Week of January 29

At the moment, I am substituting in an elementary classroom, teaching gifted students. We are studying mysteries. As I watch the students complete the assigned activities, I have thought how much fun it would be to incorporate the use of different technology into the lessons. The students have completed activities on fingerprinting and handwriting analysis for which a little research online would have benefited them greatly. It would have been much more interesting if the students could have completed a short webquest on the topics. They are also writing their own mystery story for which I would like to let them type on the computer and then edit each other's papers.

Although it is taking me a great deal of time to complete the class assignments, I am certainly becoming more comfortable with some of the tools available. I find that I am using newly discovered formatting commands as I do things at work and at home. I am also making plans for a class website for my own classroom. I am still a little intimidated but am excited about being able to utilize some of the technology that is available.

Week of Jan 22

In the article "Cooperative Learning Groups," several points were made that reminded me of some areas in which I struggle when coordinating group activities in the classroom. One area I have difficulty with is teaching individual accountability and personal responsibility. It seems that there are always several children who do not work well with others and who do not contribute a fair share to the group effort. This also affects the element of interpersonal and small group skills. I have not yet mastered the art of guiding these children effectively through the cooperative group process so that they are successful and so they do not hamper the efforts of others in the group.

While reading the above mentioned article, webquests came to mind. A well constructed webquest would be a great way to use cooperative learning groups in the classroom. Because these activities require several processes in order to complete the final goal, it would be easy to delegate equally important responsibilities to every group member.

Week of January 22

The article about webquests was very informative. I like the idea of getting students more involved in their education. Some positive benefits to students from completing webquests are:

• knowledge acquisition & integration
• ability to transform knowledge and create a product using that information
• development of higher level thinking skills such as analysis and synthesis
  
• information retention

A webquest usually contains the following elements:

• Introduction
• Task
• Sources of Information
• Process
• Guidance
• Conclusion

As I began the web resources project, I was concerned that I would have trouble locating webquests for the objectives I had chosen. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many sites from which to choose. What started out as a daunting task, actually turned out to be enjoyable and very informative.

Week of Jan. 15

When beginning this assignment, I couldn’t imagine how a blog could be of any use to me in the classroom. Now, however, I am excited about the possibilities. I would love to have a forum in which to share information with parents such as homework assignments, reminders, and special links to useful websites. I also love that this information is archived for future use.

This began as a very frustrating assignment to me. My computer knowledge is so outdated that I felt like I was reading a foreign language. Before completing this assignment, I had very little experience with blogs and was unfamiliar with much of the terminology. Although I still have a lot to learn about blogging, I now know what the termsSkype, tweeting, wiki, and hypertext mean.

Week of Jan. 15

In “Teaching With Technology”, the authors define technology as the application of current knowledge for a useful purpose while innovations represent change for the sake of change. Although many educators value technology within the classroom, some teachers never reach the higher levels of technology adoption. I believe that there are so many demands placed on teachers that they need assurance that technology adoption will be useful to their students and will be productive in raising test scores before many are willing to make that investment.

This article discusses the benefits of allowing students to explore and research information that meets their individual needs. As I am completing assignments in this class, I find that I am doing exactly that. I retain the information so much better when I am able to see the connection between and application of information.