Technology: Get the Student Excited About Learning

Technology in the classroom is increasing every year.  Students are starting to become more accessible to computers and other types of technology.  As teachers we need to keep up with the technology times and start to fill our classrooms with it.  There are many different types of technology that a teacher could use in his/her classroom but some of the technologies I would find helpful for my classroom would be Edmodo, Twitter, Jing, and Wordle.
Edmodo is a website that is kind of like Facebook but centered around education.  It is a place where a teacher could post their homework assignments and have their students turn it in.  For teachers it is an easy way to see who has done their work and who has not.  Also it is a good way to make sure your students are not doing their work at the last minute cause on Edmodo you can set time that it is due and see what time the students turned it in.  I was able to use Edmodo this year for the first time in two of my classes and I really liked it.  I thought I was a much easier way to turn in my work and to do my work on cause my teachers would post their homework assignment far in advance then that way I could work on it whenever I wanted and at my own pace.  I found it easy to turn assignment in on as well I never had any technology problems when trying to turn in my assignments.  The website, itself, was easy to use and I could always find the information I was looking for.  I also really liked the website because I always knew what my grade was because once the teacher graded my work there was a tab that I could go to see all my grades. Overall I feel as though every teacher should use Edmodo with their students because I feel as though it may make their student more enthusiastic to do their homework.
Another technology tool teachers could use in the classrooms with their students is Twitter. With Twitter being a huge communication tools for students with their peers, teachers should jump on the bandwagon as well and get a Twitter account.  Twitter would be a fast easy way to get in touch with your students in case of an emergency or to just even tell them something about their homework assignment.  A lot of times you can get Twitter to send a notification to your phone then that way if a student needs to get in touch with you they can tweet at you and it would almost be like them sending you a text message.  I know as a student if one of my teachers used Twitter to post assignments or give us updates I would receive that notification before I would ever think to check a site like Edmodo or some other forms of homework site.  I feel as an upcoming teacher this is a technology tool that I would definitely take advantage of because I feel like my students will see me as a "cool" teacher and they will be more enthusiastic to learn and do their work.  Twitter should be something all teachers look into because I feel like this is the up and coming social network and can really benefit in the classroom.
Jing is another technology tool that teachers should really take advantage of.  It is a program online that allows you to take images off of websites and crop them out and put them into other programs.  For example I wanted to use a image off a water cycle website page so I use Jing and crop it to the size that I wanted then I save it and converted to my PowerPoint slides.  One of the coolest features of Jing that if I wanted to put a weather radar map on my PowerPoint and I wanted it to move just as it did on the weather website I could Jing it so that it still moved on my slide. Jing is a really neat tool that teachers could use so that they don't always have to go back to the websites and take time out of their lessons trying to find pictures and such, with Jing you can just crop and put it in your lesson then that way you never slow down to look it up.
The last technology tool I feel would be helpful in the classroom in Woordle.  It is a interesting tool that allows you to put words into the system and then they create a design out of the word for example this picture show a Woordle of my name and things about me.  This could be a neat acivity you could do in class with your students.  To help them learn about someone or something you could have them make a Woordle so then that way not only are they learning about the subject material they are also getting to present their information in a fun and exciting way.  I made one in one of classes and I had a lot of fun with it.  We had to do one about something that we looked up to so not only did I get to learn about the person I also got to present my information in a really cool way and all of my peers really enjoyed it.  with this assignment I was excited to do it which made it one of my better assignments therefore I feel as though if other teachers use it in their classroom with their students they too will get the same results.
I think that technology in the classrooms in the best way to get student involved and want to learn.  I think that too much technology however can be a distraction, so even though there are a lot of neat ways to get your information across to the students more is not necessarily the better.  Each of these tools above can really enhance student learning as long as they are monitored.  Technology is the next up and coming thing and I think that schools and teachers need to jump on bored.

PBS for Teachers

One of the best sites that teachers can use for their classroom is PBS.org.  This website has various links to it that could really benefit teachers and their students.  Once of the links is a place where teachers can look up different lesson plans for different subjects.  The lesson plans entail all the information a teacher would need to know to perform the lesson.  Also on this website there are various links to different interactive sites that a teacher could pull up during class and show their students.  PBS.org really caters to teachers and tries to make their lives easier by providing tools and quick links to improve their classrooms.

As a future High School Biology teacher one of the links I found helpful was this lesson plan. This tells me as a teacher everything I need to know to be able to teach my students. Another link I found helpful was this interactive website.  As a teacher I could pull this website up and show it to the class and we could do the activity together.  One of the last thing I would find helpful as a teacher would be this slideshow.  If I as a teacher needed to find something quick to teach my student or was doing last minute planning I could pull this up and have an automatic slideshow without having to make one myself.
PBS.org is a great website for teachers and I recommend it to any new teachers or teachers who have been teaching for awhile because it brings up new ideas and fun activities for your students.  

Cyberbullying IS a BIG deal

It is a scary thing to think your child is being bullied without your knowledge but unfortunatly it could be happening. So parents, instead of trying to think it couldn't be happening to your child step up and ask your children what are they really doing behind their screens, and stop cyber bullying. 

According to Wikipedia the definition of cyber bullying is the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others.  Cyber bullying is not something we should take lightly according to netsmartz.org about one third of teens get bullied online and girls are a lot more likely to be bullied than guys.

In high school I knew a peer that was cyber bullied for months and she never told anyone until she thought her life was at stake.  There was a boy that was Facebook messaging her every day saying how ugly she was and would never amount to anything because she was too poor to afford college.  Also this bully threaten that if she were to ever tell anyone that he was bullying her he would personally come to school and beat her up.  She kept it secret for months and all of her friends could tell something was going on and it took one friend to really care about her to find out the truth.  Apparently this "dude" that was bullying her ended up to be a girl at our school who was jealous because this girl had "stole" her boyfriend.  When things started to leak out about the bullying the bully made one last threat that if she was to show up to school she would be beaten so badly that her boyfriend would never want to talk to her again.  Of course the school stepped in the bully was expelled from school and dealt with in the proper way.  However for the peer that had been bullied it took her awhile to really adjust to the fact no one was after her anymore, her friends said that it took her a solid month to really get  back to normal.

This is why cyber bulling is so important because just because the bullying has stop does not mean the person being bullied has recovered.  As parents we need to make sure that we truly know what is going on behind that screen.  My peer's parents could have prevented this if they would have just checked up on her and made sure everything was okay. This website is a cute website for parents to get to, to help inform their children about cyber bulling. Parents can be one of the major impacts on stopping cyber bulling because they can step and make sure that their child is doing what they are suppose to be doing on the internet.  Too many time parents just let their child go on the internet and never once check up on them to see what they are really doing. 

My Past with Technology

Throughout my elementary, middle and high school years I have noticed a rise in technology in the classrooms. In elementary schools we had over head projectors and chalkboards.  Our overhead projectors were carried around on a cart and shared from room to room  As shown in the picture on the left this is what one of my elementary school's projectors would have looked liked. I remember the worse place to sit in class was right next to the overhead because there was a fan that would blow out hot air and it would get so hot that the students would either have to move or the teacher would shut it off and start writting on the chalkboard instead. Unfortunatly this was the only technology our school could offer so classes were usually boring and if you didn't sit in the right place usually hot. However the older I became the more technology advanced and started to create hands on technology for students.  
In middle school technology really started to sky rocket in the media and also in my classrooms.On this link for example is one of the technology tools students were allowed to use; these lap tops were placed on cart and teachers were allowed to check them out as needed. I remember the most interesting class periods were the ones that you would walk into the classroom and see the lap top cart sitting there.  The teachers always stressed to us how expensive the lap tops were and if we were to break one we would have to pay for it on our own.  Along with the lap tops a very selected few teachers had SmartBoards and just about every teacher started teaching with PowerPoints and doing activites through their computers.  Classes started to become more interesting and we as students were getting more involoved in the classroom.
Once in high school technology was in full swing.  Every one of my classrooms had a SmartBoard and every teacher used their SmartBoard and so did we as students.  As shown in the picture on the top right SmartBoards were fun to play with and really engaged all of us as learners.  Teachers really took advantage of the SmartBoards and it was fun as a student to be able to use them as well and it made a lot of my peers as well as myself want to participate and learn in class. At my high school however they really stressed internet safety and even made us sit through assemblies of how to use the internet. Even though they seemed boring at first they were informative and overall I think that my peers and I really liked them and learned things we would of never of thought of would have been dangerous.  With this experience I feel as a future educator that I have more of a background to inform my students which then in the long run will help them and me.
I believe that having technology in my classrooms really helped me pay attention and want to learn because I was allowed to interact with what I was being taught. In this article, they talk about how much having technology in your classroom could really benefit your students and help with other needs not just education.  I think that with technology growing rapidly that schools need to get on board with technology and really expose there students to all the great things that technology can do for them. In these upcoming years I feel as though every classroom in America is going to at least a SmartBoard and maybe not more.  There are way too many cool "technology tools" out there that would help benefit the students that it would be silly for a school not to invest in all the wonderful technology around them.  In conclusion, this video below really drives home the message of schools need to jump on the technology bandwagon, because "the times are changing."