My Experience in Educational Media

Over the past 6 weeks, I have been taking a summer class called Educational Media. Throughout the class, I have been researching technology, the benefits of it, and how to incorporate it into the classroom. It really has been an eye-opening experience. I never realized how dependent our society is on technology and how much technology enhances learning.

I participated in a "power down day" where I did not use any electronic devices for 24 hours. It was very hard not being able to listen to the radio in the car, text, and go on facebook. I never realized how much I depended on technology until I had to go a day without it.

Although I use technology on an everyday basis for socialization, technology has also become very useful in the classroom. More and more teachers are using technology to improve the quality of learning for visual, spatial, kinesthetic, and auditory learners. Technology has the ability to capture the attention of students with all abilities, interests, and ages. Also, technology is interactive, colorful, captive, and entertaining for the students.

Throughout the class I learned many things:

• how to use the SmartBoard
• what an E.L.M.O. is
• what a screencast is and how to create one
• Copyright laws for teachers
• how to tweet
• what my Philosophy of Technology is and how I will integrate technology into my own classroom

I really enjoyed taking the summer class and learning about technology. The knowledge I gained will be beneficial to my career as an elementary teacher.

Screencasts!

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output often containing audio narration. Screencasts are useful for demonstrating and teaching software features. Educators are now using screencasts as another means of integrating technology into the curriculum. Students can record video and audio as they demonstrate the proper procedure to solve a problem on an interactive whiteboard.

When I first heard about screencasts, I thought they had no significant benefit. For a school project, I had to create a screencast. I made my first screencast this week about an interesting article I found. My first experience changed my mind about screencasts! It took me awhile to figure it out, but I found it very useful. I believe screencasts are a great way to show students how to do an assignment or how to find something online. They appeal to both the visual and auditory learners. Screencasts allow students to replay the important information as many times as necessary, which helps the teachers not have to repeat themselves over and over.

I used http://screenr.com/ to create my screencast. I like Screenr because it has a 1-minute tour, which is very helpful and made the process easier. Screenr only allows each screencast to be 5 minutes, so each screencast is fairly short.

Technology in the Classroom

Many people are afraid of the possible harmful effects of using technology in the classroom. Will children lose their ability to relate to other people? Will children become dependent on technology? Although these are valid questions, educators believe technology enhances learning. Technology is recognized as a highly regarded instructional tool in the classroom. Whether a teacher requires a student to use technology or not, most students use technology for their projects. The technology tool used most often for students’ projects is the internet. Word, Powerpoint, and Excel are also student and teacher favorites. These programs allow teachers and students to present material in a captive and easily understanding way. Teachers can use multimedia technology to give more colorful, stimulating lectures. SmartBoards and the E.L.M.O. are becoming very popular and taking the place of standard projectors. Technology adds an edge to the classroom that helps students pay attention and get excited about learning.

I believe technology should play a significant role in teaching and be integrated into the classroom. I will use technology when it enhances learning and makes learning easier for the students. I will incorporate technology into mathematics, language arts, social studies, and science. Teachers today are at an advantage with all of the new technology they have at their disposal. They should take advantage of every opportunity given to them, whether it is a SmartBoard, E.L.M.O. or any other technological device.

E.L.M.O Is Popular With All Ages

When I first heard of the E.L.M.O., I immediately thought of the character from Sesame Street. I thought, how could Elmo help teach students of all ages? After doing some research, I found that the E.L.M.O. could be very valuable in the classroom.

The E.L.M.O (Electric Light Magnifying Object) is a popular document camera used in education.It is much more advanced than an overhead projector that used to be popular for classroom instruction. Document cameras are the latest electronic imaging devices which can be used to display real three dimensional objects, pages from a book, artwork, etc. They can be very useful for stimulating students and keeping them engaged in lessons. The E.L.M.O. helps teachers deliver visually enticing lessons that keep all eyes firmly fixed on learning. It is especially helpful when grouping objects or concepts into categories such as parts of speech.

One of the benefits of using a document camera is that it can effectively allow students to easily view details of two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects which would otherwise be very difficult for the students to see. The E.L.M.O. can display three-dimensional objects from any angel.

The E.L.M.O. has a portable remote referred to as "Frosty" because it is white and shaped like a snowman. The remote allows the teacher to highlight important details, shade, zoom, brighten or dim the screen from anywhere in the classroom.

I think the E.L.M.O. is a very useful instructional aid and presentation aid in education.

SmartBoards

Over the past several days, I have been exploring the functions of the SmartBoard program. I am very impressed with the variety of capabilities. The SmartBoard has much more elaborate functionality than an electronic chalkboard or white board. It provides visual and interactive techniques to teach children of all ages.

SmartBoards have many benefits in the classroom. They allow teachers to easily display information to students and save it on a computer for later use or online for the students to access. SmartBoards also accommodate different learning styles.

I found many activities in the Gallery that can be useful without plugging the computer into the SmartBoard. I am tutoring a fifth grader in math this summer and I believe the Mathematics Gallery will be beneficial even without access to a SmartBoard. It has programs that focus on number concepts and operations, patterns and relations, shapes, space and measure, and statistics and probability. I am excited to try some of these programs with the girl I am tutoring.

I am anxious to use the SmartBoards with my own students! Technology has become extremely advanced, especially in the classroom, over the last decade. I cannot wait to see the new technological advancements that will exist when I become a teacher.

The Last Day

Yesterday was my last day of observing with my cooperating teacher. I was sad to say goodbye to all of the students I helped throughout the past ten weeks. I had an extremely good experience in my field placement. My cooperating teacher was very welcoming. She taught me a lot about teaching in general and teaching a special education class. I learned many techniques that will help me in the future with my own students.

Books are great resources for teachers to use, but they could have never prepared me for teaching as much as the field experience did. Although, I have a lot more to learn, I am more prepared to be a teacher then I was ten weeks ago.

Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to become a teacher. However, I changed my mind numerous times about what I wanted to teach. I was not sure if I wanted to teach mathematics in a high school setting or every subject to the elementary students. Through my experience, I realized that teaching is the right profession for me. Also, I love working with the elementary students. Therefore, I am going to pursue a dual-license in Early Childhood Education and Intervention Specialist.

Ultimately, I hope to teach intervention mathematics. I want the opportunity to work with elementary students and enhance their mathematics skills. Basic mathematic facts are very important. Unfortunately, students who have problems learning their basic facts get farther and farther behind in mathematics. They grow to hate mathematics and usually struggle with it for the rest of their years in school. Therefore, I want to be the teacher who gets the students back on track and enjoying mathematics.

Overall, I had a very good experience and learned a lot of useful techniques for the classroom. I cannot wait to start my next observation experience!

Testing

In the class that I am observing, tests are very different than what I am used to. In kindergarten, first, and second grade, there is not a big difference between worksheets done in class, homework, and the actual tests. I like that the worksheets, homework, and tests are all virtually the same. I do not believe it is fair for a child to work diligently in class and get everything correct, but not know what to do on the test because it has a different layout.

Since the students are all doing different activities, the classroom is not quiet when a single child is taking a test. I find this very distracting. I think that it takes the students longer to complete the test because of all of the distractions in the room. I think it is especially important that tests are taken in a quiet environment when the students have learning disabilities. Students with learning disabilities struggle with school without the added stress of a loud testing area.

Also, it seems like the students do not care when they get a bad grade as much as I did as a young student. For instance, the students have spelling tests every Friday. The students work with the list of spelling words that they will be tested on all week. They write the words multiple times and write sentences using the words. However, they do not study the words at home. Therefore, when it comes time to take the test, they forget the words. Most of the students get a D or F on all of the spelling tests, but they never try harder the next week. For me, I cried if there was anything lower then a B written on the top of my tests.

I believe that it is very important for students to be tested. However, I do not believe that a student’s progress in the class should be dependent on one day. Students have bad days and bad days can really affect how well a student does on a test.

I study for tests and know all of the material before tests are administered. However, I get test anxiety and forget everything when the test is in front of me. I get very stressed out about the whole situation because I can study for hours and know everything, but since I do not know the information at the exact moment when the test is in front of me, I earn a bad grade. I know that many children suffer from the same anxiety as I do.

I honestly do not like written tests at all. I think written tests add unnecessary stress to a child’s life. Tests should show what a child knows, but not make a child nervous. Therefore, someday, I hope to come up with an efficient way to test my students without the use of paper and a pencil. I want to create a testing method that is nonthreatening to the children and shows how they have progressed.