Better Test Questions

I had never heard of this before! I thought it was one of those things like our professor has said since the beginning of the semester, if the work is done for you use it. This man along with others did research to come up with a variety of competency requirements for questions and they are published for us and others to see and use. Most teachers only asked and assessed the lowest type of knowledge questions, but a better way to assess people is to ask questions that apply knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This creates an environment that is not boring for students, rather fun and challenging. I will absolutely use this in the future!
I learned this week that pitures are had to put into the taskstream. I tried to scan, download for a digital camera, and I still cannot get it! But I really liked the inspiration 8 program and will plan to use that and Bloom's Taxonomy.

Mapping Article

I loved this teacher’s style of teaching. I saw the students involved in the community, participating in service, learning plants and the eco-system, chemistry, research, computers, environment awareness, cause and effect, and debating which means the students needed to know their material well. There is no better lesson then life and this program showed it. I thought that is was nice to start the article off by stating that the teachers learned how to work concepts like these at a workshop because then it seems possible for me to achieve things like this for my classroom! “Inspiration 8” might be a better, or just another choice, of where students can show the material they learn like the one shown on page 3.
I enjoyed learning the program “inspiration 8” because it will more than likely come in handy for us as teacher in the future. Also the rubric program was so useful and necessary, that was very cool! This class is turning out to be less scary than I thought:-)!

Blog #3- Oh the changes

Hey I did not have a title for my last blog, and I think I needed one so this Goes with the next one:-)
I am still learning, and the ideas that I have gained this week were from the article we read. Commputers are tools that have the potential to create a better learning experience for students if the teacher know how to implement that.
(cont. to next blog)

Oh, the Changes We’ve Seen was just the article that we need to read entering the teaching field. I thought it was interesting and informative because I have not a clue about incorporation technology into the classroom. I know that I want to incorporate technology but I just figured that some more computer savvy teacher would have to be (or rather get to be) the one to do it, and I just figured I was out of luck. It was nice to see at the very end of everything, in the The Integrated Technology Classroom: An Experiment in Restructuring Elementary School Instruction, in the last column on the last page it said that doing special instruction like they were doing would take “extra work including training and leadership responsibilities in their own schools.” This told me that I could learn how to use technology for the sake of students by training in conferences and things like that, and we (teachers) have to do that type of learning all the time anyway! It was also cool to hear all the quotes from excited students, and learning the different roles that the students take on as they work on the computer enables us to see how learning and content is still present.

blog2

I thought that the article was a little vague for a person with my small experience with technology. The authors did not give ages for the examples of how to use technology, or they did not give enough of a definition of metacognition (a word that I never heard previously).
I did think that their ideas on preconception were interesting well put and right on. I had to explain seasons to my three and four year olds and I know that my three year old does not understand the concept still because he thinks that any day it is hot it is summer, and it is not easy to tell him that he is wrong and in other places, he has never been, winter is cold, rainy, and snowy.
Their ideas on integrating new concepts with the ideas that children already have is so obvious yet I had never heard it before. Overall I thought that the piece was worthwhile and I have kept a copy for my notebook of ideas.
This week I have learned many tools that can and will help me. I have learned how to google better, more about the internet and the www, and now with this article I have learned that children at any age have preconceptions. Teachers can assess the preconceptions using technology and also use it as a tool for another way to learn information.

Hi Class

Hi Class! Because of the lack of technology in my schooling background I have not seen much technology effecting children. That is not to say that I do not want to see how it effects children and how as a teacher I can use it to help them. I have never even done a power point for and class. When I was a senor in high school I heard that term for the first time but it did not effect me, all of the senors after my class would have to know it though. Three years later I entered college and I saw freshmen in college do these presentations with ease in my spanish class. I wanted to know how to create one ever since. It is a way of obtaining information in a way that can be creative and fun.
I have learned what could be the most important peice of infprmation to me, and that is not to wait untill the last night to do my computer work. I do not know much at all about computers and each year in college I have learned more and more. I hope to learn like power point and other tools that can make learning better for my students as a teacher. I would also like to know who to stay on top of technology!