Student Teaching

Since the conclusion of my ICT class I have been in blogger withdrawal, if that's possible?! I have decided to keep blogging, only this time I will be posting about my student teaching experience! 

I started my second student teaching experience on Monday at Souris School in Grade 1/2! It has been a great first week! I am so excited to get back into the classroom and start interacting with students again! 
While in Souris I will be co-teaching language arts, math, science/social studies. With one week under my belt I am ready to start taking on more teaching and lesson planning! 

The first area of my student teaching I would like to comment on is the DAILY 5! I have seen this in action throughout the week by cooperating teacher. It is absolutely fabulous!  Daily 5 is becoming a more popular classroom management strategy in language arts I am seeing (and believing) why! 
The basic categories of Daily 5 are: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing, and word work. While students are at a choice center the teacher engages in guided reading with a few students. The beauty of Daily 5 is in the "training". Students are taught what good fit books are (books you can understand and read the words but challenges yourself) and are given more responsibility for their learning. The training takes several weeks to build stamina and teach the students strategies to use at a centre. It  begins with a lesson and then students are able to go to different centres. 

I am busy doing a lot of reading about the Daily 5 in two books written by "the sisters" (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser). Check out their amazing ideas at http://www.the2sisters.com/theDaily5.html

Stay tuned for more updates on my student teaching experience! 

Conclusion

Over the past eight weeks my ICT class has been exploring many technological tools to use in the classroom when we become teachers and I have been blogging about it!

At first I was unsure about putting random paragraphs on a page accessible by anyone on the web,  but after the first two blogs it became a little less unknown/scary and more fun! I quite enjoyed keeping up with a blog and will most definitely have a classroom blog! Not only will this be a great cross-curricular tool but a great communication device with parents/community/other classrooms/friends/ of our classroom. One way that blogging could fulfill outcomes of English and Math are through the use of writing the blogs. It could become a weekly class duty and with all writing in early years students must use proper conventions, grammar, etc. By writing a blog every week as a class students will develop better writing skills and hopefully enjoy it in the process. The connection the Math that could be used is through the statistics that blogger shows. It could be used to calculate how many people on average view the blog, more number games or tasks associated with the statistics, etc. Using Social Studies through technology in the classroom also fulfills another continuum. By connecting with other classrooms' blog in the neighboring community or neighboring continent, students are developing their global citizenship and community knowledge.

Technology is becoming the way of the future and will be prevalent in all my students future careers. I am teaching students for jobs that have not been created yet. There is no better way to prepare students than to integrate the ever increasing effects of technology into the classroom. Although there is still a need for traditional research and paper/pencil work, technology is becoming more important than in the previous generations.

Although many of my education classes are beneficial, ICT has become very influential in how I will teach my future students. Many of the technology tools we learned about were about engaging learning but also about organizing the resources available on the web. I have posted about organizing resources in an earlier blog, look there to find out about those!
Engaging students with disabilities or different learning strategies is also highlighted through using technology. If students learn best visually, having a visuals projected on the Smart board with cater to the learning of these students. If a student is a kinesthetic learner, having a Smart board in the classroom is interactive and can help this student learn better.

Technology has opened up a new world of what I can do for my students and what I can do in my classroom. There is no better resource that is endless and has so many different capabilities. I look forward to my next chapter of student teaching with technology!

"Ipads in the Classroom"

This week in ICT we have been creating a group presentation about technology. My group has created a presentation on iPads and how they are beneficial to use in the classroom, iPads for Learning.

One of the many things iPads can do in the classroom is to engage and interest children in a more intriguing way, opposed to pen and paper. Another great tool that iPads present in the classroom are their intuitive nature that allows students to learn quickly.

Technology is become a central aspect of the future and playing an increasing role in people's lives. If we start adapting this into our teaching, our students will be better prepared for future jobs.
Ipads teach skills such as turn taking, communication, fine motor skills, enhances social skills, problem solving, reading, spelling, and caters to many multiple intelligences. 
Another amazing tool available with the use of an iPad in the classroom is the world-wide communication access through facetime and skype.
Students with disabilities,  such as autism and developmental delay, can fully engage students and help to gain fine motor skills through moving words and letters on the iPad screen.

Check out these neat apps we found - Mad Math, Weird but true!-National Geographic Kids, and Jam Pad. 

The potential of iPads in the classroom is endless!

Popular Prezi!

Wow! Had I known about www.prezi.com a long time ago I would have used it so many times! I love this site! It has the coolest way of presenting information and pictures other than using powerpoint. Powerpoint is a very professional presentation but prezi puts an entire new spin on presenting.

Come check it out with me!

http://prezi.com/wq4xitbxoogv/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-wq4xitbxoogv&rc=ref-30469683

Must See Videos

At the beginning of the term our ICT class was shown some pretty astounding videos about teaching. Please check these out! Their impact is phenomenal and one that will leave you thinking....


Love of Learning

Did you know? 

WEBSITES!

I am now an official creator of two different websites! I have created a "classroom website" based on the elements I would include in a website once I have my own classroom. I also have created an online eportfolio to highlight my qualifications and skills for future employment.
Weebly was the free website I used to make both of these pages! Weebly is so user friendly to use! I would recommend it to all ages and all skill levels! www.weebly.com

Please check out what I have done!
www.missdsworld.weebly.com
www.juliedyckseportfolio.weebly.com

Organizing Tech

Now that i'm all "techy", I need to organize all my websites! After learning and signing up for multiple multi-media sites like education games, tech information, sharing info, presentaion websites, picture pages, and many diferent url's I need a place to keep them all organized!

This week we learned about symbaloo, diigo, and pearltrees. I have started using the first two regularly to keep many of the new sites I have learned about organized. But whats even better about these sites is that they can be used personally, like I am now, but once I am a classroom teacher they could become your class organizer for websites. As a future teacher so many of these tricks/tips/tools are going to be beneficial.

With www.symbaloo.com you can use have your homepage set up with all the sites you frequently visit so they are a click away. As multimedia becomes increasingly used in the classroom this would be great for all students in the classroom to access! And, with smartboards being focal points in classrooms today it coud be on the smartboard at all times so its easy for yourself as a teacher or your students to navigate where they need to go.

www.diigo.com is another tool to organize and bookmark information that you want to keep track of or visit in the future. You can also tag the information on pages using diigo. This would also prove to be beneficial in the classroom as you are searching for many teaching tools or sites that students would be interested in.

Please check both of these out! The other site that we were shown was www.pearltrees.com. It is a visual organization that serves the same purpose as symbaloo.

Wiki vs. Google Docs

Hey everyone! The last day of the weekend for me and lots of work to do!

Today I want to reflect on using wikis and google docs. Although thus far my wiki usage is limited I have had a quick glance at how difficult this site can be for creating group sites to share. When using the wiki, all the information that myself and others were simultaneously uploading on one page was deleting other information. Google docs works much better for this kind of web sharing. From many computers you can access one page and there is no issue with material being deleted. To use technology in my classroom I need it to work and be reliable! I think that is the problem for many teachers that are trying to become "tech savvy" but are meeting roadblocks. Google docs would be a much easier and more reliable tool for collaborative thinking with my students. Although, I have not said great things about using wiki, I will continue to use it in my ICT class for our assignment and be sure to post back if it has improved.

Here is a video I found on YouTube that I wanted to share. Its about teaching the "tech savvy" 21st generation. This video has a creative commons license as well, now that we all know what that is, it not illegal to share. 

Technology in Education

A major topic of our ICT this week and last week! How will we as educators use technology in our classroom? Will technology access be monitored/filtered/allowed? Better yet, what is safe internet usage? Many schools today are not allowing it and some are embracing technology and introducing it into the classrooms. The "safe" answer to this question is the age old answer, anything in moderation is appropriate.
I believe that the generation of students I will be teaching must be taught using technology. Part of teaching these students the amazing learning tools using tech are teaching what is safe and acceptable. Technology should be a privilege for students and should be used for fun learning and not "free time". The amount I am learning in my technology course is beyond valuable. I am learning about new education tools that I can use in my future classroom and our students should have the same learning opportunity.
Distraction will always be a disadvantage in a classroom but if a student does not want to participate they will find a pencil distracting. It is our job as future educators to engage students. If they are not engaged are they really learning?

Cold Snap

Wow! Is it ever cold out this week! Time to stay inside and get caught up on homework!

My ICT class was fortunate enough to have a special presentation in our class. Andy McKiel and Darren Kuropatwa gave me a wonderful insight on amazing websites to create even more amazing classroom tools.

We started out by discussing "Why __________ matters in education." This was a great question to ask myself as a pre-service teacher. There are so many important aspects to teaching, but for today I chose listening. We were then asked to find an image that represented this. The search engine compfight.com.com has images available to share legally when using creative commons. Once we found a picture we logged on to pixlr.com and began to edit our photo. The finished products were very powerful.

I will let you look at mine and maybe try making your own! :)

Dropbox is a dream...

Hey!! Guess what?! Using dropbox is super easy! This a great tool that I will most definitely use for a long time! At first, I didn't know what the heck to do but once I started playing around with it I learned how to use and why I would use it! As a pre-service teacher I have many documents saved on my computer and USB drive but sometimes find myself loosing things I need somewhere in the middle. This is the solution to that problem! I love that I can access what I need from any computer and, even better, my iphone! Definitely a must on the checklist of new tech resources to use when I'm teaching!

Here is a link to the site! www.dropbox.com

-Miss D.

Word Splash

As a brief catch up on what I learned last week - wordle
Words splashes can be used in many classrooms at any age. The word splash we created on our first day of class was a great ice breaker about technology! Whether it is scary, interesting, intriguing, or confusing it can all be documented in a word splash! In an older grade each student could create their own word splash or in the earlier years creating a word splash together could be a great part of a KWL.
Here is one I created about teaching Science in an early years class...



Check it out!
www.wordle.net

-Miss D. 

Rookie Blogger

Wow! This is my first blog ever! I have now joined the world of internet blogging! I am very excited for this new adventure of learning and exploring what I can do on the world wide web! 
An assignment in my university ICT course (Using Information and Communication Technology in Education) has brought me to www.blogger.com to explore the use of a blog. After creating and designing my blog I was stumped at what to write first. 
My goal of this blog is reflect and utilize new tech resources that I have learned in my class that I will be able to use in my future classroom.  
Blogging weekly (atleast) is my first goal. After becoming comfortable with blogging I would like to expand my journey to creating a website! 

Follow me on this journey of exploring and learning! Stay tuned for more info! 

-Miss D.