Wednesday, January 20, 2010

F500 Starting Questions and Autobiography

Ways I have used technology in and educational setting:
A. Within my mass media class, I get to use a great deal of "toys" with my students. I teach iLife and all of its basic uses, we spend most our time using iMovie to create an in house television show for Friday viewing by student body, so video work. We dabble in LiveFonts, LiveType, Motion, and PhotoSuite. My second year students use FinalCut . This class is my "dream team" (usually) Last year i had 5 students receive firsts from the state media fair (sadly not being done this year).
B. Within my regular classes, I use the basics. We use Power Point (with a smart board), this is the most popular application for my speech classes and gives them a great deal of confidence when speaking. Computer Labs are used for research, PLATO (credit recovery and remediation) and such.
C. I am the yearbook advisor at my school. These students use digital cameras, and sometimes InDesign, although more and more it is being replaced by publisher specific online software. These students most frequently use iPhoto for handling photographs, but PhotoShop is used some as well.
D. I also have a grant through CELL and work with a group of teachers who wish to increase their knowledge of technology . I teach bi-weekly workshops on applications and tools and we use each other to discuss applications that are workable for our students.

Ways I use technology outside of school?
How don't I???....FaceBook addict, GPS user, Cell Phone addict, Online Banking, etc...
A.. VIDEO GAMES!!! This is largely how I get to spend time with my kids, whether it is a riveting game of B eatles Rock Band, or Bum Boarding on the WiiFit Board, it is time we are doing something together, which is tricky with kids the ages of mine. Personally, I am addicted to time management games on my PC as well.
B. Photography. I take a great deal of pictures, and although I still teach the importance of printing them to place in albums that cannot be lost in a computer crash, and grabbable in case of a fire, I use my computer to sort and edit them and to make backups to share with family. I use Photoshop on occasion, but nothing to the extent that my 16 year old does.
C. I would have to say my cell phone is my other technology vice. The freedom and security that is offered to me as the mother of a driving, dating teen that my parents did not have is amazing. I get after school texts, updates on days...I get.. "I am alive mom, still at play practice," texts that make it possible for me to breathe and know my kids are alive and can get me if they need to so I am not tied to my house. I get to talk to my friends all over without concerns of bills and get picture updates from family that can be done in an instant when mailing a picture never seemed to happen.

A time when technology enhanced an educational situation:
I have had my regular sophomores (not honor students, regular kids from IPS) do iMovies that define an emotion using pictures, such as rage, or love. We used iMovie to create them. The point was I wanted them to see words as visual as we worked on figurative language. I had 100 percent participation and their movies made me cry. They took such ownership and put so much personal information out there for each other to see and discuss that it took 3 days per class to do what I had set aside a period to cover. The class bonded and it carried us through a great deal of the semester together.
A time when technology was not helpful or done for the sake of technology use...
PLATO- This is a state mandated online program used to remediate kids who cannot pass the GQE. This program was a good idea in inception, but has gone very wrong. Students sit in front of a PC and take tests, when finished they get re-taught the areas the struggled with and then test again. This is infuriating to me as these students hate tests, they must after failing them and being humiliated by them, why would going over the same procedure over and over help? The system says it is working and school systems require remediation teachers (like me) to sit our kids in front of the PC for an hour a day. These kids are not being taught how to learn, or read, or evaluate, they are being taught how to take a test. But the belief is because it is "technological enhanced evaluation tool" that is more precise than a teacher...it is used and is only becoming more commonplace.
Another example, simplistically, is teachers who assign power points for kids to read from, not the point, and not helping students use the tool effectively.

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