Class on Smartboards

I really enjoyed this class, because we had the opportunity to learn and use the smartboards. Although I have known about smartboards for a while, I had never been able to actually use one. I had no idea the extent of the options that smartboards give teachers to use in their classrooms, and they are really fun! I can definitely see where students and teachers would have fun using this technology in the classroom. It gives students the ability to learn in a fun and interactive way. It is disheartening to realize that all schools cannot afford smartboards, because they do not get the opportunity to benefit from all that they have to offer.
The tutorial that we watched was a very descriptive and useful way for us to learn how to use the smartboards. We were able to watch it step by step in the video and then figure it out for ourselves using the actual smartboard. This way of learning was very effective and I know have a good understanding of the basics of the smartboards.

Wendy, Kira, & Liz Podcast

Podcast.mp3
Our podcast is brief debate about the age of the earth (creationism vs. radiometric dating) sparked by a discussion of exponential functions.

2/12/09 Class

I thought today's class was very helpful. The site thinkfinity.org will be extremely useful when deciding what activities we can implement in our classrooms. Not only are there sites for every content area, there is also a site for lesson plans based on NYS standards. This could be very helpful to ensure that we are staying in line with the standards that NYS mandates. The activities that are available are really endless and these sites could help someone find ones that will be helpful to their specific needs. In my fieldwork I last semester, I observed a teacher who used a smartboard and an interactive museum site, which showed the houses that most of the poor lived in during the early 1900's. This site among others could have possibly been found on one of these sites and ended up being a very interesting lesson. The Intel for education site seems like it would also be very useful, because some of the tools seemed like they could be used in a variety of different content areas.

2/5/09 Class

I felt that this class taught me a lot about podcasts. Being able to do a tutorial with resources around me that could be helpful if I got stuck was very useful. I think that if I had made a podcast for the first time alone, I would have been very lost. I am glad to know that there are programs such as these that I am learning now, before I am a teacher who needs to use these in the classroom and is confused with the program. I learned a lot about recording tracks, but more importantly how to easily edit and change the recording. A lot of these skills I had used before in other programs, which made it a little easier for me to learn. I also learned that instead of telling a student how to do everything, it is better to ask them to try what they think will work, so that they can figure it out on their own. This will be useful so that they will remember how they fixed the problem so that they will be able to do it in the future.

12/29/09 Class

Even though I thought that I was pretty familiar with both Microsoft Word and Excel, I found myself a little confused with the program. This class taught me past the basics that I had already learned and helped to think of new ideas that I could use these programs for. Instead of just a word processor and a spreadsheet, these programs can help to form tests, picture ids, and so much more. The functions on the Excel program were very convenient because they allowed for feedback based on the student's responses. I think that these programs should be taught to all students because of the benefits they have to offer even at such a basic level.