PowerPoint Is Evil

The role of technology in the classroom must be carefully applied in order to have a highest value for both students and teachers.

Technology can be a great and helpful tool to enhance the learning process and engage students to higher thinking skill, however we as teaches have to be very smart in incorporating it in our lesson plans. And use it only if it will add something beneficial to the lesson.

I agree with E. Tufte that the over use of power point in the lessons plan can be “Evil” and harmful to the lesson. Sometimes teachers rely heavily on the power point presentation and forget the main point, which is the content and how to deliver it without too much distraction to the students. Many times teachers use technology even when it is unnecessary and add nothing to the learning process.

Reflection

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to take this course. I love technology and want to integrate it in my career as a teacher, as I think it's one of the most important factors that can help teachers today when utilized correctly.  This course provided me with the technological resources that I will need as a teacher. Through the various assignments, I have mastered the use of technology as never before. Interacting and experimenting with tools such as blogs and web pages that enable me to share my thoughts and projects with other people is fascinating, and I think this is very useful in getting your points across, especially in education.

I really enjoyed using inspiration, Photoshop and Gimp and learned how to use them to make concept maps and manipulate images that I will use in my lesson plan. My favorite assignment, although it is challenging, is the digital story telling. I’m really enjoying creating it, as it's a really fun way to present a lesson and I’m sure that my students will enjoy learning through it. I also think that learning about copyright in depth is a vital tool that all teachers need, in addition to how to use or choose the resources.

From this course I have learned how to include the use of digital stories, blogs, and Web Pages into my classroom.  I will adjust my classroom environment and make technology a big part of it. I believe that students nowadays are more engaging in technology, and successful teachers can accomplish their goals better by utilizing technology in their teaching.

The Innovative Educator Blog, 2nd Visit

iPad Literacy Program Increases Reading & Writing Ability

In this blog entry, Lisa discusses a new educational platform called Footsteps2Brilliance that uses a gaming approach to teach young children reading and writing. I like the idea of integrating technology to the educational process of children at a very young age. It is certainly more fun to the students, therefore proving them with more incentives to learn. Lisa also mentions the fact the children will have the option of reading stories with animation, or have the story read to them, which I also find helpful.

I don't like however the fact that this program is device specific, and being offered only on an iPad. I believe such solutions should be offered on a more open platform that will enable wider adoption of such programs. 

Inquiry-based Learning

I wish I had experienced the inquiry based learning when I was a student.  When I was in high school teachers used the traditional approach where the students sat and absorb the information that was in the content without any interaction, then they were expected to memorize it and write it down in the test sheets. I think this approach has proved it’s inadequate, since the students’ participation is very passive, and the teacher’s role is just a transmitter of the content area. I’m not a teacher yet, however, my goal is to focus on inquiry based learning as a core principle of my classroom. I believe that the teacher and students should be both involved in the teaching process. The students must participate; they need to be engaged in the activities that help them build understanding not only absorbing. They have to answer the questions that they want to answer and be active participants. The teacher must be a facilitator and data and information must be actively used, interpreted, and discussed. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe a teacher who used the inquiry-based learning. It was a science class for the fifth grade and she was asking questions like how can I find how it works? What causes? Then she did experiments and engaged the students to perform the experiments with her.

My website URL

https://sites.google.com/a/marymount.edu/oroub/

Photograph Modification

I used a photograph of a mountain to illustrate the plot elements to my students. They can see how a plot follows a mountain shape. I added the text at the different relative locations, giving each text a different color. I used GIMP for this assignment. 

Universal Design For Learning "Concept map"

Standards..

My content area that I will focus on this semester is language arts for 6^th grade and the SOLs standards are:

6.4             The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry.

a)     Identify the elements of narrative structure, including setting, character, plot, conflict, and theme.

b)     Use knowledge of narrative and poetic structures to aid comprehension and predict outcomes.

c)     Describe the images created by language.

d)     Describe how word choice and imagery contribute to the meaning of a text.

e)     Describe cause-effect relationships and their impact on plot.

f)     Use information stated explicitly in the text to draw conclusions and make inferences.

g)     Explain how character and plot development are used in a selection to support a central conflict or story line.

h)    Paraphrase and summarize the main points in the text.

Language arts are one of the content areas that gives you a space to try different learning styles and create a wide rang of activities and ideas to transfer the content to the students. For the reading I will try the group work by dividing the students into groups and distributing a piece of literary work and ask them to identify the theme, characters, and setting. A Blog would be a great idea for language arts where the students have the opportunity to reflect on things being discussed in the classroom. I would use video and audio clips that would help for better understanding of the story or the poem. I would also use a PowerPoint presentation that contains mapping and analyzing of the characters or the theme and ask the students to do a concept mapping by using Microsoft word or power point of the characters

Teddy Bears Go Blogging

It’s an interesting project that makes the education process more fun and effective, epically for younger student in theses days where the Internet has a dominant role in people’s life. I believe blogging is a great and very effective way of communication between teachers and students. And as Brenda Sherry states in her article it is very easy to use unlike traditional websites. Blogs are easy to create, flexible in design, and very convenient for student to access and use.

I think it takes the teacher and students beyond the traditional boundaries of education and encourages the students and give them the opportunity to discuss topics and share their opinions and thoughts outside the classroom. However, it is very safe where the teacher can control and manage the blog. I like the idea where the parents can participate and be involved in their children’s education in such a creative way.

It is wonderful the way blogs connect students from different cultures and gives them the opportunity to exchange thoughts and culture.

As a teacher this is defiantly something I will consider in my classroom.

The blog I liked

I really liked the following blog: The Innovative Educator, by Lisa Velmer Nielsen.

           

Reading through the blog, I found her talking about the popular entries in her blog for this week. Some of the topics were really interesting, and for someone who visits the blog from time to time, this is a very convenient way of finding out what’s new and interesting in the blog.

What's Popular This Week on The Innovative Educator

In another entry, she talks about Homeschooling. She discusses the topic from different points of view, such as legal, social and academic. She also provides references and resource that can help the parents evaluate a homeschooling situation.

Ten Ideas to Get Going with Homeschooing