Instructional Technology in Teaching

I thought that the website http://edublogs.org/ was wonderful and is a true exemplar. I thought it was a perfect way to incorporate technology and teaching. Not only can students use it for casual journal writing, but they could also use the site to submit their papers then the teacher can go back and correct and make comments on that paper. It makes the whole writing process a lot more conversational. Furthermore, I think students will be less intimidated by it then the ancient pen and paper method. It’s funny how we get intimidated by the futuristic technology and students get intimidated by the ancient processes of the past. I love that this site provides access to not only technology help, but also you can communicate with other teachers about ideas for lessons. This site helps students use technology and teachers. The lessons and website uphold all the standards. Furthermore it is a great balance of TPCK because students can continue to practice all their writing skills, but do it in a way that is less intimidating for them…not to mention they don’t have to waste time trying to understand our handwriting while reading our comments.

I thought the K-W-L strategy applied to the http://www.edutopia.org/king-middle-sch ... y-learning was interesting, but not exemplary. It was fantastic that they were able to hold up the standards; however, using a computer to do research is not out of the ordinary. In fact, for most people today that is the only way we do research. The lesson is very balanced in TPCK and the person does a very thorough job in explaining how everything upholds standards and TPCK. However, I felt that there was no genuine creativity in the lesson and I did not find anything helpful in the article because I already knew about everything it talked about.

1. http://www.epals.com/ is an excellent exemplar! It effectively involves students as they interact directly with students at other schools, it can be incorporated into the lesson and not just used as an add-on, the focus is on the learning task rather than the technology, and it makes learning about other areas of the world possible in a way that would not be possible without technology. In the world today it is important that students learn to communicate via the internet because they will be required to do so in their jobs as adults. They will not only need to communicate using technology but they will be required to learn new technologies as advancements arise. This exemplar really helps students both to learn a new technology as well as begin communicating with people all over the world. As an add-on this site would really be a waste because as a core part of the learning process so many activities can be incorporated that would otherwise be hard to duplicate. Also, the technology actually seems to be in the background in comparison to the learning that is happening by communicating with other students. That’s exactly how technology should work: it shouldn’t even appear to be a factor because the learning overshadows it. Also, the ability for students to learn from students and hear about parts of the world from people actually living there would have been impossible in most classrooms before this technology came along. It just seems to be an excellent tool.
While this website exceeds expectations in TWS, it falls slightly lower in terms of CPAS because the computer is really the only form of technology that is explicitly used and the variety is not really there. I think variety could certainly be incorporated, but the website itself is not quite enough to make this 100% exemplary.

2. http://www.pbs.org/speak/ is probably the most interesting language site for middle and high schoolers I have ever encountered! While this is a great place for students to look around, I think it has a lot of potential for integration into the classroom as well. Instead of just adding this on as a fun detour in a lesson, think students could learn a lot about language and culture through the use of this site in conjunction with reading in the classroom. There are so many books that incorporate dialects and this website would be a great place to show students information about the formation of the English language both during the time the book was written as well as in their lives. It’s a great way to make connections between past, present, and future and create some great debate or paper topics! I think this could get even more exemplary by possibly incorporating some other forms of technology like communication as well. Perhaps a class forum or blog or even the epals website could be used for communication with other English-speaking students outside the United States or even just across the country. The really neat thing is that once again, technology is in the background and learning is in the foreground. Students would hopefully be excited enough by articles involving their favorite TV shows that the drive to learn becomes greater than the idea that they must use a technology. It’s the up-to-date nature of this site that I really appreciate because I’m not sure that I would be able to achieve the same “with-it” take on language that this website has been able to achieve. I also think that because students would be able to get on a computer to see language analysis, rather than just hear it in a lecture from their teacher, they will learn a lot more. So I think in terms of CPAS this site has a lot of potential. I wonder about the longevity of using this site though. I think it could be used in one unit but after that it might be time to move on. So perhaps for a unit it fulfills TWS but not over the course of the entire year.

3. edublogs.org is basically the same thing as the class forum that we are using now, which actually makes it quite exemplary. It can be incorporated throughout a unit or even beyond that for the rest of the year. It can be incorporated seamlessly into the course material and could be more than just an add-on. It is a great communication tool for students as well as teachers. One thing that I have noticed about a forum, however, is that, at least for me, I actually feel less inclined to communicate with my peers than actually having a discussion with them. While this may be true for me, a forum or blog would be very beneficial for students who are not comfortable talking in class and it gives them the opportunity to join the class discussion without the threat of being thought of a stupid etc. They would even keep their identity secret from the class (not the teacher) so that they would feel more comfortable. This would be quite difficult without a blog because trading papers or e-mailing would get very complicated. Another flaw that I see is that perhaps this tool is beneficial, but it is not necessarily an essential part of the curriculum. While communicating with peers is essential, I think there are other ways of doing it that might be just as effective for some students. I think it would be good to incorporate this type of blog but not allow it to take over other forms of communication.
This does teach great future skills to students though because many will be learning the technology for the first time and they can carry both that knowledge, and the confidence of being able to learn something new, with them to their careers. Overall I think this has great potential, especially in the growing technological environment we face today. Sometimes the only way to get through to young people is through technology (texting on cell phones etc) and I think this site has enormous potential for that task.

4. readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp: I love this site! It is so interactive for students not just for learning directly from the site, but synthesizing that learning and organizing it in new ways. It is a way for them to develop learning strategies which are essential to their personal learning progress. Yay for someone making a site that makes it fun to organize and synthesize knowledge learned in the classroom! What I love about this site is that it incorporates so many different technologies and can be used in so many ways without detracting from the classroom learning. It also allows teachers and students to cater whatever it is they are doing to their exact needs. It is truly exemplary! It is so easy to use and navigate and I felt like I kept finding something new and engaging on every page. It definitely maximizes on CPAS and TWS. I love that the organizers and technolgies are not just for the teacher and not simply for communication but, as I said before, synthesis and organization. The more students learn these skills in any class the better. In the English classroom it is especially important to be able to organize and synthesize ideas for papers. The skills that can be developed through this website also carry on into any profession so it can have long term uses. Because students are so technology savvy these days it is always refreshing to be able to teach organization skills in a new, fun, and interactive way instead of showing them on an overhead. And by sharing this site with students they can have numerous options open to them from the start without a teacher having to teach them all their options and taking up valuable class time. Instead they can just get started online and see visually exactly what they can achieve. It modernizes and economizes class time. Students are still learning as they use the site and the site makes that learning easier. It’s exemplary!

The Grammar website sounds really interesting.

http://www.envisionprojects.org/cs/envi ... w/env_p/80
This is a really cool idea! Storytelling is such an important part to the American Culture. It is an important thing for students to learn how to do. By integrating technology it helps enliven the storytelling and help the story come alive. By learning f the immigrants of the present as well as the past it helps us realize what the American Dream really is and it helps us realize what we need to do in order to make it a reality.

The technology of the interactive picture does not retract form the whole story but instead it will enliven the performance. It would be easier to tell the story without the picture but the gains from the visuals are immeasurable compared to the plague of learning how to put the visual together.

Response to http://www.laits.utexas.edu/laexec/laexec.html

This is a really great website that could be very valuable for Spanish classes. On this website there are a lot of different interviews of people from different Spanish speaking countries around the world. The people speak on lots of different topics that are culturally relevant to their country. This could be very useful in a Spanish class that is teaching on any cultural unit. The students would learn about particular countries views on numerous topics that would be beneficial to expand the student’s perspectives past the United States way of thinking. This would also be a good website to use in class because the students would have the ability to hear different accents of native Spanish speakers. The more students listen in Spanish to different native speakers, the better speakers they will become. This website would be perfect for helping the students linguistically.
This is also a good website to use and is exemplary because it is not focused just on the technology. The website is based around the content and the teacher could not teach the same lesson without using the technology of the internet and this particular website. It is a good combination of content, pedagogy and technology. The area that it is probably lacking in the most is in the pedagogical stand point. The pedagogy would probably come more after the use of the website. Overall I think this would be an effective use of technology to use in the classroom to help students learn better!!


Response to http://www.epals.com/

This is a great website, and could be used in a lot of different ways. One way it could be used is as a journal system with students across the world. A middle school class could work in journal writing by having pen pals across the country. Once a week the students could use this website to keep in touch with their pals. This would be a good way for students to work on their writing and it would help motivate the students to want to be better at writing because they are writing to actual people other than their teacher. It would also help the student become aware of issues going on around the world. It would help them open their minds and think about their culture and the culture of others in a different light.
This is exemplary because it is a good combination of technology, pedagogy, and content. The students would be working and practicing them all. It is not too heavy on any of the sections. The technology is good because the students can explore do activities they would never be able to do without it, but it is not based on the technology. The pedagogy is effective because it helps to motivate the students into being better writers, and they are doing something different then they usually do. The content is good because they are communicating with others from around the world while learning about other cultures.



Response to http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview?LPid=138

This website contains really good ideas for a lesson plan on using technology to help students understand characters and character development. These all lead up to the question of “Who am I?” This idea will help students connect with the characters in novels and other media. It will also expose students to different types of technology There is a combination of electronic journals, cameras, websites and also books that enhance the students learning. This is a good compilation of TPCK.
The content of this lesson plan is very important and could be very useful based on what the unit the class is doing. There is a lot of information and it will connect the students individually to several different types of literature, print and non-print. The pedagogy is also very useful because the students are doing a lot of different things. There are connections to real world context, lots of visualization, practice, feedback, group work and reflection. The only downside to this idea is it seems to be heavy in the technology area. There is a lot to do with technology and the students could become overwhelmed with all of the new options. If there is ample support and help while completing this project it could be very useful and effective for the students. If not, some of the student could fall through the cracks and fail. Over all it is a pretty cool and creative idea for using technology in the classroom!



Response to http://readwritethink.org
This website is a great resource for teachers to help their students integrate technology into the classroom. One specific activity they can do on this website is to look at a calendar and find ideas of all sorts of activities students can do in relation to what is going on at that time. There are also lots of opportunities for the students to learn how to do things on the internet, like create a website, a timeline, and power-points.
This is a good combination of all parts of TPCK. There are a lot of good resources for great lessons on all different topics and content. There are also a lot of different things that a teacher can do pedagogically like presentations, visuals, and real world context. All of these are based on technological activities so there is a good combination of technology. This would be a good website for resources and lesson plans to help enhance teaher’s ability to integrate technology into their lessons.

#3
The website readwritethink.org seems like a good resource. It has many excellent qualities that would aid in preparing a lesson or a documentation of a research project, but this exemplar is based too much on one specific website. A lesson based completely on using this website would tend to be more technology based than learning based as the teacher attempted to stretch whatever resources were available in this website. I think that it might be a good “side note” in a research project. Students might use it to better present their topic, but I don’t think that this technology stands alone in helping students learn English. The description megaloo provided is excellent. She (I’m guessing “she”) touched on both the good and bad points of the website. There seems to be a lot of flaws in the website. On the CPAS and TWS criterias I would give it a one. This, in my opinion, does not enhance learning, but would frustrate the students as they tried to accomplish the research assignment using an unnecessary webpage where there is an “incredibly large amount of information to sift through”. As I see it, and I’m sure I haven’t explored the webpage for all it’s possibitlity of resources to teach English, it would be using technology only for “presenting and production “. I probably would never use this.

#4
This webpage appears to be a great tool for creating lesson plans. It also has a “spark notes” feel about it that would help student in their reading of the text. I can imagine using this in a class, the way you say, projecting it so that the entire class could see. At the same time it seems to be more hassle than helpful. It looks like a more preparatory tool for the teacher than a learning experience for the student. This exemplar is also very specific to one webpage and I don’t think it is a good enough page to base a lesson only on it. As a teacher I might take ideas about how to teach Shakespeare from this, but I don’t think I would give this webpage to my students to help them learn, because it just isn’t focused to their needs (that and they would see my “game plan”- and that ruins the teacher performance aspect of teaching, in my opinion). I would give this a grade of one maybe less. It almost has nothing to do with the students, and if I did force feed them this webpage, it wouldn’t enhance learning. Based on this, I’m wondering if this entry was even really meant to be an “exemplar” like its title suggests. http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=368

This is a great idea- Thanks!

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/work/cinquain_ol.doc

This internet site gave a simple, yet great lesson plan that teaches a poetry concept in English, while also teaching the students how to make a fun Word document, using WordArt. This is perfect for a day in a poetry unit of an English class, most likely at a middle school or junior high school grade level. The site says for grades 7-12, though I believe it may be too simple for older grades. According to the lesson plan, the teacher first teaches the concept of how to write a cinquain, which is a patterned poem with five lines. The first line is a one-word title, and the fifth line is a one-word synonym for the first line word. The lines 2-4 each have a specific number of syllables and a specific connection to the title. The site recommends using a common theme for the whole class to write about. Once a teacher provides a sample of a cinquain, the students have the opportunity to write their own example.

Whereas stopping at this point would be a fine English lesson, adding in a touch of technology makes the lesson more fun and more memorable. Each student then goes into Microsoft Word and types lines 2-4 as shown on the website lesson plan. The first line and the fifth line are then added in using WordArt, which is a fun way to make colorful titles that stand out in a document. The online lesson plan also gives easy-to-follow step-by-step directions of how to create WordArt. This creative titling really emphasizes the importance of the first word and the subsequent synonym on the fifth line. Each student then has a printed poem with creative, colorful WordArt. An example and helpful links can be found on the website as well .

cool sites

I am responding to mferrell's exemplar. I think this looks like a great website students can use to learn about grammar. although I'm not sure how interactive it is besides just looking at grammar information (it may be more i didn't honestly look THAT closely...) it seems like a good source especially when intertwined with the idea of having the students do a presentation using the information they are given.

PRINCIPLES
1) The students would definitely be the ones using the technology as it would be almost pointless for the teacher to just get up and show the website - kids would zone out in 30 seconds! but having the students look at it for themselves would involve them.

2) I don't know that this technology is essential in the learning activity... it is mainly just a source and they could find information elsewhere.

3)This focuses mostly on the learning, not on the technology itself, as it isn't flashy enough to do that. It is all about the students doing research.

4) This website would make it easier to do this particular assignment by having so much information in one place. But it definitely isn't impossible without it.