Prompt #10

I will be reviewing chapter #10, which focuses on science in the classroom. I am going to be an elementary school teacher, but I am also getting an endorsement in science which will allow me to teach science at the middle school level. Science was never my best skill, in fact, I hated it in high school. I never thought I would ever be a science teacher one day. I took an earth science class at my junior college with a wonderful instructor. He was a meteorologist by trade, and made the class so interesting and even exciting to me, and this is really what changed my mind about science all together. I only wish I had had science teachers like him when I was growing up. Science is one of those subjects that is constantly changing, and that is what I like most about it. The science curriculum is not like math: math is unchanging, and constant from year to year. You are taught math and you memorize what you are taught and you regurgitate it on the test. Science is so much different. Science is about understanding and applying what you are learning. It is about understanding how our bodies work and how our world works. I think the best feeling is to learn something in a science class, then go out into the world and experience it for yourself and realize that you understand exactly what is happening. Isn’t that amazing? There are so many different realms in the world of science education. There is physical science, life science, earth science, space science, and much more. I am a big fan of environmental and space science. There was one online resource listed, a video of Earth’s water cycle, that I think would definitely be beneficial to show to an environmental science class. The water cycle is the basis of everything, and it is really important for students to know and understand. There were several online resources for astronomy as well. I think I will enjoy teaching about space the most, because it is a mystery to most of us. There was an online link called virtual skies that would be neat to show students. Science has been placed on the back burner in recent years due to the demand for better reading and mathematics testing results. I hope to show my future students how interesting and amazing science really is, and why we should never overlook it for other subjects in the curriculum. 

Prompt #9

I will be discussing issue #13, which is about interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards are amazing pieces of technology! I did not have these in my classrooms during elementary or middle school, but started seeing them in high school. The teachers tended to be territorial of them, so I never got to use one until I started student teaching. I wish I had more experience and knowledge of what they can do, because they truly have a mind of their own. From my experience in classrooms, the students (especially the younger ones) love their interactive white boards. There are so many creative things you can do with them. When teaching math, you can pull up grid lines and charts to make graphing easier. One classroom I was in also charted and tracker all of their daily behavior through a program on their interactive white board, called Class Mojo. The students got to go up every day at the end of school and chart their behavior for the day. The kids would get so excited to go up to the SmartBoard, and they loved that they got to interact with it. Every classroom in the district I grew up in now has these wonderful pieces of technology, and I hope I have one in my classroom. There are so many ways to utilize the interactive white boards, and in my opinion they are so much greater than the regular old white boards or the dreaded chalk boards!

Prompt #8

I will be discussing issue #7, which is the use of Wikipedia. When I was in middle and high school, we were strongly discouraged from using the site Wikipedia. Our teachers strongly pushed that although Wikipedia may seem like a decent and credible source to use, it was not. My high school even blocked the website all together in an attempt to get the students to stop using it. The truth of the matter is once you block a website and tell students they are forbidden from using it, they are more likely to test the limits and use it. In my personal opinion, I think Wikipedia should be seen as more of a friend than as a foe. While I do agree that a lot of the information provided on there is written by sources that have no credibility, I also think that Wikipedia provides a great outlet for students to get a general idea of certain topics. When researching a potential topic for a research paper, students can look to Wikipedia to get a general idea of what they might want to research further. Should the students be taking information from Wikipedia and using it as a source in their research paper? This probably is not the best idea. Wikipedia is a great starting point for students who are a little lost or just cannot decide on a topic. Since Wikipedia is available for editing by anyone, which usually consists of people without any credibility, a lot of opinions are inserted within articles. Students reading articles on Wikipedia could have the opportunity to oppose the thoughts and opinions of certain contributors. This gives students the opportunity to think outside of the box and contradict a contributor’s thoughts. For these reasons, I do not think Wikipedia should be banned from student use. Instead, I think teachers should just advise students on how to use Wikipedia to their benefit and make sure they understand that some of the information is unreliable.

Prompt #7

Educators need to be “skating” towards the new pieces of technology that are out there instead of falling behind and only focusing on the technology that is popular today. On the second adoption horizon, which includes tools that are likely to become popular in the next two to three years, I was interested in two of the concepts listed. Game based learning is a wonderful way, in my opinion, to get students engaged in what they are learning. I saw this method first hand when I was doing field experience last year in a second grade class. The students looked forward to the time that they got to use the computers to play math and reading focused “games”. The math games were mostly just addition and subtraction facts, but there was an added excitement that the student would earn points for correct answers. The reading games were focused on the students reading short stories and then answering some comprehension questions. The second graders did not even realize they were doing schoolwork most of the time, they just looked at it all as a game. I think this is a great way to promote practice and extra learning. The students can also access these online games at home, a great way for them to study and practice on their own time while still having fun. Another concept under the second adoption horizon is the use of mobiles. Many schools are purchasing iPads and iPod Touches for their students’ use. Schools and individual teachers are then creating their own apps and websites with tools for the students to use both inside and outside of the classroom. This is definitely something that schools need to “skate” towards. Most children in today’s schools have some sort of electronic device at home, whether it be a computer, tablet, or cellphone. Having apps and websites for the students to access at school or at home would allow them to have extra practice in subject, help them to review material, and also allow them to ask questions to their teacher and/or peers. One idea under the far-term horizon, which predicts four to five years from now, is about the use of flexible displays. I definitely think this is something we are going to see in classrooms in the near future. Flexible displays are basically devices, similar to a tablet, that are built into books, desks, and walls. I think this is what will eventually take over the use of textbooks. It is important for teachers and educators in general to look ahead to the technology of the future, because eventually we will likely be using that technology in our own classroom.

Prompt #6

It is truly amazing to think how technology has evolved over the last few decades. I have been a student for almost fifteen years now, and it is even more amazing to remember what we had in my first grade classroom compared to what we have in first grade classrooms today. When I was in elementary school, technological advances were just starting to make an appearance, and that appearance was very slim. Some of the classrooms at my school has a single, cube-like Apple desktop computer. Attached to these big boxes were an even bigger tower, which made the computer run. We very rarely used the computer in the classroom. Most of the time, they sat shut off in the corner collecting dust until the end of the school year. Now that I look back, I think the reason we never used them was because our teachers did not know how to use them. There was probably never any formal training right away, and they were foreign objects to all of us! Another piece of equipment I remember were the old overhead projectors. While you still occasionally see them in a classroom today, likely being operated by a teacher who refuses to accept new technology, the noisy machines were staples when I was growing up. Now, they are obsolete compared to things like the SmartBoard or electronic projectors on the ceiling. When I entered into middle school, I remember seeing and using a lot more of the technology in the school. We had a library with about thirty flat-screened computers. We had to take classes just on computers and how to use them correctly. Assignments and papers were to be turned in typed, not hand-written like before. We started being forced to get a minimum number of resources from the Internet for research papers, where before resources were only obtained from books. When I finally got to high school, technology really changed for me. I started taking a few classes that were totally online, and that had no traditional classroom element whatsoever. I had textbooks that were totally online, and did not even turn in paper copies of assignments anymore, just submitted them online. All of my teachers had the newest SmartBoards (which I never knew how to use until becoming a teacher education student!) and most had a set of iPads dedicated just to their room. Many of my classes were held in computer labs every day because all of our work was on the computer now. I even had a math class that was totally on the computer! All of our homework, quizzes, and tests were conducted online every day. It is almost scary to look back and remember what we had in terms of technology fifteen years ago and compare it to what we have today. Technology is only growing now, and who knows what we will have in another fifteen years!