Week 11, Technology Experience

Today I had a great opportunity to use technology in the classroom and the students absolutely loved it. We had an engineering day at our elementary school and the students went through different rotations. In my rotation, we started out with a clip from a crew that did some experiments with different toys in space. The clip asked the students to follow along and do some experiments of their own and see how the results differed in space from on earth. I then had the students do an experiment and led a discussion asking them to predict what would happen in space.

After the discussion, we watched another clip of the experiment in space and then discussed the differences. I then asked the students what made the difference. They were able to identify the force of gravity as the main difference and we were then able to talk more about microgravity and other forces that affect objects on earth and in space. We repeated this process for two more experiments. The students loved the hands-on experiment and the clips that allowed them to see how the experiment would work in space.

One way to use technology...

As I have observed in the classroom, I have noticed that technology is not used very often in my classroom. One idea that I really like though is using CD's on tape of different books. I think that this can be a very effective tool. Students have the opportunity to listen to a book, but at the same time they can work on different projects. This allows students to be introduced to more literature.

I also think that a lot of books on tape have a great amount of expression, especially with the different characters. They are really fun to listen to. This is a good way to get kids excited about books and literature. This is one of the many kinds of technology I would like to incorporate into the classroom.

Practicum Week 1: Technology in the Classroom

Today I had the unique opportunity to take the class to their prep hour at computers. While we were waiting in the hall for the last class to finish up, I started talking to the kids about what they did during this hour and how they liked it. A lot of the students talked about how they would use the computer to do a variety of reading and writing activities and then they would play games for a while. Most of them said that they really liked it. I also talked to the teacher about a program that they are using that prepares students for the end of year tests. It asks different questions about the subjects they are learning about and prepares them for the format of the test. The only other time that the students use technology is when they are listening to books on tape, or when they are typing up writing assignments that they have completed.

I think that the technology that they do use makes the students excited about things that they might not normally be excited about. It also helps relieve some of the pressure from the teacher when the students can be directed by different programs. I think that in these cases, technology is very beneficial to the classroom and to the students.

TPACK Questions week 7

What is the content you’ll be using in your lesson? The content of this lesson will be to explain how selected indigenous cultures of the Americas have changed over time. The culture we will focus on is the Mayans.
What is the pedagogy you’ll be using and why is it a good fit with the content? The strategies that I would use include observing, researching, comparing, etc. Students will be able to research information on different Mayan cities. In addition, they will compare photographs of Mayan ruins and current buildings/cities and will observe the differences. This fits with the content because in order to understand that a culture or city has undergone a change over time they need to be able to see differences. Seeing how a land was once filled with pyramids and is now covered in forest or more modern cities shows that there has been significant change.
What is the technology you’ll be using and why is it a good fit with the content and pedagogy? The technology includes google earth which will show students exactly what is located in a certain area now. As well as provide links to different pictures and information that will give students an idea of what kinds of changes have taken place. In this project, students focus is on the technology, the learning is individual based because they will be exploring and learning as they go through the tour.

Virtual Tour Plan

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1. Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico	Students will read about different Mayan ruins and write down the name of their favorite and why it is their favorite	Photograph of Chichen Itza, link to site with multiple ruins
2. Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico	Search some of the ruins read about in the first part of the tour on GoogleEarth	Photographs of ruins in different cities
3. Merida, Yucatan, Mexico	Compare some of the buildings found here now, to the ruins previously read about (find ancient ruins in Merida)	Pictures of houses, buildings and streets in the area, link to photographs of ruins in Merida
4. Forested area of the Yucatan	Explain how the area has changed over time and the causes for the change: talk to your neighbor about these changes	Link to clip about Mayans, gives details about the land occupied by the Mayans
Details of image polygon:	Highlight the boundaries of the ancient Mayan civilization

Digital Storytelling

"Where did you come from baby dear?"
Poetry Interpretation

***I spent several hours trying to load this into teacher tube with no success, so I just uploaded it into my blog.

Storyboard