I am back!

   It has been awhile since I have blogged. I have decided to start again for my own professional development. I plan on posting reflections about books I am reading or articles I come across. I would love to hear from other professionals and parents about what they think about the different practices. As I am in the classroom more, I will write about my own experiences! 
  I am excited to be back and even more excited to be making my way into the world of teaching!

Bring Social Networking into the classroom

    Social networking, the first thing that may come to your mind is facebook or Myspace right? You might even correlate it with time wasters or dangerous, nothing of a benefit.  So why on earth would a teacher want to bring social networking into a classroom?  
     There is more to social networks than facebook and Myspace, there is blogging like what we are doing here, to voice your opinions and  to be heard and to read others opinions. There are podcasts that give information that students are looking for while researching. 
    One website, edutopia , is calling it " academic networking" because it is important to teach our students how to collaborate using different programs. The students can share their ideas and internet sources on these networks and receive feedback from people all over. With online bookmarking networks, you share what you have bookmarked and your friends on the site can look at the sites that you have bookmarked because you think they are beneficial. 
   Some schools are even bringing twitter into the classroom. Some teachers are using it to gather data, taking polls, and other creative projects. It is a good way to have all the data you are  collecting go to one spot. Twitter engages the students in so many different ways. There are  some good ideas at 12 Expert Twitter Tips for the Classroom.
   Social networking is a great way for your students to collaborate with other students all around the United states, even the world. You can literally bring the world to there fingertips. I am still unsure how I would want to incorporate social networking in my classroom. I do know that I would have to become more familiar with all the different social networks. While in the classroom working, monitoring the networks will be essential.  I wouldn't want my students to be collaborating with the wrong people or some how venture to a site that is inappropriate. Although  there are risks with anything, I do think this would be a very beneficial technological step to take in junior high and high schools. 
    



images: cellphone, flickr.com by coblat123, social networks icons, iconlover.com

Cell Phones in the Classroom

      It is hard to even imagine life without them these days. Everyone seems to have one and there is always one either ringing or vibrating... Cell phones. It is distracting anywhere you hear them, but especially when you are trying to learn or teach in the classroom.  In many schools they are banned, do not even bring them in the buildings, but after the Columbine incident and 9/11 school districts are realizing that they are okay to have in case of emergencies.  In most schools the rule is keep the phones out of sight and off in the classrooms, but they have been a problem in the classroom with many students texting during class.This has led to passing answers on tests and bullying  along with the normally use of holding a conversation with a friend.
      Some schools are joining the phone use by bringing them into sight in the classroom. Some teachers use programs that have the students text in their answers during class which gives them instant results to see the polls on the different answers. The cell phones today have access to the internet and dictionaries to teachers and instructors have their students use them quick results at their desks.  Schools that are incorporating the cell phones into learning say that the management has improved. When you tell the students to put away their phones they are put away and gone until asked to take them out again or until class is over.
    My thoughts and feelings on this topic are mixed. Yes, bringing the cell phones into the classroom is a  good way to connect with the students digital lifestyle, but I think that there are other tools and better tools to use other than the cell phones.  Students can handle putting away their cell phones for a class period and even for the whole day, even though they may think they cannot, they can. I do find them distracting, I know that it is for me and during my classes my phone has to be on silent and in my bag. When it is out of sight it is easier for me to concentrate on the lecture. I do understand though that in schools that are having large issues with the cell phone use bringing them into the classroom would be more appealing and have a better outcome rather than the authoritarian stance of banning them from the school.
   I found a good internet source that talked about the advantages and disadvantages of having cell phones in the classroom, Teaching Today, a lot of the ideas from this post came from this website. I also found a video on Youtube that shows the issue of cell phones in the school from a negative to a positive. Check it out!



image is from googleimages.com from enviroblog.org

A Laptop For Every Student

    Is it necessary? Does it help students learn better? If every student in the classroom has a laptop to themselves is the learning any better than without them in the classroom? Some teacher say yes! They say it motivates the students more to to the work and it teaches more real life skills. I can agree to that. The students today are digital natives, meaning they have grown up using technology. Having access to the internet allows students to look terms up they might not understand in the lecture right then and there. It also helps with organization for notes and other information. Laptops would also be a great way for collaboration in the classroom with students working on projects and gathering more information and faster. 

   Yet, even if this sounds so great, there are down falls. If you as a teacher relies so much of your teaching to be done through the laptops what happens if the internet goes down or some other odd situation occurs. What do you do? Your whole lesson plan is changed. Or students can easily be distracted when the internet is right there in front of them. The games they play at home and for older students that have social networks. Another down fall is students writing and spelling skills. When working on a computer all day your writing is being corrected, if there is a grammar problem the green line shows up under the problem. If there is a spelling error the red line appears. Not only does it point it out, BUT it will correct it for you. The students are not going to learn correct grammar on their own nor will their spelling be good.

  I do believe that having laptops available for every student in the classroom is important, but I do not feel like they need to have them all the time. Use the technology to enhance certain lessons or projects, but not every lesson of every day. A lot of my ideas were based from reading the article on Mulitmedia in the classroom.

   image from Flickr.com by ctkmcmillian

Promethean boards in the classroom.

    “They’re smarter than a smart board” I once heard a teacher describe her Promethean board. So what can this board do that makes it so smart? It acts like a whiteboard, a computer and front projection. The Promethean boards engage students into learning. I have been in classrooms where the students are enthralled by the boards.  The students are able to have wireless clickers which allow the teacher to ask questions on the board and the students will click in the answer they think is correct. This helps the students know where they stand on the information and the teachers can gather which students understand, which are not, and what materials need to be touched on again.

       The Promethean Board has another tool that helps students learn by having audio tools.  The teacher wears a wireless microphone which is hooked up to speakers in the room. This tool helps the teacher’s voice be heard no matter where they are in the classroom; it also helps cut out the extra noise of fans, other classrooms, or the lawn mower that seems to go by the window about a hundred times. When students can hear their instructor clearly more learning can go on. I know that when I was going through school I didn’t always catch everything the teacher said because I could not hear them and missed small ,yet important details, I feel like this will certainly benefit the classrooms which it is used in.

                I feel that the Promethean Boards are a positive addition to the classroom because it is enhancing the students learning and a tool to observe the students knowledge by collecting data with the clickers.  I feel that some technology helps the classroom look very advanced ,but does not really do much for the students but that is certainly not the Promethean Board.

I found information about the Promethean Boards at a site called Promethean world it not only tells you about the boards but you can learn out to purchase them, and share what you have done and read what other teachers have done with their boards.

image from Flickr.com by mrkimmi