Week 2 Reflection 2

Week 2 Reflection

          I feel I have the basics of technology usage down; I use technology daily at both school and home.  When we were assigned to make a Blog I assumed it would be pretty simple.  Many of my friends use blogs to keep family and friends up to date on their lives and I visit a Blog about one of my favorite TV shows frequently.  I found it was very easy to sign up and start the process but as usual I spent way too much time on picking out the fonts and backgrounds.  I could see myself using a blog in the future to keep my friends and family up north up to date or possibly for school as a tool for homework questions or general class questions/comments.  The RSS Reader on the other hand I knew little about.  After reading about them on Wikipedia and asking my husband I now understand they are a great time saver.  If you are visiting multiple sites a day to get your news, celebrity gossip, and crafty ideas you can save time by starting a RSS Reader.  Now I am able to easily see the recently added information for all my favorite sites in one place.  It took me a few minutes to get everyone’s Blogs on the Reader but I think I will continue using this tool after class to waste less time on the internet.

         

          The two articles I read this week had a lot to offer; many of the ideas presented just made sense.  The Cone of Experience for example is a great graphic organizer showing multiple learning experiences.  The Cone does not necessarily go in a certain order and one lesson may cover multiple sections of the Cone.  Let’s say a chapter is to be taught to middle schoolers, a teacher who assigns the reading as homework or lectures on the chapter is using experiences from the top of the Cone.  Many of these students will leave confused and not have a concrete basis to recall this information on.  If another teacher uses a hands on inquiry lab to address this chapter the students now have learned by doing; they have experienced the real thing and will have an easier time recalling this information again. 

          When categorizing tools or lessons into an area of the Cone, many things must be considered and overlapping is bound to happen.  Creating and maintaining a Blog for instance could be at the top of the cone simply following directions to set up the template but could also be at the bottom of the cone if you are designing, creating, or analyzing an idea or experience.  It truly depends on the Blogs main purpose.  An RSS Reader also will overlap into different areas of the Cone; depending on the sites followed you may be reading information, looking at pictures, watching a video, or taking a virtual tour through a museum.  Because you are mainly reading and gathering information on an RSS Reader I would think it lends itself more to the top of the Cone.  After reading this article it really made me think of the variety of learning styles I have in an individual class and how Dale’s Cone can be used to come up with ideas to teach them in a way that makes sense to them.

          “Computer imagination” is important when it comes to learning using technology.  Keeping a student engaged on the computer involves finding useful sites and new exciting technology.  I recently took a class that introduced me to a variety of new ways to have students’ present information.  If you have a shy student who does not feel comfortable getting up in front of the class have them use voki.com or instead of making another poster board have your class use glogster.com and create a virtual poster instead.  The students enjoy using new technology and viewing sites that make learning more effective and increase their understanding of a topic.  Using a blog as an education tool you could easily embed videos to capture your student’s attention.  We are preparing to start our chemistry unit so a few videos of explosive experiments would get them excited to learn.  An RSS Reader would be a great tool to have set up on a computer lab where students could choose a site out of already teacher selected sites to take a quiz, perform a surgery, save a population of animals, or watch a video clip.  The options are endless when it comes to interactive sites to help solidify a topic you are teaching in your class.  Doing this will only assist you in reaching more of your students helping them make learning a purposeful experience.