Jason+Walker

[|Facebook]Jason Walker - I am a freshman at the University of Cincinnati & I was also born & raised here. I went to Colerain high school & graduated with a 3.3 gpa. I've played baseball & golf throughout my whole life including high school. I was the captain of the golf team & only played one year of baseball but still played recreational. I love to be outside & enjoy the weather, whether it's 70 & sunny or 13 & icy. One of my favorite things to do for the past 3 or 4 years is to snowboard. I'd love to go out west & take a trip to the mountains. I am an aspiring middle-school Math & Science teacher. What made me want to become a teacher is just being able to have an influence on such young minds. I feel as if teachers are some of the most vital & influential people in a child's lifetime. Teachers don't get the credit they deserve, but it's still something I wake up to & still want to be.

March 29th - > > 1) I think technology can be used to it's advantages & help the students learn more than ever now. However, I don't think all the technology's necessarily all useful. I've had classes that the teacher only lectured the hole period & taken a lot from it. I've also had classes that had a ton of technology in it, including smartboards and macs and taken the same amount.
 * 1) Does technology make a difference in the learning process or could you teach just as well without it?
 * 1) Are students today fundamentally different than students in the past?

2) Yes, Kids don't think like they used too. Kids nowadays look for the fastest and easiest ways to get things done. Such as smart-phones and the internet to get their homework done faster & quicker.

Youtube - How technology is beneficial

Washington Post - How boring school is

April 5th -

Constructivism is an open minded way to learn. It's up to the learner how they want to learn the material. It's a progressive way to learn as well. It's like a spiral because the learner can always continue to progressively learn more knowledge. The instructor is more of a mentor than a "teller". These students have a better understanding on how to approach any type of question. They know the process to find an answer whether it's right as wrong.

Objectivism is a correct/right answer based style of learning. This is more of an instructor lead, lecture style of teaching. The students in this classroom of learning are going to know the correct answer. These kids memorize the material rather than learn the material.The teacher in the classroom is going to know the answer & won't say it till the student figures out the correct answer.

SUPPORT: media type="custom" key="15008984" Solutions:
 * Raise the priority level of the technology
 * Make it known that your school needs technology
 * Raise efforts to get the money for new merchandise
 * Set goals & have visions of your future ideas

Game 1: [|Smart Board Games] 2) The games we were playing on the Smart board were Drill-based games because they were real basic games. They were on the PBS website, snd the oldest age it went up to was 8 & the concept of all the games were very basic. 3) One game we found you had to capture the fish & measure them on an interactive ruler. Then you had to proceed to place the fish in the appropiate tank. If the Fish exceeded the recommended size for the smaller tank it was placed in the smaller tank & vice versa. This implements the grade K-2 standards for Measurment & Implementing Data. Measuring the fish & then being able to interpret the data into the correct fish tank. 4) The PBS website had a lot of good games for kids of a younger age. A lot of the games were based on the PBS network shows such as Cyberspace & Arthur. I was able to play games that focused on different subjects and they made them interesting to play. These games are made more enjoyable because students can relate the skills they practice in the game to the familiar shows that they watch on a daily basis.

Web Site Evaluation: I joined group B. Which was the Tree Octopus and I could tell the website was pretty fake at first glance. A tree Octupus sounds fake as is & i've never heard of a Tree Octupus either. So I googled it & read that it was fake & only a website used for illiteracy classes. Just to make sure that website wasn't phoney I kept reading & saw that the website was creaated by Kelvinic Universirty. So I googled Kelvinic University & could tell immediately it was a fake website.

Link to Arcademic Skill Builder

Reflection! [|Video of Teaching Jason W]

Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. //a. promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.// I've always been a fan to show my creative side. It's something as a teacher you will never be able to take from a student. And when I first started this course I figured it was just going to be a computer class that teaches me how to use Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint and Spreadsheet. This class really showed me what was out there on the internet. I never realized there was so many websites for teachers such as [|Diigo]. Which was a website kind of like [|Pinterest] where teachers or whoever post their lesson plans, games and other ideas. I think as a teacher this could be one of my greatest resources & I could keep coming back to it. A tie to the 1st ISTE standard is that [|Diigo]is all about your own personal creatitvity; you can post all your own websites and whatever you want to it. If you like websites with creative game builders such as jeaopardy, you could post a link like [|Jeaopardy] to it and have the kids create their own test and answers. Have them create a jeaopardy game that'd be a big review of the test and have the kids play the game, the day before the test.
 * 1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity**

Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessment incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS•S. Teachers: //d. provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching (Longest Run-On Sentence ever)// I think this is a good standard to assess students, with different types of learning. If a kid is a bad test taker or doesn't understand the material on paper, but can represent their answer with a hands on example, then I think this would be a great thing. Math would be the best example I can think of. Johnny might not know how to do division, but he knows if he has 35 skittles and there's 5 people to split them up with, then he know's each person gets 7 of them. But he might miss this on the test because he has test anxiety or can't visualize numbers the ways he see's them. And at the same time, you may have 2 students that are excellent test takers in their own way. Sarah might be really strong at fill-in the blanks and Ben might be very strong at Multiple choce questions. That's why I found the [|Google Docs] website super useful! You can make the test/quiz questions however you want. It gives you many options, such as Fill-in the blank, multiple choice, short answer and extended response. I can definately see myself using this as a teacher too. It wouls mmake my life so much easier when it comes to test making. I think it would simplify the lifes of the students too if it was an online course. They could go to the Link and complete the test/quiz and have the results of how they did e-mailed to you. & with a day and age where everything is switching to the internet, this isn't far away.
 * 2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments**

Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. Teachers: //b. communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats.// I've already had classes where this is relevant, and I think this is sweet. This class is actually the most online-based class I've taken so far. There was so many ways to communicate with each other in this class, but I think the best way we communicated with this new digital age was our class WikiSpaces. This was like our own pesonal profile to the class. It had our introduction with our names and pictures on it with the availability to switch anybody's class wiki. This was really neat because you didn't even have to be signed in to look at our Wiki from the public. You had to be signed in to edit them though which made our Wiki's safe and secure at the same time. Another easy way to communicate with your peers would be through [|Facebook]. I wouldn't necessarily use my own personal profile though. I would make a another account so that my students couldn't see my private life. There shouldn't be anything to hide, but still as a teacher you must be very careful of these things. Or if you didn't feel comfotable doing that, there is a teacher/student friendly version of it called [|FaKebook]. Which allows kids to get onto it and create people, such as historical characters, famous actors, dead presidents or superstar athletes. The best part aboout the website is that you don't need to provide an e-mail address or sign up or anything. Just start using it right away.
 * 3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning**

Teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices. Teachers: //a. advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.// I think that this is very important to represent and stand for as a teacher. You have to remember that the internet is completely up to the user. Literally anything is only a click away. That's why it's so important as a teacher to demonstrate the correct ways to use the internet. We learned about the laws this year in the Ethical Uses of Technologylesson in this class earlier in the course. It's important as a student to understand what you can and can't do on the internet, with plagarism so easy anymore. You can literally pay for pre-written papers off some websites nowadays and turn them in. The teacher may even run them through websites such as [|Plagiarism Checker] and they can still come up completely clean. & with technolgy one click, Copy and paste away, Plagiarism has never been so easy. Also, along with plagiarism is Copyright laws. I'm sure, that at some point, you've seen the little Copyright symbol next to an image, something as simple as a Pepsi logo. This would be illegal technically if I posted a picture to wiki and didn't cite it. Even if it is for an educational purpose, people still take serious offense to stealing their work, even if you're just using it for something so miniscule.
 * 4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility**

Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. Teachers: //c. evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning// We did this every week with our class post to [|Diigo]. We would share and evaluate and comment on all the technology we were posting to them. If we didn't like one of them, we could comment on it and even perhaps provide our own link with a better website. If we saw a website that we liked, we would post it to our Diigo, under the category we thought it belonged too. Such as [|Multimedie (diigo)] in the Diigo website. One example was [|100 Ways to Use your iPod] and it obviously touched on a 100 different ways to use your iPod effectively in class. We then commented on the post and explained rather we liked this idea or not. So, basically it was like a discussion, just over a blogging website.
 * 5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership**

I actually really liked this class. I liked that it was not a stereotypical computers class where we learned the basics of computing. This class was much easier than I made it too. I wish I would have been more on top of my work, but that's my fault. I didn't really get interested in Diigo just because thats not really something I could see myself using. It was a great idea and had good concepts, I just didn't like having to comment about other people's websites. I'd check them out and stuff, I just didn't really feel a need to write about how much I liked it or didn't like it. However,I did learn a lot about the internet and how to utilize it. The possibilities on the internet are through the roof and never going to stop. The availability to web resources, prgrams, blogs and social networking is an industry that will never end and needs to be continuously taught. I learned so much from this class. But if I had to put it into a few really nice things I go out of it was This Wiki. I really liked the Class Wiki we had. The only thing I wouls do is perhaps, have all the homework under one tab, with links or something like that. It really got confusing from my stand point and from what I heard, other students as well. We would have homework on the Wiki, then Diggo then another website. It was a lot to manage after awhile, but overall, I really, really liked Wiki and what it was about. I really liked the Rubric builder & Test creator/Google Docs. I can see myself using them in the future as a teacher one day. Overall, I appreciate everything you've done for me and this class and want to say thanks & Have a nice Summer!!
 * Reflection!!**