Cassandra Holman

Educationworld.com is a great free website for educators.  This website has five main tabs:  Lesson Planning, Professional Development, Administrator’s Desk, Technology Integration, and School Issues.  I found the Lesson Planning tab most useful.  They offer lesson plans by subject, top 10 lesson plans, and lesson plan features.  The other tab that I thought that was very useful was Technology Integration.  They offer technology resources and give ideas of how teachers can integrate technology into certain subjects such as social studies.  Teachers can also find free templates to use.  Some examples of the templates are award certificates, calendars, icebreakers, setting goals, and parent-teacher communication.  These templates are nice because you can save them to your hardrive and edit them as needed, or just simply print them off as you see them already made up.

4Teachers.org is a great source for teachers and students alike. 4Teachers.org is a website that offers a variety of tools. Some tools you do have to pay for a monthly subscription, but the large majority of the tools are absolutely free. One tool that I thought was neat was the Classroom Arcitech. This tool lets you put in the dimensions of your room and then has the objects that you can place in your room. Another good tool is the Casa Notes. This tool allows you to create notes that you send home such as: progress notes, reminders, field trip slips, and homework passes. They give you the templates and you can change some of the data, color scheme, and add a graphic to the notes. The neat thing about this tool also, is that the notes can be done in English or Spanish.

Another tool is the KidVid. This tool allows students to make their own videos. It helps them to create a storyboard and script, shoot the video, edit it, and then the students can choose to show their video using the web or a CD. Another fun tool that teachers can use to help their students learn is the Arcademic Skills Builder. This tool is basically an archive of academic video games. They have games like Meteor Multiplication, Alien Addition, Coconut Vowels, and Verb Viper. Now students can even play eachother from different computers.

EdTechBrainstorm.2007.10.25 is a discussion between Doug Symington and Arthus, a ninth grader from the United States.  They discussed topics that Arthus had discussed in a previous interview and the uses of technology in high school.  Doug stressed the importance of listening to the youth about technology and education.

Arthus said that he thought Twitter would be a great tool for education because teachers could send Tweets and parents could subscribe to it.  Also, the school could send out announcements through Twitter and the students could receive them over their cell phones. 

Arthus and Doug also s social networking.  Arthus said that he preferred Facebook over MySpace, saying that MySpace had a bad interface and wasn’t as private as Facebook.  On the topic of privacy Arthus said he wasn’t really nervous about stalkers, but more so about how his profile might affect his admission to college or getting a job in the future.  He also said that he thought that Facebook should have the profiles set to complete privacy as a default and users should go in  and change their settings if they want more things available to the public.  He thought one of the biggest problems was the fact that others can tag a picture of you and you can’t control it. 

A topic that I found surprising was that at Arthus’s high school the students do not have to sign and acceptable use policy, they just have it posted.  The main thing that students can’t do is use external email accounts, but the students have found ways around that.  Arthus argued that schools shouldn’t block certain tools because in the workforce and real world people will have to use these tools and then won’t fully understand them.  Instead, he thought that schools should teach how students to safely use the tools.

Teachnology.com is a resource for teachers online. This website does offer teachers resources that they must pay for, but they also have numerous free tools for teachers.  Teachers are offer lesson plans, 6600 printable worksheet, rubric makers, website maker, and online calendar maker.  Along with these tools, the website also offers many other free tools such as a teacher message board, many resource areas, a weekly tips teacher newsletter, and educational games, along with many other interesting tools.  Even though some tools are denied without having a membership, this site has many useful tools teachers of all grade levels can use.

Elluminate Live Academic Edition V8 is software for your computer that can greatly enhance collaboration in your classroom. It allows you to have class on-line. Elluminate Live provides “full-duplex audio, chat, high-resolution webcam, synchronized notes, application sharing, file transfer, interactive whiteboards, and breakout rooms.” It is also nice because every student does not have the same connection speed, but Elluminate Live allows every student to see and hear the same things at the same time. One problem that comes up a lot with students sharing information is the difference in the type of computers they use. Elluminate Live eliminates this problem by being compatible with Macs and PC’s. Each student can create his or her own profile and is able to share it with others. Basically everything on this program is set up so students can share with each other. Students can have small group discussions virtually, in real time. There are also interactive whiteboards that can be shared among the students. Elluminate Live is great for teachers too because it allows one teacher to reach hundreds of students at the same time. Teachers can also provide virtual office, mentoring, and tutoring hours to students.

Inspiration 8 is software teachers can use on the classroom computer. This software is a tool that students can use to create research projects. Inspiration 8 is very beneficial to students who are more visual learners.  For example, when they want to search for something they type in a keyword and the software presents over 1000 different symbols.  Students can use templates to easily create diagrams, charts, and outlines, among many other things.  Not only can the students use this to do research, but Inspiration 8 also offers a dictionary, thesaurus, and auto spell checker is included to help aid students in putting their report together.  This software also offers many tools that can be useful to the teacher, as well as student.  Inspiration 8 offers more than 50 curriculum packets.  In these curriculum packets there is an integraded unit lesson plan, templates, and examplars.  Inspiration even offers a teacher resource book that addresses how to get your students to use critical thinking.

The H-ITT system is software that can be used in the classroom by students to answer multiple choice questions asked by the teacher. How it works is students have a “clicker” that has 10 buttons on it the student can choose the answer he or she thinks is correct and clicks that button. Not only can the student answer the question but he can also use the bottom three buttons to say how sure of the answer he is. The H-ITT’s base receiver can be hooked up to a PC that is running the program. After the data is collected from the class, the program creates a histogram for the teacher. The student knows if their answer has been received when the light on the button turns green.

There are two different systems available. The H-ITT CRS lets teachers report and grade any “verbal questions, display questions, or even give paper based tests.” When the student replies their answer is automatically graded and then recorded. Teachers can even set their own preferences to how they want the answer graded, for example if the question was weighted. It is also very easy for teachers to transfer the grades into excel or blackboard.

The second system available is H-ITTShow. This system allows teachers to “create, present, assess, grade and report in PowerPoint.” This system works best with group activities, but can also be used by individual students. It even includes already created slides and clips you can add into your own lesson.

One new technology I think could be useful in the classroom is the Tablet PC. The Tablet is a laptop that you can write on like you would on a piece of paper. It is easy to see the many ways a teacher could use this new technology in his or her class. When lecturing, it would be more beneficial to the students if the teacher would put the lecture notes on the Tablet. It was noted in a post by Christopher Dawson that by doing this the teacher is able to “easily change colors, highlight important materials, move back and forth between sections of the lecture (just pages in the notetaking software), and copy and paste relevant figures, all while projecting on a large screen.” Also by using the tablet to write out lecture notes in a math class it makes it easier for teachers to write out mathematical equations that they may not be able to do on another type of computer.

The tablet also allows teachers to dismiss the excuse of students who say they aren’t caught up in class because they were absent. The Tablet easily allows teachers to post all of their notes online, also “everything you present (e.g. PPT slides), say, and draw is captured for web based playback and collaboration” making it easier for students to access information from class.

Not only is it beneficial for teachers to use the Tablet, but it is also beneficial for students. Students can easily take notes by using the pen attached to the computer and then a program can change their handwritten notes into text. Students can also save lecture notes from their teachers in a PDF and then they are able to write over top of those notes as a professor is giving a lecture.

The Tablet is already being used in many classrooms and through the research I have done, I find that it has very many beneficial uses in the classroom. Who knows? Maybe one day the use of pens and paper in the classroom will be a thing of the past.

 http://www.trustyetc.com/trustyblog/2007/09/05/who-is-important-here/

The three people that I think are prominent in educational technology are Bill Gates, Timothy J. Magner, and Larry Berger.  Bill Gates is well known for his work with Microsoft. Recently he has worked on helping the city of Philadelphia to build the School of the Future.  This school focuses on how technology can improve student performance.  Microsoft has also backed several educational programs that help integrate technologies into the classroom.

Timothy J. Magner is the Director of the Department’s Office of Educational Technology.  He has had 15 years of experience working with educational technology in school and the arts.  His main goal is to develop a national educational technology policy and to enforce it.  He was one of the first technology training specialists fo Fairfax County, VA.  He was the excutive director for k-12 education for Microsoft Corp. He was also an interent specialist and program manager for the Kennedy Center’s k-12 ArtsEdge program for teachers.

Larry Berger is the CEO and co-founder of Wireless Generation.  HE helps manage and improve teaching and learning in grades pre-k-6.  He worked on Educational Technoogy at NASA, where he authored an education technology agenda. 

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