Tweet It!

Tweeting isn’t just for the birds these days! I am so interested in the way teachers could use twitter in the classroom. So at first when I heard this idea I felt a little bit uneasy, especially because it is such a large social networking website that anyone can have. After thinking about it a little more though, I found some advantages to having an education based twitter account such as communication. This is an awesome way to keep parents up to date on what is going on in the classroom. You can alert parents very easily on things such as homework, materials needed the next day for class, and exciting things that happen in the classroom on a regular basis. Another reason twitter is good for educational purposes is because it is a quick and easy way for students to ask their teachers question. They can just tweet their question and their teacher will receive an instant notification, whether it be about homework or what to bring to class, and then the teacher can respond just as quickly. Also if it is a homework question, other students in the class can then also see it and maybe help their fellow classmate out. I think that if it is possible to make your Twitter account safe and monitored regularly, it can really add a little bit of extra help and information to a classroom. So if our future is going to continuously be technology based, integrating it into the classroom will be a battle worth fighting for.

When the teacher says rap it up, she means it!

Music, who doesn't love it? And since the answer to that question is everyone loves it, why don't teachers use it to educate their students? I had gone to a guest speaker who had a breakout session about using rap to teach. This idea was awesome right off the bat! I think it’s a great way to get kids not only excited to learn but it also is a catchy way to help them remember information. When I was younger my mom had bought my brothers and I a cassette tape we could listen to in the car that sang multiplication facts. I loved listening to this music because it got in my head so quick and I could show off to my friends at school. I think that music is a great way for kids to learn, and memorize things. Not only can teachers make up their own song but they can also YouTube many different types of raps and songs to give them ideas, or even just use in their classroom. I also think this is a great opportunity for teachers to have their students make up their own raps for memorization. Not only can the students be graded on this but they will also acquire a tool for studying and memorization. I really think that since we have so many different options open to use in the classroom we should take advantage of them. It is important for educators to frequently change the way they teach in order to keep their students attention and interested.

WOW!

Technology these days is incredible. I was sitting in my last observation class and I was watching the students interact with the SmartBoard and I was in pure amazement. Not only was I amazed with the technology itself but I was also amazed by the way students know how to use it. The kids in my class knew exactly what to do during the whole lesson, making me feel silly for not completely understanding or following what they were doing. I remember when I was 8 years old, my family got our first at home computer. I was in awe as my brothers and I opened it up, and beyond excited. Forget all of the other toys I got, who cared about dolls when you got a brand new computer? So now, over a decade later, we can chat with people all over the world, through facebook, twitter, and even face to face on skype. It would be so interesting to skype another classroom in a different country and see how our students could interact. It would be like having cyber pen pals! So with this immense amount of technology I feel that education could never be boring! There are so many opportunities to take advantage of!

Power Down Day is a DON'T

POWER DOWN DAY WAS HORRIBLE! It was so hard, but at the beginning I actually enjoyed myself. When I woke up in the morning I was kind of excited that I didn’t have to check my phone or Facebook. It felt good just starting my day having no one bothering me or no one to respond to, just me, myself, and I. I was able to make it through the first hour and a half without even looking at my phone, knowing that since it was off I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. It was a little bit after noon when I started to become a little restless, but that was just before the storm hit. All at once I started itching to use my cell phone. I needed to text my friends and see what it was we were going to do that day, and I really wanted to check my Facebook, it had been almost 12 hours since my last log in. It was getting tougher by the second and I didn’t know if I was going to make it. So, instead of sitting around and waiting for sleep, which was about 10 hours away, I decided to do something worthwhile, and go shopping. So my mom and I (I had no way to get a hold of my friends) went to the mall, and pretty much any other store in Mentor just to keep my mind off of it. My mom really enjoyed the fact that I could not use my phone because we could carry on a conversation without interruption, and I was actually focused on what she was saying. After shopping we went out to eat together and then rented a movie for the whole family to watch. It was a really relaxing day with the family, but I can’t lie, by ten thirty that night, I had turned my phone on, and checked Facebook. So I failed at power down day, but I did try my hardest, it is just impossible for a person in our society to actually go a full day without technology.