Last Blog Post- Essential Questions

After taking this class, I have learned what is meant by the phrase “21^st century classroom”. This phrase means many things to me as an educator. Mainly, it means to me that classrooms are changing with the times. Classrooms are changing and are adapting to the changes in our world, including the changes in technology and how students learn. Children in today’s world are constantly using technology. Whether they are playing video games on the latest gaming system, looking up information on their personal laptop, are playing with the newest app on their iphone, children are in constant communication with technology. Children are consistently using technology because it is appeals them. The latest technology grabs and holds the students attention by making it fun, exciting, bright, relatable, and fascinating. Therefore, as a 21^st century classroom, we must incorporate this technology into lessons and activities in the classrooms to engage the students with stuff that actually interests them! If you were to walk into a 21^st century classroom, you would ideally see students with their own individual laptops, where they then would be creating projects and activities about topics that relate to the lesson provided to by the teacher. You would see the teacher constantly using technology to help students understand and engage their learning more. You would also see the teacher using the smart board to lecture the classroom instead of mindlessly writing across the chalkboard. You would also see students using the smart board along side of the teacher during the lesson, instead of passing notes behind the teachers back. Students would actually be able to add something to the lecture and help other students learn by being active within the class and with the teacher through the use of technology. You would not see students endlessly taking notes or staring out the window. Instead, students would be laughing, creating, learning, and presenting on common topics inside the classroom in unique and individual ways. This type of classroom eliminates a “one size fits all” concept and makes it more personalized for the students who are learning, which then facilitates and fosters success. The focus of the 21^st century classroom is ideally helping prepare students for the real world and it is student centered learning. As the book Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology states on page 109 "Education will be more directed more toward what people want to learn, and hence, they will be more excited and drawn to learning". The book also states on page 117, "Computer technologies open new avenues for curriculum development - ranging from new forms of teaching and learning to new ways of
organizing how student and teachers interact". These were two quotes from the book we read this semester that truly helped me understand what the 21^st century classroom.  These two quotes demonstrate what learning is in today’s world and how technology enhances this type of learning. The best way to summarize what this phrase means to me is this: the 21^st century classroom is an environment that uses collaboration, digital learning, critical thinking, and problem solving skills that best fit the interest of students by using technology that is thriving in the outside world.

               

As educators, we can apply technology tools in ways that are more easily achieved meaningful teaching and learning in the 21^st century in many unique and useful ways. Instead of having students mindlessly memorize simple facts to then take a standardized test, let’s have them create and share what they have learned on these topics in fun and engaging ways. We can teach children through technology, and it is much more personalized and engaging for the students, but why not evaluate them through the same way we teach them? Instead of having students sit down and take a test, let’s get them out of their seats and into their minds! As teachers, we can use technology to do this. After teaching a lesson, instead of testing the students, have the students pick a favorite topic that was discussed in the lesson and have them research and present more on that topic. Allow them to use a variety of technology to best demonstrate their knowledge of their topic and have them present to the class as if they were the teacher. Allow students to use technology to dig deeper in their topics of interest and then allow them to use technology to spread their wealth of knowledge to the rest of the classroom. This will allow them to demonstrate their unique skills when using technology and will also enable students to develop critical thinking in a meaningful way and to develop useful communication and presentation skills. With the use of technology in the classroom to facilitate more meaningful teaching and learning, the possibilities are truly endless.

21st Century Classroom

Katie Kline

Concluding Assignment: Essential Questions

                After taking this class, I have learned what it meant by the phrase “21^st century classroom”. This phrase means many things to me as an educator. Mainly, this means to me that classrooms are changing with the times. Classrooms are changing and adapting to the changes in our world, including the changes in technology and how students learn. Children in today’s world are constantly using technology. Whether they are playing video games on the latest gaming system, looking up information on their personal laptop, are playing with the newest app on their iphone, children are in constant communication with technology. Children are consecutively using technology because it is appeals them. The latest technology grabs and holds the students attention by making it fun, exciting, bright, relatable, and festinating. Therefore, as a 21^st century classroom, we are incorporating this technology into lessons and activities in the classrooms to engage the students with stuff that actually interests them! If you were to walk into a 21^st century classroom, you would ideally see students with their own individual laptops, where they then would be creating projects and activities about topics that relate to the lesson provided to by the teacher. You would see the teacher constantly using technology to help students understand and engage their learning more. You would also see the teacher using the smart board to lecture the classroom instead of mindlessly writing across the chalkboard, and you would see students using the smart board along the side of the teacher during the lesson, inside of passing notes behind the teachers back. These students would actually be able to add something to the lecture and help other students learn by being active within the class and the teacher through the use of technology. You would not see students endlessly taking notes or staring out the window. You would see students laughing, creating, learning, and presenting on common topics inside the classroom in unique and individual ways. This type of classroom eliminates a “one size fits all” concept and makes it more personalized for the students who are learning, which then facilitates and fosters success. The focus of the 21^st century classroom is ideally helping students for the real world and is student centered learning. The best way to summarize what this phrase means to me is this: the 21^st century classroom is an environment that is using collaboration, digital learning, critical thinking, and problem solving skills that best fit the interest of students by using technology that is thriving in the outside world.

               

As educators, we can apply technology tools in ways that are more easily achieved meaningful teaching and learning in the 21^st century in many unique and useful ways. Instead of having students mindlessly memorize simple facts to then take a standardized test, let’s have them create and share what they have learned on these topics in fun and engaging ways. We can teach children through technology yes, and those is much more personalized and engaging for the students, but why not evaluate them through the same way we teach them? Instead of having students sit down and take a test let’s get them out of their seats and into their minds! As teachers, we can use technology to do this. After teaching a lesson, instead of testing the students, have the students pick a favorite topic that was discussed in the lesson and have them research and present more on that topic. Allow them to use a variety of technology to best demonstrate their knowledge of their topic and have them present to the class as if they were the teacher. Allow students to use technology to dig deeper in their topics of interest and then allow them to use technology to spread their wealth of knowledge to the rest of the classroom. This will allow them to demonstrate their unique skills when using technology and will also enable students to develop critical thinking in a meaningful way and to develop useful communication and presentation skills. With the use of technology in the classroom to facilitate more meaningful teaching and learning, the possibilities are truly endless.

Introducting Pinterest

I choose to study the tool of pinterest this week. Lately, I cannot seem to remove myself from “pinning” things onto my online bulletin board, which is what pinterest essentially is. Pinterest is a website, that you can join for free that, like I said is just like a bulletin board except its online. Once you have signed up for pinterest, you are able to create how boards you would like to pin to and then name them. Example, I have a wedding board, where I will pin wedding ideas to and I have an education board, so when I find things I would like to use in my classroom I pin them there. When you sign up for pinterest as well, on the website you can find endless amount of photos under topics that you are interested in, example being education. When you go to look under education it has thousands of pictures which someone else has already pinned. When you click on a picture that catches your eye that you like, you can click on it, it then takes you to a different page to explain what is happening in the picture. If you like the pin you opened, you are able to re-pin it on your own board. Recently, while I was looking under education I found a great way to help teachers organize materials in their classroom, so I repined that to my education bulletin board.

One affordance of this is that it can be used by a teacher because it provides endless amounts of new ideas to incorporate into the classroom. Once the teacher as started to use pinterest and is actively pinning their educational ideas to their education board, that information is then easily accessible to have and implement into their classroom. For example, now that I have pinned that organization link to my education board, once I have my own classroom and need to organize it, I can just log onto my pinterest, refresh my memory on how they recommend it and then go about doing it. Pinterest also allows for teachers to always have something new to use, implement, or show off in their classroom.  Therefore, schools would never have to worry about boring and repetitious lessons in their classroom because people are actually able to pin ideas onto eachother’s board. Therefore, teachers in all the same grade level could exchange ideas through one pin board. A constraint of pinterest is that it can be easily distracting for the wrong reasons. Education is not the only thing that can be looked up, and therefore teachers maybe pinning about their soon to be wedding themes instead of useful educational tools. Another constraint is that some things that are pinned on pinterest are of no use. Therefore, it could be hard for teachers so see what is important and not important. Teachers could become frustrated with this concept of pinterest.

I believe that pinterest could really only be best used by the teachers in schools and not the students. But maybe older students, such as high school students would be able to find new and creative projects to submit as students. In order for the older students to learn how to use this, they would have to be able to navigate themselves around the site. I do believe that most students would be able to do so without an issue, but if you find your students could not, then I would spend a class period doing so. Since teachers are all use to actively working online, you would not have to teach them how to use pinterest. Teachers would not have to adapt their classroom to using pinterest with the student’s one on one, but teachers would have to be open to using the ideas in their classroom that they found on pinterest.

There are also lots of great websites out there discussing the popular site pinterest and its advantages. One I found was composed by the USA Today. In this article they describe what pinterest is in great detail and how to use it in great detail. Therefore, this could be a great site for teachers or students to learn how to use it before signing up. Another link I found is actually from Pearson, which is a well known name in education. In this link, Pearson the company discusses four ways to use pinterest in the classroom. The four ways they discuss are finding useful lesson plans, sharing ideas with other teachers, finding organization tools for the classroom, and lastly student use. This website alone shows you how useful this common popular website could be inside the classroom.

1. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-17/how-to-pinterest-mark-smith/52615856/1

2. http://www.pearsonschoolsystems.com/blog/?p=424

The Use of Skype in the Classroom

When most people think of Skype, they think of video chatting a loved one who is far away or chatting with business partners about a new idea, but most people do not consider how useful this tool could be inside the classroom. Skype is a downloadable piece of software that can be used for video calling. The software is compatible with most computers that have a camera piece built into them.  With this software any person can video chat, message, screen share and much more. Video chatting and messaging is free, but the other uses of this software such as calling land lines, mobile phones, screen sharing, and voicemail all cost money. You can chat with one person at a time for free but it you would like to chat with two people at the same time they also charge you for that.

Some affordances about this software are that it can make the classroom a very dynamic place of learning, especially when focusing upon similarities and differences across the world. This technology could allow teachers to attempt to connect with other classrooms all around the world and have real conversations with them. This would be a fantastic learning experience for all students. Imagine, if you as the teacher were teaching a lesson on the Hispanic culture, well maybe you and your class would try and get a hold of a classroom in Spain to talk to about how they live, how they celebrate their holidays and so on. This is real life learning. Instead of the students learning through pictures, they could learn in this situation through one on one conversation with Hispanic students themselves. Another affordance of this piece of technology in the classroom is that it could allow students to have virtual pen pals. This could also be a very unique and diverse learning experience for students to have in the classroom. These two affordances alone allow for so much growth in a classroom. And although this technology has great affordances it also has two major constraints.  One constraint would be that not ever operation that Skype has to offer is free. This is a constraint because students, teachers, or the class as a whole may want to do more a use operations that cost money but their schools may not allow them to. Another constraint could be that you as a classroom are Skyping with a classroom from a different culture or location, they may not speak English and it could be hard to understand what they are saying, which then would obviously eliminate any learning that could have come from the video chatting session.  Another constraint is that the teacher is giving up a lot of control if they would let their students individually have their own virtual pen pal through Skype. I feel this way because one, the teachers would be unable to control what was being said between the students and what was being typed between the students. If the students were just doing the traditional way or writing a pen pal, the teacher could look at what the students were sending in their letter before it was mailed, but with Skype teachers cannot control this aspect. Another control is that teachers would have to completely trust their students to be respectful of their virtual pen pals and as an up and coming teacher, I am not sure if all students could handle this. Bullying is increasing popular in today’s society, and Skype could just be another way to bully another student who is different or unliked. The teacher would have to keep a good eye out for this while using this tool or have complete trust in their students.

                In order for Skype to be used properly inside the classroom, the teacher would have to teach the students how to properly use a video camera that is based inside of the computer. Therefore meaning, students would have to learn how to turn the video camera on and off, and the students would also have to learn how to type, if they did not already know, in order to send messages.  The teacher would also have to adjust their teaching styles in order to successfully use this piece of technology inside the classroom! The teacher will have to allow the classroom to be lead by the students instead of by their instruction. I feel this way because if you are going to have your students interacting with other classes through Skype, they are the ones who are going through the learning experience and they are the ones that could be carrying the conversation with the other classes or pen pals, not you the teacher. Therefore, the teacher is going to have to give up some of the control that they would normally have in a classroom.

                Like I said before, I feel like this piece of technology can help students and teachers become more creative because it allows you to reach out all over the world to different resources to help students learn. The more realistic you make the learning experience for the students the better I think they will learn, and since you cannot take a field trip to China to learn about the Chinese New Year, you can video chat with a classroom from china to learn more about their celebrations from them. I think this technology allows for endless possibilities, it just all depends how the teachers choose to use and embrace it inside their classrooms. I feel the best ways to use this technology is demonstrated on the Skype webpage. They give you great ideas on how to use Skype inside the classroom. For example, teachers have used Skype in the classroom to learn about unique homes and habitats, local heroes, different weather in different locations, and lastly teachers have used Skype to help students learn how to build enterprises.  Below I have attached two other websites to help you learn more about how Skype can be used in a classroom and how Skype works in general.

Links:

http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/30/50-awesome-ways-to-use-skype-in-the-classroom/

http://theedublogger.com/2011/04/03/the-complete-educators-guide-to-using-skype-effectively-in-the-classroom/ 

Picasa in the Classroom

Have you ever used a picture editing software? Did you pay for it? Well good news, Google provides a picture editing tool for free called Picasa! All you need to do to access this great tool is to create a Google account; you even need to create a Gmail if you do not wish to. Picasa essentially allows you to create, organize, edit, and share your photos from your computer. This tool will access photos from your computer, upload it into their system for you and place them in folders. Once your pictures are placed into folders, the possibilities are endless for creating and sharing. You can also import your photos from a camera, scanners, or a storage media you may use on the web. You can edit your photos several ways in this software. It allows you to manage and edit your photos with great ease. You can create new folders within the software, or you can keep the folder names the same as you have them saved to your computer. Picasa has the standard editing tools such as adjusting color, adding effects, and adding text to pictures. There are actually 9 standard editing tools. Another interesting editing tool that Picasa has is that you can make collages and movies. I really enjoy editing pictures so these two editing tools are naturally the first two I decided to play with. Creating the collage reminded me of scrapbooking except online so I found that to be very neat. I also created a movie, and I can personally say, after using IMovie from a Mac, I found this software much easier to use and understand. Another interesting command that I found while playing around in Picasa is called “Geotag a photo in Google Earth”. This is a tool that will allow you to embed a location of information into a file of a chosen photo. You can then even sync that photo to Google Earth, where it can then be displayed on the Google Earth satellite map. How cool is that?

Some affordances of this tool within a classroom setting could be that it allows for creativity to emerge.  This tool could really allow students to think outside of the box. Inside of having students present through writing a paper or making a poster board, you as a teacher, could have students make a movie on the topic they are presenting on. This would allow for great growth within the classroom because then students would be challenged to think past writing simple facts down. They would now have to develop pictures, words, artifacts, and audio into a movie all through Picasa. A constraint to this tool is the fact that teachers would have to learn to develop a project around this tool in order to use it successfully. This is a piece of technology that is very interesting to use but yet every time consuming. Most teachers will just tell the students what they expect of them for a project and then never touch on it again until it due. But I believe teachers could not do that with this technology because learning how to use it properly takes at least a couple of days to become comfortable with all of its commands. Another constraint of using this tool inside a classroom is that you would need access to several computers. Not many school districts can afford computers for every child; some cannot even afford computers at all. So if the teacher would choose to use this tool in their classroom, they would have to be very creative about how to use the couple of the computers for a large classroom size of students.

The students and the teacher would have to develop certain technology skills in order to use this tool. The students would have to learn how to upload, import, and add photos from the computer into the software and then from there they would have to learn what command is what inside the software in order to use to properly. The teacher would also have to learn skills and become a master at using this software before implementing it into a classroom that way they are then able to answer questions and help students while they are using it. I also think it would be in the best interest of the teacher to learn how to block the internet while using the computer for this tool that way students are unable to go off task and surf the web inside of using Picasa. I also believe that a teacher who uses this is in their classroom is going to have to change their style of teaching. Most teachers feel the need to control every part of a classroom or part of a project and when using Picasa, it is virtually impossible to do so. Picasa is all about embracing creativity, and creativity cannot be control. Therefore the teacher would have to able to let go of the controlling factor of the classroom while using Picasa and allow for natural flow of discussions and teachable moments when using it inside a classroom. The teacher would also have to gain a lot of patience when using Picasa in a classroom because students are going to be asking a lot of questions and the teacher is going to need to answer them without becoming frustrated. Because I believe that when I student sees that their teacher is frustrated that their level of thinking in then dissolved because they become too worried about pleasing the teacher inside of learning.

There are many ways that you can include this software in the classroom. I believe the book gives several great examples of this. Some of the ideas they listed included creating a movie for an Open House event, make a movie of student’s performances in assemblies’, celebrations, or field trips, create a class photo yearbook. The book also suggested that you could use Picasa as a way of students creating documentaries, photojournalism, and dramatizations which I think would be spectacular in older grade levels. For literacy, you could have the students develop a project through Picasa demonstrating a “how to” guide, which then would allow the students to build and reflect on sequential thinking. Personally, I think this is a great piece of software to be able to compile a digital portfolio of the entire student’s works to show the parents at the end of the school year or even in parent teacher conferences.

 Below I have attached two links to extend your knowledge of how you can use Picasa in your classroom. The first link is a great resource. It is actually a wikispace page that was made by teachers. On this page you can find out more about Picasa as a software and then creative and innovative ways to incorporate this into your classroom on a daily bases. The second link that I have listed below is a link to read an article that was written by another teacher and how he used Picasa to publish his student’s works. I found this article interesting because it touched my idea of using it to create a virtual portfolio of the students work over the course of the year.

1.       http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Picasa

2.       http://mrgsblog.posterous.com/using-picasa-in-your-classroom-to-publish-stu

The use of igoogle

The technology I choose to study this week is igoogle. I wanted to study this piece because I have heard of people using it to set up their classrooms with their students and to be honest I was very curious. After playing around with igoogle.com in class I think by the use of this technology in the classroom could be endless possibilities. But first, I have come to conclusion that there are pros and cons to this technology. A pro about this piece is that this website is what you as a teacher chooses to make it. This website could be an agenda for students to use as a resource in class or as a resource to provide for the students to use as home, as the book calls it, an outer space. The book defines this as including contents and tools the user finds interesting or useful on a more general basis or for infrequent use. I also think a pro of this technology is something the book points out which they consider personal space. This includes the use of content and tools that will be personally useful for school or work nearly every day. I find this to be a pro because this would be great if every student could have their own laptop for a school day because you can do some many activities through this website.  I was able to play around with the gadgets on this website and there was a gadget for almost anything you can think of. Which is great variety of teaching in the classroom, there was at least 3 gadgets for every subject taught in the classroom today. But the con I find to this website is the fact that most schools do not have the option to give each student a laptop. I feel like this site would be best utilized this way and unfortunately the school districts do not have this option.

                I think for students to be able to use this website a teacher would have to teach the students a couple of things. The skills that the students would need to be able to be involved in this website are the skills to be able to type, search online, and to be open minded and creative. Learning this website is something I do not foresee students having problems with in today’s society since the internet is such a daily activity any more but if students did struggle, as long as they had a knowledgeable teacher I think everything would go along smoothly. Another thing that the a teacher would have a huge part in with using this website would be that the teacher would have to adapt their teaching style and lesson plans around this lesson if they choose to use it actively. I feel that lesson plans would have to involve around the use of the website as formative assessment. This means that the teacher would really have to pay attention to the class while they are on the computer in order to make sure they are not getting side tracked. I think the best way to make sure that students are on task is for the teacher to be able to block certain websites from them that way they cannot be socializing through facebook as an example. I also believe that students would be best utilizing this website by having them write or reflect on their learning’s instead of having them take a test on the computer through the site. But that is just my style of teaching. But by having the students write out their findings that will creative creativity within the classroom through the use of words and expression. But also teachers could use this website to redo their whole classroom and creative creativity by having the students develop a YouTube video, but it on their igoogle, and then share with the class as a project! Just imagine the possibilities. This website will also allow students to develop computer skills that will help them later in life with their future jobs because if you think about it every job in today’s society involves the computer even fast food.  

Word of the Day: Curiosity

While browsing through Flickr before writing this blog I found a quote from William A. Word that said “Curiosity is the wick of learning”. I believe that curiosity is the wick of all learning. Without curiosity why would you want to learn? I also believe that technology provokes curiosity in learning academically and socially which then technology can also assist the students to explore their curiosity. I know that sentence is full of the word curiosity but allow me to break it down for you.

                “Technology provokes curiosity…” this is the first bit of that crazy sentence that holds very relevant information to understanding my concept of thinking. Technology is new and an exciting part of our thriving culture. Technology draws the attention of children without a lot of work. Therefore representing that children just want to explore and play with technology, all types of technology. But the main piece of technology that I think really catches children’s attention is the computer. There are numerous things that children can do on this one piece of technology. Just like Mimi Ito says in her video students are constantly on the computer socializing and some are even exploring some topics educational without the push from a parent or a teacher. So what should this say to us as soon to be educators? Well I think it screams “USE THE COMPUTER AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WITHIN YOUR CLASSROOM!!!!!” This leads me to the second half of that sentence.

                The next part of that science “….academically and socially which then technology can also assist the students to explore their curiosity.”  I think this was the message that Mimi Ito was getting at in her video. Students use technology constantly. Whether they are using it for socialization such a blogging, or in the form of “geeking out” students are constantly involved with the computer. So why not use this to motivate students in the classroom. As teachers let’s combine the use of socialization and geeking out on the computer as a way to motivate and explore the student’s curiosity. For example, since they are so interested in the socialization aspect on the computer you could have them research the development of socialization sites (ie: facebook) and then have them develop a youtube video on its history (ie: the “geeking out” part). By having the students do this simple assignment, you have already touched on the subject of history. Just imagine what other subjects you could integrate into this lesson to make it much more dynamic. The use of technology is endless in the classroom, and teachers, we need to wake up smell the coffee and learn how to incorporate this into more everyday use in our lessons. This is just one explain of what people and students can learn through technology.