My Brief Taste of Instructional Technology

There is no doubt in my mind that I will use the knowledge I gained on operating Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Publisher in my future classroom. I believe that all three of these Microsoft programs are excellent tools and extremely beneficial for teachers, specifically. I have been using Microsoft Word as far back as elementary school and so it goes without saying that, out of the three Microsoft programs above, I feel the most comfortable and confident working with this program. However, with this being said, I had never explored Microsoft Word from the viewpoint of a teacher and I quickly discovered that there were many features and capabilities of this program that I was unaware existed.

Even though I do, in fact, have Microsoft Publisher on my computer, when I was given the choice to create both my Internet Safety Brochure and my Parent Newsletter in either Publisher or Office 2011 for Mac, I chose Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac without hesitation. But why did I do this? I had never used this new version of Office, and in fact, even had to purchase it in order to complete these two assignments, but I was happy with the program I chose anyways because of how comfortable I am with Microsoft Office in general. As I played around with this new version and created the two projects that I ended up being extremely proud of, I realized that I would never grow out of Microsoft Office- from using it to type out 'MOM, DAD, DOG' and the few other simple words I knew how to spell in 1st grade, to now creating newsletters and brochures to hand out to the parents of my future students. In my future classroom, I intend to make weekly newsletters to send home to the parents every Monday. After working on the Parent Newsletter and Internet Safety Brochure assignments, there is no question that I will use Office 2011 for Mac, or whatever the new version is at the time, to create these weekly newsletters.

Scholastic explained the benefits of this type of weekly newsletter and suggested these ideas for content:

• Announcement of upcoming events
• Invitations to class activities or open houses
• Reminders
• Lists of items parents could collect or save for class projects
• Thank-you notes to families who help out
• Descriptions of study units and suggestions of ways parents can supplement units at home
• Reprints or articles I think are important
• Explanations of grading policies, standardized testing, and other means for assessing and evaluating performance
• Explanations of behavior standards and consequences for misbehavior
• Highlights of community resources such as a museum exhibit, play, concert, or television show
• Children's writing and artwork
• News about classroom pets, trips, and celebrations

Other than using my knowledge of Microsoft Word to communicate affectively with parents, I also feel as if I will be implementing what I learned about creating templates, such as for lesson plans, with this program. By having a lesson plan template locked and saved onto my computer, I will be saving time by not having to create the chart each and every day and instead use my saved time to put more thought into the actual lesson itself.

Although I feel more confident than ever utilizing all the different options Microsoft Word has to offer, I am afraid I need to learn more about the ins and outs of Microsoft Excel before I feel 100% comfortable depending on it for my gradebook. My previous experience using Excel is extremely lacking and, other than creating a bar graph or two many years ago, is practically nonexistent. But although I hope to experiment and learn more about this Microsoft program before I have a classroom of my own, I did find it extremely beneficial how it automatically calculates each student's grades and eliminates the need for teachers to spend hours plugging each student's  grades into a calculator by hand.

To learn more information about instructional technology and how your child's teacher may be using Microsoft Office in the classroom, check out the links below:

• Classroom Resources for Microsoft Office
• What's New in Word for Students, Teachers, and Professors
• Using Microsoft Word to Produce Classroom Documents

Technology Grant!

As I sat here considering my options about how I felt it would be most affective to spend my class's $3,000 technology grant, numerous ideas popped into my head. Should I start building a class set of laptops? What about the Apple Ipad? What would benefit my students the most and help enhance their overall learning experience? Well,  I made up my mind on how I intend to spend this generous amount of money for our class and I hope you  guys are as excited about it as I am! So here it goes! I am ecstatic to announce that our class will be getting a SMART Board installed, complete with the projector, table stand, speakers, and programs to explore all of it's capabilities! Also, I will be purchasing a class MacBook, which will allow me to utilize all the different SMART Board features and create digital, interactive lesson plans to display on it.


SMART Board w/ Table Stand = $1,199.00
MacBook = $999.00
Audio System for SMART Board = $299.00
Additional Program Software for the Classroom = $500.00
An Interactive, Groundbreaking Learning Experience = PRICELESS!

How can it be used in the classroom? Excellent question! Here are some things it will allow me to do:

 
• Share new lessons and presentations, and add on to the presentation and explain it further by making digital markings with the special pens as we go over it 
• Ability to be used as a traditional whiteboard by making digital marks with the pens on a white screen
• Ability to use interactive websites as a whole class
• Ability to make lesson plans appeal to all different types of learners by showing diagrams, videos, simulations, etc...
• Share examples of good work or trouble areas by scanning in sample assignments and editing/correcting them digitally in front of the class
• Save lessons to reteach students who were absent or need extra help
• Prepare students for tests/exams by playing interactive games and activities on the board
• When teaching math lessons or using dice for games you can make the dice interactive, by clicking the die it will automatically roll (interactive materials like the dice encourage students' motivation to participate and  learn)
• When doing vocabulary or any similar lesson the smart board has a tool called a shade which will allow me to cover some of the page, only displaying what I want at a certain time (shade can be moved from top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right, or right to left.)
• Print everything I have worked on or presented, including notes that were digitally written on the actual board itself

The remarkable SMART Board technology has already been recognized for changing the classroom environment as a whole and has been said to involve, encourage, and excite students of all ages. With our children today being more technologically savvy than ever before, they deserve and ultimately need a technological education to compete in the 21st century, and the use of the SMART Board helps to meet that need. We live in a time where it is not enough to simply give the students the information we want them to learn and hope they can regurgitate it on the test. We live in a better time with much higher expectations, and this SMART Board will help our students achieve more in the classroom and make learning fun! I am so excited to get this new piece of technology up and running in our classroom and am beyond eager to play around with it and discover every capability it has to offer!

Technology in the Classroom!

During my second grade year at Galatas Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas, I can remember begging my mother to drive me to school a half an hour early so that I could go visit my first grade teacher and help her clean off her overhead slides from the day before. As I caught Mrs. Vermillion up on all the happenings in my invigorating, seven year old life, she would allow me to doodle on the see through slides and see my works of art pop up on her board. This was my definition of the perfect start to a day.


As I moved from elementary school to Mitchell Intermediate School, it absolutely blew my mind to discover on the first day that each and every homeroom classroom had a television mounted on the wall to watch the morning and afternoon announcements on! The words to the pledge of allegiance even appeared on the screen as we were saying it- in my mind it absolutely could not get any cooler than that! In fact, at the end of the day, the bus numbers would even pop up on the television screen to alert us of when to head outside and look for our bus driver's familiar face. But this was not the only instance I was exposed to technology in my fifth and sixth grade years. Starting in fifth grade, my public school required us to take keyboarding class every single day. Each computer had a contraption that covered our keyboards and only contained a slot big enough for us to slip our tiny hands under. We were then tested on our words per minutes and accuracy level each day, which, might I add, seemed pretty intense for ten year olds. But, looking back on it, I am so unbelievably grateful that my old school district recognized the importance of making sure we were all proficient and comfortable using technology and prepared us for the years to come when technology usage sky rocketed.

In my high school, there was not a single class that did not get a SmartBoard installed during my freshman year. Every teacher was required to take a four hour long seminar one Saturday morning, in order to teach them all the ins and outs of this new form of technology, and I can  honestly say that I noticed a drastic spike in participation and attendance in all my classes. My classmates who normally slept and chitchatted through our forty-five minute spanish class each day now were having to be told by the teacher to give other students a turn because they wanted to get up in front of the class and use the SmartBoard. The SmartBoard encouraged students in my high school to get excited about learning and coming to class again. Although some of my teachers struggled, initially, trying to figure out the more advanced capabilities of this new technology, overall I believe every one of my teachers would agree that the SmartBoards were a worthwhile investment and definitely had a positive affect on the learning environment.

Although I am only eighteen years old, I have gotten the opportunity to witness unbelievable growth and change in regards to technology in the classroom. Just as technology is always expanding and improving, so are the noted benefits of incorporating it into the learning environment. Throughout technology's history in the classroom, it has encouraged students to get involved, prepared them for the working environment, which revolves more and more around technology each day, and allows them to access information within seconds. I, personally, feel as if students should be exposed to as many forms of technology as possible, starting at a young age. I believe that technology is the key to the future and that it is only appropriate and logical for educators to use the technology of today, in the classroom today. 


 "It's the difference between looking at a picture of a heart in a textbook, and looking at a beating heart and being able to slow it down and analyze it to see exactly how it works, step by step," said a high school science teacher in Florida about the difference between teaching from traditional methods compared to teaching by using technology and simulations.