NETS I Faciltiate and Inspire Students Learning and Creativity
To immerse myself in the realm of educational technology, I created a class blog, which is an online journal used to showcase work that's been created for educational and social purposes. This technology allows users to consolidate many websites into one for easier access. The way I created a blog was first by signing up for a Google account. I then went to blogspot.com to set up an account to produce the blog. After naming my blog and customizing it, I then added posts or information that I had produced. I could add links to other websites I felt were interesting. Other gadgets could also be added to additionally customize the blog. My blog meets the NETS-T standards because it allows me to showcase discussions of real-world issues and serves as a communication medium for creating and posting innovative writing and technology-based portfolio samples. Moreover, within my blog, I can embed and add links to tools and resources that can help solve authentic, everyday problems. Additionally, my blog allows for interactive communication, which can jump start collaborative learning with students, colleagues, and other individuals within both virtual and face-to-face situations.
In order to promote technology in my classroom, I was able to produce a creative newsletter, which I would publish in my classroom blog. The newsletter will contain information such as homework due dates, schedules, and how to contact me. In my classroom newsletter, I inserted a table to serve as a template for my masthead and inserted WordArt and horizontal line art for visual effect. Then I split the document into columns, inserted Clip Art and wrapped the images into my text. Finally, I added DropCaps into my articles and used the formatting palate to make my newsletter more aesthetically pleasing. I created a classroom newsletter to promote student reflection using this collaborative tools to help clarify students' conceptual understanding, planning and creative process. The newsletter, which uses creative visuals and includes discussions of real classroom issues, serves as a mechanism for facilitating learning among students within the classroom by keeping students well-informed.
NETS-T II Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
To completed in credential
NETS-T III Model Digital Age Work and Learning
To engage a student in learning, a teacher must capture their attention in a creative and unique way. One method of promoting learning in a classroom is with the use of digital technology. PowerPoint software is a tool that when used creatively in a classroom can help facilitate student learning. This tool enables the user to create presentations. In the presentations creative clip art, sound, animation and links can be added to demonstrate the meaning of an idea more effectively. A PowerPoint presentation was created to show my knowledge of the ISTE NETS-S and the performance indicators for middle school. In this presentation I added a link to the ISTE website, animation to each slide, clip art to make it visually pleasing, sound to enhance the clip art and links to other websites that were beneficial to the presentation. I then posted the presentation to my blog for others to view. The use of a PowerPoint presentation in a classroom setting assists in effectively using digital tools to support student learning. The presentation also models to the student the effectiveness of digital tools to aid in the evaluation of research.
Students of this day are becoming more and more technology savvy. The more an educator can embrace technology in their classroom the greater the benefit to student learning. Inspiration is a computer software program which allows the user to create graphic organizers. This tool is valuable in brainstorming ideas, relating two topics or piecing a story together. The graphic organizer can also be converted into a text style outline. To enhance the look of the organizer clip art can be used. Also to make the organizer aesthetically pleasing, items like background, font, connecting lines and text boxes can be changed to a different color or font. In addition links to important websites can be used in the organizer. I generated a graphic organizer using Inspiration. Using the five NETS-T from ISTE and the work I had created in class, I graphically outlined my work with the organizer. In the main picture of the ISTE NETS-T, I inserted a link to the ISTE website. Each of the five NETS-T standards was given a symbolic clip art and it was connected to two different descriptions of work or artifact I produced in class. Between each standard and artifact was a portion of the NETS-T text that relates to the artifact. After completing the organizer, I was able to convert the organizer to a jpeg document and upload it to my blog for others to view. Having the knowledge of how to use Inspiration has given me a resource which would allow me to incorporate digital tools into a classroom to promote student learning and creativity. This tool is also accommodating in designing relevant learning experiences for students using digital tools.
NETS-T IV Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
California State law legislates that all students as well as teachers need to be educated on the appropriate and ethical use of information technology in the classroom and Internet Safety. Internet safety is the term that encompasses six specific topics of the Internet usage: identity safety, cyber predators, inappropriate content, cyberbullying, plagiarism, and social networks. Within each of these areas are safety and etiquette issues students need to learn to emerge into the real world with proper and ethical knowledge of the Internet. To educate myself on Internet Safety, I collaborated with five other members of my education 422 class. We each chose a topic to address on the JCCS website. Using Google docs, we added our topic and research information to create an Internet Safety document that can be referenced to when we teach. I then posted this document to my blog for others to reference if necessary. By collaborating with my peers on Internet Safety and promoting from my blog what I have learned about the Internet, I feel I can encourage and model digital etiquette in and out of my classroom as a teacher. The information on Internet Safety has taught me, as an emerging teacher, to also be responsible with my digital interactions.
In any field it is always important to keep educating one’s self to keep up with the latest technology that our world uses. In education as well as many other fields, social bookmarking is one way to continue lifelong learning. Delicious, a social bookmarking site, is a way of saving a web address in an online file so that the user can revisit the site when needed. To save this data, tags or descriptions of the site are created to be stored into the file. If the bookmarks are made public they can be viewed by others and followed. To implement social bookmarking I signed up for a Delicious account. I then researched a number of helpful teaching sites, one of which was a multicultural education and equity awareness site. For each site I visited I created three tags that could be publicly viewed on my blog. On my blog the tags are all visible and when clicked redirect the viewer to the site I bookmarked. One way to engage with colleagues and students of other cultures is through social bookmarking. Sites such as Delicious enable the following of colleagues and what they are researching in a particular field, such as multicultural education. The use of this tool in education is helpful for a teacher to model and develop cultural understanding and global awareness.
NETS-T V Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
As a teacher it is helpful to have technology tools available to help with creating lessons. At times it is also useful to be able to ask a teacher in the same field how they would go about adding creativity to a lesson. Classroom 2.0 is a technological tool which allows teachers to learn from other teachers ideas. Utilizing this website, an educator can look up ideas they would like to incorporate into their lessons, for example virtual field trips using videoconferencing, and follow threads on how other teachers have successfully used or what problems they may have had while using the particular technological tool. In this technology course, I became a member of Classroom 2.0 and then was able to research videoconferencing. I found information from a particularly interesting teacher that had virtually taken many of his students all over the country. Other teachers had posted comments on how they would like to incorporate his lesson into their class from the information he gave. While some teachers asked for help on how to get started videoconferencing in their classroom and how to avoid behavioral issues with students while conducting a videoconferencing. This tool allows for the participation in learning communities from the United States as well as around the world. My membership to Classroom 2.0 will allow for the exploration of creative applications of technology to facilitate improved learning of my future students.
With any profession it is always beneficial to be up to date with what is current in the industry. Teachers for example, need to be informed of current technology to keep their students current with the latest global information. The International Society for Technology in Education, ISTE, is a website that provides current technological information to educators. This site contains valuable information from books and journal articles to websites and podcasts, allowing educators to stay up to date with today’s technology in order to benefit student learning. To keep up with the latest technology I became a member of ISTE. I was able to read journal articles about the latest technology, for example Classroom 2.0 and Virtual Field trips, and how to incorporate them into a classroom environment. After reading eight journal articles from the journal Learning & Leading from ISTE, I posted a summary of each article and two questions that I had about the article along with my answers to the questions on my blog. By becoming a member of ISTE and researching their journal articles, I have been able to evaluate and reflect on current research using technological tools for classroom use. As a teacher, I will also be able to regularly check the website to learn of emerging digital tools that I am able to utilize in the classroom to support student learning.
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