Open Office

In my placement last week I noticed that all the computers in the computer lab (PC's) didn't use Microsoft Word. Instead they used a program called Open Office, and every computer in the school had it, even the teachers. I went to openoffice.org and found out that it is an open-source program. Open-source means that it has a completely open development process and anyone can report bugs, request new features, or enhance the software.

I can definitely see why a school would want to use this software instead of one that they have to pay for like Microsoft Word. This is completely free of any licencing fees and offers pretty much the same thing as other programs.

There are however a few issues with it. My counseling teacher (CT) sent me a file of her class schedule and I was unable to open it on my computer. I feel like issues like this would be likely to come up, but it would be worth working through them when you think about how much money you could save your school. Some sources say that open-sourced software has saved people $60 billion dollars a year (link).

Lesson-Podcast

The content goals and technology I would like to use for my first formal integrated technology lesson plan in CEP 416 is about the American Revolution, and I would like to use podcasting as the technical aspect. The learning goals are going to be centered on the Michigan Department of Education  GLCE’s (Grade Level Content Expectations). For 5^th grade the GLCE’s are…

I would like to split the class into groups and give them each a topic to research (the advantages for both sides, Valley Forge, roles of women, African Americans, American Indians, and France…) For the podcast I would like them to present the material as if they were the ones who were there, go back in time. I think this would make the project much more interesting, and it will hopefully get the students more into it. I want to do this with a podcast because I want each student to be able to access it and share it with their families. With podcasts you can download them on any computer with itunes, or put it directly on an ipod or a class website. 

Digital Storyboard

This week in class we worked on making digital storyboards. Basically it is telling a story by some sort of technology based website or program. There are a ton of different ways to create a digital storyboard. Some programs are slideshows, others are like movies and you can add audio and video. I decided to use www.tikatok.com which is a site for children to create books. i thought that this would be a cool site to use if students were working on a biography or a report of some kind. It is free, and this way kids won't have to print off sheets. Usually schools don't use color printers all too often, with this they can have the vibrant color in the photos that they find, and it would be really easy to share it with their parents and families. I made a little report on Henry Ford.

Using Cell Phones in Education

Lately I have heard a lot about using cell phones in education. I’ve seen it pop up all over, but I just recently started really reading about it. The concept is pretty simple, you have students use their phones which have more computing power than a 10 year old computer. These powerful machines are in the pockets of a lot of kids. They can be used to do research for projects, reading articles or books, polling questions or quizzes, education programs, or even by using the digital or video cameras that are on most phones. Students could take pictures of the board if they can’t get all the information down, they could send notes to a sick friend or email their parents a picture of a group project and get them more involved in what is going on at school. I do think there are definitely some benefits for using cell phones in the school setting, but if a program like this is to be established I think that the school has to provide the devices. Not every student and their family are going to have or be able to afford a cell phone, and you could risk really singling them out. I think that devices that can hook up to wifi would be the best to use, and then it is just the one time cost of buying the device.

In Johannesburg Africa where 10% of the population has internet access and there are very few computers in schools, students use their own money/minutes to use a social networking application that links them with a math or science tutor (all volunteers). I thought this was a really cool program, and it has been running since 2007 (article link).

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPAC) is the type of knowledge that teachers need to know when educating, and we are learning about how to do this in this class. Teachers need to know the content that they are teaching in order to teach it, pretty straight forward. Obviously it is important to be knowledgeable in whatever area you are teaching. It isn’t enough to just know the content, but you also need pedagogical knowledge, a deep understanding of the material, how to manage a classroom, and how students learn. That way you know how to teach and present the information to your students so that they can fully understand it. The technological knowledge is your understanding of the tools in which you present the information. This can be as simple as a pen and paper, or using an application on the computer. When you utilize all of this you can best teach your students.

Cell phones do have a lot of potential to help students learn. I think the main challenge would be making sure kids stay on task when working with them. It is also vital that you have a deep understanding of the applications on the phones that you will use while educating, and how to create lessons that kids can be involved and focused on the task at hand.

No Child Left Behind

Today in my CEP 451 class (law of special education) we watched a video on No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I've always known the basics of it, how it uses standard testing to determine if schools are achieving to required expectations. Also if a school doesn't it gets taken over and radically overhauled. I've never talked to much about how it really affects schools. There is the concern that teachers will only "teach towards the test," and they could miss out on a lot of creative meaningful learning that a teacher would have provided them if they didn't have to worry about their scores on these standardized tests. In the video we watched there was a high performing school but they were so high they really couldn't improve each year, so they went from like a 90% to a  91 or 89% and were "outperformed" by a school that went from a 30% to a 40% (these numbers aren't accurate I didn't take notes). There isn't something quite right there if schools are up to be taken over by the national government if they don't meet expectations for 4 years or something like that. We haven't talked about it in the class yet so I still need more background information about it. Don't quote me on any of this because the video was very one-sided and I still need to delve deeper into this topic. NCLB is doing what it was meant to do, it is improving test scores and literacy proficiency all around the country but there are a lot of educators that are not big fans of it. I just felt like writing my reaction to the video, I will post more about it on another day.

This is a photo I just licenced with Creative Commons

I just added this photo to my flickr account (link). The copyright I set up makes it so that other people can use it, but it can't be used for commercial use.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a website that allows someone to give permission to others to use their work as long as they recognize them for it. So I could take a photo I find off flickr and turn it into a poster as long as I attribute the person who took it like with this photo.

Photo Attribution:

Image: Colour Pencils-1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/3267138841/

by: David Blaikie

I think that this could be used in the classroom by using it as a motivational poster, or to list class rules onto it or something of that nature. I think that a motivational poster about using creativity in the classroom would work best because it would fairly hard to see a list of rules on it.

Online Lessons

I stumbled upon an interesting and helpful site earlier this week. The sight is www.khanacademy.org. I was reading an article in the New York Times about homeschooling and this was a site that the parent mentioned. This website has video lessons on a crazy amount of topics related to math, science, history, and more. They have over 1800 video lessons on anything you could think of related to science and math. I think this could be a useful site to use if a student needs help on a certain lesson, or a new way of looking at it. If a child was sick and there was a lesson that they missed they could possibly watch it on this site and not be too far behind their class.

Their are of course a few problems with lessons like this online. There isn't teacher you can immediately ask a question if you are stuck (there is a spot under the video where you can ask a question, but I have not tried this out yet.) If a student doesn't get something they could be completely stuck and become frustrated. Another think that could be a problem is that the voice of the individual giving the lesson is pretty monotonous, and I could see these videos being very boring for a student.

It has inspired me to create online videos like this in the future. Not for every single topic but for big picture stuff, or for modeling how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. I think that many students would benefit greatly from a video actually showing you how to work out a problem as opposed to reading it from a textbook.

Overall I think that these online video-lessons are a great idea, but they should be used in conjunction with lessons actually taught in the classroom, not as a replacement for them. Sites like this would also be a great way for students to learn during the summer, and develop individual learning skills and commitment.