Post #10

I have noticed through the course of this class that the tools that were offered to me as a student in elementary through high school and the utensils that are available for students now are very far on the spectrum. We have so much more currently to offer to our students to help them expand their education. I plan to incorporate the majority of the technological concepts that i have learned within the classroom. Especially the use of blogging and the Inspiration software. I feel that these two are very important and helpful features to the classroom. Blogging allows the student to step out of the structured medium and show us as teachers who they really are and what is going on in their heads. Inspiration, I believe, is an excellent program that can be incorporated inside of the classroom and also can be beneficial to the student outside of the classroom.

Something that particularly stuck out to me was a statement that Seth made in one of his blogs. He said something about possibly taking outside classes that were funded by the school. I think that this would be an amazing an enlightening experience for the students. Not only does it take them away from the stuffiness of the four walls of the classroom, but it also gives them a different perspective on concepts. My creative writing teacher back in high school used to allow us to go outside all of the time or to where ever we felt most able to think freely and write, as long as it was within the school grounds. Some of my best pieces of poetry came from when I was writing from the roof of the Communications building at my old school.

In the last blog, I spoke about web cameras being integrated into the classroom to make the pen-pal concept more appealing to students. Another technology-related skill that I think would be beneficial for high school students would be a school email similar to what we use in secondary education institutes, like our FSU email accounts. This tool can be used for the teachers who have students taking Advanced Placement and other college level courses while in high school, to inform them of the different examination dates and such, because they usually don't comply with the rest of the school. Also, it will help the teachers answer last minute questions about assignments and give the student a chance to ask the question that they forgot to in class. It works out for everyone.

The previous tool to be learned and incorporated would take a lot of time and money to accomplish. I would definitely need the backing of the school board and an efficient system of creating these email addresses for all high school students would be imperative. There would most definitely be a need for a trainer to come in and not only train the teachers on the usages of the email, but also the students. This would also take time out of the curriculum and money to pay for the trainers, thus a large budget would be necessary. This project would definitely take time and couldn't be implemented anytime soon, however, I feel that it is a definite possibility.

Post #9

A tool that I found would be very useful to me as a teacher was a website that connected teachers with different lesson plans and activity ideas for not only the core subjects but also other extracurriculars. Along the right side of the website are links for lesson plans, seasonal items, printable worksheets, and job availability. Not only that, but the web page also links to other credible websites. This website is called www.theteacherscorner.net

Upon looking through the other sites that were listed by my classmates, I found one in particular that I could connect very well with its usage. This site was www.freetranslation.com. to be used for translating words, sentences, paragraphs from one language to another continuously. This site has been a great help to me through my 8+ years of Spanish.

A technology-related skill that I would like to learn next is how to integrate the use of the web camera in the classroom. I have also felt that the idea of having a pen-pal in another country or even another state was in more ways than one beneficial to the students. However, its difficult to get them to remain in touch and motivated to send letters back and forth. Therefore, I feel that the web-camera would be nice so that the students can continue with their new-found friendships.

Since the above is one of my future goals, I will have to do a lot of research in order to set this up, because I would need to ensure that the other classroom of students has access to web-cameras. Even before this, I would need to do a proposal and possibly apply for grants to get these devices in supply at my own home school.