Liz and Hayley

I'm with you there, Liz... it's hard to believe that the semester is almost over! For my multimedia lesson, I found a great website that makes podcasts of Shakespeare's plays. It's designed to be modern and easy to understand, to make Shakespeare more appealing to our generation. I think it would be a great way to encourage students to learn about Shakespeare on their own. Instead of assigning mountains of reading, I can just have my students listen to a podcast at home. This would not make up the core of my English class, but it's a way that technology can be helpful in education.

Spencer and Liz...

Hey, yeah I wanted to make one last blog too. I didn't have too much difficulty finding a lesson online that I liked. I found a website with games on it that helps you to learn vocabulary in French. It's pretty cool and I think it would be very useful as a lesson for students in a computer lab. So yeah, I think it went pretty well. It's hard to believe that the semester is over already. That's so crazy! But, other than that, I don't have much to say besides Merry Christmas! :)

~Hayley

Hey Guys!

Hey Spencer and Hayley,

It's hard to believe the semester is almost over! I just wanted to do one final blog this year. i turned in my Multimedia project a few days ago. I thought it was an interesting project, though I had difficulty finding a lesson online that I liked. HOwever, a lesson I found did give me a great idea for a lesson on Shakespeare's use of metric patterns. I used this idea to create my own lesson. I hope you both had success with your projects! I'll see you at the final!

Liz

Second Life

I definitely agree with you, Spencer. Second Life looks like a really cool world of virtual reality, and there's so much you can do with it. However, it looks like it's one of those things that can become very addicting, and can therefore be dangerous. People's social lives can be harmed through the overuse of this program. It looks fun to play around with, but one needs to remember that the real world around him is what is really important.


~Hayley

Virtual Reality

In games and programs such as "Second Life," users have the opportunity to "pretend" to be someone else. They construct their own avatar, or digital representation of themselves, and they "live" in a virtual world. Games such as these can be fun. They provide an opportunity to interact with others, and to meet new friends. However, they can be detrimental. Sometimes, the users become so enthralled with the digital "lives" that they do not function well in the real world. I think that balance is a crucial aspect in computer usage. We need to remember that face-to-face contact is the best way to maintain healthy relationships and to build trust. Games like "second life" are fun, but moderation is key.

Tom Snyder Productions

Hey Guys,

I was looking at the different Award Winning Publishers in our PowerPoint and really liked Tom Snyder Productions in particular. Though this website provides activities and practices for several subjects, I focused on looking at what it offered for English. Under the Reading and Language Arts tab it lists several different games and activities. These range from the basic kindergarten level to the high school level. Some are specifically for certain ages, while others, such as Timliner XE, accomodate all ages and are broken up by ability level. Holleywood High is one tool that students i will be teaching will probably use. In this game, students can write, produce and protect stories of their lives. This, as well as the other two sites, are great tools!

Liz

Google Earth

Yeah, Google Earth is really cool!! There are also several ways in which it applies to English and French. It applies to English because it allows you to travel to places that are settings for books, or you can check out places where famous authors grew up. Even cooler than that, you can use the Google Literature Trips application, and actually follow the sequences of books, and it takes you from place to place, showing you all the places that the characters traveled. Examples of books that you can follow are The Grapes of Wrath and Huckleberry Finn. This would be very useful in the English classroom because while the class is reading a book, you could show them each place that the characters are when it gets to that point in the book. Google Earth can apply to French because it allows you to travel to France and look all over, including the major sites in Paris such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the famous Musee du Louvre. It could be used in the French classroom because you can show your students actual photos of any places in France that you want, and it can be helpful in sparking interest in the students.

~Hayley

Google Earth

Spencer and Hayley,

I just explored Google Earth and found that it is a fascinating tool! It is a virtual reality center in which one can explore the sky, moon, mars and earth. It also has a feature that allows the user to see the sunlight at different times on the moon, mars and earth. The earth feature is the most detailed. One can view virtually any location, including major cities, schools, and one's own house! Additionally, some of these locations, such as Grove City College, are in 3D. Google Earth also has several points of interest marked at each place, such as hotels and restaurants.

Google Earth can be beneficial in many ways. It can be used as an educational tool when wanting a visual depiction of stars and galaxies in space. The pictures are from the Hubble Space Telescope. It also has all of the constellations marked, which would help in learning about Astronomy and the layout of stars. On a more day-to-day level Google Earth can provide directions. In addition to simply aquiring directions, one can also have a virtual map of their route. This map can help those who have trouble visualizing the layout of a town or county. Google Earth is an exceptional tool.

Liz

Hey!

Hey, my break was pretty sweet! I worked on my philosophy a little bit too. I actually used books from the library for my sources, and I got a book about technology in bilingual education and it was really helpful for my French stuff. And I agree with you Liz about the wireless problem. It doesn't make sense to have wireless in the IM room when most of the time there are probably not very many people there, and not having it in the dorms is really inconvenient and frustrating sometimes.

Thanksgiving and Philosophy of Technology

Hey Spencer and Hayley,

I hope you guys had great breaks! I know I loved spending some time with my family and friends. Over break I was working on my Philosophy of Technology in Education. One of the sources I found to be very interesting was the one Dr. Jenny gave us by James McNamara, a former student at Grove City College. I thought his essay was very well written and communicated his point accurately. One fact he commented on was the distribution of funds at Grove City College. He mentioned that the Intramural Room has wireless internet. I think that this is an unwise use of school funds and that it would be much more beneficial to have some of the dorms be wireless. I know that I struggle to complete groupwork in my dorm room because only two people at a time can use internet. Additionally, if I want to bring something to show to a friend quickly and the assignment is online, I have to either call my friend to me or unplug my internet, take my computer to my friend's room, and replug-in my computer to the internet. I do however think that it is very nice to have wireless in the academic buildings, library and KetRec, as I often do homework at each of those places.

Liz

VoiceThread on George Herbert

Voicethread on George Herbert

We created a voicethread on the poet George Herbert.

http://voicethread.com/share/755196

Philosophy of Technology

Hey Guys!

I was working on my Philosophy of Technology project yesterday and was thinking about how technology has been used effectively in my personal experiences in the classroom. Many of my teachers in high school used overheads, however, a few used PowerPoint. For example, my Health teacher used PowerPoint. I enjoyed her lectures and found them easy to follow. The pictures were often much clearer than those on overheads used by my other teachers. This is one example in which the development of technology has been an asset to my education. Additionally, we had to write a research paper every year in high school. I found a lot of my resources by looking up information provided through Databases. The computers not only allowed me to find online articles, they helped me to quickly and easily locate print resources in the library. Technology can help to present information clearly and can be a great organizational tool.

Liz

Podcasts

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication, which is when website material is made available over multiple sites. Since Spencer and Liz are English majors, we picked the Poetry Foundation Podcast, which would be good because you would be able to hear the stressed and unstressed metric patterns in the poems. Also, we chose the Shakespeare podcast because Shakespeare can be really difficult to understand and hearing it would be easier than reading it because you could hear the voices and it would make it more interesting. For me, I would choose the FrenchPodClass. This could be very helpful because you would be able to hear the pronunciation of words, getting the students used to the sounds of the language and helping them a lot with listening comprehension.
It would be a good idea to use podcasts in the French classroom because there is an advantage to being able to hear words and conversations at normal speed, rather than the students just talking to each other, which would be really slow conversations. They need to get used to hearing and understanding normal spoken French, and the podcasts would help a lot with that. It would be a good idea to use podcasts in the English classroom because they could be used to help the students better understand the English language, and it would be especially useful for students learning English as a second language because it helps them hear how the words and phrases are pronounced and it's presented in a fun and upbeat way.

The links to the websites are found here:

http://www.frenchpodclass.com/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audiolanding.html

http://www.shakespearebyanothername.com/audio.html

Education Issues: Reading Problems

When I was reading through the education issues, I found a section about reading problems, specifically in middleschoolers. It discussed the problem of students being unable, or having a lot of trouble reading. In fact, many students are below the 30th percentile in reading. This problem with reading is a key contributor to many students' lack of interest in school. This is definitely a problem that needs attention, and this article suggests that technology may be used in a positive way to effectively help these students who are struggling. Since the traditional methods of teaching has not worked for these kids, the internet may be a useful tool in getting kids more interested and involved in reading. There are many reading software programs that can be used for this purpose.

I think this information could be very useful in my future French classroom because if students are having trouble reading English, they are going to have an even harder time learning to read French. I could use online and reading software programs to get my students to be more interactive in reading and make reading more exciting for them. I could also try to find 0nline programs that would assist students in learning to read French as well. This would help them to learn more outside the classroom as well.


~Hayley


The link to this information can be found here: http://oc.course.com/sc/tdc5/index.cfm?action=issue&chapter=3

Education Issues: Wikis and Education

For the second part of this assignment, I chose a subject under Education Issues. Wikis and Education discusses the importance and detriment of Wikis. Some Wikis have only a few editors and are on specific topics while others, such as Wikipedia, have throusands of editors and encompass many topics. These can easily have fraud, as anyone can edit the content. As a teacher, I would not allow my students to use wiki sources in research topics. I know that as a student, I often go to wiki sources for information, however, whenever my teachers do not allow this, I often find a greater amount of information becaue it forces me to look at several different sources. Although wiki sources are somewhat helpful and can provide great information, they are not always completely reliable.

Liz

"Reading Aloud: Is It Worth It?"

This article discusses the advantages of reading aloud to students. Nancy Lacedonia, a teacher in Massachusetts, created a survey to gauge the effectiveness of reading aloud in a classroom setting. The findings show that classroom reading can enhance a student's reading ability and can create an interest in literature. Students who learn to appreciate literature are often more successful in school, and are often more likely to go to college.

I think that this topic is relevant to my future classroom. As an English teacher, I will be exposing my students to a variety of literary works. By introducing these works aloud, I can help the whole class to participate, and this will encourage class discussion and group learning. Reading aloud is a good way to bring the class together.

Integration Corner

While I was browsing through the integration corner, I found a website about writing activities for the web specifically for the use of foreign language teachers. Since I am a French education major, I found this to be very interesting and potentially very helpful for the future.
The World Wide Web is a very useful tool that can aid students in the mastery of a foreign language. It is useful especially in a foreign language class because it is very easy to find cultural documents and information. Foreign language teachers at the Technology Workshop of the Summer Institute of the California Foreign Language Project created web pages for all levels of students that are great examples to go off of in creating your own web activity. Also, since beginning level students often have trouble with reading assignments, these websites give reading strategies that can help the students in comprehending what they are reading. This can be much more beneficial to the students because they will be able to get help online from the website when they do not have a teacher available to ask for help.
I think these web activities could be very useful for my future French classroom. It will allow the students to be more interactive and they will be able to gain more knowledge, especially culturally, than just simply through in-class activities.


The link to this website can be found here: http://www.clta.net/lessons/writing.html

Integration Corner: Reading/ Language Arts Corner

Spencer and Hayley,

I chose to look at the Reading/ Language Arts Corner since there wasn't a specific English Corner. One aspect that I thought was pretty neat was the discussion on reading aloud in the classroom. A few people i nthe article commented on reading aloud in their own classrooms, one who teaches at the graduate level! Reading aloud helps students to focus and get settled before the lesson begins. In an elementary classroom, reading aloud helps give a visual thatwill later assist students as they learn to read on their own.

I will integrate this into my future classroom as an Engilsh Secondary Education instructor. I will make an effory to read aloud to my students at least a few times a week. If we are working on a book in class, I might choose to read portions of it to them. As we read, I will stop to ask thoughtful questions to keep the students engaged and thinking about the work. If we are not currently working on a book, I will choose either interesting and applicable articles, or a novel that will possibly intrigue the students.

Liz

It's a Delicate Balance

I have to agree with you, Spencer. I have been frustrated by computers malfunctioning so many times. I also think that too much technology in the classroom can become a bad thing if teachers start to rely solely on technology rather than their own creativity for lesson plans. It is important for teachers to continue to interact with their students and not use technology for everything. There needs to be a good balance of using technology effectively and using the "oldschool" methods of pencil and paper.


~Hayley

Not All Technology is Flowers and Sunshine

Computers crash. Hard drives are wiped out. Batteries die. Viruses destroy programs. CDs break, flash drives are misplaced, and documents disappear into the vastness of cyberspace.

Needless to say, technology has its disadvantages. Any teacher that relies exclusively on technology will be ineffective, and his or her teaching abilities will be drastically limited.

Hey...

What do you guys think of Sharepoint Designer? I think it's pretty cool how you can make websites and webpages so easily.

Have a great fall break! :)


~Hayley

Philosophy of Technology

Yeah, that's true. I'll probably use technology in my French classroom by showing videos of French news and also for listening exercises and stuff like that. But I don't think I'll use powerpoints too much because I don't think that would be very effective for teaching a language. I also think that technology can be a distraction to students, especially if they have their own computers to use in class like we do. A lot of times they are doing other things than what they should be doing, and this hinders them from paying attention and learning in class.

Philosophy of Technology in Education

I agree with Spencer. Technology will definitely be a useful tool for my classroom some day. I have really enjoyed learning about excel and how to create gradebooks there. Also, many of my teachers use PowerPoint in their lectures and I have found it much easier to follow, especially if I am able to access it online and save it to my computer, and then take notes on the slide. PowerPoint is a great way for students to be able to follow along with the lecture while taking notes on an outline of the lecture already in their possession.

Liz

Jane Eyre PowerPoint

This is the PowerPoint template we found that would work in an English classroom. It is about Charlotte Bronte and her work Jane Eyre. We added on the last slide what we would do to make it more interactive with the students. We also added an example question.

Technology in Education

I see what you mean, Hayley. Personally, I think that technology can be effective in any classroom setting if used correctly. All my English classes have used PowerPoint presentations to teach different works of literature, and I think the overall effect is beneficial. If the teacher is an effective communicator, then technology can be used to enhance his or her presentation.

Hey!

Well I haven't started thinking too much yet, but I think that technology can be helpful in education, but not in every class. For instance, it would be a lot more helpful to use it in science classes than it would be for English or French. So I was thinking that I might mention something about that when I'm writing it. What do you think?


~Hayley

Comp 204 A

Hey guys!

Have either of you guys started thinking about your Philosophy of Technology in Education yet?

Liz

Copm 204

Spencer and Hayley,

Welcome to our blog!

Liz