Week 5

     Today in class we learned about social networking sits. Some of the most common types of social networking sites in the United States are: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We learned how we could use these in the classroom and discussed if it would be a good idea to use them. I don't think that it would be a good idea to use in the classroom with the age group I will be teaching. I think that they are way to young and it is to dangerous to use. I know that most of them will probably already have a facebook or a twitter but I don't want to bring it in the classroom no matter what. That is something that they should be doing outside of school. We also talked about copyrighting issues and how you need to cite everything that you get. What I didn't know was that even if you just get a picture off of Google you have to cite it. It is something well learned and will not of course be used. We also learned how to make surveys on our Google sites. I can't say if this will be helpful in my classroom or not but it definitely is a good think to know how to use.

     I plan on using one of the two things that we talked about today in my classroom. I most certainly will not be using any social network cites in my classroom. I do not think that they serve a purpose for me and my major. I think that it would be very helpful for say English majors but I think that it would be really hard to incorporate math and social net work cites. There is just no need for it in math. Its understandable in other subjects but I just can't see myself using in a math lesson. I will however use the teaching of citing sources in my class room. Although they may not be citing a lot of things math related (unless they are doing some sort of project) but I will encourage them to make sure that they are citing things properly in their other classes.

Some ISTE standards that we used as teachers today were:

• Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity: As teachers we learned something new that we can use to teach our students (surveys) and use in our classroom in a hope that the students will find it interesting and use creatively.  

Some ISTE standards that we used as students were:

• Creativity and Innovation: We learned to to incorporate our existing knowledge of technology into learning how to use it in a new way. And a creative way by now being able to create surveys online.
• Communication and Collaboration: We used our Google sites to talk to the other students in our group in order to create a story. 

Week 4

       Today in class we learned how to create a Webquest. We watched a video on how the first Webquest was created and what it is used for. Webquests are used as a good way for the students to interact in a fun way on the internet. There are a whole bunch of different components to a creating a webquest. Some of the most important things are; The introduction, the task, the processes, the resources and the evaluation. Each one of these components plays a special role in creating a webquest. I think that the most important feature is the task. You have to have a good task in order for everything else to fall into place. The next most important is the processes. You have to make the process fun for the kids so that they enjoy and learn from this experience.
      
    I think that I could use this tool in my classroom. It would be kind of hard to incorporate into a mathematics lesson but it can be done. As I was doing some research and browsing around of all the different math webquests there are, there are some great ideas. They had a lot of good examples of algebra and calculus. I think that the calculus webquest would be able to help me out now in my higher level calc class. Which is good and I am glad that I found some of them. I defiantly intend on going home and looking more into them to see not only how I can use them in my classroom but also for my own personal studies.


     Some of the ITSE standards that we covered in class today as Teachers are:

• Model Digital Age and Work: We learned about a new type of technology and how to use it based off of our current knowledge of technology.  We also collaborated with our peers in the classroom and bounced ideas off of each other
• Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity:  We worked face to face in a virtual environment. 

    Some of the ITSE standards that we covered in class today as Students are:

•   Commutative Collaboration: Students will need to collaborate with their classmates when they are working on group presentations.
• Research and Information Fluency: Students will need to come up with an idea for their Webquest and will need to do research on the internet in order to come up with ideas for their projects.
• Technology Operations and Concepts: Students will need to understand and know how to use technology.

Week 3

         Today in class we learned a lot of great information. We started off class by learning about what podcasts and vodcasts were. I have never made a podcast or a vodcast but I have seen a lot of them online and a lot of people really enjoy doing them. I think they are a good way to incorporate them into a classroom. I think they would especially be helpful in English classes or History classes. The second thing we talked about was what Cyber bullying was. We watched a really cool video of what cyber bullying could do to someone, and someone in the act of bullying  (pretending of course). Then we watched another video of three girls who were sitting in a coffee shop and pretending to bully someone on Facebook while others were watching. When they asked the onlooker to participate in the bullying he complied and went through with it. Which just goes to show that some onlookers will not tell the bullies to stop what they are doing. We were told some statistics about bullying and it is really astonishing how many people are bullied. Its something that needs to stop because in some cases it results in suicide, which is in no means okay. After our discussions we learned how to use Picasa and how to create videos with pictures on our Google site. We learned how to add audio to it as well and upload it to our Google site. 


     I can't really see myself using podcasts and vodcasts in my content area. It defiantly makes sense for an English class or History class to use them but I don't really know how I would incorporated them into a Mathematics class. I"m sure I could find some ideas off the internet on how to use them in a math class, but I don't really know right now.

     Some of the ISTE standards we used as Teachers today in class were:

• Model Digital-Age Work and Learning. We learned about new technologies (Picasa) and how to use them in our classrooms. 
• Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity. We learned a new and creative way to teach our students through virtual environments.

Some of the ISTE standards we used as students today in class were:

• Creativity and Innovation. We applied our existing knowledge to the new things we learned today.
• Technology Operations and Concept. We all used computers today in class and how to use them effectively when applying them to the new programs we learned about in class today.

Week 2

•         Today in class we learned ways to incorporate technology and social media sites into our classroom. It was really interesting . I liked the ideas that others had about using Smartboards in the classroom. The video we watched about the kindergarten class using the Smartboard to learn words was so cool.    I not sure how I feel about kids that little using so much technology (smartboards, ipads ect), but it is a great way for the students to be interactive and enjoy learning. Another useful tool that we learned how to use was Twitter. I am not a big Twitter fan myself and did not have one prior to yesterday but, I  must say that it is a good way to stay connected. It's a good way for a class to be able to interact with their fellow classmates, whether its about school work or outside of school things. Lastly, we learned about all the ins and outs of powerpoint. I thought I knew how to use powerpoint pretty well but clearly I was mistaken. I did not know how to use the hyperlinks and switiching from slide to slide. That was really cool and very useful for using in the classroom. I will defiantly be able to make my power points more interactive and fun for my students!
              I could defiantly use these tools in my classroom. The one that I would probably use the most is the smartboard. When I was in high school we used the smartboard a lot in my Statistics class. It was a great way for us as the students to be interactive and come up to the board and solve problems.  It also makes things a lot easier by not having to constantly erase the board every time you ran out of room and you could save the work and work on it the next day if you ran out of time. I could not see myself using social media sites in my classroom. I do not think they would be beneficial in any way in helping the students learn. I think I could find a way to use an ipad in my room, but i most certainly would use the smartboard. 
  
  

Some of the ISTE standards for Teachers we used this week were:

• 1d, because we learned how to use power point more efficiently in our classrooms and really engage the students in using power point and learning from it. Not only how to use the program but academically.  
• 2a,  for the same reasons as 1d, we learned how to use power point to promote creative student learning.
• 3a, would also be a standard that we used today. We talked about the difference in today's classroom and the classrooms that we grew up in. A lot of us didn't use smartboards or ipads when we were in school. So today we learned ways to switch from the old to the new. 

Some of the ISTE standards for Students we used this week were :

• 1a, most of us had pre-existing knowledge of how to use power point but I know that I learned a lot of new things ie: hyperlinks. And I now can incorporate them into my future power points.

• 6a, we must understand ourselves how to use these applications in technology in order to incorporate them into our classrooms.