Reflection #8

With the introduction of every technology I tried to envision how I would utilize it in the classroom. For one technology, in particular, the possible applications were obvious and powerful. With a wiki I would be able publish items relevent to the class such as assignments, the class syllabus, agendas and lecture notes. I could also post links to web pages that offered material that supported the concepts and skills discussed in class. Students could in turn pose questions to me or the entire class as well as turn in assignments. As far as any "Aha" moments, it would have to be when I discovered all of the applications available on Google and the ability to access these applications from any computer with an internet connection. Why use/pay for Microsoft Office when there is Google documents? Plus, there is the abilty to share the control of documents with others who "google". "To blog or not to blog"....It maybe that because I had a negative preconception of blogging, which has greatly improved now that I actually know what blogging is, or that I plan on teaching high school math or physics that I find it difficult to see what tools a blog offers that using a wiki does not. I do know that I will keep my eyes open for oppurtunities to use wikis and blogs in the future.

How to Improve Student Learning

The videos fit very nicely with one of the themes of this class; Today's student is different from yesterday's student. Today's student grows up with technology affecting most aspects of their day-to-day life and therefore feels out of touch and frustrated with traditional methods of teaching. I believe the greatest benefit of the use technology in the classroom is that it can allow the student to "own" the knowledge present in the classroom and in part control the flow of that knowledge to themselves. Students can learn at their own rate and get the immediate feedback that technology can provide when used properly. Given this, the way to improve student learning is for educators and administrators to use technology to enhance the learning experience.

Reflection #7 Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan

Density The objective of my lesson plan was two fold. 1)The first part was to get students to calculate the density of various liquids. 2)Based on these calculations students will hypothesize in what order the liquids will “stack” when poured in a container. Students will need to justify their hypothesis by referencing the results of the their calculations and the graphs generated from the calculation. The students would use the Google documents spreadsheet to perform the calculations and then graph the results with a bar graph.