Final Reflection - Scenario

I feel I am an exceptional candidate for this teaching position.  I have a strong background for incorporating technology into the classroom, not only from the educators standpoint...but for the students as well.  I believe in this every changing almost "instant" world we are in, students need to be able to access anything at anytime.  My great education from Kansas State University has prepared me to be a strong teacher and I feel that I am a huge asset to your school.  Not only to I have a strong background in technology, I am also ESL endorsed so I know how to incorporate differentiated instruction into the classroom, and technology only makes that simpler.

I hope to see myself in five years as a steady teacher in a great school district.  I hope to help mold a not so technology savvy school into a very technology intelligent school.  I hope to bring new direction to everyday instruction, and be able to receive grants to get my school more computers, iPads, and smart boards.

Technology is such a great way to impact students' learning.  By using computers, information is instant.  Say a student needs to write a report on an animal...they can use the web to access pictures, facts, videos, all in the same place.  How convenient for not only the student, but the classroom teacher, and the parents of the students.

Looking back to when I was in school, we didn't have access to computers and technology like kids do these days.  We got to go to the computer lab once every other week, where as now, each classroom has a cart of laptops that are used daily.  I would love to see every school in the district in which i will teach in have individual computers for each student.  This way they parents don't have to worry about getting a home computer if the finances are not available, but this can also help educate parents.

I feel I have alot to offer as a teacher in your school district and hope you consider me for the job.  Please visit my website for all the technology projects that I could be using to teach our students.

Stephanie's Portfolio

Final Reflection - My WOW Moment

Believe if or not...this morning at about 1am...the light bulb clicked on for me...and this class finally started to come together.  I had struggled all semester with what website tool I was going to use.  I have taken webpage design...and coming from designing my own website from scratch...to using a template became very hard.  I am a perfectionist, when I want something someway...I want to figure out how to get it that way.  I had to learn that it isn't that easy with google sites or wix sites.  I started out with google sites, switched to wix, and about 11:30pm last night...I switched back over to google sites because my wix wasn't cooperating.  Talk about a stressful night!  Once I put my mind to my google site, it came together in about an hour.  I have learned to be more patient this semester, and that things don't always go as planned.  Talk about waiting until last minute to decide with type of site you are using...I think I won that award.  I am very pleased with my website...and hope that I can use this one, and just tweak it a bit for my interviews for teaching jobs.

Final Reflection - Podcast Favorite

Out of all the podcasts that I listened to this semester, my favorite was Tech Chick Tips.  These two women have great insight on how to incorporate technology into your everyday classroom.  Their blogspot is very inviting and has a great look and feel to it.  It was easy for me to find things to write reflections on that they had discussed.

They talk about information like how to create an ibook with your students, or how to tell if a document is corrupt.  The information is not only beneficial but interesting at the same time.

Final Reflection - Semester Favorites

There have been many tools I have learned this semester that I will be using in my classroom as a future teacher.  I have already used some of them in my college classes this semester alone.  Two tools that I enjoyed the most, and feel I would use and my students would benefit from in my classroom would be prezi and animoto.

Prezi is a great tool to replace the boring Microsoft powerpoint presentations.  Prezi is like using a white board.  You have an endless amount of canvas to gather, sort, and put together information for an awesome presentation.  I wish that we would have had more time to learn about this tool.  It is a lot more complex than powerpoint, but i'm sure with more use and ease will come.

Animoto is another great tool.  This is a video slideshow presentation that is simple, takes little time, but can have a total impact depending on what you are presenting.  I have used this in at least three different classrooms this semester alone.  All you have to do is find pictures on the topic, put in a few words, pick music and animoto takes a few minutes an completes you an awesome slideshow.

The greatest thing about ALL these tools we learned about this semester, it that they are ALL FREE!!!!  How can we beat that?

Classroom 2.0

Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network. It is great for those who are "beginners" will  help be a supportive comfortable place to start dealing with digital dialog.  You have to become a member and they do background checks to make sure you are legit.  It is a great site like the others to stay connected with other educators and have all of your resources conveniently located in one place.

Eduteacher

Eduteacher has tutorials to help you navigate the site and show you all it has to offer.  It has ways to blog, message and chat.  You can have a backpack where you keep all your files and links to things.  It is basically a place to keep all of your resources and information organized.

Kan-Ed Portal Site

I couldn't begin to explain all of the resources and tools that are available on the Kan-Ed portal site.  It is an awesome place to have bookmarked and use continuously throughout my teaching career.  It should be the first place I look to for support, lesson plan help, resources for teaching and many other things.

Using Animoto in the Classroom

Creating a presentation with Animoto is easy, quick and to the point. What I like most about Animoto is that it takes just minutes to create a very resourceful presentation. Other than being simple, Animoto is clear and to the point. A lot of other presentations are filled with all kinds of information that isn't useful. With Animoto you don't have to fill space. Animoto not only is a great tool for teachers, but also a great way to differentiate instruction for students. I would like to use more presentations in my class. I think Animoto will allow my students to create projects that are more meaningful than research papers or experiments. Animoto will give them the control to create and learn at their own pace. In the end I believe that Animoto is an essential tool to use in the classroom.

Fun with Text / Wordle

I thought that both of these activities were a lot of fun.  This would be a great activity to do at the beginning of the school year with your students as a "get to know your peers."  Everyone could do it on their families, what they did over the summer, or even just things they like to do.  I think that this is a wonderful tool that I will definitely be using in my classroom.

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Podcast Reflection #8 - Tech Chicks - It's not that much shorter

The first link that was shared was the new Diigo, version 5.0.  It has new features including a capture option.  You can capture an area on the screen and are no longer limited to just text.  You are also able to add notes.  They also talked about the web highlighter that is available for the iPad.  You are able to highlight areas with your own finger.  The next resource was 10 ways to discover new music online, such as map roamer, music match, and one-track-mind.  At the site one-track-mind, new artists are able to post their music and leave blog posts.  All of these sites are focused on new talent and new artists.  Another link was oneframeoffame.com.  One frame of frame is a site that will give you a pose to make and your webcam will snap it.  In the next hour your picture will be put into a stop motion animation video along with other people’s photos.  It is a very creative and fun website to check out.  Open clip art was the next topic, and it is a site to find open source clip art.  Another link is digitalfilms.com.  At this site you are able to make your own video online.

Podcast Reflection #7 - Moving at the Speed of Creativity-Using iWeb for Blogging & Publishing

This podcast teaches you how to get started using iWeb for blogging and publishing.  iWeb lets you choose from many different themes.  You will have six sites to choose from, for example, the Blog page.  You can rename your folders, add new pages, and add new entries to any of your named folders that you have created.  This will create several pages to each of your folders.  As I have learned in my Teaching Educational Technology class, there are many different things that you can do with the iWeb application.  You can create links to different websites, write reflections and post from the different podcasts (three types-audio only, enhanced, and video) that you listened to, add photos, videos, widgets, digital stories, avatars, iMovies, photobooth podcasts, lesson plans, a Google presentation which is similar to a PowerPoint, and a voice thread project.  I am sure there are more creative things that you can do with iWeb, which I am eager and willing to learn throughout my journey of becoming a teacher.

Teachers can use the iWeb application to create a blog and share the content which they have created or put in to the iLife applications, such as, iPhoto, Garage band, and iMovie.  They can share with either a global or local audience with or without being password protected.  Podcasting and blogging enables us to share our information online and lets us fundamentally address the students’ perceptions about our teaching and writing.  

Podcast Reflection #6 - THe heroic Journey Project

This sixth podcast caught my attention because in my Children’s Literature class we read several heroic stories and discussed their adventures. This podcast gives teachers an idea of how to have a lesson over specific books such as “The Lightning Thief”.  Students can create their own creatures and heroes for their own stories. This would be a fun writing activity for your students to experience as a class. It also incorporates using technology. Once the students are done post them to their own website.

Podcast Reflection #5 - Teachers Teaching Teachers

For this podcast I listened to they speak with Carolyn Kirk, Tasha Whitton, Ellen Steigman, and a couple other teachers. These teachers are discussing how our students are reacting and voicing how they feel about the disasters that are happening in our country. They touch on 9/11 and the most recent Gulf Oil Disaster. How can we get our students to understand what is really going on and understand how it is affecting real people in that area? They also talk about what we can do now in our schools to help maybe prevent these types of things from happening.

Podcast Reflection #4 - Ed Tech Weekly—The Death of the Open Web

This podcast discussed an article from the New York Times entitled, “The Death of the Open Web.”  The article talked about the idea that Apple has complete controls over everything and the days where freedom to post whatever you want is gone.  All of the members on the Ed Tech Weekly show concluded that this article was definitely false.  They discussed that there are still plenty of ways to post whatever you want on the web, stating that there are a number of ways to post information on the web without even having to deal with Apple.  I agree that there are various ways to post things to the web without dealing with Apple because I do it all of the time. (Or at least I think I do!)  I think this article was just worried about Apple becoming some sort of monopoly.  All in all, I agree with the cast of EdTech weekly in that the article “Death of the Open Web” is a little ridiculous and false.

Podcast Reflection #3 - EdTechWeekly--Facebook, privacy, and social networking

I agree that it is difficult to follow Facebook’s constantly changing privacy settings.  I have the same mentality that the guy on the podcast does; anything that I put on Facebook might as well be public.  When I was younger I didn’t understand the severity of how public all of my information on Facebook was.  When the younger girl was talking about her number of friends on Facebook; I learned that I would benefit by thinning out my friends list.   However I would still not post anything that I wouldn’t want other people to know.  It’s called “Facebook stalking” because it truly is that invasive.  I don’t believe that educators should communicate with students, especially in K-12.  That can potentially lead to an inappropriate relationship between teacher and student.  I think it is different once you enter college because after a course you may remain friends and in contact with them.  I think social networking is very important and students should be taught how to properly use social networking and the dangers and problems, which accompany it.