Chapter 5 Journal

What are search engines and how do they work? Search engines are software programs that use networks of computers to acquire and assess information about a topic from its databases. We often use search engines because we want to receive information about a specific topic on the internet. Search engines are brilliant, because by typing a single word or phrase you can receive millions of webpages regarding your topic within milliseconds. For example, there are sites that I utilize on a daily basis like Google and Bing. These sites allow you to search specific topics and often will populate frequently searched topics as you begin typing in what you're looking for. Search engines are also available for educational resources which provide more options for school-related topics and offer more scholarly resources.

This video was provided YouTube user socialmediadd

Tech Tool 5.1 Photo and Audio Resources on the Web Tech tool 5.1 demonstrates Flickr which is a photo managing and sharing tool on the web. Many educators use this locate and organize their photos. I've actually explored this site at the beginning of the semester and enjoyed it because not only can you put your own photos on there, you could use the photos that people have shared if you're looking for something specific. Tech Tool 5.1 also shows LibriVox which offers free audio recording of published books and other random material. I would definitely utilize this site for my students and myself. I could either use it in class reading or for students that have difficulty reading on their own.

Chapter 5 Summary Researching and Evaluating Internet Information Chapter 5 basically states how to make the internet a useful source by eliminating all the garbage. ICT Literacy means to be able to use digital information, communication tools, and networks appropriately to correct and solve information problems.Therefore, educators take this serious and they teach their student how to be IT Fluent. For example, the goal of an educator is to make sure the student knows how to approach and use the internet as if they were an expert. Search engines like Google have become a popular resource where student and other go to get information but if the student understands how it works and how to navigate it they are able to use as if they were experts, which is the ultimate goal. Chapter 5 also explains the differences between a free-text search, keyword/exact match search, and a Boolean search.It provides strategies on engaging the students and showing the student how to use these resources as well. When using the variety of searches you might come across different problems and receive different responses like misinformation and useless information. It also talks about Wikipedia and how it compares to a paper encyclopedia.

Chapter 5 also goes more in depth of how to educate your students on evaluating a website, strategies for teaching web evaluation to students, how to avoid plagiarism, and what causes plagiarism.

Chapter 4 Journal

How can teachers integrate technology into their work as educators? Teachers can integrate technology into their work as educators in many ways. First, teachers can integrate technology into their work as educators to present academic material and create interactive learning experiences. After doing my first 5 hours of observations, I noticed the teacher used many different ways of integrating technology into the classroom all day. For example, she used a smart board for her students to do demonstrate their answers on the board and also offered the students computer time during centers at the end of the day. I feel this teacher really used her technological resources throughout the day to help her students have interactive experiences and present education material throughout the day. Next, teachers integrate technology into their work for administrative purposes like taking attendance and responding to emails of events that could be occurring at the current time. Also, when teachers take their students to the library, this really gives the student more opportunity to advance with technology because in the library students have more advanced resources of technology that they could use on their own, which also helps the teacher integrate technology into their work as an educator. Furthermore, there are so many other ways that teachers integrate technology into their work schedules. They can assign homework to students that require the use of a computer. They can also use projectors and the internet to demonstrate different assignments and for personal use like tracking grades, attendance, and lesson planning.

Tech Tool 4.1 Online Technology Integration Resources After exploring some of the online integration resources, I could really appreciate the internet. I love the fact that there are so many resources out there to help an educator integrate technology into the classroom but also provide sufficient information to help the educator advance herself in her teaching skills.

Edutopia was a great resources, not only does it offer an overload of information on different technology topics, they also have contest for teachers to have an opportunity to win some extra tech tools themselves. Since I want to teach K-2 as my primary choice, I decided to explore this area on the site and got a lot of great information. I really enjoyed reading some of the articles and loved some of the videos I found. The video I'm posting this week was actually an idea I received from the Edutopia website called Phonics Vs. Sight Words. People were providing ideas on how where you could find additional resources.

  This Video was provided by YouTube user hooplakidz.

Chapter 4 Summary Chapter 4 provides lots of information on how to integrate technology and creating change. Along with the information provided to integrate technology, it also provides resources on getting extra information to help you integrate technology into your classroom. It also talks about how the use of technology can be divided into three separate categories: Inside-the-classroom teaching tools, Outside-the-classroom professional resources, and inside-and-outside-the-classroom learning resources for students. All three of these categories are then broken down into smaller categories with additional information that is great and how these additional resources are used as part of the job like teaching tools, office, and the learning environment. 

Chapter 4 also discusses the integration stages and issues you may come across on the job. Since every educator has a different teaching style, professional development is always required to help improve with the integration of technology. Having the appropriate support with your administration, helps curve these needs. It also brings up that educators might have an issue when using technology as a reward/punishment because reward can sometimes create destructive classroom dynamics. This will leave the student to lose interest because based on a theory from Alfie Kohn, the more you reward someone for doing something, the more they will tend to lose interest in what they had to do to get rewarded.

The digital divide, digital inequality, and the participation gap. This topic of the chapter really interested me because it talks about how students from low-income families sometimes don't have direct access to computers or internet. The term digital inequality basically says that adding more machines to home or schools will not changes or make a difference in access among different social groups.Participitation gaps occur when there is a lack of participation in student because they don't have the same opportunities as those with 24/7 access causing them to fall behind their peers.

Furthermore, chapter 4 continues to go on about how technology creates change and how teachers can create additional change with technology. This chapter I found to be very informative especially with the digital divide, digital inequality, and participation gap because I notice those things among my younger cousins who have the technology resources at home opposed to my other set of cousins who don't have the technology resources at home.

Chapter 3 Journal

How can teachers evaluate and assess their students? Teachers use many ways to evaluate and assess their students. As teachers begin planning their lessons and deliever their lesson to the class, they are able to being the process of how they will assess their students. After the lesson has been delivered properly is when educators can properly assess there students because it takes a minor process. First, personal experience is the first step teachers tend to educate and asses their student because they use the way they were taught. Next, educators use standarized testing to assess their students. This plays a major role in a students success because standardized test are required more and more and they determine whether or a student passes or fails a grade. Finally, teachers test also help influence how a teacher assesses and teaches their student because it influences the importance of a test to teacher which influences how important he/she might feel it is for the development of their students.

This Video was provided by awslutsky on YouTube

Tech Tool 3.1 Online Resources for Lesson Planning: Thinkfinity, PBS Teachers, and Giffy I chose Tech Tool 3.1 because with my other assignment I already explored PBS Teachers and found that site to be extremely helpful. I went to it for the lesson planning part and I really enjoyed all the ideas it provided for a teacher. I would defnitely use something like this especially because it provides many inovated ways of incorporating technology with you lesson and how to make it work for you. This site also provides ideas for different types and age groups of different students.

Summary of Chapter 3 Chapter 3 is mostly about how teachers plan, deliver, and assess lessons that engage students and improve academic learning through technology for the student. This chapter provides tips for lesson development using technology: what to teach, how to teach, knowing what students have learned, and putting all of these into action. Chapter 3 also provides different ideas on how to approach lesson planning in order to meet educational standards and the proper way to assess and evaluate students.

Chapter 2 Journal

How do students use technology for visual learning? Students use technology for visual learning in many ways including internet sites, videos, graphing calculators, software programs, and many other things. For example,things like iPads provide students who are visual learners to enhance their learning abilities with images as well as touch. Technology also allows teachers to promote visual literacy among their students. Visual literacy involves giving student the skills they need through images and colored text in many varieties of presentations. These will include pictures, diagrams, illustrations, charts, graphs, etc. Furthermore, visual displays aid a teacher in providing multidimensional ways of giving the student different perspective on the world.

Tech Tool 2.1 This tech tool provides web resources for visual learning. For example, The e-Skeleton Project provides the student we 2D and 3D digitized images of human and non-human skeleton. I'm actually very familiar with this website because it helped my pass a test I had to take once in my past Anatomy Class. I found this website to be very helpful with the memorization of the bones in the body. All of the websites in Tech Tool 2.1 provide the visual learner with color animations, videos, audio clips, and slide shows that help enhance the mind of the visual learner in order for this visual learner to grasp the lesson in hand.

The following video is a perfect example of how a video could be used through technology for the visual learner:

Credits for this video can be given to YouTube user Anatomyx21 

Summary of Chapter 2 This chapter discusses how technology makes it possible for visual learners to learn from different forms of technology and what these different form of technology provide for the visual learner and the teacher. It also provides the reader with the three learning theories that most educators tend to follow. These learning theories are Behaviorism, Cognitive science, and Constructivism. Furthermore, this chapters goes into the teacher-centered and student-centered theories. Out of both of these theories,i feel like a student-centered theory would probably be the approach I would use because I feel that learning should be a natural process. Although I tend to agree more with the perspective of a student-centered prospective, I think I would incorporate some of the ideas from the teacher-centered theory because even though learning should be a natural process, not all students learn the same way.






This chapter elaborates on Active Methods to engage students and gives the educator different ideas to engage the student like one-on-one tutoring and learning groups. It also explains how to use technology for visual learning.

Chapter 1 Journal

Credits for video goes to EDTP504 from YouTube

New technologies create many opportunities for teaching and learning. These opportunities come in many different format. Not only is the world changing everyday, but technology keeps advancing more and more each day. Therefore, technology lets you change teaching and learning that enhances the way the student learns.

Tech Tool 1.1 is very convenient for me now. Therefore, I could see how convenient it could be for my teaching career. Having an Ultraportable Laptop Computers is great because it's almost like carrying a paper planner but in a much more organized format. You can take it anywhere. The fact that you can work on something at home and save it to share in the classroom is great. In comparison to be able to use saved work from something you worked on at home, you could also use it to reuse material from the previous work which will help save time as well as give you extra time to modify the lesson to make it work better the following year.

Chapter 1 was a great introductory to the book because it shows how technology creates opportunities for teaching in learning. Also, it helps you understand the barriers that come between technology and teaching. It also gives you new ideas of how to overcome these obstacle when trying to integrate technology into the world of learning and teaching. After reading this chapter, I've noticed that many of my professors now have succeeded on integrating technology into the classroom while others have failed. Either way, I think this chapter has given me \great ideas on being successful when integrating technology into my classroom.