EDIT 2000 Reflection #5

One of the most important things that I learned is that visual literacy has many benefits. Incorporating the arts in everyday schooling not only enhances the learning experience of the students but it also decreases drop-out rates and gets them genuinely interested in what they are studying. Also, it gives them things to focus on outside of school, as we saw a few weeks ago in the after-school program that provided students with technologies and equipment to take pictures, make music, make movies, whatever it is that they love to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took several art classes in high school which were, obviously, very related to visual literacy and art. We had several projects where we would have to take a song or a piece of writing and convert it into something visual. Some of my teachers were very good at involving visual literacy into our every-day class. For example, I had a history teacher my sophomore year that had us make a children’s storybook about the Protestant Reformation. My group had an absolute heyday with that project. And because of the way in which we had to learn about it, through creating an illustrations book and short story, I remember a lot about it now, three years later.

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/032/0/b/my_children__s_book_project__pages_4_and_5_by_killerartist95-d4oc1dp.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my future career, I will be working with children that have varying degrees of hearing loss. Many of these children will be in speech therapy which involves a lot of interactive games and drawing, making pictures, et cetera. Also, a large portion of my job will involve testing these patients to see how good/bad their hearing is. Many of the tests involve playing games and connecting words to pictures. Both sides of Communication Sciences and Disorders- audiology and speech pathology- involve connecting what you see to what you hear and forming associations between the two.

 

EDIT 2000 Reflection #4: Horizon Reports K-12 Edition

I think that the trends mentioned in “Horizon Report k-12 Edition” are very pertinent to today’s educating style. I have seen them in my most recent years of schooling somewhat frequently but I have also heard many stories from my younger cousins or friends who have different teachers who followed these various trends very closely. For example: the trend that social media is changing the way people interact, present ideas and information, and communicate. I personally have had to do several projects that were set up in social media format, such as creating a Facebook profile for various historical figures or having to make a YouTube video about how physics is portrayed in the world around us. I also have many friends who had teachers in high school that they communicated with through Twitter. Another example of a trend that I see acted out repeatedly is Openness (open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information). Currently, in my English class, we post all of our essays online so that they are “shared” and our class mates can look at them and give us feedback and ideas on how to improve them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of the challenges portrayed in the report a very accurate as well. I think that the biggest challenge that is encountered is that teachers have a hard time keeping up with the advancements in technology and the ways in which it can be used for educational purposes. And more often than not, this trouble with technology is a major hang-up in the classroom. Not only are teachers unable to answer student questions about how to work the technology, but they waste class time because they are caught up trying to get various technologies to work because they haven’t taken the time beforehand to learn how, nor have they been required to learn how they work. The easiest solution to this problem is for the school board to bring in experts on each technological tool to come teach the instructors how to use them most effectively in their classrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of all of the different technologies mentioned in the report that are being integrated into educational methods, I think that the most interesting is 3D Printing. 3D Printing is gradually becoming more accessible and affordable to schools. The 3D printers can print off of designs, but they also give students the opportunity to create their own designs and prototypes and then print them off to create models of their own. The most common uses of this technology is in the fields of jewelry, footwear, industrial design, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC), automotive, aerospace, dental and medical industries, education, geographic information systems, civil engineering, and many others (http://mashable.com/category/3d-printing/). The opportunities that this gives students to take their education by the reigns and go crazy with all of the possibilities is incredible.

    

Reflection #3: 9-4-13.

Video link: http://video.pbs.org/video/1797357384/

Guiding Questions:

1) Which project do you like the most or which project is the most impressive? Why? I thought that the project that the little kids did where they made a scavenger hunt for teenagers at the Smithsonian museum was pretty interesting. It required them to put a lot of thought behind the clues they gave, rhyming, overall sensibility. All of this effort went into producing a scavenger hunt that is both educational and entertaining. I also thought that the “augmented reality” activity was very cool. Getting out in the community and hearing about the history of the place where you live is a great way to learn. Even cooler though is getting to compare pictures of buildings then to how they look now. And the kids were assigned specialized positions. They had their area and got to talk to city officials about things that they saw in the community and thought to be problematic.

 

 

 

 

 

2) Do you think you need to sharpen your digital medial skills?  I think that there is always the need to improve digital media skills. Because the capabilities of digital media are constantly growing  and expanding, so are the endless number of possibilities. If we don’t continue to grow along with them then we will get left behind. What are some challenges for you to use the digital media in your own learning/ teaching? Maybe it’s the challenges related to resources, time management, curriculum design, your own skills, teachers’ collaboration? My main digital media challenge is to just figure out what I’m doing and how to do it. I’m not very technologically adept, so I don’t know how to do a lot of things. Another challenge is learning how to use the equipment needed for audiology (I’m not planning on taking on a teaching career. My major is Comm. Sciences & Disorders. Then I’m going to go on to get my degree in Audiology). This includes learning how to work completely different programs on the computer, learning how to program hearing technology, test the product, et cetera. The list of things to learn is extensive and will definitely be a challenge.

3) Do these projects remind you of some ideas you learned from your reading (meaningful learning with technology chapter 1)? What are the ideas? How did you see the connections? Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing and to support learning by doing. It appeals to different types of learners. It involves problem solving, analysis, critical thinking, and creativity. It also employs the idea of “knowledge construction, not  reproduction”. The scavenger hunt required collaboration, conversation, learning-by-doing, analysis, problem solving, and creativity. The after-school program that supplied kids with various technological equipment encouraged experimenting, inquiry, design, collaboration, etc. Through this, the children really learned a lot about not only how the devices work but also about how to work with others and how to make a good project great. These are just a few of how these ideas can be portrayed through technological means.

http://northfield.groupfusion.net/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=7053

4) How do social networking sites or virtual communities broaden and/or otherwise change your students’ sense of community, and/or interaction with others? What benefits do these digital tools offer, and what challenges might they present? In many cases, I think that this is both good and bad, and thus it is hard to generalize it by deeming it one or the other. It really just depends on the class: the students in it, as well as the teacher. These tools can open up a whole new dimension of opportunities for connection and interaction between classmates as well as student/teacher interaction, but if and only if it is used correctly. And using it correctly requires the knowledge of how to do so, which many people (myself included) are still limited on. And in this case of limited knowledge, the use of such tools as social networks, virtual communities, discussion boards, what have you, can be very limiting, simply because it is so new and so unknown that we cannot maximize it to its full potential and will spend more time trying to figure out how it works that actually paying attention and/or participating in the discussion. How do students communicate differently using technology than they might in person? Social networking sites in the educational spectrum tend to give more timid children a chance to speak up without putting themselves in the spotlight. It is easier for shy people to speak up when they don’t have twenty-four other pairs of eyes staring them down. With social networks or virtual communities, they can speak their mind but not have to look their peers in the eye while doing so. This is comforting for many people.

http://www.thememorist.com/category/the-90s/

5) Did you have similar experiences or did you know any teachers / schools doing similar things? Describe your experiences or the teachers/ schools you know.  If you don’t, try to think about one think about one digital media project that you want to do with K-12 students or your friends. I took some computer classes in high school that involved different computer programs. I also had a few middle school projects that required video-making. However, I’ve heard stories about teachers that are much more technology-based than mine were. The classes in the video completely revolved around technology usage, and they did some pretty cool things with it. For many of the students, it really interested them and helped them learn the material in a new and technologically creative manner. I’ve never experienced this degree of technology usage in the classroom. However, with my job in the future, technology will play a major role. Given that, I’m sure that I’ll do many technology-involved projects in the near future.

http://media.timesfreepress.com/img/photos/2012/11/07/HearingTest_JohnsonAudiology_1_t618.jpg?ba5b5b122dd3d37cc13d83e92a6a0ec0d5bfa32a

9) Jim Mathews says, “What’s important about place-based learning is really the idea that it is mobile. You’re not tethered to a classroom. It’s pervasive in the sense that you have it with you all the time. “ How might this 24/7 access impact you or children’s learning in today’s society? (adapted from the discussion guide for the video clip). Place-based learning is wonderful. One of my favorite scenes from the video was when the students were walking around their town with their phones doing an activity that involved learning about the history of their community. In this activity they got to compare current buildings to pictures of how they used to look. They got to talk to real people about the history of that specific place. They were assigned positions and got to talk to city officials about problems in the community and possible solutions. The students were excited about the project and more importantly they were excited about learning. The experience as a whole was very educational and interesting. I think that this is likely to be the case with almost any type of place-based learning.

Reflection #2: Thoughts About the Usage of Technology in Classrooms

 

The main point that I gathered from the reading is that educators should teach through technology instead of with it. By this I mean that they should use the technology that is available to them as a vessel through which they can transfer the information to their students. Technology should be used to reinforce knowledge and to better understand it than to learn it for the first and only time. I read that making tables and slideshows and various other technologies helps the material become more firmly planted in your mind. It helps you learn it better, which is the whole point.

 

This is a sensible concept and doesn’t surprise me in the least, however I do think that it is an easy rut to fall into as a teacher and honestly isn’t a realization that I had given a name to. This article has certainly changed my views about education, simply because I had never realized how often this faux-pa was made and now that it has been pointed out, I can look back and see that the classes that I learned the most in were the ones that integrated the use of technology in a way that made us take what we were learning and apply it instead of getting the information directly from the technology and then not being required to do anything with it.

  

Reflection #1 for EDIT 2000

I can recall when I was in Intermediate school, the teachers used to teach using projectors with light bulbs and slips of

plastic that had the material printed on it. Also, when movies were shown, they were on VHS tapes.

Once I entered middle school, projectors that connected to a computer began being put to use, but they were on four-wheeled carts and annoying to use. Sometime in middle school, the PCs that were in the computer labs were replaced with Macs. In eighth grade or so, projectors began to be mounted directly to the ceiling and Smart Boards became popular, although  were finicky and incredibly expensive. By this time, DVD’s were more common than VHS tapes.

By the time I reached high school, Smart Boards were common place, and even classes that didn’t have them at least had ceiling projectors. Bulky and slow PCs were outdated  replaced with slimmer versions. The Internet itself had become faster and more expansive, providing us with even more resources to use for our research papers and other projects.

How do you learn something? We learn things by receiving information in a clear and meaningful way that we can process and store for retrieval and usage later. Who helps

you learn things? Learning is most frequently assisted by teachers/professors but also by friends which can form study groups and occasionally help put things a different way that is easier to understand and remember. In the past years, what has changed in your learning? My learning style has changed as I have gradually gotten older and more responsible. However, the material learned has also become much more complex and intricate, which required more effort and study time to be devoted to learning it. How does technology change the way you learn? Technology changes the way I learn by quickly providing easily accessible information (smartphones, computers, tablets), allowing me to compile it and present it in new, interesting, and fun ways (PowerPoint, Word, Pages, Keynote, Excel, Numbers), as well as take note of things that I need to remember

(Notes, Calendar, Alarms, Reminder). What’s the role of technology in your learning? Currently, in college, technology has a very prominent role in my learning. I use my phone to get me to and from classes and to keep track of my schedule. I use my computer to type papers, do research, send emails, get and do assignments, and I use printers frequently. My teachers use projectors, laser pointers, computers, online books, and sometimes magnifying projector things in my science classes.