NETS for Teachers - Interactivity 5

• Net Standards Spreadsheet
  
  I was luck enough to Interview my cooperating teacher who is a 7th grade Language Arts Literacy teacher in the West Orange school district. She is a woman that has been teaching for about forty years and enjoy every second of it. She tries very hard to keep up with the new advances in teaching but as she had to admit, it doesn't always work.
  The teacher that I interviewed know about the standards but is not necessarily familiar with the standards themselves. She seemed to know what they were when I asked her but did not know much more. The have been brought up in conversation she told me but they where never something that was a requirement of the school itself.
  She informed me that there was talk about the standards but they are not obligated to include them on lesson plans etc as of yet. She said that she understand the need for technology and she is working her best to keep up with it but adding more standards just adds another aspect for teachers to include on their lesson plans and search the standards when they already accomplish them in their classroom one way or another. This particular school has recently put a brand new SmartBoard in each classroom therefore urging the teachers to integrate that technology into their classroom. The teacher I interviewed loves her SmartBoard and uses it now in all of her lessons. She did tell me that it was up to her how to learn to use it though. She had to teach herself and see if classes were offered in order to learn more than the basics of a SmartBoard.
  I was not really surprised by her responses because I have been in the school district and have heard very little about these standards. She keeps very up to date with the technology that she uses and keep me very in the loop when talking about anything lesson plan and standard related. I see her implementing most of theses standards without having to be told to do so.
  As a future teacher I believe it is important to know about technology and how to use it, but these standards are what new teachers are going to be implementing on a regular basis without actually looking at the standards. I think that these standards are good, but will become irrelevant because they will become common practice.

Communication and Technology

Technology allows for a lot of communication whether it be between teachers and parents, teachers and other faculty, or teachers and their higher ups, communication is key, but is email always the way to do it?  I have been able to watch a lot of technology based communication go on at my fieldwork site and sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When my teacher has a concern with a child, she either emails the parent or will call them.  There are both good and bad things about both of these.
With email there is a record that the teacher did try. Unfortunately, not every parent checks their email as much as all teachers would life. Some messages are not read until days after the concern and then either the punishment has no effect, or the issue was already taken care of without the parent knowing. Emails show that the teacher has tried, but if they parents does not read that email and respond, the teacher is obligated to try harder and contact the parent in another way.
When talking to a parent on the phone is used, there is less of a documentation that is seen. Yes, a call log can be used as proof, but the conversation that happened between the parent and the teacher is not recorded and therefore can backfire. No one knows what is said during that conversation and if the parents was properly informed of what the issue was with the students.
Email allows for a quick conversation that can be done any time that the teacher has an extra minute. A phone call is usually only made when the teacher has a free period and in the same token the parent may not be able to be reached. I hope that we can all be great teachers and be able to communicate with our students parents as needed but must make sure that technology and communication is used properly and intelligently.

Novels and Technology - English Lesson Plan - Interactivity 4

Choosing a lesson plan was slightly difficult. When I saw this lesson plan, I chose it because I have taken a Holocaust class before and I have also read the novel Night, which the lesson incorporated. This made is easier for me to understand the lesson and what the teacher was looking for in the project. I think that the teacher was able to implement technology successfully and within the standards. I believe that she could have expanded the project a little more than she did and would have definitely gotten the students to understand more aspects of technology such as blogging. Symbols and finding images that represent the symbols is a good project for a 7th grade class which was the grade that I focused on. If this was an 8th grade class lesson, I would implement more technology and the idea of blogging and interacting with each other while using professional language in order to get students ready for high school. I believe that this teacher was trying to allow the students to have fun while exploring the internet and making it more student centered rather than her lecturing to them for the class period. I do believe that this project was important to the curriculum for the students to understand symbolism. This project and technology could have been done in many different ways. I believe that it was successfully executed but not necessarily life long impacting for the students to experience technology wise. Finding pictures online does not call for an extreme amount of authenticity of the website like a research project would, especially when using cartoon like images. I like this project for a way to show symbolism through pictures. The lesson would have been more student centered but the group discussions will definitely help the students analyze their symbols.



Lesson Plan Spreadsheet

It Is Not Always "Every Man For Themselves"

Working as a group is inevitable. It is not something I like to do within my classes but it is something that I have learned to do. I am not about taking leadership and keeping it but rather taking leadership and sharing it. I created the document and shared it with the rest of my group partners. I enjoyed this group work because it was helpful to see other technologies that my group members came up with. As English majors some of us clung to the technologies that we can use in order to define and look for synonyms, those options that are available to us to help assist in our teaching. Others of us focused on the technologies that allow the students to become creative within the classroom rather than the standard projects. This group work gave me good insight to new ideas that I will be able to use within my classroom and change the way that teaching is done. I was very impressed with how little overlap of technologies we had. Even though overlap was acceptable on this assignment I think that our group did an amazing job on finding as many different technologies as we would. When we did repeat them, we all had different reasons for them. I absolutely believe that this is a document that I will hold onto and use in the future, and as a teach player, share it with other teachers that I would be in contact with.

Technology and Book Reports

Having grown up with the boring book report, five paragraphs, 5-7 sentences each, include the author, title, and summary, I have always wondered how we could make this more interesting, more engaging. Not all children like to read as is, and having them then complete a report that bores them is not helping the situation. In my fieldwork class I was lucky enough to see two different ways to create a book report that got the students involved as well as accomplishing the same thing. Not only were they able to read their book, like it, and understand it, but they had a fun time creating an assignment that was going to be worth a large grade.
These students had to create a PowerPoint in which they told the class the name of the boo, the author, the summary, themes, their favorite parts, and feelings that were seen throughout the book. At the end of their PowerPoint they were given creative liberty. Presenting these PowerPoint's on the SmartBoard gave them more liberty than they would have with simply projecting the information on a screen. One create idea that I saw in a few classes was the idea of connecting vocabulary. The students put one column of words and another column of definitions. They students in the audience were picked to come up to the SmartBoard, use the SmartBoard pen and draw a line between the word and the definition that they thought matched. If the pairing was incorrect the presenter was then able to erase the line and let another student try. This taught the students vocabulary, during a presentation, that incorporated technology. Thinking about it from a pedagogical stand point and out push to live up to the technology we have, I was intrigued and through it was a successful project. What impressed me even more was that the students were coming up with their creative idea's thinking about how they could use the SmartBoard to their advantage. 
I was able to see the same teacher, with another class, do a book report but in an entirely different way. This project was called "Book in a Box". The students were to collect items that had to deal with the book and present them to the class explaining their significance. The students loved this because it involved very little writing, they were able to be creative and they enjoyed showing the other students what they had found.
This simply proved one thing to me. There are always two ways to do things. Teachers are able to incorporate technology in amazing ways. Teachers are also able to have students go back in time without technology and find things in the physical world rather than the digital world. They could also turn to the technology of pen and paper and have students write papers. These two projects were not only fun for the students but it made grading fun and easy for the teacher. Technology in classrooms and with students is such a great tool if executed properly and with regards to the students that you, as a teacher, have within your classroom.

Technology in the 1900's to Today

Technology is something that is progressive over time. We did not miraculously have smart boards in classrooms because someone snapped their fingers but because people worked to figure out this technology for years and years. Technologies advancements are unbelievable but in order to understand them we have to look back to the 1900's.
In the world of English we are lucky enough not to bother so much with technology. We love our books, both hard and soft covered and we enjoy writing with pen and paper. Looking back at the YouTube video I realize that English classes can be compared to the 1900's and the idea that pen and paper were their means of writing and communication. Throughout the video I saw a lot of children with pens and paper on their desk ready to write notes and understand material. This was one of the greatest influences throughout history of a form of technology.  The one thing that I noticed and was intrigued by was the television with the words on the screen in order to teach vocabulary. This allowed the students to hear the words but it also took away the need for a teacher. I am not sure that these videos taught much nor entirely caught the children's attention. Also the idea of the teaching machine, I am sure that it was great for English and seeing words and knowing how to spell them but again it takes away the need for a teacher.
In my world of English, I 100% think that the greatest piece of technology and will always stand as the greatest is the use of pen and paper. It allows for expression of oneself and also allows for the teacher to be needed and to have a purpose.I would rather have my students using books and paper and pens rather than looking up the spark-notes in today's world of technology. Students need to learn the material and understand it before they go searching for alternative ways to get around learning the material.

Full understanding from reading a book or
summarized understanding via a screen?

The online article "A Social History of Media, Technology and Schooling" by Vanessa Domine opens up the idea of whether students got anything out of the educational videos. In today's world I wonder if students get anything out of looking at a computer screen. The article worries about the amount of information the students were getting from the educational videos and if they were truly learning anything. As a student, I found it much easier to memorize and learn when I had to write things with pen and paper. The action of writing has been proven to make a difference in retention of information.
The problems lies here, in Chapter two of "Rethinking Technology in Schools". On page 32 of the text it states "The fact that textbooks are generally costly to produce has created a chronic need among school teachers for more affordable means of instruction". Real books and the money for such resources are lacking therefore some teachers these days are going to more video based and online instruction. Within the text it also discusses the "information superhighway" that students and teachers alike must prepare for in the world of the 21st century. As we progress with technology it becomes more difficult and this is why I hold onto the pen, paper, and book idea because it is something that can never change.
My argument unfortunately goes back and forth. Back in the 1900's paper and pencil was used and used successfully as it is today. Both in the 1900's and today books were used when they were available to the teacher. Instructional video still has its skeptics on whether it is effective or not but was used for some time in the 1900's and with the invention of YouTube it has become a very common thing to see within  classrooms of today.

Being Literate Now Including Technological Literacy

"Back in the day", as colloquial as that can sound, there was simply the idea of being literate, being able to read and write. Pen and paper was all that was needed. Today, reading and writing are still a huge part of literacy but it encompasses so many different medias. Not only do we have to learn how to read and write with books, paper, and pencils within a classroom but students today are also expected to know all the details of typing and researching properly. This allows for so many discrepancies in students learning. In my fieldwork classroom I have already witnessed three accounts of plagiarism for a book report assignment. The internet access that they students are capable of using allows for temptations of "copy and paste".  The world that kids are growing up in now is giving them the tools to not have to know much. Students can look up definitions on the internet rather than learning how to use a dictionary and they are able to research summaries of novels rather than actually reading them.

The problem here lies in whether the students understands the material or not. Comprehension is a lacking ability in today's students. The technology that helps students with comprehension is their eyes and a piece of paper and a pencil. Their brains must be worked and push to understand material rather than being pushed to read something off of a screen. As an English teacher, in order for students to understand material, we have to bring it back to the old school way of technology, pen and paper. Students must have the ability to read and comprehend before they have the ability to use a computer and the technology of the day. New technology allows for advancement in teaching and creativity but it is important for teachers to rely on what has worked from the beginning on occasion.