Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Blog

Chapter 8 I felt was a very useful chapter as a teacher and for what we are doing in this course.   It was good that it talked about how elearning and the benefits of it for students include ELL students.  Of course with anything it had its disadvantages as well.  Some of the benefits I liked were about interaction as it gives a chance as it said for shy learners to participate.  Also, the benefit of anonymity and equity for the students.  It gives a chance for all students even ones with physical disabilities to being to participate in the classroom.  The disadvantage that stood out to me was that teachers might experience technical problems.  Another disadvantage was that a teacher might find it difficult to meet all the needs of the students and their learning styles.  The chapter then goes into different elearning tools that are useful as teachers.  It showed a few and I think the podcast is a cool way for teachers to express lessons and it gives a student a chance to listen at there on pace.  All in all this was a good chapter that showed a lot of ways to interact with distance and students in the classroom.

Reflections of Chapter 5 & 7

Reading chapter five was all about creativity.   The chapter made me thinks of how I want to be creative in my classroom.  The more creative you are than maybe it will keep the student’s attention and have them retaining the information.    I also liked how the chapter gives you four guidelines to follow to make your classroom have creativity opportunities.  One part that stood out was about you must “feed the senses”.  This is a good way to think of how you prepare your lesson.  Does it include trying to use all the student’s senses?  Teaching seems more effective if you can connect with all the senses.  Chapter seven was about production where the students create a product focused on learning.    This according to the chapter is just one type of learning where as a teacher will get to see an actual end result.  This would be working on a project to build and learn about something.  I thought the section on benefits were useful.  It is good in this type of learning for the students to be able to have responsibility for their own learning.  They have to plan and decide what they or their group are going to do to produce their product as a PowerPoint.  Both chapters go hand in hand with trying to be creative when trying to produce a product.

My thoughts on chapter 2

In chapter 2 we read about content learning.  We learned that knowledge according to research can be broken down to three categories which are declarative, structural, and procedural.  It went on to explain what is type is and an example of it.  I really think the figure 2.2 on pg. 40 gave a great simple breakdown of what they are and how they go with each other.

Something the chapter made me really think about was just how the technology would be physically in my classroom.  With I mean will my classroom even have a computer and if so how many?  I know most classrooms I have gotten a chance to observe didn't have any computers in it.  The closest it came was a laptop the teacher used.  The classes would each get time in a computer lab.

The chapter went on to talk about different technology that can be used besides a computer such as whiteboard, overheads, and microphones to name a few.  It talked about the different softwares that could be used for the different learnings.  I liked the software they talked about from Tom Synder where the students have to make a decision and they do it several times to see the different outcomes from their actions.

This chapter was about how to get you to start thinking making lesson plans and having them technology-enhanced.  You have to think about how the technology will work with all students such including special needs and ELL students.  I think the computer and certain softwares will benefit ELL learns by being able to use their language and English.  The chapter also gave good guidelines to remember when making your lesson plans.   I think with the United States being such a melting pot of different cultures it is good to remember guideline #3:  Teach in a culturally responsive manner.   It was a good chapter and one to look back on when writing future plans.

Creating my first blog!

Greetings everyone!

This is my first blog and I am still trying to figure everything out.  I'm glad though that +Blogger makes it easy to to set up a blog.  I really hope my blog is easy to read and naviagte though.  I think I'll probably still make mistakes, but it is a learning process for me.  Hopefully by the end of my course it will so vast improvements.