Of all of the content areas that would use technology as a basic foundation for exploration and learning, it would seem that the arts would be at the top of the list. In my school, I have seen technology used in creative ways to help students explore new mediums and ideas. When I first read this chapter, my mind went immediately to the tech programs at Foster Tech. I've had several students who've learned all about digital and graphic technology in the Digital Media and Commercial Art and Photography programs at the Foster tech center. In these programs, students are encouraged to explore photojournalism, advertising, lettering on autos and on signs, television production, music videos, and public service announcements (among many others).
In the regular high school, we do have quite a few art and music options for students. The only school-based dance opportunity I am aware of for students is a dance club that meets after school. As for theater and drama, oh my. We have TONS of options for students who're interested in dramatics. Some of these programs occur outside of school, but we also have several courses offered through the English department that would allow a student interested in theater to pursue dramatics during the school day.
More than any other chapter, I thought that this one offered ideas that could be applied in the regular classroom/ content area. I know that in my classroom, history and arts are the content areas that I integrate into my lesson and unit planning most frequently. I am excited to have the links and the ideas that the author of this chapter made available for exploration. I also liked the way that she separated out the various areas related to the arts. This makes this chapter more user-friendly as a reference.
I think that the difficult aspect of teaching the arts and using technology is that technologies are changing so rapidly, as is art, and it could be a difficult task to try and keep up with both of these worlds. A solution that I've seen work in our schools is for teachers to work together to allow students access to a variety of experts who may have more knowledge in technology to work with students. The art teachers in our building have been very open to this method. After all, there is really no way that the two art teachers could become experts on every new program, every new technique, and every cutting-edge artist.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
TPACK Science
It seems to me that of all of the content areas addressed in this book, science education definitely uses the most technology on a regular basis. Science=experiments, right?
I have to admit that science was never one of my favorite subjects. The best science experience I remember having is when a college professor allowed us to read a book about Darwin for extra credit. It was a long, information-packed book and I was the only person in class who completed the entire assignment. Cutting up dead things--no. Reading a book--yes.
The part of the chapter that I responded to the most was the discussion about how to teach with technology. I think that it's hard to allow students 'play time' when it involves potential down time or expensive equipment, but I think that some kids will always be curious and want to push that shiny button. If it won't break the technology, then let students play for a while. It sorta seems like introducing students to a new novel. The first task I ask my students to complete is to look through the book to check out the set up. This short bit of exploration saves time later when they know where to find the table of contents and the index.
I also appreciated that the authors noted the necessity of clear and thorough directions. Part of the frustration of technology and science (for me) is that one or two false moves can almost ruin your chances for success. I always hated this part of science class because I would inevitably cut something too far or put too much water on the slide or smoosh the lens of the telescope into the slide and have to start all over. I think that detailed directions could've prevented some of my science mishaps, maybe. Big maybe.
Because so much science technology, included the dreaded dissections can now be completed using technology, it seems that teachers of science need to find ways to stay current in terms of what's available online for resources. A computer generated frog can save a lot of stomachs and a lot of money for the school system, I'm sure. Science teachers have a wealth of technologies available to them online, they just need to develop the searching skills and have the time to play and search for useful tools.
I have to admit that science was never one of my favorite subjects. The best science experience I remember having is when a college professor allowed us to read a book about Darwin for extra credit. It was a long, information-packed book and I was the only person in class who completed the entire assignment. Cutting up dead things--no. Reading a book--yes.
The part of the chapter that I responded to the most was the discussion about how to teach with technology. I think that it's hard to allow students 'play time' when it involves potential down time or expensive equipment, but I think that some kids will always be curious and want to push that shiny button. If it won't break the technology, then let students play for a while. It sorta seems like introducing students to a new novel. The first task I ask my students to complete is to look through the book to check out the set up. This short bit of exploration saves time later when they know where to find the table of contents and the index.
I also appreciated that the authors noted the necessity of clear and thorough directions. Part of the frustration of technology and science (for me) is that one or two false moves can almost ruin your chances for success. I always hated this part of science class because I would inevitably cut something too far or put too much water on the slide or smoosh the lens of the telescope into the slide and have to start all over. I think that detailed directions could've prevented some of my science mishaps, maybe. Big maybe.
Because so much science technology, included the dreaded dissections can now be completed using technology, it seems that teachers of science need to find ways to stay current in terms of what's available online for resources. A computer generated frog can save a lot of stomachs and a lot of money for the school system, I'm sure. Science teachers have a wealth of technologies available to them online, they just need to develop the searching skills and have the time to play and search for useful tools.
TPACK Math
The question asked in the first part of this chapter is not such much whether or not technology should be used, but how and when. The age old question that I know I always struggled with as a not-so-stellar math student is" Why can't I use a calculator?" I still don't completely understand why I can't use a calculator in some areas of math class, but I do understand that there are many areas where technology can be used to elevate the real-world application of a concept.
I know that in my own life, math has only been of relevance and/or interest when I've had to use it as part of my job or to figure finances. My husband, who is a carpenter and uses geometry and algebra on a regular basis, often stumbles when leaving a tip or calculating a good buy. We re in perpetual amazement of each other for our very different talents where math is concerned. This made much more sense, though, in reading through this chapter. I have always been horrible at math, but I hardly ever use anything other than simple math: fractions, percentages, addition/ subtraction, and multiplication/ division.
I wonder what would have happened had I been exposed to more relevant, exciting math in school. I think that this is where today's students are at an advantage. There is an abundance of technology, we just need teachers who're preceptive and imaginative to know when and how to best employ it. Also, I think that there is tons of room to introduce these ideas to all levels of students. This sort of real-world technology could be so engaging and exciting to students who're smart but put off by the constant worksheet, workbook, textbook routine.
Part of the challenge for today's math teachers has to be securing access to the right technologies for the right students. I do know that some of the activities would never have appealed to me, no matter what. However, I can picture some of my students who are looking forward to the year that they can take a tech program at Foster Tech being satiated by some math activities that use practical technologies. Again, though, we are going through some rough financial times and resources are shrinking. All the more reason, I guess for teachers to use their imaginations, like Einstein recommends!
I know that in my own life, math has only been of relevance and/or interest when I've had to use it as part of my job or to figure finances. My husband, who is a carpenter and uses geometry and algebra on a regular basis, often stumbles when leaving a tip or calculating a good buy. We re in perpetual amazement of each other for our very different talents where math is concerned. This made much more sense, though, in reading through this chapter. I have always been horrible at math, but I hardly ever use anything other than simple math: fractions, percentages, addition/ subtraction, and multiplication/ division.
I wonder what would have happened had I been exposed to more relevant, exciting math in school. I think that this is where today's students are at an advantage. There is an abundance of technology, we just need teachers who're preceptive and imaginative to know when and how to best employ it. Also, I think that there is tons of room to introduce these ideas to all levels of students. This sort of real-world technology could be so engaging and exciting to students who're smart but put off by the constant worksheet, workbook, textbook routine.
Part of the challenge for today's math teachers has to be securing access to the right technologies for the right students. I do know that some of the activities would never have appealed to me, no matter what. However, I can picture some of my students who are looking forward to the year that they can take a tech program at Foster Tech being satiated by some math activities that use practical technologies. Again, though, we are going through some rough financial times and resources are shrinking. All the more reason, I guess for teachers to use their imaginations, like Einstein recommends!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Collaboration with Social Studies Department Head
The colleague I chose to work with on my integrated unit has been working closely with the social studies department head for the past couple of years. They work together in their planning so that their curricula are in line and their students have the same basic experience no matter who they have as a teacher.
Because my colleague and I are now working on an integrated approach, we thought that it would be wise to include the social studies department head in on our planning. This teacher turned out to be a gret resource in helping us to think about the span of topics and issues covered over the course of the year. She has also approached me in the last week with a video version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I have not viewed this tape as of yet, but I think that it could definitely be useful.
The important aspect of this connection and collaboration is not so much the sharing of a video, but the sharing of resources and ideas in general. There is a lot that can come from a single hour spent brainstorming with peers. I often connect in this way with content-like colleagues, but this hardly ever happens in such a planned-out manner with teachers of other contents. I don't know that I've ever set aside a prep period to plan with a teacher of another discipline. Hopefully, this will all translate to a more transparent set of goals and objectives for students, a closer connection to more and more colleagues, and the opportunity to integrate with representatives of other disciplines in the future.
Because my colleague and I are now working on an integrated approach, we thought that it would be wise to include the social studies department head in on our planning. This teacher turned out to be a gret resource in helping us to think about the span of topics and issues covered over the course of the year. She has also approached me in the last week with a video version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I have not viewed this tape as of yet, but I think that it could definitely be useful.
The important aspect of this connection and collaboration is not so much the sharing of a video, but the sharing of resources and ideas in general. There is a lot that can come from a single hour spent brainstorming with peers. I often connect in this way with content-like colleagues, but this hardly ever happens in such a planned-out manner with teachers of other contents. I don't know that I've ever set aside a prep period to plan with a teacher of another discipline. Hopefully, this will all translate to a more transparent set of goals and objectives for students, a closer connection to more and more colleagues, and the opportunity to integrate with representatives of other disciplines in the future.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Tech Integration
In our school, we are lucky enough to have a tech integrator who will come to our rooms and teach you how to use the applications and programs contained on our laptops. She is extremely knowledgeable and is a great asset to our school.
Once I decided to use GarageBand for my unit, I knew that I needed help to understand the entirety of what this program could do. I did not want to rely on my own understanding of its possibilities and functions, so I scheduled a meeting with our tech integrator. We met this past Thursday.
It turns out that I had figured out much of what this application could do in just playing around with it at my house. This was an advantage for us because we were able to move on to other aspects of the projects that I had not yet thought about. Like, how do I want students to share their recordings with other students? Do I want to show them on an LCD projector, or did I want them to create MP3 files and make some sort of playlist on itunes?
The tech integrator and I discussed all of the possibilities and she had recorded questions that she needed to which she needed to find answers, we were done. We scheduled a follow-up meeting for the 23rd.
Once I decided to use GarageBand for my unit, I knew that I needed help to understand the entirety of what this program could do. I did not want to rely on my own understanding of its possibilities and functions, so I scheduled a meeting with our tech integrator. We met this past Thursday.
It turns out that I had figured out much of what this application could do in just playing around with it at my house. This was an advantage for us because we were able to move on to other aspects of the projects that I had not yet thought about. Like, how do I want students to share their recordings with other students? Do I want to show them on an LCD projector, or did I want them to create MP3 files and make some sort of playlist on itunes?
The tech integrator and I discussed all of the possibilities and she had recorded questions that she needed to which she needed to find answers, we were done. We scheduled a follow-up meeting for the 23rd.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
TPACK Chapt 6 (Social Studies)
I found the chapter entitled "Toward Democracy: Social Studies and TPCK" quite interesting. For one, the chapter raised a few issues that I had never quite thought of before. The first issues that I had never really put into a complete thought is that social studies, as a discipline, doesn't really have a distinct shape. Yes, there are subtopics like the ones mentioned in the chapter, but the discipline is pretty all over the place. This must make it challenging for departments to cover the variety of standards and subject matters involved.
Another issue that I had never thought of is that social studies is pretty much just what the name implies. Therefore, if we are to study societies we need to integrate technology into this subject matter in a major way. We need to do this because the newest members of our society, the newest generation of citizens on this planet have been majorly affected by technology. Whether societies have been affected due to the presence of technology or because of its absence differs depending on its geographical and political location, I'm sure. But the fact that technology has changed the cultural, political, and economic picture of every culture on the globe is pretty much indisputable.
Just think about our last election. When declaring his running mate, President Obama had the world waiting for a text message. Truly. We were all waiting, with great anticipation, the arrival of a text message that would tell us the name of the person who would be chosen to become second in command of one of the most powerful countries on this planet. Brilliant! As for countries where information is not so readily available, how much talk has there been about google's decision to conform to China's censored web searches? How many of us have seen footage of monks protesting against Myanmar's tyrannical regime? These examples show the power that technology has on our modern global culture.
Some of the challenges in using technology in social studies classrooms are outlined in this chapter. The one that I find the most frustrating is the lack of organization of historical materials on the web. Maybe this is due to the fact that I am not a social studies teacher, but I find that I spend way too much time looking for pictures, documents, timelines, etc. when I plan history-based lessons using the internet. I can only imagine what it feels like to be a student with less experience searching for relevant materials. Because of this, I do feel like we all need to spend more of our time teaching technology-based skills explicitly. Students come to use from a variety of backgrounds and some have limited experience in using technology. Or, some students may have developed horrible habits when using technology, such as plagiarism. I find that many students who plagiarize often do not know that they have done so and that they have no idea how to accurately give credit to another's work and/ or ideas. Simply teaching students about basic research skills could prevent some of this problem.
Finally, whenever I read about the necessity of using technology with students in any of the content areas, my mind automatically shoots out exclamation points because I know that not every teacher has access to technology in the ways that he or she would like. I know of many teachers who would love to integrate technology into their lessons on a more regular basis but find that the technology we do have access to is either unavailable or an extreme hassle. In some areas of the school, a laptop cart is available whenever you need it and in others you need to plan weeks in advance in order to sign up to use one. Also, more money needs to be spent on professional development for teachers in technology integration. We have workshops and demos here and there, but there has been no money for workshops and district courses for the last couple of years. I took a district technology course about four years ago. It was filled with teachers at a variety of levels of experience and it was super valuable for me and for others because we got individualized attention. More of this needs to be made available if we expect teachers to integrate technology-based lessons into their teaching repertoire.
Another issue that I had never thought of is that social studies is pretty much just what the name implies. Therefore, if we are to study societies we need to integrate technology into this subject matter in a major way. We need to do this because the newest members of our society, the newest generation of citizens on this planet have been majorly affected by technology. Whether societies have been affected due to the presence of technology or because of its absence differs depending on its geographical and political location, I'm sure. But the fact that technology has changed the cultural, political, and economic picture of every culture on the globe is pretty much indisputable.
Just think about our last election. When declaring his running mate, President Obama had the world waiting for a text message. Truly. We were all waiting, with great anticipation, the arrival of a text message that would tell us the name of the person who would be chosen to become second in command of one of the most powerful countries on this planet. Brilliant! As for countries where information is not so readily available, how much talk has there been about google's decision to conform to China's censored web searches? How many of us have seen footage of monks protesting against Myanmar's tyrannical regime? These examples show the power that technology has on our modern global culture.
Some of the challenges in using technology in social studies classrooms are outlined in this chapter. The one that I find the most frustrating is the lack of organization of historical materials on the web. Maybe this is due to the fact that I am not a social studies teacher, but I find that I spend way too much time looking for pictures, documents, timelines, etc. when I plan history-based lessons using the internet. I can only imagine what it feels like to be a student with less experience searching for relevant materials. Because of this, I do feel like we all need to spend more of our time teaching technology-based skills explicitly. Students come to use from a variety of backgrounds and some have limited experience in using technology. Or, some students may have developed horrible habits when using technology, such as plagiarism. I find that many students who plagiarize often do not know that they have done so and that they have no idea how to accurately give credit to another's work and/ or ideas. Simply teaching students about basic research skills could prevent some of this problem.
Finally, whenever I read about the necessity of using technology with students in any of the content areas, my mind automatically shoots out exclamation points because I know that not every teacher has access to technology in the ways that he or she would like. I know of many teachers who would love to integrate technology into their lessons on a more regular basis but find that the technology we do have access to is either unavailable or an extreme hassle. In some areas of the school, a laptop cart is available whenever you need it and in others you need to plan weeks in advance in order to sign up to use one. Also, more money needs to be spent on professional development for teachers in technology integration. We have workshops and demos here and there, but there has been no money for workshops and district courses for the last couple of years. I took a district technology course about four years ago. It was filled with teachers at a variety of levels of experience and it was super valuable for me and for others because we got individualized attention. More of this needs to be made available if we expect teachers to integrate technology-based lessons into their teaching repertoire.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Meeting with Colleague
Meeting with my colleague about our interdisciplinary unit was time well spent. It is sometimes hard to carve out time to have these important discussions in our every day teaching schedule. We met for most of a prep period last Friday and I think that it was a productive time for both of us.
We started the meeting by looking over my stage one, which my partner had yet to see. We found some corrections that needed to be made and talked about the progression of her unit in relation to mine. It is really exciting to think about the experience that we're creating for our students for next year. We have extended the collaboration of this one unit to a year-long course that we will teach in a collaborative fashion. Therefore, each of the units we teach in our English and history classes will correspond and correlate. This is super exciting because it will hopefully make for a more rich experience for our students and for us as colleagues.
An interesting layer to this particular collaboration is that my colleague is also taking a curriculum course right now at another college. She is using the same basic text that we're using, but we are getting differing messages about curriculum and how to use the book and workbook from our professors. We've basically decided to meet somewhere in the middle and use the planning guides and materials in a way that will work for us and for our students.
As far as leadership is concerned, the fact tat my colleague is also working from the same text helps tremendously. It is not like I am talking with her about ideas she has not heard. In fact, she is using the same process that we are using to create our unit. I feel like my colleague and I have already worked together for such a long time that leadership is not as much an issue as is being completely cognizant of what I'm envisioning so that I can put my ideas and my vision into words during our planning sessions.
Next week my colleague and I will be meeting with the head of the social studies department. This teacher has been collaborating with my colleague for some time on curriculum and planning for the junior history class that they both teach. Now, we are going to meet together to talk about the conceptual lens we've chosen to use for our classes next year. Also, I'm going to meet with the technology integrator to learn more about the Garage Band program. I've played around with it some, but I want to understand the entirety of what it can do.
It's interesting and cool to me that this one unit as opened up conversation between myself and several of my colleagues. My Alt Ed colleague and I are working more closely together on curriculum than we have in the past and we've reached out to include others in this process. Hopefully, this collective effort will translate to better instruction next year for all of our students!
We started the meeting by looking over my stage one, which my partner had yet to see. We found some corrections that needed to be made and talked about the progression of her unit in relation to mine. It is really exciting to think about the experience that we're creating for our students for next year. We have extended the collaboration of this one unit to a year-long course that we will teach in a collaborative fashion. Therefore, each of the units we teach in our English and history classes will correspond and correlate. This is super exciting because it will hopefully make for a more rich experience for our students and for us as colleagues.
An interesting layer to this particular collaboration is that my colleague is also taking a curriculum course right now at another college. She is using the same basic text that we're using, but we are getting differing messages about curriculum and how to use the book and workbook from our professors. We've basically decided to meet somewhere in the middle and use the planning guides and materials in a way that will work for us and for our students.
As far as leadership is concerned, the fact tat my colleague is also working from the same text helps tremendously. It is not like I am talking with her about ideas she has not heard. In fact, she is using the same process that we are using to create our unit. I feel like my colleague and I have already worked together for such a long time that leadership is not as much an issue as is being completely cognizant of what I'm envisioning so that I can put my ideas and my vision into words during our planning sessions.
Next week my colleague and I will be meeting with the head of the social studies department. This teacher has been collaborating with my colleague for some time on curriculum and planning for the junior history class that they both teach. Now, we are going to meet together to talk about the conceptual lens we've chosen to use for our classes next year. Also, I'm going to meet with the technology integrator to learn more about the Garage Band program. I've played around with it some, but I want to understand the entirety of what it can do.
It's interesting and cool to me that this one unit as opened up conversation between myself and several of my colleagues. My Alt Ed colleague and I are working more closely together on curriculum than we have in the past and we've reached out to include others in this process. Hopefully, this collective effort will translate to better instruction next year for all of our students!
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