UEN

This week in class we are learning how to set up our own UEN site.  We will be setting up a public domain and a personal domain.  This is a site were my students can go to look up our class information, rules, procedures, etc.  They will also be able to look at my personal site and see who I am, what I like to do, and other things.  I really like this idea, giving the students access to info about the class and me on the website.  Having a site like this will make me much more up to date on technology, especially if I have links they can click on to get help from other sites.  In a very small way it will be like a search engine, but for my class specifically.  It would be pretty awesome if I had a class that had a website that had different links on it that would help me in the class.  I have classes that have websites, which is very helpful in and of itself.  Students in my classes will be able to access the information more easily, like they can anything on the internet.  For many students this will help them remember thing and get to know me better.  If I give them the same info in class on a sheet of paper, many of them will lose it and will forget it.  On the site I can have different resources for my students that will help them do their homework.  I can make it a great website or an okay one.  It wouldn't take much work though to make it a great tool for my students.  Hopefully having a site like this will help my students.  Just like with technology I will need to keep my website up to date.

Video-"The New Math"
This video was pretty hilarious.  It was kind of crazy at the same time.  When I was taught math we were just told to do it and not really why we were doing it.  Now days kids want to know why they are doing it and maybe other things.  Is there a right answer to every question, or if you can show a logical way to do it then it is true.  There is another video that is fun to watch that is somewhat similar.  It is Abbott and Costello.  The guys answer on this makes sense, doesn't it?

Technology in the classroom

What?

This week we talked about students these days and how they are so used to technology and need to be engaged in learning.  I believe that many students are bored when they go to school.  I would like to be able to help them be engaged, and for many of them that means using technology to learn.  In my professional development paper I talked about how technology will help the students. 

So what?

As a teacher I want my students to be engaged and learning.  I am not the best with technology, but I have a pretty basic knowledge of how to do most things.  I would like all of my students to learn and if using technology will help them to do this, then I would like to use it in my classroom.  Since I want all of my students to learn, then I need to learn how to use technology to help them.  I can learn from others around me and from this class.  Students want to learn, they want to be engaged and excited, and if this means that I need to become better at using technology to teach then I will work on it. 

Now what?

I did not realize before we watched and read some of these things that students today are bored in class.  I looked at it from the perspective that they are the problem and not the way they were being taught is the problem.  If students are engaged and interested about what they are learning then they will not be bored and they will pay attention.  By using videos, podcasts, web quests in my classroom I can get more students to be engaged in learning.  I could have them use the internet to search for new data.  I would like to teach them how to know if information they find on the internet is true and correct.  I would like to work with other teachers to see what they have done that has worked with technology. 

Video

Students and youth now days are used to having technology around, they have grown up with cell phones, I-pods, computers, and other technology.  They want to be able to have technology with them wherever they go.  They grew up different than even I did and completely different from their parents.  Since they have grown up with technology surrounding them they need to see that in school.  We cannot teach them the same way we were taught.  In order for the students I teach to be engaged I need to let them use technology and help others to see that technology can help the students learn.