Review and Web-Portfolio

I really enjoyed this class. The first day, I thought I knew everything there was to know about technology. I knew about the internet, Powerpoint, and creating videos. What I didn't know was all of the other new technologies that were about to be brought before me. I have discovered a lot about technology and myself through this class.
I learned that the internet can be used not only as a research tool, but in the classroom for student activities. I learned about new technology such as the Interactive Whiteboard and 3D Projectors. I would be so lucky to have these things in my classroom someday.
I found making the Smart Board presentations fun. Being an art major, I am a very hands on kind of person. I learn with visuals. The interactive whiteboard facilitates that very well.
It was beneficial to write the technology notebook. Reading about different technologies available to today's students made me open my eyes to the world of technology. Coming from a somewhat unconventional high school (a charter school) it was interesting to hear about online schools and the schools whose curriculum is technology based. It is hard to run a school that is so innovative.
The cumulative part of this class is of course the Web-portfolio. I feel tied everything together. Looking at each assignment individually, it is hard to see the big picture. With the creation of the website, I see that all of this research and planning is critical to becoming a great educator.
http://msernst.webnode.com/

Video Project

The video project turned out to be quite the experiential experience. After not being able to attend the original class period intended for video production, I rented a mini DVD camera from the library. Of course the files were not compatible with any editing programs. After downloading three different conversion software's, I found a configuration that worked. From then on, it was smooth sailing.
Veronica and I created a video on the effects of smoking. Since both of us have family members and friends who smoke, smoking seemed like a logical topic to create a Public Service Announcement. With help from her husband we filmed a smoker walking up the stairs and becoming winded. I played the non-smoker. Together we can stomp out cigarettes and live healthier lives.
Prior to this experience I had never uploaded a video on YouTube. I never really thought of it as being educational, more like a bunch of drunk idiots shoving kittens in toilets. Now I see the educational value. Students can learn a lot creating their own videos and posting them to the internet. It is a great way to become involved in their community.
After the first few bumps, the video turned out to be a success. I hope you can enjoy it and it inspires you or a loved one to quit smoking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTYIthWB2qY

Interactive Whiteboard

The interactive whiteboard is a great tool for the classroom. I think that the students can really get into the personal interaction. There are a lot of ways that the teacher can interact with the students and really get them involved rather than just lecture. It has the potential, as with any technology, to become boring if used everyday in the classroom or for the entire class period. It will be great to use for little activities during the day to keep the students focused and motivated. The advantages of the interactive white board as opposed to a plain whiteboard, or even just using powerpoint, are that you can save your class notes and set the students up for interaction. Students learn more by doing and the interactive whiteboard makes that a lot easier.

Video in the Classroom

First off, I would just like to say that the 4 Generations: Water Buffalo Movie definitely brought a tear to my eye... just one, like the Native American crying about polluting the land in that commercial a few years back. (you all know the one). A video like that might be a great beginning to a lesson on community and charity.
As for using video in any past projects, it would have come in handy when I made that PowerPoint presentation on the classification of animals in high school science class. I must admit that I was guilty of overly using the effects button and redundancy of bullets. Being an art student, I have made my fair share of video projects.
When it comes to using video in my classroom, I will use it in a number of ways. I will use video to engage the students about a topic, such as Native American rituals or Chinese Watercolor Painting. Being and art teacher, the students will have a few video assignments. Some might include making their own commercials, a video tour of the art room/school, a video of puppet shows using puppets the students have made, or a day in the life of the student. Students can also make Podcasts of what they have learned in my classroom as well as others.
Video is open to creativity which is essentially what teaching art is all about.

Closing the Gaps in engagement in learning

This chapter mainly discusses the importance of the internet in education. It tends to discuss the use of "technology" (by technology, the article means the internet) in a high school setting. I understand when they talk about the primary ingredients that foster involvement and motivation; Faculty and students need to have competence and control, a strong belief in the value of education, as well as a sense of belonging. I believe that the curriculum should be relevant to the students experiences and goals.
However, I don't agree with their statement on how the gap between engagement and learning can be closed by "encouraging our faculty and their graduate students to take education issues seriously". This implies that the faculty and their students don't take education seriously or for that matter care about education at all.
This article leaves me a bit confused. When they mention undergraduate students and graduate students, are they talking about them in terms of teaching them or in terms of those students preparing to be teachers? I also feel that this chapter answered very little questions on how to close the gap between engagement and learning. They offered minor suggestions on how to use the internet in the basic subjects such as math and science. But they also said the technology should be integrated into the curriculum as if it was always there. The actual means of technology should (the computer or projector) should fade into the background therefore bringing the content to the forefront. This was a good point, but it does not tell me how to close the gaps between engagement and learning. I guess that is up to me.
I appreciate that they made clear the importance of maintaining lectures and reading, but again this does not pertain to the subject of art. They mentioned that with the integration of internet in the classroom students can DO history and science rather just read or talk about it. Well, students were DOING art before the invention of the internet. Sending students to make art on the internet seems counter intuitive and almost backwards.
The internet has its place in all classes. It is a great interactive tool that can raise a child's interest and knowledge in other cultures. It is also great for research projects. But as far as art is concerned, as of right now I don't see many other uses for it.

Technology in Art.

The world of teaching has changed since I was in elementary school. The lessons I remember learning in art class between grades 3 and 5 seem almost outdated. While their content is still important (things such as the elements of design) the way in which these methods are taught are so different now. There is a fine line between teaching children the new technology in the ways of art and cutting out more traditional methods of art making.
When I see the new technology I am concerned that eventually all curriculum will be taught online and have not seen many online curriculum's in the way of art. Art requires a hands on approach and it is necessary for all children to experience and learn the techniques in order to grow as individuals.
This is just a rant; a concern of mine. I feel the need to engage the children using technology relevant to the student's outside experiences, but at the same time do not want to loose the personal connection the material, classmates, and teachers.

Excel Ideas

Everyone knows how much I love one day workshops! So here's one you might have actually found interesting: Excel in the classroom.
Some ideas for classroom activities in the art room:
1. Have the students use Excel to chart a graph of their favorite colors. Students will design a survey of 6 different colors. Each student is to pick their favorite color. We will analyze the data and enter it into Excel. Then create a graph or pie chart.
2. Students will keep track an inventory of art supplies using Excel. Each semester we will count the number of paints, boxes of markers and crayons, brushes, paper, etc. and the students will mark it into an Excel spreadsheet. They will then see how much supplies were used throughout the year.
3. Students will use it to keep track of the art they have created. This list will include the date, title, and any opinions on the piece they made. They can use the list to reflect on the work they created at any time.
4. Students will create an Excel spreadsheet of important artists in history. This list will include the name of the artist, date of birth, location, important works created, important events, the genre of art created, and the date of death if applicable.
5. Students will chart the probability of getting certain colored legos in a box of legos.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is an easy way to store and find interesting websites. It is most commonly used among teachers in order to share websites that other professionals have found useful. There are so many websites out there and with social bookmarking it is easy to search websites through colleagues with the same interests and profession. This saves a lot of time. Teachers may also post course readings and important websites through a social bookmarking site. This saves paper and ensures that all readings are located in one place.
Students can use social bookmarking sites as a way to keep all of their references listed for school research projects and in turn share these websites, which may be helpful to other students.
I think social bookmarking will help me because I no longer need to keep bookmarks and can access all the important websites from any computer.
I choose to use Diigo as my social bookmarking website because spelling out delicious with all the periods in between was a pain. Also, some schools block that site because of the word.
http://www.diigo.com/dashboard/neonangel

Lesson Plans from Google Apps

There are only two lesson plans in my content area of Fine Arts.
The first lesson plan is A Place in Time with Google Tools- The Impact of Photography designed for grades 10-12. In this lesson plan, the teacher must first create a Google Earth tour of a few selected photographs that have influenced the US or World opinion. The students will then view the teacher's earth tour and select photographs from American photographers. They will then watch a PBS film "American Photography a Century of Images" and view the online film guide in Google Docs. Students then create their own website and Google Earth tour based on the findings of the photos they selected from the original tour the teacher created. The students must properly site the information and teachers can provide feedback and critiques by using the comment feature in Google Docs. This lesson plan covers the NETS for Students standards 1. Creativity and Innovation and 3. Research and Information Fluency.

The second lesson plan is Great Moments in Art and is designed for students grades 6-8. Students are to use Google Calender to compose a calender of important art events or artist birthdays in history. They use museum links to find this information. Upon entering the information along with location into the calender, the student will also create a Google Map where students can click on the location and see a photo of the location. Students may do this lesson in groups or alone. The NETS-S Standards are 2. Communication and Collaboration and 3. Research and Information Fluency.

Google Apps

It would have been really helpful to me in college if I had the Google Apps calender. I would have loved to share the schedules with others and been able to see when my teammates were available for practice. And who doesn't want their very own website? That would be awesome. It might have also been helpful to be able to share my documents with others, such as the writing help desk, in order to write a more informative paper or presentation.

And I thought I was part of the Net Generation! Ha!

The language the students use is often times the language that I use. I familiar with the most computer terminology. I consider myself part of the Net Generation. I am no stranger to the various forms of media used by Net Geners today,but I'm sure there are plenty of things that I do not know about. I find it hard to believe that at this point in time, there are still professors who refuse to use email. I must admit that it has been a long time since I've set foot in a library for a research project and that most of my information can be found on Google or Wikipedia.

However, I might have to agree with the attitudes of the Generation X when it comes to getting to the point. I don't appreciate classes where the majority of the time is spent getting off topic while students repeat the same points they've already made just in different words. I am here to learn, and granted there is a certain value in a class discussion, but when it takes away from the main topics we are supposed to be discussing I start to loose focus.

We can't always teach students the way they want to be taught. Just because they learn by giving them all fun and games doesn't mean it should be the only way to teach them. Students need to know that when they are done with school, the business world will not accommodate to their learning process and will more than likely require you to read the texts and that the power point presentations will be boring in a business setting. Students still need structure and discipline in order to make it in the business world. I'm not saying that using technology in fun and interesting ways is a bad, we just have to consider its implications in settings outside of school and how a generation can progress without valuable reading and comprehension skills.

As I read the Diigo articles, I am thinking about all the tools and terminology of web 2.0. I was reminded that I had no idea what web 2.0 even meant. I have to constantly tell myself that this information is important to my success as a teacher. I feel very close minded and have to change my way of thinking. But it is not easy. All of these things the students have learned slowly over a long period of time, and now I am forced (through my own drive for success) to learn these things within the next year and a half, or possibly less. Perhaps it is that I am not really a total part of the Net-Gen but only partially.

I am skeptical of strictly online schools at the K-12 level. Is this a product of my only partial involvement with the Net Gen? I am so stubborn that I just can't believe that learning everything online could have a positive effect on children? I see that online schooling can cut back on the budget for education, but does the budget outweigh the students final educational outcome? Will the students wake up one day and realize that they have been missing out on so much by learning at home/ These are questions I can not answer and leave it up to researchers and parents who are willing to take that risk.

I must admit that I have not heard of a lot of the R/W technology. Although I have heard of Flickr, I had never used it and was unaware of its photo annotation. I do not know what an aggregator is. I have never used nor heard of Google Docs so I went to the site. It seems pretty useful to me. It is all the word processing documents found in one place where you can share it all without the hassle of downloading the file to the internet and copy and pasting text.

I leave you today with a quote from Chapter 5 of Educause and a video I found on School 2.0.

"Lessons last longer if we understand the relative steps to reach them."

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=7191679&page=1

The Net Generation

Today's children, known as the Net Generation, learn by doing. Not just doing, but doing fast. What some may call impatience, the Net Geners have termed "immediacy". The texts we have read this week will lead us to believe that this immediacy stems from the generations involvement with technology from birth, or at least a very early age. I tend to agree that all the technology that our children are exposed to are building a different "brain" than those of previous era's and this greatly effects how we should be teaching our students.

Chapter 2 makes a few valid points that I can relate to such as the need for structure and engagement, which I think is true of almost all generations. I can also look back on numerous occasions when I found myself simply skimming over readings. However, I don't believe that all students prefer to work in teams, although I believe that it is still an essential skill to have. I found it also interesting to know that children like to make a difference in their community, which is also a characteristic specific to the Net Generation.

I agree with the use of technology for practical purposes, not just for the sake of using technology. When using the technology in a fun and innovative way, rather than simply copying and pasting the regular lesson plan in a technological format, the students are engaged while at the same time giving some structure to the lesson.

I think it is important to remained focused on things like reading, writing, and math and not lose sight of those things while making lesson plans whose main goal is to keep the student focused.

As for the article on Connectivism, it seems a little dangerous to me that the ability to learn is more important than what we know. So yeah, I know how to research things, but if I can't retain any of that information, then what good will it do? I suppose it's part of a never-ending cycle of incoming knowledge and with technology and information changing as fast as it does, the ability to learn new information might be more important than knowing the outdated information.

In the risk of this being too long, I leave you with a quote from the "21st-Century Digital Learner" as described by a student when speaking of teachers and technology:

"You think of technology as a tool. We think of it as a foundation-- it's the basis of everything we do."

In Depth

This class is going to be a bit more than expected, but I can handle it.