Assessing Meaningful Learning

I find clicker to be a really interesting way to go about getting student’s involved in lessons while not completely calling them out and putting pressure on them. With this tool the students and professors interact with one another with more ease and it makes it easier for the professor to see if the students understand what is being taught. If the professor asks a question and the students pick the multiple choice answer they believe is correct, the results will show whether or not the majority of the class got the answer wrong or right. If the majority of the class got the answer correct than the professor can continue to move on, but if the majority of people got it wrong, the professor knows that they need to go back and re-teach the material. These clickers would be a good idea for assessing how much a student has retained from a previous class or how much the student knows coming in from a different class. Inspiration and kidspiration are really cool tools adults and kids can use to better map out their thoughts and project lines. Since both programs have a lot of different views and managing tools to choose from, it is understandable why a lot of schools are using both of these programs. Kids and adults alike can use this program to form a more solid foundation for school work or project management.

I have learned a lot of things from this class; at first it was very unclear to me why I needed to learn a bunch of random stuff about computers that I was sure I would most likely never use in my classroom. Overall though I think there are some specific things that have been kind of interesting to me. I really enjoyed finding out more about the programs that I look over everyday but never really use. I liked learning about blogs and wikis even though I probably will never use a wiki for anything. I really liked finding out more about podcasts, although I have to say that I am still a little unsure about how that works. If I could change anything about this class it would be that it is online. I hate trying to remember to do homework and I hate not having someone around to physically show me how to do stuff if I need help. Other than that I would say this is not the best class that I have ever taken basically because of all of the constant work; but this isn’t the worst class I have ever taken either.

TEKS

This is the TEK I chose from the TEA website.

§126.2.(4) Information acquisition. The student uses a variety of strategies to acquire information from electronic resources, with appropriate supervision. The student is expected to:

(A) apply keyword searches to acquire information; and

(B) select appropriate strategies to navigate and access information for research and resource sharing.

The only problem with this assignment is that it does not cover all areas of learning and ages. Obviously if you pick a younger age group it's harder to find a TEK that calls for use of technology. Kindergarten music, for instance, is not something that generally requires any use of technology. Any teacher could modify or accommodate on a student to student basis. However, what happens when the parent of a 5 year old doesn't want them playing around on computers or using technology. There is not one specific TEK that calls for the use of technology in the classes that I plan on teaching, and throughout this class there hasn't really been one. The closer I get to graduation the more I try to cater things that what my degree is in. It is extremely difficult to find anything about technology on a kindergarten music TEK that has been modified or accommodated for a special education student.

In my opinion that is the most difficult thing when it comes to this ETEC class, there are definite ways to integrate technology into classes. However, it becomes a little more difficult to do when you are working with a 17 year old student who has the mental capacity of a four year old. On certain occasions, yes, a student with needs can be given help through technology. I am not talking about AT or anything that is necessary to benefit the child in learning. I am talking about things that we have learned in this class. It is a very difficult task to find not only age appropriate, but functional appropriate technology for students with severe needs. There are so many ways to incorporate technology into the classroom but it becomes less and less applicable with every week that progresses in this class.

Visualizing with Technology

Visualizing anything when it comes to children tends to be the leading automatic response. Humans are visual creatures for the most part so the most common learning style would be visual. I know there are a lot of auditory and kinesthetic learners in the world so I am not bashing any particular learning style. Most kids these days know way more about computers and internet than most adults or people in my age bracket, just because they have had it throughout life. I can remember my families first computer with dial up internet and not knowing a thing about how to work it. To this day I don't know nearly as much about computers and the internet as my 10 year old cousin does. With that said, any strategy that gets students involved and eager to learn is a good strategy.
Visualizing with technology is extremely helpful and some of the sites that were given to us as resources are fantastic learning devices. Students these days and technology go hand in hand and the more you use a technology in lessons the more students will feel like they are not being bogged down with boring school work. It's pretty much a win win for the teacher and the students.

Podcast

I actually listen to podcasts on my ipod and iphone all of the time. Although, not for the purpose of doing better in school. Podcast are interesting to me so many people do them over the every imaginable subject and sometimes they are beneficial and sometimes they are not. I think it is very cool that a lecture can be turned into a podcast so the students can use that resource instead of a book or filling out mindless pages of homework covering the same topic.
In all honesty, podcasting and the other web applications seem to be the exact same to me. Beneficial if done right but more time consuming than just standing in front of the class teaching. The only thing I even use my computer for is the internet, meaning, facebook and youtube, and for homework stuff. I understand that to a degree there should be an integration of technology into the classroom and the students should have other resources beside just the teacher. I could see myself using maybe one or two of the things I have learned in this class. If I were going to be a General Education teacher this class would be a lot more helpful.
I own an iPod, I have some Podcasts on it and I listen to them every once in a while. However, I don't feel like podcast are something practical when it comes to younger grades and Special Education services. Maybe in middle and high school this would be a brilliant idea that everyone loves but it seems to just be rather unhelpful in my situation, cool none the less, but unhelpful.

Web 2.0

I learned a lot of new, very interesting, information about some of the ways we can better education. The wikis are the most important to me. I think it is cool that instead of emailing back and forth you can have one wiki where everyone can go and leave their own input on whatever the specific topic is. In classes, especially, you could use it for group projects or homework assignments where the class could go and find out certain things about the project or assignment. Technology is so important to the classroom and I really love that classes have become so involved with wikis and the internet and smartboards. Students these days are used to having the internet and computers at their dispense. It is almost easier to involve technology than it is to try to get students attention without it.

Copyright

I have learned quite a bit about what is acceptable and what is considered copyright infringement or not acceptable. Those websites actually have pretty useful information on them regarding videos, audio, and pages on the internet. As students we should all know by now what is and is not okay to use as far as plagiarism goes but copyright and fair use is a little more in the gray area. I will admit that I am guilty of not going through the necessary process or taking the correct measures to ensure that I am not violating any kind of law. If I need to put something in a blog or in a powerpoint I usually do it the easiest and least time consuming way. I assume everyone probably does it like that or at least has done it like that in the past.

I'm sure there is more information on the internet machine about this topic than I could read in a lifetime, however, I am actually kind of glad I got to read up on this matter a little bit. I obviously don't know the exact "rules" of using media in the proper way, but now I at least have a jumping off point. I feel a though some of the lengths that people have to go through to keep themselves legal are a little extreme. However, we live in an imperfect world and things are much more difficult and time consuming than they should be. Do I think it is okay to pirate something off the internet and then pass it off as an original copy? No. Do I think that if I am a registered member of youtube and want to put something into a powerpoint or a blog I should have to go through a meticulous process to do it? No. There is a fine line when it comes to the internet and luckily now I at least have something I can reference when I am trying to go about the correct way of doing things on the internet.

MAPping

I pretty much knew how to search the internet and find what I needed previous to the MAPping activity. Most people who grew up in my generation are pretty well versed when it comes to search engines since we have been using them for most of our lives. When it comes to school work I use Google for just about every thing I research. You type in what you need to know and the more precise you are when you enter a search the more precise of an answer you will receive. Not exactly anything new there.

MAPping is fine too, I guess. Not really anything super new there either. MAPping just associates multiple elements into a given set and can give you a more concise search. Overall if you were to teach MAPping to students when they started learning about searching for things or websites and programs that would probably be the way students searched for things and did things. Mostly unnecessary though,

The way I learned to search for things was to bring up a search engine like google or askjeeves and type in what I wanted to know and look for an answer that closely matched my search. Usually search engines have a very broad arrangement or websites or answers to the thing you first searched for. However, the interesting thing is that most likely the thing that will be at the top of your search is probably what you are looking for since it relates most directly to the key words that were entered in the first place. All in all, I think I am just going to stick to my simple one word Google search.