The "Doing"

I talked to both my mom and my older sister who has a two-year old son. My mom works at a middle school, and does have a good grasp on what technology has to offer. She feels confident using sources that she already knows how to use, but given the chance she will learn how to use a new resource. She did not know much about resources there to teach children specifically about internet safety, but she seemed interested in it.
My sister, on the other hand, was very confident in all technology. In her family, they use handheld devices, and use the computer for blogging, uploading pictures, resources, and much more. She is slowly introducing her two-year-old son to technology. He likes to sit on her lap to look at family pictures, and can be prompted to push a button to make music play. When I called, she had just allowed him to play a computer game at the library for the first time. Her opinion is that as long as the control of technology comes from the parents who are open to new ideas, then her children would be making safe choices. Most of the information that I told her I had learned she already had a previous knowledge about, which comes as a comfort if I ever need advice with my own family.

Revised Technology Lesson

Reviewing Proper Nouns Revised

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Civil War Tour Final

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Internet Safety Article

I read "Rated A" by Elder Marvin J Ashton. There was a lot of good information in this article, even though it was written in 1977. Principles that the General Authorities taught yesterday are still applicable today. He focuses on the world's rating system, that our perceptions of what is rated "A" might actually receive a rating of "R" or "X" in our eternal perspective. We should not be compromising our standards to follow the rating system of the world, to "fit in."
I think that the best thing I can do as a parent and a teacher is show by example that I can go against the grain of the world and feel good about it. I can hold my own standard and still enjoy the offerings that the media has for me. I also will teach my children and students to the best of my ability of how to use all technology and media safely following the rules and guidelines set forth by General Authorities of all times. I can also influence friends by being the best example that I can. I can never be less than I am.

Lessons Lessons Lessons

I taught a lesson using the Promethean Board about proper nouns. I reviewed what makes a proper noun, then wrote several sentences with them on the board. Using the highlighting tool, the students volunteered to come and highlight the word in the sentence that was a proper noun. After this exercise, I had more sentences on the next screen that did not have the proper nouns capatilized, so students could take the eraser tool and erase the wrong part of the word, then use the pencil tool to write in the capital manually. To assess this, I had them go to their desks and write me a story about themselves using as many proper nouns as they could.

Tech Idea for Classroom

There are so many ways to use technology to help teach lessons at my school. The best asset we have is the Promethean Board, which is an interactive whiteboard. I can take virtually any lesson and show it to the entire class, as well as pointing out and clicking on specific items. Math is one of the best subjects that could be helped with the Board. Many times, first graders are asked to count out money or other items. By apply a "copy and drag" option, the students would be able to count out as many as they need to, and mistakes are easily remedied.

Classroom Technology

I am amazed at the technology that my school has to offer. I never imagined that kindergarten and first grade students would have the skills to be able to log onto laptops with passwords. The students in my first grade class are always excited to use the computers and the educational programs included on them. Another wonderful technology that is availabe to use is the Promethean Board. I took a short seminar on how it works, and have used it every lesson
I have taught so far. It has so many capabilities for pictures, sound, movies, text, and more. It is a great asset to have.
There are occasionally problems with the computers, and it can be frustrating to the teacher to deal with broken headphones, bad internet connections, and other problems that pop up. Occasionally there is a tech supervisor that is there to help, but that still makes two adults to an entire classrooms. Overall, I am still happy with the technology that my school has to offer.

Civil War through Google Earth

I am going to go through four important battles of the Civil War with students. The core content I am using is the fifth grade social studies core:

Standard 4 Students will understand that the 19th century was a time of incredible change for the United States, including geographic expansion, constitutional crisis, and economic growth.Objective 3 Evaluate the course of events of the Civil War and its impact both immediate and long-term.a. Identify the key ideas, events, and leaders of the Civil War using primary sources (e.g. Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation, news accounts, photographic records, diaries).



The Peadagogy that I'll use is a guided discovery as the students go from battle site to battle site using Google Earth. At each stop they will perform a task and write in their journals.

I'll use Google Earth for the technology, making a kmz file for my students to use and "travel" to each of the major battle sites of the Civil War. Google Earth is such a great tool because students not living in a civil war area of the United States will be able to see the distance that it covered and other land facts.

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1. Battle of Bull Run	Research Bull Run on Wikipedia about how the war started, including the two Bull Run battles.	use the Wikipedia link on Google Earth to access information.
2. Battle of Gettysburg	Write in their journals about how it would feel to be the member of a family that lost someone at the battle of Gettysburg	use the distance tool to find out how large the battle field was.
3. Battle of Vicksburg	look up how terrain affected a battle and write the advantages and disadvantages.	use the landscape/terrain tool to look at the shape of the land and locate any large hills.
4. Battle of Pettersburg	Write in their journals about how they would feel if they found out that the war was over.	Use the picture links to find pictures of the end of the war
Outline of United States with pins marking the battle sites

Falling for Rapunzel

Here it is!!!!

Storyboarding- Falling for Rapunzel

We are going to tell the story of Falling for Rapunzel, and already have captured our claymation for our storyboard.

For the content, we used this standard from uen.com for first grade.

Standard 1
Oral Language-Students develop language for the purpose of effectively communicating through listening, speaking, viewing, and presenting.
Objective 2
Develop language through viewing media and presenting.
b. Use a variety of formats (e.g., show and tell, drama, sharing of books and personal writings, choral readings, informational reports, retelling experiences and stories in sequence) in presenting with various forms of media.

The pedagogy that we're using is a fractured fairy tale, "Falling For Rapunzel" by Leah Wilcox. This should be an engaging story for children that know the story of Rapunzel already because they get to look at it in a different way. The story also includes rhyming, another point a class could study within a unit on the story.

We're going to be using PhotoStory and posting our finished product on TeacherTube. This will be great for the students to actually see their work being published for parents and others to see. The technology allows us to use literature further than just reading the book, it engages the children.

Can't wait to finish it!!!!

Thoughts on TPACK

In our experiment, we used every knowledge in TPACK. For Content, we used Standard 3, Objective 3 in Utah's 1st grade core curriculum, which states that students will be able to "Collect, organize, and represent simple data." We accomplished this through the sorting of M&M's into flavor and color groups, and then creating a graph from the information we found. For Pedagogy, we tried to make the experiment interesting for the students by supplying M&M's for them to eat once the experiment was over. They students would also be working in small groups to encourage students to work together to get the information. The teacher would walk around the classroom, helping the groups when they needed assistance. Lastly, for techology, we used the graphing tool on PowerPoint. There are clear options for multiple types of graphs, and entering the data was relatively easy. Young students would be able to use this after some modeling by the teacher and supervision during the experiment.

Tech Savvy Teacher

Technology is our friend. Let's all learn to use it together!

Why not take a simple experiment that has been done for years, and add some spice to it and incorporate technology into it? That’s what two up-and-coming teachers from BYU did recently to great success, Miss Schefcik and Miss Cluff. They took an experiment found at http://www.macomb.k12.mi.us/eastdet/Plans/EL-math.htm and applied it to fit the 1^st Grade Core Standard for the state of Utah...

Standard 3
Students will understand simple geometry and measurement concepts as well as collect, represent, and draw conclusions from data.
Objective 3
Collect, organize, and represent simple data.
1. Collect and represent data using tables, tally marks, pictographs, and bar graphs.

2. Describe and interpret data.

They were able to find that working with technology is relatively simple and when you combine food with simple technology, it can’t get any better. In their experiment, plain and peanut M&M’s were counted by the color and flavor and graphed.

After the sorting of the M&M’s into colors, the results were entered into the graphing tool on a PowerPoint, and displayed in a colorful bar graph. The process was quick and easy, with easy-to-read results. One of the interesting points that was discovered is that Plain M&M’s has a wider variety of colors, as well as more M&M’s than the Peanut M&M’s.

But, the best part was the end of the experiment, eating them!

TPACK and Science Technologies

I can see that TPACK is necessary for today's teachers. Our world is becoming more and more technological. If we as teachers do not know how to teach technology and using technology, than it is almost no use knowing how to teach at all. While all three circles in the diagram are important, I think that they will always work the best when they are used together.

The coolest technology that we used in class was the thermometer and the computer program that we used to chart the change. I think that in a classroom, you would be able to do so many things with that, experiments and such. The part I liked the best was that you could plug two of the thermometers into your computer and chart both at the same time. I really never thought that people would ever be able to plug thermometers into their own personal computers. It's amazing really.

Always Something New to Learn

Add a post explaining what you learned about RSS and Web 2.0 tools and how you might use one of these tools as an educator.

It felt good to learn something that I had never known existed. RSS feeds are a totally new concept to me, and I can see the benefit to knowing about them now. I can keep up to date with news and information from just one website. As a teacher, I can see myself linking to various educational websites that will keep me up to date with a variety of things.

I also really liked the Goodreads website. I've always loved children's books, and know that I will be able to find a lot more to read with the recommendations from others. It is a fast and easy way to find out a lot of information in a short amount of time.

This week I found out about a lot of resources that are available to me that I never knew existed.

I'm A Blogger!

I've had a decent amount of exposure to technology.  I use a cell phone and text my family.  I have a personal blog that I update occasionally.  I have an email account and can navigate the internet through searching and links.  I have a facebook account and update it regularly.  I have a general idea of what wikis are.  I love to buy items online and often have to teach my mom how to navigate online.  

So I feel like I have a basic grasp of what technology has to offer.