April 17 (Day 3)

Today we talked a lot about how we could use cameras in the classroom. I feel like everyone had a lot of great ideas that would be very beneficial to students. I think that using cameras to record presentations would help students learn how to plan in advance with regard to their videos, and it would highlight how important collaboration with group members is during the whole process. I also think that recording students reading would be a big help to them, so that they could then go back later and watch these videos to see areas where they could improve, and areas where they've improved already. I also liked the idea about using videos in PE classes, because that sounds like it'd be a great way to show students proper technique for activities. I feel like these are really important things for future teachers to consider, because of the fact that technology is becoming such a huge factor in society.

April 10th (Day 2)

 Today we learned so many interesting things to be aware of when teaching. I really enjoyed the activity that we did at the beginning of class with the worksheets, that had different sets of directions. I was not really sure why we were doing the activity at first, but then when Denvi had people read their directions I realized that there were two different sets that people had received; one said to picture the sentences that were going to be read aloud to us, and the other one said to imagine how hard it would be to say these sentences. I thought it was really interesting that the majority of people who tried to picture the sentences did better in the question-and-answer portion of the activity than the majority of people with the other set of directions. I never realized how big an impact pictures had on how well students absorbed information. I also feel like that was a great activity to have us do before we started learning about Photoshop. I never realized how easily magazines could Photoshop pictures and give consumers false information. After doing our activity at the beginning of class I realized how important it was to make sure that whatever images I present to my students in class are accurate and don't present them with misinformation. I also really enjoyed what we started working on in Photoshop. I was very nervous to start working with the application, because I'd never used it before, but after all our instruction and time to figure out how things worked, I really enjoyed working with the photos and trying to put them together in a plausible way. Being able to use Photoshop seems like a good skill for any teacher, but I think I'd be able to utilize that tool especially well in a kindergarten classroom due to the fact that pictures are such an effective way to get information across to young students in a simple way.

First Day, April 3rd

Today we learned about Web2.0. I was surprised to learn that webpages were not always as interactive as they are now. Websites were essentially a piece of paper on the computer screen that people could look at, but could not interact with, so people couldn't click a "like" button or comment on things. I feel like being able to interact with people on websites is really useful, especially for teachers. I think that it would be very useful to be able to look up websites where teachers could post lesson plans and get feedback from other teachers. Hannah said that she found a website like that when we were exploring webpages today, and it sounded really helpful. I want to teach kindergarten, so creating lesson plans that teach the students new information without overwhelming them is something I'm worried about doing effectively. I think the websites where teachers can share lesson plans and ideas for improvement are a great thing that came out of Web2.0. I also found a website that had interactive games and printable worksheets for grades K-8, which I feel is another really important teaching method that came out of Web2.0.