Chapter 4

After learning how important to use technology in the classroom, Chapter 4 gives me some idea about how to use it to design my lessons.

Chapter 4 gives us an overview about what is lesson development. Lesson development refers to all the activities that teachers do as they plan, construct, deliver, and evaluate lessons with students. All the teachers should know that lesson development and design includes three decisions by teachers (1) what to teach (2) how to teach, and (3) how to know what students have learned. In 21st century, technology plays an important role in lesson development. A teacher should be able to use technology to enhance academic content, learning assessments, teaching goals, methods, and procedures. As a future teacher, I always ask myself a question: how teachers can engage students and incorporate technology into the lessons. I have done some observations in different classrooms and I found that even using the same technology, different teachers would make different results on teaching. It is not because of the technology, however, it is the different design of the lesson.

A teacher who is very successful in using technology in her math class give me some good website that she used in her class. I said that I want to make my future class like a study playground and all the students can learn something useful in playing. I feel like that this teacher is a good model for me. I want to share what she use in  her classroom with you. The website helps students to learn by playing, which also make me have a lot of fun in using this technology.

The more I learned and read, the more I feel I need to enrich myself. As a teacher, we need to make myself always be "fresh". Technology is a good way for all of us to learn new things and we need to find a good way to make a technology-classroom for our students. Computer must a good helper for teachers. We need to use it effectively. Also, I need to say that I have no experience in teaching so I hope you can give me more advice in teaching.

Questions:

1.How are lesson planning and student assessment enhanced by technology?

2. How can teachers evaluate and assess students' learning?

Take Away Message for Week 4

To be honest, I am a little worry about my video. I feel like they did a very good job which give me a lot of idea. It is not very hard to create a video in iMovie  but it is hard to have some good questions to lead the students to think about the topic and what they need to learn. 

Before today's class, my  topic is Rivers of the World. However, I feel like my topic is hard to make a good video. Could you give me some advice? Should I change my topic?

Blog 3 – Chapter 3 & 9

Recently, I always think that if we can live without technology in 21^st century. Fifteen years ago, most of families just had a television and in China some families just had the black and white one. When I was in primary school, only very rich families could have a computer. As for my own technology using experience, I remember that I got my first telephone (not smartphone) when I was in 8^th grade; in 9^th grade I started using my own computer and iPad became a part of my life was in my Sophomore year. Today’s children, however, they know how to play smartphone, iPad or Kindle and computer. One of my friends’ child who is only three years old knows how to find kids’ movies on the computer. As a future teacher, I need to clearly recognize that technology has become an essential part of today’s children. Teachers not only need to know how to use technologies in the classroom, but also need to teach students how to use these technologies correctly in their study and daily life.

In Chapter 3, it gives me a lot of advice to transform learning with unique and powerful technology. As I mentioned before, technology has already gotten into nearly every family and 21^st century’s children has known how to play with these technologies before they go to school. If a teacher can make some connections between home and classroom, playing and learning by using technology effectively, it will make our students love study. Also, using some technology in teaching will make it easier for teachers to track students learning process and leave feedbacks as soon as possible. After reading, I watch a video which is named A Different Way to Think about Technology inEducation. I feel like that a teacher is the people who can make students know the world and themselves better. There is no doubt that the world and today’s children have changed a lot with the technology. Teachers need to keep up with these changes, or even walking in front of them.

As for Chapter 9, it explores about using multimedia and digital technologies to present and share information to out students. Students often multimodal learn, which means that the teacher combines spoken words with visuals, written text, audio, simulations, or models. Schools today consist of multimedia technologies. Most of teachers use PowerPoint in their classrooms but I feel like that some of them do not make it interesting. Why we use PowerPoint in our classroom? We want to make the class more interesting, let our students focus on the lesson and help students learn more form the class. However, if the PowerPoint just shows something from the textbook or the teacher just read the PowerPoint, it will make the class have no novelty. There is a good article about how to use PowerPoint effective, which I learned a lot from it.  

Questions:

1. How can teachers create PowerPoint presentations for maximum teaching potential and learning impact?

2. What is your opinion on using video in classroom?

Blog 2- Chapter 1 & 2

 

Both Chapter 1 and 2 start with a short story which will let me know the real situation about how to use technology in the classroom and give me a lot of information about the technology.

In Chapter 1, the story is about Two New Teachers and Their Technology. Since I have no teaching experience, I really like the way that helps me to draw a picture of the classroom and lead me think about the different technologies in my daily life. In the 21^st century, we cannot live without technology. We have to confess that technology is driving profound changes in every aspect of modern society. There is no doubt that we can see the difference between today's children and the children in the past; for example: I played Hide and Seek when was a child, while today’s children play smartphone, computer and iPad. As a future teacher; I not only need to have a clear understanding of these changes, but also have to adapt to these changes. This chapter gives me a good guidance and advice. First, this chapter clearly describes the various technologies. Second, it gives me some advice about how to use these technologies in the classroom. Last but not the least, it gives me some advice on building my digital identity as a teacher.

Although today's children already have a lot of knowledgeable about technology, classroom technologies are different from which we use in the daily life. In Chapter 2, it not only describes the trends of using technology in the classroom, but also describes the problems that the teachers may be facing in the teaching process. Like myself, many future teachers know how to use the computer, create PowerPoint presentation, search the Internet and so on; however, we are less informed about how to use technology to transform teaching and learning in schools. As we all know, using technology in the classroom will let students more interested in the classes and have fun in the classes but some of the teachers do not know how to make it more helpful for their classes. It will lead the students to do something else but pay less attention on study.

I believe that if teachers can know how to use the technology effectively in the classroom, it will help both teachers and students to build the class well. I will share you a link about 12 Easy Ways to Use Technology in the Classroom, Even for Technophobic Teachers. I hope you can find some good ways to use in your class!
Questions: 
1. What roles dose technology play in the lives of students and teachers?
2. For your own experience, what is the biggest barrier to technology use in school by teachers?

My Personal Learning Goals

When I was in middle school, my teachers asked me to write my study goals. At that time I just wrote to my teachers for homework but did not follow my goals. Since I studied in Education, I realized that how important to have some goals before I start studying. Every semester I will set some goals for my courses and try to achieve them at the end of the semester.  

Like many girls, I am not very interested in technology. Most of times, I just use my laptop to watch movies, play games and do my homework. In fact, I never use a lot of features of my computer. Such as how to make a video by using iMovie, how to make a attractive PowerPoint and how to use the different kinds of network resources to design my class. Although I am not a teacher now, I need to prepare myself for the future . And I also want to learn something about how to set my own website.

Before taking the class, I have a goal for this class - get an A for my final grade. Now, I still have this goal but the more important thing for me is to learn something that can really use in my life. I believe that the first step towards setting and achieving personal goals is that you must realize you have to prepare for the future and not wait for it to happen. I want to see myself progress step by step. As a start, I want to learn how to add music in iMovie. 

 I read some other classmates' Personal Learning Goals before writing. Some of them have worked at school so they know what they want to learn from this class and what can help them to make their classes better.  Since I am not a teacher yet, I do not have a lot of experiences. Now, the most important thing is that I need to enrich myself as much as possible.