Weekly Post - Digital Cameras

What?
This week we learned about digital cameras. Our assignment was to get together with our team, come up with a concept to teach, and take pictures to teach that concept that will eventually turn into a presentation.

So what?
I love taking pictures, and I'm sure I will take a lot of pictures as a teacher. I think this assignment opened up my eyes to how I can use my camera for teaching! I usually take pictures to document and assess, but now I can teach by taking pictures too. I think this assignment opened my mind to come up with creative ways to teach concepts.

I think pictures will be a great tool in my teaching career. Not only are pictures fun to look at, but they are especially important for visual learners. I know because I'm a very visual learner - I have to see to learn. I don't really gain anything by just hearing the information. It is important for me to use a lot of visuals because I want to teach preschool and most preschoolers can't read yet. With the access to a digital camera, a computer, and a printer, I have a great tool to create my own visuals.

Now what?
Instead of trying to find clipart on the internet, I'm going to try and make more of my own visuals by using my camera. I love pictures and taking pictures (I pursued a photography last year) so why wouldn't I think to incorporate photographs into my teaching. I would love to cover the walls in my classroom with pictures of teaching concepts that are fun for the kids as well as the kids in the classroom and the activities we do.

I would also, if I had the resources, invest in a kid's digital camera that students could take turns taking home and taking pictures. Kind of like show and tell - they could take a picture of something they wanted to teach the class or share with the class, and when they would come to class the next day we would look at it on the computer ( and eventually print it out and hang it up) and the child could talk about it; this is a great activity for language development, which is important in preschool, because kids are excited to share what they know.

Video Reflection
The mashup was amazing - for lack of a better word. I wish I was so musically inclined that I could put together a bunch of different musical clips and make it sound like an actual song. Incredible. I also wish I had the computer technical skills to edit and compile all of those videos - that is something I would love to do (actually what I originally started going to college for - Computer Information Technology with an emphasis in Visual Technology.) I also enjoyed Letterman's Top Ten - all of them are so true. My favorite one is believe your students when they say they need to go to the bathroom - very relevant when teaching preschoolers.

Weekly Post - Internet Safety

Although there is access to many inappropriate materials on the Internet, the Internet is an invaluable resource. The Internet gives us access to oceans of information at our fingertips that would otherwise be limited to the resources within our physical reach. We no longer have to spend countless hours searching through libraries to find information we need, with the click of a button we have millions of resources set before us. Another great thing about the Internet is it is or can be immediately updated whereas with books it takes time to revise and republish information. As well as having instantaneous access to informative resources, the Internet allows people around the world to share ideas. This is especially useful for teachers because they can share ideas and lesson plans with each other and not have to do everything on their own. People can work collaboratively on the Internet because it is can be accessed almost anywhere in the world, you no longer have to be physically in reach in order to work on the same project. The Internet is an incredibly valuable resource and great time-saver.

Because there is access to just about everything on the Internet, it is important to evaluate sites to make sure they are appropriate for students. There are many dangers on the Internet and as teachers we need to make sure we are doing everything in our power to steer children clear of those dangers. Another thing to evaluate sites for is making sure they are worthwhile and useful to the students. If they are not valuable to the students there is no point in using them. An important thing to evaluate is accuracy. Everyone can publish things on the Internet so it is important that you check the sources of information to make sure they are accurate and reliable.

To evaluate websites I’ve adopted Kathy Shrocks’ 5 W's.

WHO wrote the pages and are they an expert? Is a biography of the author included? How can I find out more about the author?

WHAT does the author say is the purpose of this site? WHAT else might the author have in mind for the site? WHAT makes the site easy to use? WHAT information is included and does this information differ from other sites?

WHEN was the site created? WHEN was the site last updated?

WHERE does the information come from? WHERE can I look to find out more about the sponsor of this site?

WHY is this site useful for my purpose? WHY should I use this information? WHY is this page better than another?

I also as myself other important questions like:

What domain does this site use? Is it a prefffered domain such as .edu, .gov, .org, .net?

Does the URL include a personal name or a tilde (~) or a percentage symbol (%) which indicates a personal page.

Does the page have a lot of advertising? Is that its perpose?

Are the page author’s credentials relative to the material?

What other sites link to this page?

Does the page cite reliable sources?

I can try to keep my students safe by sharing my Internet safety tips with them and their parents. By letting students and parents know how to evaluate websites they can use the Internet more to their advantage. Knowing what to look for in websites will help students to eliminate the bad websites and use the good. With teaching preschoolers, I would focus on educating parents on how to evaluate websites. I would post these tips on my blog or send it out in a newsletter. I would also inform parents of the educational websites that I have evaluated and approved by my standards for their consideration.

Video Post
I thought the video outlined very good Internet Safety tips. This would be a good video to present to a class before giving out an assignment that uses the internet, although the class would need to know how to read beforehand so I'm kind of out of luck with the preschoolers. Although this video was good, I think the presentation could vastly be improved. It wasn't very interesting; it laid out all the information but that's about all. Also some of the effects were not very well thought out, like in the rule #6 how the words scrolled across the screen in a huge font; it was really hard to keep track of the words let alone the whole sentence. All in all, it was a good video to introduce Internet Safety tips.

Weekly Post - UEN Part 2

Utah Education Network is full of valuable resources I would like to use in my future classroom. Because I want to teach out of my home, UEN would be a useful tool to find the pre-k core curriculum so I would know what I should be teaching. UEN also offers lesson plans, which is such a time-saver. All of their lesson plans are based on standards and objectives from the core curriculum so UEN is a much better source for finding lesson plans than searching Google.

To encourage parents to continue education at home, I would also post bookmarks on my UEN page and in newsletters to parents of interactive learning games and virtual field trips relating to our theme that week. These are fun and easy ways for parents to implement learning activities in their home.

Through Pioneer Online Library, eMedia offers many video clips that I could use in my classroom or could suggest to parents to watch at home. It is easy to find relevant movies through eMedia because it lets you search by grade level or by Utah Core subjects, as well as featured items, media type or popular series.

Also through Pioneer, there is a resource called CultureGrams. I think it is important to teach about diversity in early childhood education and CultureGrams would be a great resource to find out about different cultures. I could find information from here to teach in my classroom or bookmark a link to the country/culture we were learning about in class on my UEN page. This is a fun way to get kids interested in learning about different places and cultures and that there are many different kinds of people in the world.

A great feature that Pioneer offers, especially for me, is Preschool Pioneer. This is a whole site dedicated for Preschool! It has tons of educational activities for kids to do. There are sections for Learn, Play, Watch and Read, but all are educational. There is also a page for parents and one for early childhood professionals. This is especially great for me because it has links to research, blogs, current news and more to keep me up to date at home.

UEN is such a valuable resource and can be a huge time-saver for underpaid teachers. There are many great features in the K-12 Student Center for teachers and students. Pioneer gives you access to movies through eMedia, audio clips through Soundzabound, articles through EBSCO, SIRS Discoverer and Knowledge Source, and many more. The great thing about these resources is that they are not only great for teachers, but they’re parent-friendly and kid-friendly as well.

Video Post

Oh how I love Sir Ken. How inspiring. I totally agree with what he says. I am kind of one of those people who thrive in creative arts - I love design, I love to sing, I love to dance, take pictures, create things, the works. But I too think I was stifled as a child with "that's never going to happen" and "choose a reasonable career" type of thing. That is why I love preschool - in preschool imagination and creativity are encouraged more than in any other grade. Three, four, and five-year-olds have yet to be stifled by society and the rationality of the world. Yes only a few make it to the top, but who can say that won't be you - you never know until you try. I think the world needs to realize the importance of creativity and encourage it more, especially in schools.

Weekly Post - UEN

This week we learned about UEN - Utah Education Network. Our assignment is to create our own page on the Utah Education Network.

This is something entirely new to me, I've never heard of the Utah Education Network. What a valuable resource it is. There are so many free resources through this site which is so important for underpaid educators. I'm excited to learn more about this as I explore through UEN's extensive site. I'm sure it will come in handy as I am planning my preschool lesson plans for my student teaching this semester.

I really enjoy the Preschool Pioneer through Pioneer Online Library because I want to teach preschool and pretty much nothing else. This is a great resource to keep in the loop through blogs, current news, and research. Because I will most likely open a preschool in my house, it is up to me to keep up to date on everything. If I had access to the resources on UEN it would be very beneficial for me and my career as a preschool teacher.

If I don't end up teaching in my home I hope to teach at a school that has access to UEN. There are many resources that would be helpful in developing a class like clip art, movie clips, activities, etc. Because teachers don't have a large budget it is important to use as many free resources as possible. Especially in preschool, classrooms have a lot of visuals. Clip art subscriptions can be expensive at times so if you had access to free clip art, like through UEN, it would help a ton.

Another major benefit would be having a web page for the class. Parents could access it and have the links to things we did in class, or movies to watch at home, or books of the month. There are so many tools and services like calendars and bookmarks and messages - everything you needed parents to know could be easily communicated through a UEN web page - that is if they would continually check it. I think the parents would find it very helpful and convenient.

Video Post

Obama makes a good point - you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. So it is with education. It can be placed right in front of you but only you can reach out and take it. It is important for students to be proactive in their education. Everyone has their own trials and adversities but they work past them and so can you.