Jennifer Nelson's Weblog

My Technology Portfolio

jnelson9 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:21:14 +0000

This first assignment is my newsletter where I made up a sheet with a lot of announcements for incoming students. I actually had a lot of fun with this assignment and I can really see where this is going to help me in the future. Each year I’m going to be getting a whole new set of students who know nothing about me and it would be helpful to be able to put together a newsletter letting the students know a bit about me and what’s going to be going on during the year. It’s something I’ll actually use very often in my classroom I think.

newsletter

This assignment is my spreadsheet activity. I made a spreadsheet of different countries in the world and how many books each of them print every year. While the spreadsheet does apply to my specialization, I don’t think I’ll ever use anything like this. As a high school English teacher I don’t know how often I’ll be using spreadsheets, but I think that it was good to get a handle on how to use them because I know that they’re very helpful in keeping students’ grades and what not. I know that as a teacher I’ll be using them a lot to keep track of assignments and students and grades, but in my classroom I don’t think I’ll be using them much.

spreadsheet-activity

This is my database activity where I took my spreadsheet and turned it into a database. Once again, I don’t know how useful this will be in my actual classroom in teaching the students, but it will again be useful from a teachers perspective in keeping grades and tabs on students.

database-activity

This is my inspiration assignment where I mapped out some of the characters in The Kite Runner and outlined some of their characteristics. I also included a picture of the book, a video of the movie, and a clip of music from a passage in the book. I think that this program will be very useful in my specialization because my students will be reading many different books that they will need to think out and this concept map is a perfect way to do it. Students will be able to do what I did with the Kite Runner and use it to help them understand what we’re reading better.

In my first case study I looked at technologies in a classroom for children with disabilities. It was really interesting to see some of the technologies that they have available in the English department for students with disabilities such as word recognition software. I think that it was helpful to do this case study because I may run into students in my classroom that have learning disabilities and if I know about some of these programs I will know better how to help them.

case-study-1

In my second case study I looked at a video of a biology teacher introducing new technologies to her students. The classroom got new microscopes and she introduced them by just letting the students experiment and play with them and learn by using them that way. I think that this was helpful because different technologies will have to be introduced in different ways and seeing this showed me that sometimes I’m going to have to think outside of the box.

case-study-2

In my third case study I looked at a classroom where students were instructed to make a movie to demonstrate an idea. I think that this was helpful to me because I remember making a movie in my classes in high school to od the same thing and I think that it does help students learn. It gets them involved with different software that they might not have used initially, and it helps them get more into what they’re learning. I think that I will definitely use this in my classroom.

case-study-3

In my last case study I looked at a classroom where they were studying black studies and they were using a videoconferencing system to communicate with a classroom in another state. This was helpful to watch, because it illustrates another way of getting students connected with the outside world. Many students never experience much outside of their immediate surroundings and videoconferencing is a great way for students to get some viewpoints of people in other places.

case-study-4

In my first lesson plan I got a bad grade, but after seeing an example of it I realized why. I did mine on the Kite Runner and wanted students to get a more in depth understanding of the characters in the book and how their actions affect the plot. My instructional strategies did not follow the format however, and I learned from this how to do the next one better.

lesson-plan-1

In my second lesson plan I got a much better grade, and I think that my lesson plan was a lot better. I had students look at a book and try to deduce a theme from it to write a paper about it. It’s important to know how to do a lesson plan well because it is the main thing I will be doing as a teacher and it is important that I learn how to do it well.

lesson-plan-2

My final multimedia project was kind of a pain in the butt but it really did prove that I did learn a lot in the class. I was able to do a lot with PowerPoint (like make action buttons) that I had never done before. I did my project on the writing process and how to pick a topic and then applied it to Les Miserables. It was an interesting project and PowerPoint is something I think I will use a lot in my classroom because it is a great way to present ideas.

final-multimedia-project

What from the semester will be most beneficial to you in your future teaching practice?

jnelson9 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:02:24 +0000

I think that the most beneficial thing that I learned this semester would be some of the extra aspects to word and how to write a lesson plan. Word is going to be one of the most frequently used software programs for me and my students and it is absolutely vital that i learn how to use the program to its full extent so that it can have as much benefit as possible. When we wrote the newsletters I had a refresher on things I didn’t quite remember and I learned a couple of new things which is always a good thing. Learning how to make a lesson plan was also very useful because it is something that I am going to have to do throughout the rest of my career. I’ve seen teachers make lesson pland for years, but I’ve never actually put together how much thought and how many rules go in to making one. It was very important for me to get to learn that and to put it all together myself in the two that I made this year. Those plans are what I’m going to use to teach students for the r est of my life, so they’re obviously going to be very important. If lesson plans are done right and the right things are taught according to the standards students will get a better education, which is always a good thing. It is also beneficial because it’s part of my job and I will probably be penalized if I cannot do one correctly when I get a job. These lesson pland extremely important to the teaching profession and by learning how to do them correctly I am making myself a better teacher.

How has your understanding of integrating technology into your teaching practice developed to this point in the semester?

jnelson9 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:56:11 +0000

So far this semester I’ve learned a lot about the ways of integrating technology into teaching that I don’t think I knew before. It’s really important to get a better grasp on how to do these things before you start trying to teach others, and I feel like I’ve been doing that in this class. We’ve explored a lot of programs that I’d neverused before such as inspiration, audacity, and imovie and I think that I will actually be using these in my classroom. Inspiration is a really wonderful program that lets students really become interactive with what they’re trying to learn and I think that now that I have learned a lot about it I will be better able to have my students effectively use it. I think that sometimes I just use the same programs over and over without trying any others because I don’t know how use others, but this course has broadened my horizons a bit and has really developed my skills. I had used a program sort of like imovie before this class called pinnacle and I think that I might have normally stuck with that all the time because I just know how to use it, but because I was forced to go outside of the box and learn something else I think that it is really going to benefit me and my students – especially since pinnacle is only for a PC. If I had a mac, I’d have to learn a lot of different software and this class and all that we have been taught so far in it have really helped me to learn some of those things that I’m going to need to know.

What do you now know are some good reasons to integrate technology into your teaching practice?

jnelson9 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:32:45 +0000

I now know that some forms of technology can really help students organize and understand materials better. When we used the spreadsheet I realized it would make it easier for students to organize information and use it in a way that could help them better understand a concept. When we did the inspiration project, I could really see where having students put together a concept map could truly show their understanding of what they read and understood. I remember making concept maps when I was in high school to either help write a paper by organizing the main ideas and characters or show what knowledge I had gained throughout my reading. It was really helpful. I also saw another use in the program in that you could add pictures, audio files, and video. These could really help in making students understand what I’m talking about. Not everyone learns just by reading, in fact most people don’t, and being able to do that could really help me in reaching my students. It was also helpful to do the newsletter assignment and test our skills in microsoft word. Word is an extremely useful tool and will probably be used in nearly every assignment I create or assign. It’s important for me to know how to use it and be able to show my students how to use it because I know that in their lifetime they will use it all the time. Overall, all the technologies I have been introduced to throughout this class will really help me when I am trying to teach my classes. Integrating them into my daily teachings will really help my students with their work and help them better understand what I am trying to get across.

How comfortable do you feel about integrating technology into your teaching practice?

jnelson9 — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:04:44 +0000

I feel pretty comfortable about integrating technology into my taching practice. I’ve been using a computer since elementary school and I’m really familiar with almost all of the programs that I would be using. Having come to college and seen how useful technology is to teaching, I know that it is very important to integrate it into the classroom and make sure that students use it to make their lives easier. I am also learning little things along the way that are going to help me in the long run, for example there were some things in word and the whole list function to make a database that I didn’t know about that will make teaching using technology a bit easier for me. I’m really familiar with power points and a lot of processing programs and I’m fairly confident in my ability to get students to be really interactive with the technoogy that will be available to them. I think that I will be even more confident after I finish this class, because I will know what a lot of other programs are that can help me teach. I don’t really know much about the concept mapping software, wikis, virtual reality, podcasting, or audacity. I assume that since these are being taught in the class they are things that we could use so I bet that I’ll be even more comfortable after I’ve learned them.

Based on your previous experience as a student, what is your opinion of the use of technology in education?

jnelson9 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:14:35 +0000

My experience with technology in education is very limited. I grew up in a very small town and went to a school that only had about 200 kids in the entire high school. We operated on very little money, and there wasn’t much technology in our classrooms other than the computers that each teacher had to type up our assignments and enter our grades. However, while in college technology has been very useful. In a chemistry class that I took this year technology was very useful and used all the time. We had powerpoint presentations everyday and the teacher used a microphone to talk to the class. This was helpful because it was a class of 300 students and we wouldn’t have been able to take notes and understand what she was saying if technology hadn’t been used. Also, outside of class we used Web CT for our howework and quizzes. This made it easier for us to complete assignments on our own whenever we had time. We could also contact our professor or TA through the program which helped because sometimes you need to ask a question before an assignment is due or just find something out that you wanted to know and thechnology helps get this accomplished much faster.