Technology is Waiting!

I can't believe this is the last blog of the semester. Time flies when you are having fun. Technology has been a great class. I learned so much! I enjoyed working in groups! In fact I enjoyed working in groups so much that when I found out our final is on our own I was almost in a panic. After giving myself some serious self talk I decided I can do this.

I looked online to get my creative juices flowing and I think I have come up with some good ideas. One of the ideas is to do something with google earth. Maybe the students could go on a treasure hunt or something like that and find different land forms found in Utah (for fourth grade) on google earth. Another idea is to have the students make up their own chat bot for some kind of famous person in history. The students can make their own chat bot using a downloadable program called virsona.

I will keep the lesson plans I create and hopefully be able to use them in my future classroom. Technology is an amazing tool that will keep my students interest and help them enjoy their education. There is so much that can still be done to further our educational world. The technology that is available could change education as we know it. Our students could be working on technology that will help them make great contributions to their society. Reality is there isn't enough money put into education and funding so we as educators need to figure out how to get technology grants so we can make a difference in the world of education. The technology is ready and waiting!

Digital Story

Today in class we worked on our digital stories. As we were putting the pictures together we thought we had the theme of Civility but as we were searching for pictures the Civility theme got too big. There were so many things we could cover for instance, Trail of Tears, civil rights, slavery etc. We were trying to get the idea across that the world hasen't changed much since then because people still don't treat others with respect. We were going to show the Bionce, Taylor Swift incident, and the senator that yelled out Liar at Pres. Obama.

Now we are going to narrow our theme of civility down to civil rights and completely change the twist to how far we have come as a nation in accepting African American's. We decided there is a small percentage of people that make our nation look bad, overall people are good and decent. We have some great quotes to tie it all together. We will now transfer it from powerpoint to i-movie.

Knowing how to make a heart wrenching, emotional digital story is a plus for a teacher. Kids love to be entertained. When there is emotion with the subject I teach it will hook the students. My students will enjoy what they see and not even realize they are learning because they are into it and can't wait to see what happens next. Digital stories are a great tool for my future classroom.

This video brought up some good questions and statements. The idea of having everything you want to do accessable with no limitations sounds amazing and we aren't far from it. When I think about it, it seems that the world is more like Star Trek than ever. I remember the first time I saw someone with a blue tooth in a store. I thought the person was talking to himself. Imagine what the pioneers would think. Even my generation can get overwhelmed by new technology if they don't have an open mind. I laughed when the kid in the video told about how he has to help his mom with her cell phone because I can relate. I haven't got the texting thing down yet and my kids have been showing me how but I am S--L--O--W! I love the idea of not having a credit card too, as one of the kids in the video mentioned, since mine was hacked into over three weeks ago and the new one still hasn't arrived! I would also love to see voice activated computers, keyboarding would be obsolete. The millenial generation will be the ones to bring us these cutting edge technologies because they have open minds and are excited about technology.