Week 15: Blog 13: MyWiki

This past week, I have been working on Wikispaces. I think that this website can be very easily incorporated into the classroom. Teachers can use wikispaces as a class website. This will allow the students to have a website to refer to. I feel like the website also allow the students to feel a sense of belonging in the class. My wikispaces also allows the teacher to incorporate several things. I have incorporated a science and an ELA lesson into my wikispace. The students are able to explore their imaginations and creativity when exploring my wikispace. My wiki is also a great way to introduce technology into my classroom. It allows the students to think of this website as their own. They are also to go on and display their own work onto the website. This will allow them to share their work with others. They are also able to view their classmates projects. I really enjoyed using wikispaces. I will definitely use this in my future classroom.

Week 14: Thanksgiving Break

I really needed a nice break from school work and Cortland. It was so nice going home and spending time with my family and friends who I have missed dearly. I can't wait to get back home for Winter break! While I was home I relaxed for the most part. I had the opportunity to catch up with friends. It was really nice seeing my family because I haven't seen a lot of my cousins and relatives since the summer. On Thanksgiving Day I woke up and ran while I watched the parade. Then I went to my Grandparent's house. I really couldn't wait to eat. I ate every single food that hit the table. It was so yummy! I can't wait to be finished with Block 1. It has definitely been a tough semester with all of the work we have had. I am very excited to take a break and relax for a few weeks!

Week 13: School Districts Struggle with laptop repairs

Maine school districts just spent $56,000 to repair their laptops. This is very shocking to me. It states that the school spent over $150,000 to lease 778 laptops for each year from the state. This is a large amount of money for the school to be spending, along with the amount of money they are spending on repairing the laptops. Do you think that laptops are worth the amount of money the school is spending? This school is spending a little over $200,000 on leasing and repairing the laptops. This really creates a large debate over whether the laptops are worth having and incorporating into the classroom. Several people began to question the decisions the school district was making. How could the school use that much money on laptops? This really baffled me. The school district is beginning to incorporate and instill new rules when handing out laptops to the students. The students are told that they must treat the laptops with care, or they will lose them. They were also told that their damages will be documented. This will help the students be more careful. This article was very interesting to me.

Week 12: VoiceThread

Today in class we learned how to use the VoiceThread. I was very nervous to start this process because it seemed difficult to me. The name alone seemed very intimidating to me. After watching a bunch of tutorials, the VoiceThread isn't as bad as I predicted it would be. I have now learned how to upload a picture. After finally uploading my picture, I was able to add comments. I was not only able to record my voice and add it to the VoiceThread, but I was able to talk and doodle on the picture as well. This was very interesting to me. The VoiceThread allows us to do more than one thing at once. It also allows us to be able to incorporate technology into the classroom. This gives students an opportunity to learn in different ways. I think that it should definitely be incorporated into the classroom because it gives the students another option of learning as well as teachers other options when teaching. This is a great skill to have and incorporate into the classroom.

Week 11: eSchool News

I read an article on eSchool News titled Foster students: Half don't finish high school, nearly all don't finish college. This title caught my eye and I just had to read more about it. This article states that among roughly 50% of the nations 500,000 foster kids who won't graduate from high school won't graduate from high school according to experts. There are some members in Congress who are trying to strengthen laws to ensure the child welfare system to make sure that foster kids are safe and also receive a quality education. The chairs of Foster Youth are stressing that officials needs to ensure the foster children are succeeding in school just as any parent would make sure their child is doing well at school. We must treat each child equally. Teachers must not treat these children like they are broken. We must treat them with the sole fact that we know they are strong and hard-working students. This article really opened my eyes to how people and teachers may view foster students. These students should be viewed just as any other student is viewed.

Week 10: iMovie

This week we recently worked with iMovie. I have had a mac for about three years now and I was always aware that this application was on my laptop, I just never really had the courage to explore it. I figured that iMovie was very difficult to use because I didn't think it would be an easy process creating a whole movie. My thinking was completely wrong. I really enjoyed working with iMovie. My group did a great lesson on addition and multiplication. We were able to load the movie onto the iMovie application without any problems. We were then able to edit the parts of the movie that we wanted to change or take out. My group was even able to figure out how to add sound to the iMovie. We also added a introduction page and a credits page. I have definitely not mastered this application, but I now have the courage to use this application on my own, as well as in my future classroom.

Week 9: Field Placement

I am very surprised with all of the wonderful knowledge I have gained from observation. I always knew that it was going to be a great experience, but I didn't realize I would learn so much this quickly. I am observing a very low-level 4th grade class. 21 out of the 23 children in the class failed the ELA and State Exams last year. This makes this class a bit more interesting. My host teacher works very hard to get the children on the same page. This is very difficult because every student is on a different learning level. We have children in the class who range from a 2nd grade reading level to a 6th grade reading level. This really challenges my host teacher. She has to find a way to meet the needs of every student in her classroom.