Final Thought

I loved seeing how EVERYBODY seems to be moving away from paper and pencil. I mean, it does have its place, but seeing so many interactive lessons and hands on activities was great.

I plan on continuing with DVTech Pro next year if it is available. I realize that we merely scraped the surface of what is out there, and I am excited to dig deeper.

You were all amazing and patient instructors. Thank you so much for all you did.

Final Class

I enjoyed my first experience in Tier 1 of DVTech Pro. I have always considered myself to be comfortable with technology but never truly a pro. With the things I learned during my first session (blogging, wikis, movie maker, smart board) I do feel like I am better than I was before. I have long believed that in order to teach children, we need to teach them in the ways they learn. Today's children live and breathe technology. It is what they know, understand and enjoy. So, knowing this, it seems that in order to keep them engaged and interested in what they are learning, technology needs to be a major component in the classroom.

I am concerned about losing the knowledge I gained in this class. I am worried I will forget how to do many of the things I learned. I guess I just need to keep doing the things I learned so I don't lose the knowledge.

I would have liked to have done more with the Smart Board. It would have been nince to see more way to integrate it into lessons and into my classroom. That is the only thing that I would have liked to have had more hands on experiences with.

Rubric for Graphing Activity

Click me to see the Rubric.

Backward Design Lesson Plan

Create a Graph

Wiki

With practice a wiki spaces could be fun for the students in my class. I am creating one right now for my class which will provide information on lessons for the week, homework, study guides and information for upcoming tests as well as a links page for educational websites.

What is a cue?

A cue is a precursor. It is a hint or a clue as to what is going to be learned, what the important information is that needs to be watched for, and will often try to pull in prior knowledge. KWL charts are a tool that works well for organizing cues. Questions are used to check for understanding.

Will I Use it?

There were many interesting tools introduced to us today that are foud on our laptops. In trying to think of which I would use and how I would use them in my teaching...well, Windows Movie Maker is a given. There are so many cool things students could do with that. Picasa would also be nice for taking pics and putting them into ppt or other programs.

Almost Done

As we get closer to the final session I feel more stressed about completing my work, remembering what I have learned and finding ways to implement it in my class. I am still very unsure as to what videos are expected from me, whether my videos have to be my backward design lesson plan being taught, whether or not the videos of my students have to be the same lesson being practiced that I was taped teaching. Add to all this the fact that I am the master procrastinator and I am feeling the stress. Sadly, with AIMS prep, parent teacher conferences, spring break, then AIMS I had no time to do any of the summary frames or the consensogram. We are back into social studies and science this week, so I do plan on trying them out. I just hope that I can get all my work done on time :(