Essential question Week 7 continuation

How can technology enhance learning when students aren’t the ones accessing it? How can we create effective assessments using technology? Also respond to the video that we watched about standardized testing-where is the balance and what should we strive for?
Effective assessments through technology can be done by asking students to create presentations. Presentation is a great tool where students can review their work and also others can gain information from it.  
Blogs are great for classroom discussions and this can help the teacher to understand how much students have understood about the subject matter. 
Also , when the tests and quizzes are taken online the students can get immediate results thus helping them to improve themselves for the future without wasting time. 


Our curriculum needs to be based on standardized tests.  Only then, we can insists on our students the importance to these tests.  Our classroom teaching , test should be connected to what is being asked in these tests.  Only then, students will give more importance to these tests and we can better prepare our students for the test. 

Essential question week 5 continuation

Essential question week 5 continuation

How can tools be used to increase understanding? Why can digital storytelling be an authentic assessment? Could digital storytelling be used in your classroom as an assessment? Should students publish their work? 


I believe digital story telling can be considered as an authentic assessment because it can be used to assess student's understanding of the subject matter.  Digital story telling can be used as a part of the final exam . By explaining the concepts they have understood over the semester students can prove what they have learned from the class.  Thus, it can be used as a summative assessment at the end. 


I think , students can or should publish their work only after a careful review of the work by the teacher .  As the work can be seen by anybody after it has been published , lot of effort and hard work has to be put in before the work is published.  But, if the work done by the students is good enough and if others can learn  from it , then it can be definitely published for others to use.

Essential question week 5 continuation

How can tools be used to increase understanding? Why can digital storytelling be an authentic assessment? Could digital storytelling be used in your classroom as an assessment? Should students publish their work? 


I believe digital story telling can be considered as an authentic assessment because it can be used to assess student's understanding of the subject matter.  Digital story telling can be used as a part of the final exam . By explaining the concepts they have understood over the semester students can prove what they have learned from the class.  Thus, it can be used as a summative assessment at the end. 


I think , students can or should publish their work only after a careful review of the work by the teacher .  As the work can be seen by anybody after it has been published , lot of effort and hard work has to be put in before the work is published.  But, if the work done by the students is good enough and if others can learn  from it , then it can be definitely published for others to use.

Essential question week 4 continuation

What is your ideal technology "set up" in your classroom? How would technology impact student achievement and engagement in your classroom?

Ideal technology "set up" is something when every student in the classroom have access to technology.  Not only does these kids need to have access but they should also know how to use the tech tools provided to them.  Then only it becomes ideal and fair on teacher's part to assign work based on technology.  
To achieve this, the teacher first of all need to make sure that all the students know how to use the tech tools.  He or she can spend some time in the beginning of the semester and give students small training classes and then start giving work. 


The other ideal set up is when all the students have the computer or any other mobile device to use .  When the number of computers or laptops available is less in quantity students are forced to work in groups.  As much students like to work in groups there are lot of chances where they can get distracted into other things, while working in groups.  
Thus the quantity should be optimum where every student has a personal computer to work on. 


As technology makes things more creative, students will definitely be more engaged in what they want to learn or suppose to learn.  Also, technology provides updated information which also gains attention.  


When students can see their progress consistently they can work on those areas where they need more practice and effort.   Thus, they can improve their grades progressively. 
Technology through presentations, and videos make students think and also makes them to ask questions about a particular topic which improves their thinking process. 


All this will help students to be a better listener and ultimately have an positive impact on student achievement.

Essential question Week 5

How can tools be used to increase understanding?

As a teacher I believe that understanding can be improved by making the subject matter more interesting and meaningful for the students.  This can be achieved by technology and its tools. 

Blogger:

When students write blogs about a topic which was taught the writing process motivates them to think.  When students think, they are able to realize what they understood out of a class and what they did not.  This will help them to concentrate on the areas where they need more help and better understand the topic.  Also , a student might also can also get a better idea about a certain topic by reading other student blog when the blog is written in a more simpler way .  

Google presentations:

Google presentations provides an environment for the students to collaborate and do the work together.  This will assist students to ask questions to each other and answers can be obtained thereby improving the understanding process.  

Glogster:

When students do their own posters about a particular topic, they are being given the opportunity to explore the topic by themselves and find links, videos, images about the topic.  By creating the poster by themselves, they can learn the concepts or topics themselves visually. 

Animoto:

By providing short videos during class lectures, the visual understanding of the topic can be established. This helps them to grasp the topics which are hard to understand through imagination. 

Skype:

Skype promotes online learning .  Through webcams students and teachers can view each other and one on one attention can be provided to the students by teachers which help the student to clarify all their questions on time. 

Prezi:

It act as a great tool where students can create their own short presentations. As this involves, images, videos, and other information gathered by the student, it improves their learning process by self learning the ideas and concepts online through internet. 

Podcasts:

When a teacher records and publishes his/her podcast online it is available for the students all the time.  Even if the student did not pay full attention in class, he or she can always come home and listen to the podcast again and again.  Repetition of concepts through podcast will help students to memorize and understand the topics in a better way. 

Webquest:

Webquest is a great activity where students are forced to think, apply and learn.  As this involves activities students will definitely have passion to perform it and understanding of the subject matter will be achieved indirectly.  

Twitter:

Twitter is a great area where students can find friends who are interested in the same topics as taught in class.  By following them, they an find great articles where they can find information about the latest developments and applications in the area of interest. 

Thus, understanding can definitely be improved by the proper use of technology and its tools.

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Essential question Week 4

How can you engage all students?

By assigning group work:

Students generally like to do their work in groups as they can share ideas and learn new ideas and thoughts from their friends.  Teachers can form buddy groups in the beginning of the semester and create project ideas where the entire group is involved.  If the project is done if form of groups every student will have an opportunity to get themselves involved in the work as the teacher is not directly involved.  Google presentation is a great tool for this purpose where students can all work on the same topic from their own homes.

By understanding the needs of variety of students in class:

It is the responsibility of the teacher to analyze the pattern of students in the class and prepare lesson plans accordingly.  If the class has lot of visual learners, then along with presentations, teachers can show videos through you tube or they can make their own videos through animoto.  This will help students to pay more attention in class and will remember the concepts through visual clips .

By asking students to blog and tweet each other:

When students blog about a particular topic in class other students can read it and share their comments on it.  This will help students to express their opinions and ideas about the question asked in class and at the same time, it helps other students to learn new ideas which they never thought of.  Every comment being posted can be given a grade for encouragement.  By creating twitter accounts students can follow one another and get lot of useful information through articles that are posted on web.  Students can be given extra credit points if they share one useful article they found on the web every week.  This will engage them in a way that they do their work but at the same time get extra grades for it.

But, in order to achieve everything said above first of all we need to make sure that all the students present in class are comfortable in using technology.  If the majority of the class is not, then special training sessions can be conducted in school followed by using these tools in class. 

Thus, by encouraging the students , awarding them with extra credit points, by performing collaborative group work and finally by making sure that all students know how to use technology , students can be engaged in the learning process. 

Essential question Week 9

Why are there more issues with cheating, plagiarism, and related incidents now than before the web?  Or are there?

I would agree  that there is more cheating and plagiarism going on especially with students these days due to technology and resources it offers. 

Children of this age are brought up with technology around them and they exactly know how to use them to solve their problems either in school or in their houses. Though the search engines give us lot of useful  information about various topics , it also provides information which can be misused for lot of other purposes. 

As much as we want our kids to make use of technology and its tools we should also take the responsibility of keeping a check on them and what are they exactly doing on the web so that they are not pulled into wrong directions.  

When web was not in picture, students only had school provided books, notes etc from which they study and prepare for exams.  But once the web came into picture, students choices increased and everything can be accessed through internet.  This does not mean that web is the only reason for cheating or plagiarism.  Both of them did exists  but after the web, the issues have increased because more information through lot of websites is available readily. 

To avoid cheating and other related issues strict guidelines have to be followed when using the web by students.  School rules have to be specific and particular websites can be blocked. Parents should keep a constant check on their kids and make sure that the work done by them, is purely produced by them. 

Teachers can guide the students by giving them specific websites to do their research on , so that the issues rising out of cheating and plagiarism can be avoided. 

Students should also be encouraged to provide specific citations for their work so that plagiarism can be avoided.  

Essential Question Week 8

Can technology integration benefit everyone?
As I have mentioned in rest of my posts earlier there are lot of benefits to technology integration in school.  Instead of repeating the points I had mentioned earlier I would like to write this post addressing how technology integration cannot benefit all the time.

Cell phones and other mobile devices when used in class:
As much as these devices are easy to carry and use, there are lot of cons to this.  Using these devices in classroom is a huge management challenge for teachers.  As much as students are eager enough to use technology, when used for educational purposes it is still hard on teachers part to make everyone involved in the process.  Issues like students misusing these devices will be a common occurrence and it becomes the responsibility of teachers to bring them back on track during valuable class time.

Use of social media like twitter, google+ etc:
Again, when students are allowed to use these social networks in classrooms via computers, we should keep a constant check on them and make sure there are not using these networks for personal purposes. 

Parents not knowing how to use technology and those who don't have access to technology:
Even today there are large number of parents who either don't have internet access or who do not know how to use these technology tools when provided to them.  In these cases even if technology integration is provided the parents cannot make use of it.

Special education and ELL students:

There are lot of students who need specific support and guidelines to use these technology and its tools.  Students who are immigrants cannot be expected to know to use these tech tools in the best manner. 

Thus I would like to conclude by stating that though technology integration in education is useful in lot of ways , at the same time there are other avenues we need to evaluate before we can start implementing them in our schools. 

Essential question Week 7

How can technology enhance learning when students are not the ones accessing it?

In this age of digital world we are all in the process of using technology one way or the other. If students don't have access to technology, they will be indirectly helped by teachers and parents who uses technology for various reasons. 

How can students learning improve when teachers have access to technology?

When teachers get new ideas through internet , their lesson plan changes, and it makes the classroom setting more interesting for the students.  Teachers can get the attention of students by using lot of videos, clips and presentations in their classes. Not only this attracts students but also it helps a lot of visual learners. When concepts are explained through images and videos students remember them more easily and they can recollect it for tests and exams. 

When teachers update themselves with the recent information about a particular topic through internet, they can provide those as examples during lectures.  This will again be encouraged by students and they would be more willing to learn more updated information in that subject area. 

Again, when teachers get different set of worksheets through other teacher websites, it makes them a better teacher by preparing the class for special education and regular group of kids. 

When grade books are online easy access can be done , and constant feed back can be provided to the students.  This will help students to improve and pay attention on those areas where they need more practice. 

By sending monitor reports online, parents get to know their son/daughter progress immediately and necessary actions can be taken as soon as possible. 

When parents have access to technology.

When parents access teacher websites, they can have an idea about what to expect in that particular teacher's class.  They can get their children ready for that class prior hand by buying books, art supplies etc.  They can also keep a constant check on their children if all the home work, classwork , tests are being provided on the website.  All this will develop student's learning consistently.  

Last but not the least when grades are available through web portals parents exactly know the growth of their children.  This will keep a constant check on the students and help them to improve  progressively.

Essential question Week 3

Essential Question: How can you provide equal access to the digital world to all learners? Are mobile devices a way to accomplish this? Should schools try to acquire more of these vs. computers? Would an iPad work in your classroom?

 School is a place where students can have equal access to technology and its tools .  There are still lot of students in our district who don't have internet and access to technology because of poverty and other factors.  But, if they are in school we can make sure we can provide all the necessary tools which technology could offer .  

First of all we need to make sure the students are in school consistently.  We should improve our attendance policy so that there is not frequent absences seen in classes.  When this is carried out, teachers can set aside more time for computer labs by using labs in their own departments or by taking the students to the school library.  

Teachers can also come up with lot of new ideas and projects where they can increase student's time using technology. When the school district makes the effort and get lot of funding, we can buy ipads and use it in our classrooms.  By doing so , even if the computer lab is not available students can access technology directly in their classrooms. 
Parents can be encouraged to take their kids to the local libraries where they can make use of computers and internet. 

I am not 100% convinced that mobile devices would solve the problem of providing equal access of technology to all students.  We cannot force students to buy an ipad or a smart phone.  But, we can make sure that the students are in school consistently so that they can access the tech tools provided.  Though mobile devices are easy to carry and use, we cannot rely on them completely because not all students can afford them.


I would definitely say yes that schools have to acquire more mobile devices like ipads .  Ipads are great in holding charge and will last longer.  It can be easily used by all students starting from kindergarten level.  Although we cannot make sure that every student has an ipad , we should at least provide one ipad per group of 3 students.  This will be very useful for classroom interactions, note taking etc. 


I can definitely picture that ipads would definitely work in my classroom.  It is a great device for writing texts, taking pictures during lab and recording it for future review.  
The only draw back I could think of ipad is that it is expensive and has to handled with lot of care. 

 

Essential Question Week 6

How does teacher experience change how they view technology integration?

To answer this question I would like to write about myself as an immigrant teacher.  I was born and brought up in a place where , I set up my email account only when I was in college specializing in pharmacy.  But, things have changed a lot between now and then, and need of knowing technology and tools it has to offer has grown very much.  

When I first started as a teacher , with no knowledge of technology I was under the impression that just with lectures, notes, worksheets , tests and exams I can make students learn and understand the subject matter.  
But, as every year passed by, I slowly learned that students definitely need more, other than just lectures, notes etc. 


Students of this age are brought up with technology around them and they prefer to learn through it, as it is more fun and creative.  This makes the teachers to learn the tools and also make use of these tools to organize their classes more meaningful for the students.    By doing so, not only these teachers are liked by students more but also the teacher gains a great sense of confidence in them to do their job in a better way.


As I had been posting in all my blogs,  we as teachers are always challenged to teach different set of students with various needs in our classes.  Only by understanding what is the current need of students teachers can efficiently teach and make the subject matter easy to understand for the students.  


By using tools such as twitter, google + teacher student relationship can definitely improve.  By using google docs and google presentations teachers can develop the creative skills of students in their content area.  Teacher's skills to handle special needs and challenging classes ( with behavioral issues) also improves with the use of technology.  

By using videos through animoto teachers can reach visual learners very easily.  By using google web sites and podcasts teachers can make information available for the students before hand so that the students are well prepared for classes.


To achieve all the above, teachers should start engaging in more workshops and training programs where technology is being taught.  This will not only help them to become a better teacher but also make them a person ready for the current world.  

Thus by learning technology and its tools , every teacher can develop their teacher-student relationship, make the subject matter interesting and meaningful and finally gain experience which will get them ready for current and future. 

Essential question week 2

Is there more to social networks than meets the eye? What is their role in education? 

Social networks not only act as a social media to find friends, relatives but it also helps students and teachers in various ways.  I would like to write my blog addressing each social media network sites. 

Twitter:

Twitter is a great area where we can find people of similar interests like us.  It opens up doors for us to learn and find interesting topics.  By following other people we can get an updated information information about what is going on around the globe.  It is definitely not time consuming.  I just started my twitter account and I am able to find lot of people with so many useful sites and articles which can provide great information about digital tools, science and other topics of interest towards education.  Twitter also helps to get connected with other teachers across the world and by doing so, we can get new ideas and strategies.  Twitter is also used in education conferences where teachers and others can share their opinions immediately.  It can act as a professional development tool by itself.  Twitter is also a great tool to pass an important information spontaneously as a flash news on the web.

Linkedin:

Linkedin helps to find people in groups of similar profession.  It is a valuable tool in education where we can find someone like a former principal or a teaching staff .  This will help us to build the the lost relationship and indirectly help us to get better advice, skills from them.  It also helps students to connect with teachers and faculty and keep in contact from wherever they are. It is place to search for new opportunities and ideas for teachers in this era. 

Google+:

Google+ helps to create circles .  It is a great tool where teachers can use it share valuable information like videos, photos ( about a particular subject matter) with his/ her students who are added to the circles.  By doing so, it will make the information available to all the students in class.  Even if a students is absent or sick  he/ she can access it at anytime and from anywhere.  

Facebook:

Compared to all the other social media networks I believe facebook is one of the least used tool for educational purposes.  But if used wisely, it can still be used to pass information and give an updated profile about a teacher for students before the start of a new class. 

Thus, finally I would like to conclude by saying that all the above social media networks can definitely be used in education in various ways possible when used wisely.

 

Blog post for Week 2

Is there more to social networks than meets the eye? What is their role in education? 

Profile about me done on jan 19th

It was very interesting to see that, from a webiste through google I can find myself online and my home address can also be found.
As much as this is interesting, I feel it is a safety issue as well.  I dont prefer to see my address being online and everybody can see it.
As much as I like technology , sometimes it scares me as well.

Essential Question 2 Week 1

The tool which I can use in my classroom
Google docs

I am planning on using Google docs in my classroom for presentation purposes.  I would like to use a tool where i can go back and check about how much each student has contributed in developing the presentation. I think , this can be made easy by using google docs presentation especially for group work .  I usually give my students a powerpoint presentation project at the end of each sem and it is a part of my final exam . 
By letting students use google doc presentation, they can discuss with each other and complete the presentation by sitting in their own homes and cumminicating online. 

Importance of integrating technology into the classroom

After reading Chapter 2 from the asigned book, I am able to understand the fact that 21st century students prefer their work to be done through technology.  As teachers, we have the responsibility to make the subject matter meaninful, understanding for the students.  And I believe, along with the lecture notes, board and worksheets, technology has a huge role to play. 

Technology not only, makes the subject matter interesting for the students, but also it helps to integrate the skills learnt in class inform of projects, group work and also presentations.  As a chemistry teacher labs are integral part of my course work.  But, safety is important as well.  There are times when I have not done labs based on the student behavior in my class.  Technology can solve this problem.  As more and more virtual labs are emerging , I dont have to worry about safety issues for my students if they have to use acids or other corrosive chemicals.  They can understand the content  by doing experiments in computers, and at the same time finish the lab.

These tools also helps students to organize themselves in a better way.  They will know what to expect out of a class through sharepoint sites and better prepare for the class.  When the work is done in computers and sent to drop box, there is less chance of students missing the work and it is always saved in a database for future reference. 

By using discussion board and blogging students can discuss with each other , about their learning from anywhere.  It is a good review process and also can be made a quick form of formative assessment to know how much students have learnt about the subject.

Technology also gives students the uptodate information about a topic.  It takes more time to search a book rather search the same topic online and the information obtained is always updated.
Thus, overall technology and its tools will definitely help teachers to reach students in a faster way and will also help students to understand subject matter in a creative and interesting way.