Reflection over Chapter 5

This has been a very overwhelming week. It is the middle of the semester. I am ready to be done with the semester, but the end is not insight yet. I am tired. I feel so behind in everything. I am digging my hole deeper and deeper. I don't know if I'll ever get out. I am ready for fall break. Just another week and a half...

This weeks reading was interesting. I liked the aspect on reading images. Too often images are seen as decoration and not part of the text, but images can add so much to the text. I enjoyed looking at the pictures in this reading. A whole lesson can be created using just one of those images. The use of images will deepen students learning.

I have enjoyed working on the newsletter. I think this will be fantastic way to communicate to the parents what my students are doing. Parent/teacher communication is vital, and usually done when something is going wrong, or at least that is what I have witnessed in my classrooms. It is also a good way to showcase the students' work.

Chapter 4 Reflection

This week's reading has been the most valuable so far to my content area. My content area is Math. I have learned a lot of ways I can use technology within my classroom when I'm a teacher.

There is one thing that is bothering me, and has been bothering me since I did my first field experience. I am finding that students are too dependent upon technology and not enough on themselves. Students are lacking the knowledge of the basic facts. I know of 6th grade students that use their fingers to add on if a calculator is not available. These students are also lost when it comes to the basic multiplication and division facts. The students are very knowledgeable about the calculator and how to use it. However, it takes longer to perform these basic calculations on a calculator than it does to do them in your head. I think it is hard to justify the use of calculators when it is replacing what I consider a very valuable life skill of knowing the basic facts. Are these students going to carry calculators with them in a grocery story to ensure they do not go over the budgeted amount? I see the value of using calculators in doing some calculations, however, I think that our elementary teachers have become too dependent on their students using the calculators instead of teaching them how to preform these operations.

I have enjoyed creating the spreadsheets in Excel. I can see this being used as a valuable tool in many of the content areas.

Reflection Chapter 3

I enjoyed the readings this week. It was over some material that I was a little more familiar with. I really liked the idea of a paper-less classroom. I think it would be fantastic to turn in all assignments electronically. I know there are few ways to do that. It can be done via email, posting on a web page, or through beaming. It would cut down in the paper that we use in a classroom, and also make technology an integral part of our class. I would love to find more web sites through www.yahoo.com and www.hotbot.com. Some of the sites I found were wonderful. They included applets that would go very well with my unit plan. I would like to search for more such web sites.

Weekly Reflection Over Chapter 2

I have enjoyed learning all about linking computers. I am furthering my knowledge of computers and web design. I started my journey in CS 130 last semester. This class is taking what I learned in that class and taking it farther.I found the copyright rules very interesting. These will be hard to remember, so I plan on keeping that list on hand. My questions for this week is we have learned how we can make the internet accessible to our students with out actually being online. There are students that do not have access to computers outside of school. How can we fix this? What resources are available for these students?