Assessing Meaningful Learning with Technology!!

Yes, there are many different types of assessment tools that you can use on a day- to- day basis in your classroom.  There is the ePortfolio that is a great way to make assessments on what you learn in class and or it can also help show your teacher what you retained from all of the assessments that you have done over the course of a couple of weeks.  I believe that grading rubrics are a crucial part of the grading system on how to create grades in your classroom, although your students can or will be oblivious to your grading system or your grading rubric.  When I was in 8^th grade by Spanish teacher used the response system called Quizdom or what I like to call Clickers.  Clickers are a great way for teachers to receive immediate feedback about what their students are learning or retaining information that you are teaching in your classroom.

 

         I definitely think that this course was a great way for me to learn about what different kinds of tools that I can use in my classroom.  I loved learning about the many types of Web 2.0 tools, how to make a lesson plan even though it was more like a syllabus in many ways.  I also know that a grading rubric is definitely going to be used in my classroom, I’m also going to use a lesson plan, and some of the Web 2.0 tools will be used in my day- to- day basis.  I’m also going to try to use what is called a respond system, which is AClicks, that I am going to try to incorporate it into my classroom because it would be a great experience.   

Technology Application Standards!!

I will teach High school (12^th Grade) English.

§110.34. English Language Arts and Reading, English IV (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2009-2010.

(a) Introduction.

(1) The English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are organized into the following strands: Reading, where students read and understand a wide variety of literary and informational texts; Writing, where students compose a variety of written texts with a clear controlling idea, coherent organization, and sufficient detail; Research, where students are expected to know how to locate a range of relevant sources and evaluate, synthesize, and present ideas and information; Listening and Speaking, where students listen and respond to the ideas of others while contributing their own ideas in conversations and in groups; and Oral and Written Conventions, where students learn how to use the oral and written conventions of the English language in speaking and writing. The standards are cumulative--students will continue to address earlier standards as needed while they attend to standards for their grade. In English IV, students will engage in activities that build on their prior knowledge and skills in order to strengthen their reading, writing, and oral language skills. Students should read and write on a daily basis.

(2) For students whose first language is not English, the students' native language serves as a foundation for English language acquisition.

(A) English language learners (ELLs) are acquiring English, learning content in English, and learning to read simultaneously. For this reason, it is imperative that reading instruction should be comprehensive and that students receive instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and word attack skills while simultaneously being taught academic vocabulary and comprehension skills and strategies. Reading instruction that enhances ELL's ability to decode unfamiliar words and to make sense of those words in context will expedite their ability to make sense of what they read and learn from reading. Additionally, developing fluency, spelling, and grammatical conventions of academic language must be done in meaningful contexts and not in isolation.

(B) For ELLs, comprehension of texts requires additional scaffolds to support comprehensible input. ELL students should use the knowledge of their first language (e.g., cognates) to further vocabulary development. Vocabulary needs to be taught in the context of connected discourse so that language is meaningful. ELLs must learn how rhetorical devices in English differ from those in their native language. At the same time English learners are learning in English, the focus is on academic English, concepts, and the language structures specific to the content.

(C) During initial stages of English development, ELLs are expected to meet standards in a second language that many monolingual English speakers find difficult to meet in their native language. However, English language learners' abilities to meet these standards will be influenced by their proficiency in English. While English language learners can analyze, synthesize, and evaluate, their level of English proficiency may impede their ability to demonstrate this knowledge during the initial stages of English language acquisition. It is also critical to understand that ELLs with no previous or with interrupted schooling will require explicit and strategic support as they acquire English and learn to learn in English simultaneously.

(3) To meet Public Education Goal 1 of the Texas Education Code, §4.002, which states, "The students in the public education system will demonstrate exemplary performance in the reading and writing of the English language," students will accomplish the essential knowledge, skills, and student expectations in English IV as described in subsection (b) of this section.

(4) To meet Texas Education Code, §28.002(h), which states, "... each school district shall foster the continuation of the tradition of teaching United States and Texas history and the free enterprise system in regular subject matter and in reading courses and in the adoption of textbooks," students will be provided oral and written narratives as well as other informational texts that can help them to become thoughtful, active citizens who appreciate the basic democratic values of our state and nation.

(Source: Texas Education Agency at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/)

           

            There are many ways that you can utilize this TEKS for a 12^th grade English class.  One of those ways is to have a book for the class to read and have a student read out loud so that they can comprehend what’s being read.  I can give the students a quiz or a test about that same book that I gave them to read out loud during class, so that they can comprehend and be taught academic vocabulary and comprehension skills.  I will teach the students Shakespeare and tell my students to do a project to write a poem about what they think that Shakespeare is trying to teach or to tell them, so that way they can comprehend and gain skills like new strategies to learn different things.

            I believe that the most important TEKS is “(1) The English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are organized into the following strands: Reading, where students read and understand a wide variety of literary and informational texts; Writing, where students compose a variety of written texts with a clear controlling idea, coherent organization, and sufficient detail; Research, where students are expected to know how to locate a range of relevant sources and evaluate, synthesize, and present ideas and information; Listening and Speaking, where students listen and respond to the ideas of others while contributing their own ideas in conversations and in groups; and Oral and Written Convention, where students learn how to use the oral and written conventions of the English language in speaking and writing.  The standards are cumulative- students will continue to address earlier standards as needed while they attend to standards for their grade.  In English IV, students will engage in activities that build on their prior knowledge and skills in order to strengthen their reading, writing, and oral language skills.  Students should read and write on a daily basis”.  And the way that I would cover this selection in my classroom is to have my students write a daily journal about their thoughts for that day, have them write poems about what they read in the book that I gave them to read out loud during class.  There are many more things that can be done.     

Visualizing with Technology!!

Yes, there are many ways that you can visualize with technology because basically everything in the world is technology, well at least these days.  I definitely do believe that many people basically run on technology.  My family is one of those families that run off of technology because of how this generation of technology is evolving greatly.  But there are these days that I believe that there are not that many people who can handle how technology is advancing because some people just prefer to process information by seeing the information.  I feel like there are a lot of visualizers who tend to think more concretely, like by using imagery, and personalizing information.

            There are many ways that visualizing with technology helps when it comes to learning processes.  I believe that visual images are powerful mediators when it comes to making things meaningful.  I know that the tool called Sketchcast is to help the least artistic among us, and it makes a movie of what one draws and says while drawing, using a simple palette of tools that helps impact on the learning process.  Graphing calculators is a visualizing tool that helps when it comes to doing mathematical type of things.  But there are many things that are abstract when it comes to mathematics because visualization is a tool that helps learners to understand the different mathematical concepts.  Such visualization tools are not always computer- mediated.

Podcasting!!

Podcasting is the kind of thing that not very many people do, nor watch either.  I found out that it’s basically an audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 or any other audio file format for playbacks in a digital player like a CD player.  I also learned that you can watch podcasts on your iPod and or MP3’s.  But podcasting is also one of those hidden things that I didn’t know that you could use as a teacher for like lectures.  Podcasting is somewhat of a hidden secret that most people don’t use because of YouTube now and days.

There are some similarities and also some differences of some Web 2.0 applications and podcasting.  Like, let’s say that blogs are similar to podcasting because both can present information and you can present your own thoughts on the subject at hand.  But the difference between blogs and podcasts is that one you have to read and the other one all you have to do is listen to what you want to know.  As well as the fact that other people can respond to what you are saying, that goes for both blogs and podcasting. Wikis and podcasts are just different in all its own because wikis are full of fake facts and podcasts are full of opinions.

I own a lot of electronics in this day of age.  Yes, I do own an iPod and when I was in middle school I use to own an MP3 as well.  I mainly use my iPod for music because of the fact that I have a nano, so it is kind of hard to watch a podcast on it.  I would definitely use podcasting in my classroom because if I couldn’t finish the lecture for that day, my students can just watch my podcast to get the rest of the notes for that class.  Sometimes I think that the disadvantages and or advantages of online communication tools can sometimes make everything confusing, especially for those people that aren’t computer savy but overall I believe that the online communications is a better way of life.

Web 2.0 Tools!!

There are many of different kinds of things that Web 2.0 Tools can help you with, especially on a regular and daily basis.  But what I definitely do believe in is that Web 2.0 Tools or that those kinds of applications are used a lot more in a teachers’ classroom today.  Some of the Web 2.0 Tools or applications are called wiki, and social bookmarking is an application that allows you to share your bookmarks with specific people or groups.  And voice threading is a different kind of multimedia slideshow that allows creators to combine images, documents, and videos using your voice.  But to me, Web 2.0 Tools are basically a way to integrate and collaborate with all of the different types of social medias all in one, so that it makes it easier for people to find and figure out how to use technology in this day and age.  And because of the fact that technology has gotten flamboyantly more complicated as time keeps on going, as the world keeps on turning.

In the world of education today, Web 2.0 Tools have the ability to combine technology with many collaborations in the social networking realm.  Web 2.0 Tools are also called applications because of the way that technology is increasingly being developed at an exceedingly fast pace.  Then again, the world that we live in never stops moving, which means that new things are always being created, so in all reality technology is never fully developed because you can always create and add more to the product that you already have at hand.  The different things that you can add is like the many kinds of applications that most people and definitely most students use on a regular basis is like Facebook, Myspace, Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Yahoo, Bing, and even Flickr.  All of those applications can also be an avenue to talk to professionals, maybe talk to future employers, and to ask students for their own personal opinions.  Web 2.0 Tools will and can get students writing and thinking about important topics and what their interests and goals are or goals that can be evolved. These applications can give the students an authentic audience to write to or the audience can give the students suggestions on what to write, it also helps the student's to communicate and collaborate more in Web 2.0 Tools.  These applications can also help eliminate the walls in school because a lot of students are shy and can get teased for having their own personal opinion and or just speaking out in class to answer questions.  I definitely think that it’s funny that the most famous wiki application or Web 2.0 tool is Wikipedia today and how it’s one of the major resource that’s used in the world. But you never truly know if any of the information that you’re reading on Wikipedia is actually the real facts about many of the things in the world that is known and or unknown because it did start out really small and as a resource without very much competence at all.  And that is why Wikipedia is the perfect example of the way that Web 2.0 Tools or Web 2.0 applications will and can allow communication and collaborations with anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

Copyright & Fair Use Policy!!

There are many things that we do on a regular basis online, that are against the law but we do them anyways.  But there are many things that we do without thinking that we’re even doing them.  We never really pay close attention or even notice that there are copyrights and fair use policies on everything.  I believe that copyrights and fair use policies are quite straightforward.  Especially when it comes to teenagers being bored cause they tend to go online and just bully other kids or people threw like facebook comments and or posts, threw text messages, and threw twitter, as well.  I definitely know about cyberbullying from personal experiences in my past because I was cyberbullied through this site called myspace, that cyberbullying put me in a deep depression and it was hard to get myself out of it.  I feel that cyberbullying is wrong and that the government should have a law against cyberbullying online and or even at school.  I think that netiquette is in basic terms is the rules, guidelines, and it’s basically doing the right thing while you’re online.  Netiquette is the respect and the way you treat other people in person, but instead it would be online in this scenario.

            I definitely have learned that copyrights are basically mainly put in many different ways for when you can copy something the right way and or the wrong way.  I also just found out that you can get pirated copies of different types of software and many kinds of movies or videos that you can download online without paying for them, which is against the law and it’s a felony to copyright something that way because it’s also the wrong way.  And I also learned that many people have there own forms of netiquette and not all forms of netiquette are all exactly the same.  So those are the many things that I think about when it comes to copyrights, fair use, cyberbullying, and netiquette.   

SearchEngines and SearchTechniques!!!

The life that I use to live before I knew about how to conduct online searches is none existent in my way of living.  From the moment that I started using the computer, my mom taught me how to do searches somewhat properly.  Before I knew anything about the way that search engines were used and also before I knew that there was such a thing called search techniques, I would search what I thought would be the primary source of what I was searching for at that point in time.  I use to just type a question or just a word into the search engine text box, before I knew that there was search techniques to help you search for what you’re looking for in search engines.  No, not to my knowledge, I didn't know all that was covered about search engines and search techniques but there are some things that I just found out about, that I will definitely use in the future.

There are many things that can happen and or change when it comes to the future, especially with the way that I will be teaching my high school English class, in the future.  But I do think that some of my habits will be changed slightly in many different ways.  In the future, I will put everything and anything that I want and or need to search, in simplest terms and never in the form of a question because questions confuses’ the search engines every time.  All of this new knowledge will definitely affect my teaching style in many great ways.  My future high school English students will be affected by this change that is caused by the great knowledge of search techniques because now I can teach my future students about the appropriate and right way to search for things while being hassle free.

A lot of people do not believe in change nor do they believe in the new generation of technology today.  Which means that most people think that there are several of ways to search things in a search engine and I use to think that to.  But now is that time when my way of thinking is going away because it is changing, so that way I can empty all the bad documents and bring in all the new things that I have just learned and will be continued to be learning.  Like the proper ways to search what you want to find in a search engine and then also the many search techniques.  So if you search the proper way, well then I know that you will get the results that you were looking for a lot faster than the amount of time that it would’ve usually taken you.