Journal Post 6

Focus question:  What are WebQuests and virtual fieldtrips?

            Webquests are online inquiries created by students and guided by teachers. Teachers preselect websites, which students can tour to gather information about the assigned topic. This information may be gathered from pictures, videos, digital text, or audio. With this information, instead of writing the typical research paper, the students might prepare individual or group presentations to share with their classmates. Virtual Fieldtrips allow students and teachers to take field trips to different places in the world without ever leaving the classroom. I believe that both of these are a great alternative or addition to how lessons are normally taught, they are both engaging the students to learn more, and exciting them about learning. Virtual tours could be especially helpful in a class such as geography, world history, and social studies, this way students can feel more connected and get a real picture of the place their studying about.

Tech Tool: Backflip- www.backflip.com

            Backflip is a free bookmarking tool. This tool is especially useful for students to keep track of the sources where they get their information. One of the benefits of using backflip is that it enables you to retrace the steps taken on the web. It can also serve as a web surfing tool that will organize and collect history of the websites you’ve visited. I would consider using such a site, especially because there is nothing more frustrating than finishing a very long research paper, ready to list your resources, and not being able to find your source. All students could really benefit and should be using a site like backflip as a tool to stay organized.

Summary: Chapter 6

            Chapter 6 introduces websites for maintaining organization while working with online resources. Some of these include bookmarking, social bookmarking, and information alerts. Bookmark techniques are especially helpful when researching a topic, they can aid you in staying organize and not losing your sites without having to keep all the tabs opens. Webquests and virtual fieldtrips are also introduced, which are great ways for teachers to capture the student’s attention and keeping things new and exciting, while following the curriculum and learning standards. In order for teachers to stay organized in following the curriculum and standards, they can use electronic resources such as building a standards connector web.

Photo credit to Robin Ashford

Journal Post 5

Focus Question: How can teachers respond to problems with plagiarism when 
students use online sources?


Plagiarism is the direct copying and misrepresenting of someone else’s work. The 
internet is perhaps the biggest source of information available to students; and
 most students chose online sources when it comes to writing a paper or doing any
 other school assignments. Turnitin.com and ithenticate.com are two of the
 websites that aid teachers in detecting plagiarism in a students work. The work 
is electronically scanned to identity is the text is directly copied from other 
sources. In turnitin.com alone there are about 40,000 papers turned in a day, 
 and 30% have material that is identified as plagiarism or less original. Rather 
than waiting to find plagiarism in a students work, it may be a good idea to
 warn students and teach the ways to avoid plagiarism. James McKenzie identified 
seven ways teachers can fight against plagiarism. These include, distinguishing 
levels or types of research, discourage “trivial pursuits”, emphasize essential
 questions, require and enable students to construct answers, focus information
 storage systems, stress citation ethics, and assess progress throughout the
 entire research process. All of these ideas are great; however we all know that 
even if we teach students how to avoid plagiarism, there are still student’s that
 will take the easy way out. In my opinion it is a great idea to guide them, and
 warn them about plagiarism, but still use sites such as turnitin.com, to make
 sure that the work is truly authentic. It’s also important to let the students
 know that you plan on turning this paper into such a site, and explaining the
 site. This will hopefully motivate students to do their own work, and as an
 outcome actually learn something from the assignment. 

                                                            Photo credit to Andrew Wong

 

Tech Tool: 
Librivox – http://librivox.org


Librivox is a website that offers free audio recordings of published books and
 other materials. These materials are read aloud into digital audio files by
 volunteers. You can do a search by author, title, reader, and language or
 subject/genre. Many books are available by chapters. This makes it very useful 
for teachers and students who don’t need to listen to the whole book, but only a
 certain chapter, poem, etc. This website is wonderful for people who have
 impaired vision. At the same time is helpful for people who are on the go, as 
you can download these files into itunes, and then into your phone, or ipod. 
 There is a wide variety of books and other materials on this site, it is great
 that so many people have volunteered their time to create all of this things
 accessible in an audio version. 


                                                Photo Credit to Kara Shallenberg

Summary: Chapter 5

            Chapter five discuses how teachers and students can both use the Internet correctly to assist them in their plans and learning. The chapter begins by introducing different search engines and giving examples of how teachers can teach student to use them correctly, and identify things such as weather there are bias and have useful information. The chapter also includes a chart listing specialized resources for teachers. Other than addressing how to properly use the web as a search engine, and how to teach students how to this as well, the chapter also goes over plagiarism. Plagiarism is a big issue since the Internet has become such an available source for students to research in. Students can find actual papers and turn them in a their own work. There are of course other ways students plagiarize such as not sourcing their sites, or taking big chunks of information from a site and using it as their own. At the end of the chapter there is a Technology Transformation Lesson Plan. 

Journal Post 4

Focus question:

What are “digital inequality” and the “participation gap”?

Digital inequality is defined by the book “Tranfroming Learning with New Technologies” as the idea that access to the latest computer technology varies greatly within low-income and non-white Americans less likely to be able to afford and use the newest tools. In a research study based on students between the ages of 5 to 17, 80 percent of white students have access to computers at home, while only 48 percent of Hispanic students and 47 percent of African American students do. A participation gaps definition, states that students who lack 24/7 access to the latest technologies lag behind their peers technologically and educationally. As technology is being emphasized more and more in schools having a strong foundation and a lot of practice with computer use can be very beneficial. While this can be good for children that are familiar and experienced with handling computers, it can be very much harmful to those that are not fortunate enough to have access to computers at home. Lacking the practice of using these tools can really slow them down in completing assignments or doing research. Though there are libraries and computers at school this does not close the participation gap. In fact, some argue that adding computers at school can actually increase digital inequality rather than reduce it.

                                                                    photo credit to: MDGovpics

Tech Tool:

Edutopia

Edutopia is a great site with lots of information for Innovate Teaching in grades K-12. This website contains blogs, videos, articles, and a lot of great information. This website would be very useful for teachers who may need ideas on lesson plans or how to handle things in a classroom, it is also informative on what is going on in the education world. However, you do not need to be a teacher to find this website interesting; it is full of great information for anyone to enjoy. It is easy to navigate through it. I also like that it does not ask you to sign up in order to view their videos, articles, etc.

Summary:

This chapter focuses on integrating technology in a teacher’s curriculum and also for the teachers use. This chapter discusses benefits of technology in a classroom, while also addressing the drawbacks of its use on certain students. One of these, drawbacks is the concern of digital inequality and the participation gap. Despite some of the drawbacks, there are many benefits that in my opinion outweigh any negative factors, such as the student’s positive response and interest in using technology in school. Some other benefits are that technology facilitates communication, research, and the teachers ability to track student progress.

Jounal Post 3

The Common Core

The common Core state standards provide clear standards of what a student is expected to learn in each grade level. These standards were put together by teachers, parents, and community leaders. The purpose of The Common Core is that teachers and parents know what they need to do in order to prepare the students and enable them to learn better. These standards were approached with the purpose of reflecting the knowledge and the skills that students will learn in the classroom to those they will need in order to be successful in college and their careers. The Common Core sounds like a good set of standards specially that our teachers and parents also had a big input in defining them.

There are already 45 states that have adapted the Common Core. However, there are still others that are not as supportive of these standards. The Washington post website posted an article by Valerie Strauss discussing the views of Yong Zhao, presidential chair and associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. Yong Zhao discussed that the Standards are too narrow and rigid. He also points out that we do not know what work will be available when today’s infants leave College and enter the workforce.  In another article by Jan Murphy in The Patriot-News website, the opposite is argued. “Pennsylvania has had academic standards in place since 1999, this is simply upgrading the standards to meet the new times and needs we see out there,” said Education Secretary Ron Tomalis.

 Fox news published an article about home school parents being concerned with the new standards. They state that the reason they homeschool their kids is to be able to focus on the individuals talents and personality. They are concerned the material will be too limited, and wonder, will they have to take these test too? The answer to that question depends on each state. Home-schooling groups, like the HSLDA, claim the Common Core creates a “one-size-fits-all approach to education” that rests on the “assumption that every child must learn the same things at the same speed.” In defend of The Common Core an supporting  institute explained, “Teachers and administrators, including principals and superintendents, will decide how the standards are to be taught and will establish the curriculum, just as they currently do, allowing for continued flexibility and creativity.”

While I can see both sides to the debate, The Common Core doesn’t seem like a bad option. We already have certain standards, and I don’t see a big issue in updating them. The world keeps changing and as does the material students need to learn to succeed. The common standards seem to leave some room for adjustments and flexibility depending on the school and student’s needs.

 

Resources:

"Common Core." Common Core State Standards Initiative. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Sept. 2013.

Corbin, Cristina. "Parents Who Home-school Question Common Core's Reach." Fox News. FOX News Network, 05 Sept. 2013. Web. 05 Sept. 2013.

Murphy, Jan. "Central PA." The Patriot-News. N.p., 13 May 2013. Web. 05 Sept. 2013.

Strauss, Valerie. "Common Core Standards: Arguments against — and for." Washingtonpost.com. The Wasington Post, n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.

Journal Post 2

Focus question:

How do students use technology for visual learning?

                To begin with, what is visual learning? Visual learning is defined as gaining knowledge through the use of pictures, drawings, video, animation, and other visual sources of information. In traditional learning students only used pictures or graphs in their textbooks for visual learning.  Technology has opened many doors, especially for those students that are visual learners. Instead of only viewing static images, students can now use all of the visual sources listed above and more. For example in science class, rather than looking at bacteria only in a picture, students can now look at live bacteria through a microscope. Videos are also a great source, I know as a student I very much enjoy when teachers play videos in class, not only because I am personally a visual learner, but also because it gives you a better grasp of things, rather than just hearing it, or reading it. You are looking at it and hearing it at the same time, some videos also include text. In this way you are not only learning visually. Perhaps one of the most positive attributes of using the visual learning sources in technology is that many fulfill more than just the visual needs of a student.

 

                                                                    

Tech tools: Rome Reborn

        Rome reborn is a website that digitally reproduced Rome as it was on June 21, AD. 320. The website includes pictures, videos and clips. It is probably a good website for a student doing research on ancient Rome, who wants to get pictures for his or her assignment. As it is a visual tool, there isn’t much written information. The website seemed very simple and a little plane. I personally like a website that is mainly constructed to be a visual source to be a little more animated.

Chapter summary:

                This chapter included a wide variety of information. The beginning was very interesting because it included a parent-teacher conference in which the parent questioned the teacher as to why she encouraged so much technology in her classroom, where at home she is trying to do the opposite for her child. The teacher did not have a good response for the parent. Personally I have always felt the same way as the parent did in this scenario. I’ve always liked technology to be very limited because I associated technology with isolation.  After reading this chapter I understand that technology is actually a great thing to use in a classroom.

                There are three learning theories that teachers consider when they are using technology to teach. These three theories include behaviorism, cognitive science, and constructivism. It is important that teachers use technology in the right way therefore there are guidelines to help them do this. There are also active methods to engage the students; these include one-on-one tutoring, learning groups, inquiry learning, and meta cognitive thinking. My favorite of these is meta cognitive because it encourages students to reflect on their own learning and self-evaluation. The text also introduces two types of approaches to teaching, teacher-centered, and student-centered. In the teacher- centered approach the major focus and energy of a class comes from the teacher to the student, while in student-centered, the students are actively a part of the class, from planning lessons to engaging in discussions.

                Visual learning using technology is a very important part of using technology to teach. Students can use things as videos, pictures, telescopes, and microscopes. Reading about visual learning I found out that there is also something called visual literacy. I would’ve never thought of visual and literacy having any relation. However this is when a student learns to critically read color and form while assessing the types of visual presentations.

               The text emphasized that it is important to include active engagement, collaboration, and group work when using technology in a classroom. In this ways students can share their creativity and what they’ve learned with other students. After reading this chapter, many of the things I learned eliminated my old concerns of student isolation in a classroom due to the use of technology.