology is their world. They are much more comfortable with the techno world than in the real world. I would also, however, want to make sure to spend time in class talking about the work, pair sharing, or group sharing. I think that too much web interaction takes away from the social experience of literature.

EDRD 651

sarahfrith429 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:40:51 +0000

Has opened my eyes to the WWW!! lol

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sarahfrith429 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:28:46 +0000

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