iBook

During my four years at UT, I was never presented with the opportunity to use an iBook textbook for a course.  I was under the impression that iBooks were simply text with no other capabilities.  After using the iBook for this course, I learned that the iPad gives the reader the ability to highlight text, make notes, and even take quizzes.  These iBooks allow readers to be interactive with the text by watching videos and receiving instant feedback for quizzes.  These videos were some of the most helpful aspects of the TPTE iBook for me.  While working on my ActivInspire flip chart, I often looked to the iBook for help, especially when suing the magic eraser tool.  The book provided very clear descriptions of what the different tools were, as well as the ways to use these tools in your presentation.  In addition, having the textbook on a small, light iPad made it much easier to bring with me and use at all times.   If these chapters were given to me in textbook form, I would be less likely to bring it with me to class while working on this flip chart. 

One aspect of the iBook that I did not like was simply the fact that it had to be read from an iPad.  I do not have an iPad, and it would have been nice to have the opportunity to download this book onto my Mac instead of the iPad. 

Even though this iBook was very convenient and user friendly, I will continue to use printed textbooks.  I am a hands-on, visual learner, and I benefit more from highlighting and taking notes in a paper book. 

Interactive White Boards

Interactive white boards, also known as IBMs, are large boards connected to a computer or projector that have opened up numerous new opportunities for teaching and learning.  These IBMs are being used across the country for projecting, but their main purpose is to give students an opportunity to interact during a lesson.  The boards, provided by Promethean, SMART, and Mimio, have been adopted with much excitement, but still there is little research on their effect on student knowledge.  Research has shown that the success of the students using the IBMs depends on the ways the teacher implements them in their lessons. 

The most effective ways for a teacher to use the IBM in the classroom include highlighting, zooming, hiding or revealing text or photos, dragging and dropping, matching, and using student response systems.  Research studies have laid out many of the instructional benefits of using IBMS, which include improving classroom management, encouraging active learning, providing flexibility in handling lesson materials, enhancing interaction between peers, drawing learners attention to visual media, and enriching instruction. 

According to a study done by Marzano and Haystead, using IBMs brought about a 16-percentile gain in student achievement versus not using them.  The main features that directly linked to improvements in achievement were student response systems, graphics and videos, and reinforce properties. 

Like most educational tools, there are both positives and negatives to their implementation.  Studies have shown that not all teachers use these boards effectively.  This may be due to the lack of teacher education with technology and the IBMs, but research has also shown that even teachers who do have advanced technology skills don’t always use the boards effectively.  In addition, technology is not always reliable, and there will be times when the IBMs do not work the way the teacher was intending.  When this occurs, both the students and the teacher may become frustrated and the likelihood of the boards being used again decreases. 

Overall, the interactive white boards are very useful tools that, if used properly, have the potential to benefit students learning in a number of ways.  I am very interested in using these boards effectively in my future classroom and observing how they can increase achievement with my students.

University of Houston: Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is the use of computer-based tools to tell stories or educate.  These stories combine art and storytelling with graphics, audio, video, and web publishing to educate an audience and focus on a specific point of view.  These stories are typically 2 to 10 minutes long.  The use of digital stories extends past the classroom into libraries, neighborhood community centers and even businesses. 

Digital storytelling can be used in many different ways in the classroom to capture the attention of students, increase their interest in exploring new ideas, presenting information, and enhancing current lessons.  Research has shown that using media like these Digital Stories helps students to retain new information as well as comprehend more difficult topics.  The use of Digital Storytelling can also be an effective tool for students when they are asked to make their own stories.  Giving a student the opportunity to create a Digital Story will generate interest, attention, and motivation for technology in the classroom.  This task will assist students in learning how to download images, present their knowledge, and improve their computer skills.  After the stories are made, students could post their work online and have the opportunity to critique other students’ work.  A teacher could use these stories online as a study guide for students or as a way to teach different parts of a lesson.  For example, I would divide my students into eight different groups and assign each of them a planet.  The students would be responsible of making a Digital Story about their planet, and after presenting to the class these stories would be the study guide for our next test.

Overall, I find Digital Storytelling to be a very useful skill in the classroom.  I think that all teachers should experiment with technology like this and determine what works best for his or her students learning.  For more information on Digital Storytelling, examples, and a step-by-step guide, visit The University of Houston website.   

Reflecting on Ms. Cassidy's Blog

Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog is a blog about a class of six-year-olds in Canada.  This blog illustrates how great of a teacher Ms. Cassidy is!  She uses technology often in her classroom: she has students read to Rebecca, a future teacher, through Skype; each of the students have their own blog; she has a class Twitter account.  The students’ individual blogs have videos that show different lessons such as adding, subtraction, and the senses.  The students also comment on each other’s blogs.  I find this to be very impressive, especially for students of this age.  The class Twitter account is linked to the class blog, and this shows that each of the students have an opportunity to post a photo of anything they are learning in the classroom.  This is helpful because it is another way to inform the parents what their students are learning, and it could be used as a way to assess the students in a unique new way.  A second way that technology is included in the classroom is through the use of iPads.  Ms. Cassidy’s blog shows that the students in her class use iPads for measuring in math, taking photos, and a number of other ways.  This information is something that I find important to place in a blog because, like the Twitter account, it allows other teachers and parents to see how their students are learning in ways that are creative and new.  It is important for teachers to incorporate technology into his or her classroom, and I truly believe that Ms. Cassidy does this in the most effective ways which are shown through her class blog. 

The blog itself is free of grammatical spelling and punctuation and it is easy to read. There are many photos and videos that enhance the blogs visual appearance as well as the content.  Overall, Ms. Cassidy's blog is one that I would look to as an example for a future classroom blog.

Evaluation of Website

The website that I evaluated was “Scholastic”, a website full of useful games, articles, interactive activities and lesson plans to assist students, teachers and parents.  

By evaluating this website I learned how to distinguish between a reliable, valuable website and one with little to offer.  The objective for this assignment was to evaluate websites based on author, publishing body, accuracy, currency, and lack of bias, and I believe that my experience evaluating “Scholastic” assisted in mastery in this objective because I learned the key factors to look for in a website.  Finally, I learned the many ways to incorporate technology, especially websites such as “Scholastic”, into a K12 classroom setting to enhance students' learning.