Reflection 2: CDK's Education Technology Place

CDK's Education Technology Place

After reviewing CDK’s Education technology place I found this website to be very interesting. The multiple you tube videos are interesting and informational. I previewed a few of them and thought it was a unique mixture of videos about education and about the students we future educators will be teaching. I really enjoyed the TED talk. I took to heart the part about treading lightly on students dreams and helping students figure out what their talent is. It was very inspiring. Besides the videos, I found the multiple different websites and twitters to be useful. While browsing through one of these sites I found interesting podcasts, tools for organizing your life, and interesting articles. I really enjoy that the homepage has multiple links that I will be able to make use of in the classroom. The tutorials on the Ipad page are very helpful and a good start to get comfortable with this new device. I am also grateful for the websites of past students. It allows me to meld my ideas with some of their helpful tips and designs. All in all, the website is very informative, easy to use and well organized.

Reflection 1: Technology Bits, Bytes & Nibbles

Technology Bits, Bytes & Nibbles

Math is not a subject that most kids enjoy. They loathe having to complete the problems and do not see how this content area would be applicable to them in the real-world. I am glad to say that Vi Hart has changed this way of thinking. Now, when students ask me why they must learn math, I will be able to relate it to one of Vi’s creations. I would be able to advise the students to view some of her entertaining videos so they could see the applications of math. I find these videos to be very interesting, and hope they would too. It was fascinating to see how doodling is very relatable to math and that math can also create art among other things. I have never thought of math in an artistic way before seeing her doodling videos. Besides her videos, I thought it was interesting that she attended a math conference and was very pleased while she was there. Vi mentioned that at this gathering the mathematicians were very excited about their professions, and that this enthusiasm inspired her to enjoy the conference and math. I have always known that being passionate about my content area is a very important aspect to being a good teacher. If they students see math can be enjoyable then they are more likely to want to learn about it. I was glad to see that she mentioned this in the article, because I believe that more people need to know this fact. It has a major impact in the way you decide to teach. I think that I will be able to show students her videos and do creative math projects with the students involving art. This is something I would never have thought to do before reading this article and digging deeper into Vi’s videos. One last thing, Vi mentioned that many young girls have been viewing her videos, which is wonderful. When I am a teacher I also hope to inspire young female students to be interested in mathematics.

I am from a high school that issued students laptops. I believe that it was a great help to my school and to the staff. While reading the article about whether or not laptops were helping a school, I was interested to see what the consensus was. The polls mentioned that many of the students and teachers believed the laptops to be more of a distraction than a useful resource. This surprised me. From my experiences, I saw that my fellow students and I were very focused even with the technology. But, I do remember that many regulations had to be put in place before we became focused. I think that this school needs to figure out different methods of regulating students’ behavior on their laptops. It is not taking away the students’ freedom but helping them to learn the proper way to use this technology. I was also surprised that the teachers said that the students’ work habits have became worse because of the laptops. I thought that this would be the exact opposite, but I was wrong. I was pleased to see that several students and teachers thought that the laptops were very beneficial and really enjoy them. In a world driven by technologic advances, I believe that I will have to face these same issues with technology in the classroom. I benefited from this article because I now know what to be cautious of with technology when I become a teacher. I know that I will have to keep the students on task and help them to not be distracted by their laptops. Besides having to be a good disciplinarian, I am enthused to see what interesting projects my students could create by using all of the resources that this technology provides. I think that it will make classes much more interesting and allow a wider scope of instruction.