Chapter 1 - What Will Students Learn?

Chapter 1 is all about software to use for setting objectives.
My favorite was the electronic newsletter for the parents. It sounds like a wonderful idea - cutting out so many steps in the printing, folding, and sorting process of the hard copy way of doing things. Plus, in the example the newsletter was sent directly to the parents so the school didn't have to rely on the students being responsible for the delivery or using money for stamps. I wonder if my school could do this. How would we get the addresses for all of those e-mails? Is there any way we could capture them off Parent Connect? I often wished I had my students' e-mails too to send them homework or project deadline reminders. I do understand that not 100% of my students or their parents have e-mail, but I expect more than half of them do. Sometimes I call my absent students during the class they are absent from. When the other students see me do this they often give me their cell phone numbers so if they are ever absent they would like for me to call them directly. So, I probably could text my students class news and reminders, but I don't know how to send a mass text. The other thing about the example electronic newsletter was that it included the learning objectives for the month. I really liked that idea. I imagine that parents are more likely to help their elementary students with their homework than those some parents are likely to help their high school students. Even with that as my premise, it's still important to give that information, to let everybody know what's going on with their child's education. So, yes, a newsletter for the parents from the high school that included the objectives from the classes would be a good idea. A teacher could still have her own web page but the whole school periodically e-mailing out a newsletter would really be a nice gesture of communication.
This chapter also suggested a teacher blog as a way of communicating with students. I did look at the teacher blogs that were included in the chapter. I do like the idea of blogging for my students but, just like poor Ms. C's blog from the chapter, I don't think my students would visit it. I often wished I had a place on-line to post certain things for my students and their parents to easily access, things such as - class objectives and expectations, a class syllabus, test outlines, and project rubrics. Since I'm already using Eduphoria for my lesson plans, I wonder if that could be accessed by parents and students. Otherwise it would be repetitive for me to post with the district on Eduphoria and then the post the some information on a classroom web site or blog.

The Survey Monkey does seem like a useful tool to find out what the students already know and what they are interested in learning about. I do like the KWHL (what I KNOW, what I WANT to learn, HOW I will learn it, and what I LEARNED) tool. When I used this before I had to help the class brainstorm the "what I Know" part and the "what I Want to learn". But with enough help on those two parts I do think my students could use this as an organizational tool for their projects in my class. Using Inspiration for this will allow them to easily put it in presentation form to share with the other students.

The Introduction

The introduction reassured me that my part of this technology is having the student use it as an academic tool. (I remember the information overload back in the 80's when we took BASIC first instead of just learning the word processing.) So I remind myself I don't need to be a computer whiz, I just need to help the students discover what they can learn from/with the technology. I have 4 student computers in my classroom that the students are already using on a limited bases. The students work independently on Rosetta Stone, the tutorial software from our textbook publisher, or a limited number of internet/computer projects I have already designed. Often the students working on the computers will ask each other for help, or even another student who's not on the computer. This is good - collaboration and communication. My desire is to increase the complexity and number of the projects I write for them. I am enrolled in the Google Earth workshop. I plan on making a virtual tour of a Spanish speaking city then assigning a similar project to my students - they'll have mine as an example.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

The video was short and to the point - I need to include more technology in my instruction! I am glad I'm taking this workshop since it is something I truly need to work on. I do appreciate that my students run much of their lives with technology and have an eagerness about using computers. I do know the technology is there, but certainly don't use it that often in my personal life. I mean, the long phone calls I make to my sister are still on land lines - hers and mine. I realize that although I have a clue of some of the technology out there I am not a regular user of it. I need to include technology in my classroom teaching for the sake of my students and not just for their accomodations, modifications, or learning styles, but because as a teacher in the 21st century it is my job. I will incorporate more technology in my classroom. For example - my students do use Spanish-English dictionaries but I will find a couple of good bi-lingual dictionaries sites to add to the "favorites" on the student computer stations. (maybe that way too they'll be more inclined to look up the word they don't know instead of just asking me)