Week Eight

A large part of the semester helped me to better understand technology that I had previously been less than informed on. One such thing would be PowerPoint. While I could probably have eventually figured it out on my own, it was one of those things that I never used, and therefore never really thought about learning. Now it is a program that I better understand and would be able to adapt for classroom use, and quite possibly use on a regular basis myself.
Another useful program that we discovered this semester was Google Docs. I haven't yet to figure out exactly how I'll use this in the classroom with younger students, but I can certainly see how I would be able to use it to converse with other teachers, to work on lessons or letters or proposals (oh my!) of some sort. The whole thing, documents as well as presentations and graphs, is just such a novel concept, it would be a shame not to integrate it in some way or another.
Inspiration was a software that I had used once or twice, but I had actually only used the Kidspiration version and just for one very limited assignment. It was far more useful to dive deeper into what it can do and find out how to incorporate my own photos and how to actually use all the buttons available. In the classroom, I hope to be able to use a program like this because it will help students have a motivation to learn, in that, it's more fun! Bloom's Taxonomy was also an interesting thought process for me. A lot of it was stuff that I have already, unintentionally done just because it felt right, so it's nice to have a validation of sorts. The deeper level thinking is an important tool for students to discover, so the actual concept of Blooms may even be something I eventually bring to the classroom and explain, mildly, to the students so they know more about how they are getting their own learning.

Week Seven

Webquests turned out to be far less complex and difficult than I had originally imagined. The only examples I had seen were the permanent type where a huge website was created solely for the quest. So when we began the project I was in horror at the amount of work that would be required and especially how difficult it would be to do with a group in such a short period of time. But once we got working on it, things easily fell into place. Maybe our final outcome wasn't the be all end all of webquests, and was certainly a temporary quest, as opposed to a permanent one, but the process was similar and therefore extraordinarily helpful for the future. I think that this activity is one of the most versatile of all programs/activities we have engaged in this semester thus far. Students can create these quests for themselves, for other students or to prove their knowledge in an area. Teachers can create quests for students to learn new material or even to reiterate previously learned knowledge. A quest can be complex and be aimed at high school students, or be simple and aimed at elementary students. The varying levels of difficulty possible make this type of activity easily accessible for students at all grade levels and therefore make it an awesome tool for educators. After doing readings and looking at several examples of webquests, both good and bad, it was even more clear that as far as these quests go, anything goes and the more creativity involved, the better! It was a good experience actually creating one and gives a lot of insight for the future.

Week 6

I've had to work with spreadsheets on a very limited basis throughout work and schooling. Usually, it's been limited to just filling in boxes that already had formulas put in or just putting in a few pieces of information and making an easy little graph. But now, actually being able to know the formulas and having done a bit more research on ways to use spreadsheets for educational purposes, it seems that programs like Excel bring on a million new uses. It's amazing that I let something so simple and useful go by unused and unexplored, but now seems to be the perfect time to be learning stuff like this. For use in the classroom, spreadsheets would be amazing for stuff like attendance and grading, but also for assignments in pretty much any subject.
I guess I kind of assume that finding the appropriate information online isn't a tough deal. Sure, it might be hard to find what you're looking for, but I'm no Internet/computer genius and I'm generally able to get things done. Though thinking about it, and thinking about the tips in this weeks reading, I suppose I can see where students would have a tougher time. Should things go the way I want them too, I'll be working with lower elementary grades, so their use of the Internet will be even more limited, but a teenager may find it even more difficult to find what is true, accurate and useful. A story that always gets me: the daughter (5th grade?) of a professor here at CSUSM was doing a report on octopuses and she of course Googled octopus, and found a site, about 4th on the list, about the endangered tree octopus. Now of course, this is a fictional site, but it is put together very well, professional looking and very misleading, especially for a younger student who may or may not know any better. I suppose this just goes to show that all the things Caulfield and Symans discuss in their article in order to assist students in obtaining the proper information.