Here is the link!
I decided to do the promotional assignment since I got so much out of this year I'd want to encourage every teacher to take the course!
Here is the link!
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I have discussed the topic of BYOD with numerous colleagues. Most of us agree that in a district like ours, where under half of the student body has their own device that they would be able to bring in, it would not currently work. In an area where everyone had their own device to bring in I think it would be wonderful! We are currently looking into grants that would allow us to get a laptop and/or tablet for every student. As of right now our policy is that the students can bring phones or tablets to school but they are only allowed out in class if the teacher permits it. Absolutely no pictures or videos are allowed to be taken without permission from teacher or administration.
In our building we have two computer labs with 32 computers each in them. The library has another 20 computers for students to use. We have two laptop carts with 32 computers each on them. We also have an iPad cart with 32. Unfortunately those are all signed out on a regular basis, usually the computers are being used for testing so this leaves very little time for creative uses and class projects. If we were able to begin the BYOD in our building it would be a wonderful thing and open up a lot of avenues for teachers to engage students in new learning experiences! There are so many amazing and sometimes crazy technologies that they keep coming up with! Some I think would be very helpful and a great tool to use in the classroom while others I believe would be more of a distraction. I think that the five of these technologies would be absolutely perfect to use in any type of STEM class. After doing further research on them I learned some interesting information.
The Arduino tool is designed to be a simple tool that allows students to focus on their creativity. The designers did all of the programming for the user so that they could concentrate on being an inventor. With a variety of sensors available students are able to create a wide range of experiments and projects. The Raspberry Pi tool is similar to Arduino but is much more involved as the user does the programming. After reading several reviews it seems that the usability of this tool is much more difficult than using a tool such as Arduino. Most people said that they could see college students using it and possibly an advanced high school but not much younger than that. It seems like this would take some major training for the educator to be able to make the students successful. Makey Makey is just so cool and I hope that I get to use it some day! It is very simple to use and from reading reviews it seems like the sky's the limit when it comes to creativity and ideas! Students of primary age have been able to use it with ease and from what I’ve seen, have had a ton of fun. Oculus Rift is something that I actually heard about a few months ago. My husband is a big gamer and showed me a demo video when it first came out and was all excited about it. It is pretty incredible how realistic they can make everything. This could be amazing for virtual tours of anyplace around the world. Also I think it could be very interesting to use in a physical education class and also for science experiments. Many other companies are coming out with their own versions including Google Cardboard. The last technology that they list is a 3D printer. This would be amazing for any classroom to have. You can pretty much print out anything that you can think of! Students are able to design and then bring their creations to life which is something that in the past they haven’t been able to do. There is a big difference for most people from seeing a drawing or design on paper versus seeing it in real life and being able to hold it. This will bridge a lot of gaps with learning for students and give them the confidence and drive to do more! http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=4229
Even though I teach middle school and Bob did this lesson for lower elementary I feel it can be adapted for any age group. One of the things I go over with my students is commonly used devices like ereaders, tablets, and GPS. Most of them do not understand the use of satellites with using things like GPS and using Google Earth would help with that! There are so many fun projects that you can do with the students to help them become comfortable with the concept and navigation of Google Earth. There are also a large variety of websites and blogs that give helpful tips and ideas to use in the classroom. I believe that use of this type of program would be modification as far as changing and enhancing the lesson. Allowing students the freedom to explore and view places that they’ve been to and also that are brand new to them and create a path or roadmap to these places with this type of technology would be totally foreign to the majority of them. This would allow them to be creative and complete a project in a new way. They would also be able to bring in previously learned skills to combine with all the new ones they are learning. Using Screencast-o-matic was seriously awesome! Teaching computers this is the perfect resource for me to utilize in class to help the students. I got a little frustrated at first just learning how to use the different tools and making sure that I had all of the screens open that needed for the presentation. Once I had all of that set up the way I needed I was good to go! I redid the lesson about 20 times because I either stumbled and end up saying something wrong or I exceeded the time limit because too much time on a certain portion of it.
What I found was the most helpful for me was simply going back and re-watching it. Every time I did that I found something that I wanted to change for the next time. I feel like the next time I will practice with the script a lot more before I try the first recording out. Timing is crucial when using a resource like this and I feel like I could have run through it a few times more with timing out each section before making the first recording of it. The concept for the lesson worked great and the feedback that I received was extremely positive. The students loved that they could go back and watch it and pause it if they missed on of the steps. The absent students were also very happy that they could watch it and get caught up easily and at their own rate. They now want me to do this for every lesson so they'll always have a recording of how to do the steps of every assignment for if they either fall behind of are absent! Here is the lesson! Being a computer teacher I think that this was the resource I was most excited to use! It was a lot of work but was well worth it for the reaction and feedback from the students!
Here is my voice recording. I chose the program SoundCloud to create my recording. I must not have the best microphone because I recorded it a few different times and it is not the smoothest sounding recording so I apologize for that! Overall I felt the program was easy to create, upload, and share!
Here is the link to the digital story that I created using Little Bird Tales. I also embedded it on my classroom website for the students to view. They really enjoyed having the visual to look at any time they wanted.
Since my main focus this year has been keyboarding I decided to do the 5 main typing techniques that we work on each quarter. I might have to tweak it to make sure it fits in the allotted time frame but it really helps to organize what all you want to go into the video this way!
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AuthorI am a computer teacher for middle school students in the Melvindale-Northern Allen Park School District. I have a beautiful 1 year old girl named Alexis and love being a mommy! We are expecting our second child (a boy) at the end of July! Archives
April 2015
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