Reflection 10

I couldn’t have asked for a better experience in EDIT 2000. The guest speakers we had and the information Justine taught us I truly think will be so helpful when I become a Speech Language Pathologist one day. With our world and technology constantly coinciding, I believe technology will be something I am required to use in my work one day. Now I will know I can reflect back to EDIT 2000 and all of the awesome things that we learned. The stop-animation project was probably my favorite. It was neat to get to see what everyone created, and I think stop-animation videos, as we learned, are great ways to persuade someone to use something you created. Also, I think the LAD project was extremely beneficial to not only mine, but to everyone in the class’s future careers. We all we have to make a lesson plan (or something like it) one time or another in our careers, and now we have experience doing so! We got to see how much time and hard work it takes to make them, but also how beneficial and how great they can be when they are done.

Throughout EDIT 2000, I think it’s great we keep a blog. This morning, I decided to go back through and read all my blog posts created throughout the semester, and it’s cool to see how much I’ve grown and what all I’ve learned through taking this course. Thank you Justine for allowing me to learn so much in your class while having so much fun doing it!

Final Documentation

Campbell, Courtney, and I are extremely proud of the work we did with our LAD project. We worked so hard, and I think the class got to see that when we presented our project. The hardest thing of the project was probably keeping a timeline for ourselves. Since the project was over such a long period of time, it was often difficult to keep on top of what we needed to do next. However, we pulled through, and other than that I really can’t complain. I had teammates that worked extremely hard with me to make this project the best that we could. We hope that we now have created a site that parents and teachers can use to teach students to be healthy. We provided multiple tools for them to use, and also provided them with lots of useful information to teach the students what healthy even means. We are so proud of our project, and we hope that shows through the hard work we put into it!

Documentation for Week 4

11/13

This week was a great week for our project! We had the opportunity to meet with Justine on Monday which was very helpful. She gave us some pointers, approved our technology activity, and we talked through our final plans for the project. Then, she decided to give us the day off from class on Wednesday to use it as a work day for our project. As a group, we accomplished a lot on this day. We worked on and completed our technology activity. I think Campbell had a hard time creating the QR codes, but she ended up doing a great job with it! Another thing we struggled with was trying to think of names for our tabs on our website. Our project is geared toward elementary students, so it has been difficult to try to come up with tabs that they will understand! That is something we need to work on more. We also finished the quiz we created for after the project is over to see what kids learned. In addition, we created the food journal that students will complete throughout the whole project. This will act as our reflection and show what you know combined in a way. Really, the only thing we have left to do is work on our rubric. I think our project is coming along great, and I’m excited for next week when we get to share our hard work and see our classmates work as well!

The Rise of the Interactive White Board

For this reflection, I read the article called “The Rise of the Interactive Whiteboard in Higher Education.” It talks a lot about how interactive whiteboards aren’t only useful with elementary, middle, and high school students, but they are also extremely beneficial to students in colleges and universities. The article states that these technological whiteboards “engage students’ imagination and encourage them to collaborate.” The use of interactive whiteboards are growing in higher education, and I predict they will be in almost every classrooms in the next ten years. One of the best tools these types of whiteboards can do for higher education students is assist with presentations. It will make student’s presentations much more time-efficient, easier to use, and provides many tools right at their fingertips that they wouldn’t normally have in a typical presentation.

This video I found on YouTube shows some cool things the whiteboard can do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLdHbtuCIyY

I personally think whiteboards should be available in every school and business across the country. They are the perfect new and innovative tools to use to better presentation, learning, and creativity. By having a smart board present in places were creativity is vital (like schools and businesses), people will be encouraged and much more willing to get their creative juices flowing. I think these interactive whiteboards are greet tools and will be so beneficial to the learners and teachers in our society. I think they can do nothing but help our schools and businesses.

 

Documentation for weeks 2 and 3

11/6: Last week, we did not have class. Our group used it as an opportunity to get ahead and work on our project. Courtney and Campbell worked on creating activities for our website, and I worked on the lecture for the website. At first, I struggled slightly with how to come up with a lecture. I decided to use PowerPoint since I am already very familiar with that application. Once I started using PowerPoint, I conducted a lot of research in what it takes to be a healthy student. I found a lot of interesting things. When Campbell, Courtney, and I all met to see how our project was going, we were all very pleased with each others’ works. They did a great job with their activities! Last week was a successful week on working on our website.

This week we had presentations. I think it is really great that Justine gave us an opportunity to get feedback from our classmates about our presentations. I found it really helpful, and I’m sure we’ll get constructive criticism on how to make our website even better. We will be meeting with Justine next week to further discuss our plans for the project. This is something we are all looking forward to because we want to make sure Justine likes our plans, and that we are on the right track to a great project. We all are continuing to work on our site, and I think it’s on the way to be great!!

Documentation # 1

10/23: Today we worked on our “Hook” section of our project. We found a video, made a fun facts page, and also found a game for students to play before the start their lesson on “Healthy Living.” We feel like we are on task with our project and progressing well! We haven’t come across any problems with Weebly yet. The only issues we had today was that we struggled to find a video, but we found one from Sesame Street that gets our point across! – Campbell, Courtney, and Emily

Hands on Learning, Hands on Life

I think project-based learning is a great tool for teaching, and for students to learn more easily. When they have to physically work on a project, I personally believe it makes them more passionate about what they are doing, and they are also more likely to pay attention to their work. They will be more focused on what they are learning. When I have participated in project based learning, I have found that it has helped me. It makes me appreciate what I am doing more because I become passionate about it. It gets me more involved, and once I am involved and connected to things, it personally gives me more of a reason to do the work.

From a student’s perspective, I think there can be many pros and cons to project-based learning. First of all, I think most students can agree that project-based learning can be very time-consuming. This is a con because most students don’t want to put in extra time and effort. However, there are the slight few that do, and that makes the projects very different. Another con would be that project-based learning may be one-sided. However, I think most students would agree that project-based learning has more pros than cons, and most students enjoy working on projects in the classroom. It allows them to dig deeper and get their creative juices flowing, which is something a lot of students thrive off of.

From a teacher’s perspective, there can also be pros and cons to project-based learning. One big con would be that the teacher is much less in control when it comes to this type of learning. The teacher gives them the materials, but really it’s in the students hands if they want to learn it. This can lead to the con of some students doing the work and learning the material and some students blowing it off, and the teacher can’t do much about it until after the assignment. This would be past the time when the student’s needed to learn it, which means there is not time to go back and teach the material again. A pro would be that it would give the teacher a chance to see the creative sides of her students, which is something I think is very important. Creative learning leads to critical thinking in students, which will get them far in life.

Picture 1: http://cdn.teachhub.com/storage/previews/300×220/storage/4d6e50ade5908_49085.jpg

 

Reflection 7: My Experience with Stop Animation

I think Ladybug Number Count is a great tool to help children who can’t count learn to count. It’s easy to use, and it makes learning fun for kids by being on the ipad. Kids have very short attention spans, however technology is a big part of their lives in this time period. So, by being able to learn on something kids enjoy using, and are good at using, it makes them want to learn. Ladybug Number Count is a great app for kids that are learning to count, and teachers and parents should definitely try it.

I think the fact that technology is constantly evolving and creating new things is such an amazing thing for our generation. As seen while watching other classmates’ stop animation videos, there are so many amazing apps that we can simply download, and they can better our lives. For example, the recipe app was so cool because you can search ingredients and it gives you step by step recipes to make with the ingredients you have. Also, I thought that the app about the dictionary was cool. You can look up the meaning of a word within seconds with the use of your smartphone. These emerging technologies makes our lives as 21st centurions so much easier and there were only be more and more innovative apps that come out.

I thought that making the stop animation movie was really cool. It was cool to be able to make a video using the same techniques that many commercials use today. I think the only con I can think of is the fact that it took a lot of time and effort to make this video. However, the results were very rewarding. This project was very fun! I would suggest to others doing this project to plan out how you are going to do the video so you don’t waste time when you are filming.

Reflection 6: Augmented Reality

There are many pros to using augmented reality in the classroom, in my opinion. First of all, today, we live in a very technological based society. Since technology provides us with so many useful tools right at our fingertips, why not use them to better our classrooms? Another pro to augmented reality was one I read in “the guardian” article that was posted on Justine’s Edit 2000 blog. The article said that augmented reality can be used as a tool for interactive communication with your audience. I think teachers could use augmented reality to better progress their classrooms in a multitude of ways.

While there are many pros to augmented reality, there are also some cons. One of the biggest cons is that while yes, technology plays a huge role in our society today, it still is constantly changing. Augmented reality, in turn, is constantly changing as well. As stated in “the guardian” article, these changes can threaten what has already been developed. However, I still believe that augmented reality is a great tool and should be implemented, despite the threat of change.

One augmented reality app I found very interesting was Google goggles. Basically, it is a Google search engine, but instead of typing things to search, you search through the use of your camera. This makes searching much easier, especially if you don’t know the name of something you want to search for. Another cool app I found having to do with augmented reality was Google sky map. With Google sky map, you can simply point your phone towards the sky and it will tell you the name of the constellations. Both of these apps are very innovative and cool ways to use your smartphone with augmented reality.

Picture 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=technologyin+class&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=wLtJUrjnEoTI9QS8hIHIDA#facrc=_&imgrc=rfaC0nBsFYRLzM%3A%3BCYOKCk8oMnn_2M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fbryanhighnorseman.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2011%252F04%252Ftechnology-in-classroom-logo.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fnotanotherhistoryteacher.edublogs.org%252F2012%252F02%252F20%252Finteresting-ways-to-use-technology-in-the-classroom%252F%3B350%3B350

Picture 2: https://www.google.com/search?q=technology+constant+change&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=frtJUt-sCYPE9gS1tIG4DQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=yEIxYME51bvsoM%3A%3Bw5vC6LV8kJ8lkM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F3.bp.blogspot.com%252F_VdzkmGA2S8U%252FTOm2TV1ROJI%252FAAAAAAAAAA0%252F3bccB5JXp8Y%252Fs400%252FCHANGE%252Bis%252Bthe%252Bonly%252BCONSTANT.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fsmeitexpo2011.blogspot.com%252F2010%252F11%252Fera-of-technological-revolution.html%3B1440%3B1540

Picture 3 and 4: http://deepknowhow.com/2013/04/04/top-20-augmented-reality-apps-for-android-and-iphoneipad-users/

 

Reflection 5: Visual Literacy/ Art in Education

For this reflection, I decided to show a different way, rather than writing, to get across how I interpreted these three articles. I found an article by the Washington Post that I think reflects exactly what these three articles are saying, which is basically the importance for our students to be exposed as much as possible to technology and the arts in the classroom in order for them to be 21st century, well-rounded students. Click here to view the article.