Day Nineteen- March 30

Today in class we viewed WebQuests and evaluating them according to the role that we played. There were 4 roles: the efficiency expert, the affiliator, the altitudinist, and the technophile. My specific role was the technophile. So, my job was to view the websites and see which ones made the most use of technology. So, pretty much, if the site had bright colors, pictures, pictures with animation, links to other sites, etc. then it was a good site in my particular role. My favorite site was the Grow School Greens one because it used picture animation in almost every picture on the site. It also used the color green which happens to be my favorite color, so it already had the advantage before I started evaluating! The best standard in the ISTE NET for Students is definitely 3 (Research and Information Fluency) B (communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats) in this particular activity. I say this because these students had to create these sits using a variety of medias and formats and they were viewed by our class.

Day Nineteen- March 30

Day Eighteen- March 25

Today in class we watched some photostories from the 8 little indians. These kids actually had some great ideas for stories. My favorite was the little indian that used deer in most of his pictures. It made it so realistic. After viewing these photostories, we then made comments on each of them on blogmeister. The activity that we took part in today is a great example of the ISTE NET for Students standard that is evaluating and selecting information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. The students had to use other digital tools to find pictures that best fit their stories. This activity was more than likely fun for these students because they were allowed to do it on things that were of their greatest interests and were not assigned to any one specific topic. They were very interesting to view and some of them were very impressive!

Presentation

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Day Eleven- February 23

Today, we used Blogmeister to engage in a writing activity with 5th graders. The specific story that I read dealt with a bear and an elephant and a magical land. This story was pretty humorous to me. I commented on it trying to give them help with the next scene of their story. I made it where the bear and elephant had to go through some adversity. For this week in our blog posts we are using the 21st Century Skills site to reflect on our day. Under the Life and Career Skills categories, working effectively in diverse teams is mentioned. I felt like this was a good example of that because the students got together and came up with these creative stories.

Day Ten- February 18

Today, in class we finished our rough drafts of our photo stories. Then, we made comments on other students stories so that they can get ideas of what they need to do to make their stories better.

When I Become A Teacher

Day Six- February 4

Today we used a video conferencing application to talk to 5th graders in Oakland, California. These fifth graders asked questions about Internet Safety and writing autobiographies. The question that they asked me was 'How do I keep my autobiography to a minimum?' I answered that they need to just highlight the main points in their life and not to go into details about everything. This activity is a great example of Standard 3 (Model Digital-Age Work and Learning) Benchmark B (collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation) because we collaborated with other students using the digital tool Skype. I think this would be great to use in my classroom so that students can get opinions from students all around the world and not just from inside the classroom. I think that the students from California really enjoyed and were very thrilled to be speaking with college students and getting our opinions on their questions.

Survey Results

Day Five-February 3

Today we got on Google Documents to create a form. After creating a form, we then put the data on a graph. The graph is shown above. I felt like this was a great example of Standard 1 (Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity) Benchmark A (promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness). The reason I believe this is because one word "creativity." Everything we did today was very creative, whether we were making up our own questions and answers to put on the form or creating the graph with the data. I think this tool would be great to use in my classroom so we can provide statistics to the answers on the kids surveys. With these statistics, we could figure out what answer was most often chosen, what answer was not chose very often, and what answers were not even chosen at all! I would definitely recommend this tool to every teacher. It is fun (in my opinion), so I think the students would have a great time doing this, while learning at the same time.

Day Four- January 28

Today we joined a discussion group, Web 2.0 and Schools, on Facebook. We were asked to comment on a link about digital media and how it has changed our language. I felt like this was a great example of Standard 3 (Model Digital-Age Work and Learning) Benchmark B (collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation) because we are able to connect with friends and peers on Facebook and chat with them about random topics. Most of the time the topics are fun but every once in a while you will see a serious discussion on Facebook. Facebook has to be one of the most known, and used, social networking program. For example, on the first day of class, when asked if anyone didn't have Facebook, I don't think one person raised their hand. I would definitely like to use Facebook in my classroom so my students could connect with each other and discuss what was done in class everyday.

Day Three-January 26

Today, we joined Classroom 2.0, which is a teaching community. Classroom 2.0 is a professional teachers application to connect and share ideas with other teachers throughout the country. For example, since I want to become a math teachers, I can go do a search on this website on "blogging Algebra 2" and it will come up with many different links that I can click on to view other teachers philosophies on their teaching strategies. I felt like we met Standard 5 (Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership) Benchmark 1 (participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning) because we did just as it says "participate in local and global learning communities." I don't know if I would use this in my classroom because I will be teaching younger students who are not in the college level that have not even selected a major of choice. So, I wouldn't want a student who is wanting to be a physical therapist to be using this teaching application because this would be of no help to them. However, I do think this is a really great application for us college students!

Day Two- January 21

Today, we used google documents to create a resume to put on our blogs. I felt like doing this was a good example of Standard 2 (Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments) Benchmark A (design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity). This was the most likely standard because we designed a resume and published it using digital tools such as google documents and blogger. This helped out a lot because I learned about what important accomplishments I need to get to be able to be a likely candidate for a job later on down the road. It also allowed me to be creative. Since, I was not able to fill out all of the spaces, I just simply made up some possible answers to the guidelines. When I become a teacher, I will make sure that I incorporate google documents into my classroom. I think this will help the kids learn about all the different kinds of applications that they can make online that will benefit them when they are sitting in the exact same seat that I am in today.

Day One- January 19

Today, we set up a blog through gmail and I felt as if we met standard 3 (Model Digital-Age Work and Learning) benchmark B(collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation)because a blog will help us collaborate with each other throughout this semester. It will also allow us to communicate with our peers and friends. A good example of this is the wordle activity that we engaged in. Everyone in the class sent a text message with two nouns and two adjectives that describe California. This was then sent to a classroom in California, and that classroom sent a message back with what they thought about West Virginia. That is a great example of collaborating with other students using digital media!

Resume Link

Introductory Post

My name is Ben Wise from Ravenswood, WV. I am an education major.