Assignment 3.1 Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Screencast

Let Us Meet in the Cloud

Picture from http://www.gdocsdrive.com/

     Improving the use of Technology in the classroom is one of the priorities of our school.  That is why our school sponsored me and my colleague to attend the Technology Symposium last October.  We were also asked to conduct a teacher training about the information we learned from the symposium.  We learned more about Google Docs Drive and  Ipads in this seminar so we decided to create an interactive Presentation of these topics.  We used Google Docs Drive and created a PowerPoint presentation using it.  We edited it whenever we can.  It worked out great for us because we do not have the same prep period and it would be difficult to schedule a longer meeting.  Being able to edit the presentation and see what the other person already has added made it a lot easier.  It saved us time in finalizing the report because there is no need to compare notes.  We can see all changes we made to it.  Everything we do is saved in the Google Cloud Platform so there is no need for flash drives!

      Google Docs Drive is an excellent tool to use in the classrooms and at home.  The students just need internet to access their files anytime and anywhere.  There are several options available that the students can use in their classes.  For example, they can create documents, PowerPoint Presentations, Spreadsheets, drawings and a lot more.  There is an option to add more applications to the Google Docs Drive too.  It automatically saves the file in its Cloud Platform which can be accessed anywhere there is internet.  The files could be shared to the teacher, classmates and parents.  All the revisions can also be seen including who made the revisions.  This would be particularly good for group projects since the teacher will know who are contributing in the group.  The students can no longer say that they do not have their homework since their computer is broken or they forgot their flash drive or they forgot to print it because the teacher will see the files in Google Docs Drive and access it.  

      There are numerous applications that we can use just in  the Google Platform. Which applications would be the best ones to download?   It should be noted that not all the applications in Google are free.  If we are going to implement this is our classes, we should also involve the parents to make them aware of how to use these applications.  How do we plan our year to incorporate a little training for teachers, students and parents? This way we can all meet in the Cloud.

TED 682 Assignment 2.1

Ferre's VideoCast

 

Title

Changing Teacher Practices  with Interactive Whiteboards

Author

Jason Borgen

Web address 

http://www.portical.org/tv/changing-teacher-practices-with-interactive-whiteboards/62.htm

Discussion 2.1 Using Art in a Science Classroom

Art and Science Together Creates “STEAM”

"Nathalie Miebach  focuses on the intersection of art and science and the visual articulation of scientific observations." Taken from www.ritholtz.com.

Science has always fascinated me.  I love learning new concepts and understanding how they apply to my life and everyone around me.  Science, for the most part, is able to explain how and why things happen inside our bodies and around us.  It also shows how these two systems relate and affect each other.  So if science is so interesting and amazing, then why is it so difficult to teach it to our students? In teaching science, the biggest challenge is how to motivate the students and inspire them to study and appreciate science.  There are a lot of scientific terms they need to know and understand.  They are big words that they probably heard for the first time like Adenosine Triphosphate or Deoxyribonucleic Acid.  How can we prevent our students from being scared and shut down after hearing these complicated words and concepts? How can we maintain their motivation?  How can we ensure that these concepts will be retained after they leave the classroom or after a whole year of science class?

There are a lot of challenges to overcome, but I believe that if students experience science then it will help educators to answer these questions.  Laboratory experiments, field trips, projects are ways to experience science.  Science teachers use these strategies, but they are still not enough to answer these questions.  In 2008, DANA Arts Cognition and Consortium organized and assembled different scientists from multiple Universities to conduct a study if the use of Art affects other areas of learning.  The study indicated that there were improvements in math and reading scores, attention, cognition, working memory and reading fluency (Pomeroy 2012).  There is another study by the National Endowment for the Arts where they found out that students from low socio-economic backgrounds show better scores in science and writing if they actively participated in the Arts (Chen and Cheers, 2012) as shown in the table below.

 

I love Art and I find it very interesting, so I combined these disciplines that I love in teaching science.  It is good to know that the results in my classroom coincides with the studies I mentioned above.  Sometimes my students will tell me, “Ms. Ferre, I thought this was a science class, then why does it feel that I am in an Art class?”  The student is not really complaining, he is just curious.  I would tell my students that I love Art, that is why I always use it in class.  After years of teaching, most of the former students that I have talked to remembered the concepts I taught them.  Most especially, the activities that that have done where they drew pictures, created models, poems, music, etc. There would always be a part of my lesson where the students draw a model of the object we are discussing.  Examples would be the cell, types of faults, animals and a lot more.  They also labeled and explained the functions or relationships  of their parts and concepts.  They also created models using any materials they can find.  Sometimes, we use food items to create models and the students eat them afterwards.  My favorite activity is when the students drew pictures of their fictional babies after they combine their dominant and recessive traits with a classmate.  They use the Punnet square to identify the possible traits and then they finish the assignment by drawing their babies.  

Students remember these activities and the concepts very well  They are motivated and excited to do these activities as well.  They do not feel bored since they are not just listening and memorizing the terms and concepts, but they actively engaged but unconsciously absorbing them.  That is why I agree with Debra Shapiro (2010) in her NSTA Report on Reaching Students Through STEM and the Arts  that mentioned, “Teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are discovering that by adding an "A" -- the arts -- to STEM, learning will pick up STEAM."

References:

Chen, Kelly and Cheers, Imani. American Graduate Education (2012, July 31). STEAM Ahead: Merging Arts and  Science Education.  Retrieved on December 10, 2012 from  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/07/the-movement-to-put-arts-into-stem-education.html 

 Pomeroy, Steven Ross. Scientific American (2012, August 22) From STEM to STEAM: Science and Art Go Hand-in-Hand.  Retrieved on December 10, 2012 from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/22/from-stem-to-steam-science-and-the-arts-go-hand-in-hand/

Ritholtz, Barry.The Big Picture (210, September 30) Art+ Science = Sculptural Data. Retrieved on December 10, 2012 from http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/sculptural-data-art/

Shapiro, Debra. NSTA WebNews Digest (2010, January 7). Reaching Students Through STEM and the Arts. Retrieved on December 10, 2012 from http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=56924&print=true

The Role of Technology in a 21st Century Education System

The rate at which technology develops is significantly faster than our ability to fully recognize and use it in our classrooms.  It is obvious that our students are usually more technologically savvy than us, their teachers.  That is why it is important for us to catch up with what is new in science and technology in order to relate and better motivate our students.  We now live in a world where students use a lot of tools and equipments that they can use to explore a variety of things and topics.

The videos that I watched were very helpful to better understand how technology could be used in the classroom.  Since I am a science teacher, the video by Edutopia (2012) on STEM was very interesting to me.  They showed how technology can be used in laboratory activities.  It also showed examples of Performance Based Learning that we could apply to the 21st Century Skills.  The Text on Maximizing the Impact by iste emphasizes the essential information on how to develop and reinforce 21st Century Learning.  It is important for our students to be prepared to face different challenges when they finish school.  This includes the use of technology to enhance their learning and skills and to learn how to solve problems by using critical thinking skills and using all the available resources (including technology to solve them).  

The video on Differentiating Instruction through Interactive Games (Edutopia 2012) showed the advantages of using technology in our classes.  It is very inspiring to know that the teacher, Mr. Pronovost, was able to get a lot of his equipments through grants. It is also good to note that there are a variety of softwares or apps that we can use for various topics or concepts that we teach.  These apps can aid our instruction and help us to effectively monitor and identify the students that are struggling since we get immediate evaluations from the softwares.  This will save us time going around and trying to identify these students.  This means that we have more time to help our students.  The teacher mentioned a couple of softwares that he uses.  They are the Planet Turtle which has questions that are of the same level for all student in the class.  This will help filter the students that understand the lessons and the ones that need more help.  The other program was the Dreambox which allows students to work on their own level and pace.  The other advantage of the use of these programs is that they already check the students’ answers which helps in the student level identification.

There are 6 California Standards for The Teaching Profession and I believe that Technology can be used to satisfy all of them in a certain degree.  The four CSTP’s that I think would most benefit from the use of Technology are Standard 1 (Engaging and Supporting All Students in Learning), Standard 2 ( Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning), Standard 4 (Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students) and Standard 5 (Assessing Student Learning).  Technology will definitely engage students especially the softwares that are visually appealing and fun to use, of course, while providing essential information to the students.  This ties to Standard 2 and 4 because the activities are designed to improve effective environments and provide various learning experiences to all students.  They can work independently and as a group.  Technology is so versatile since we can use a variety of equipments like laptops, tablets, iphones, laboratory machines, etc.  We also have unlimited choices of softwares that we can use to enhance student learning.  A lot of the available softwares also have assessments and even data analysis that will help us to get a good trend of our class and individual student's progression.

References:

Teaching & Learning 21 Century Learner - Power Point. Dr. Patricia Dickensen

Edutopia (2012, July 11). Differentiating instruction through interactive games (Tech2Learn Series). Retrieved December 2, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ0BGXMf83U&feature=youtu.be.

Edutopia (2012, April 5). Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) projects encourage students to excel. Retrieved December 2, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRrLPCQTZwc&feature=player_embedded.

State Educational Technology Directors Association. (n.d.) Maximizing the impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century education system. Retrieved December 2, 2012 from http://www.setda.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=191&name=P21Book_complete.pdf.