BOO! (-lean search)

Search Keys	Purpose of limiter	What did you find when you tried it? How many hits? Was this limiter effective?
AND	Narrows my search and finds web pages in which both words occur	[science and elementary]  I got about 293,000,000 hits.  The hits on the first page had to do with elementary science resources and science mini-lessons.  This limiter was effective because it gave me science resources for an elementary classroom.
OR	Expands my search and finds web pages in which either or both words occur.	[science or elementary]  I received about 294, 000, 000 hits related to science resources for elementary classrooms from the web and from various school districts as well as links to elementary science lesson ideas and elementary science education journals.  I feel this limiter would be useful if I did not have a narrow focus of what I wanted to search for.
NOT	Narrows my search and finds web pages in which one word appears but not another.	[bears NOT football; bears NOT Chicago]  This limiter failed as almost all of the first hits I received had to do with the Chicago Bears football team.
“                    “	Use for phrases and it limits searches to searches for words as a single unit.	[“bears hibernation”]  I received about 38,000 hits.  All of the first hits were related to actual bears and hibernation.  I felt his limiter was much more effective that the previous one.
*	Truncate words; cuts word short to allow for a variety of endings.	[teach*ing]  I received about 445,000,000 hits.  The first hits were anything from the Wikipedia page for “teacher” to the top ten requirements for good teaching and teaching/living in Anchorage.  This limiter is definitely not effective to narrow down a search.
- (minus)	Designates words that should not appear in the search.	[bears –Chicago]  I received about 592,000,000 hits.  This limiter was much more effective at just including bears and nothing to do with the football team.
+ (plus)	Designates words that must appear in documents included in the search results.	[whales +humpback]  I received about 4,240,000 hits.  The first hits were all about humpback whales.  This limiter was very effective in narrowing the search to include just one type of whale.
5 Others You’ve Found		[whale +”humpback entanglement”]  I received hits on a paper on humpback whale entanglement rates in fishing gear in southeast AK, results of the SPLASH humpback whale study, and other information regarding humpback whale entanglement.
		[car* -rental]  The first hits were all car dealerships but not rental car agencies!
		[“Lake Tahoe” +”mysis shrimp”]  I received many hits related to research that has been done on the mysis shrimp and its impacts on Lake Tahoe.
		[“social studies” +”elementary education”]  I received many hits on books related to teaching social studies in elementary education and other sites with resources for teaching social studies in elementary education.
		[Alaska +bears +”Glacier Bay National Park”]  I received hits on GBNP, fauna and flora in GBNP, as well as hits on Inns in Gustavus that have the term “bear” in them.

Voicethread Victory

Completing my voicethread was a great learning experience.  Before this course my only experience with using technology to present information was on Microsoft PowerPoint and an ELMO.  Including audio in video presentation was a totally foreign idea and I must admit I recorded, re-recorded, re-re-recorded and re-re-re-recorded my voicethread before I thought I sounded somewhat like myself! 

I would like to use the voicethread program with the students in my future classroom to create an end-of-the-year presentation that I could make available to the students families.  Perhaps we could create a classroom blog so my students’ families can follow our adventures throughout the school year and keep up-to-date with what is happening each week.  Depending on the ability of my students, I would like to teach them to create their own voicethreads to post on our classrooms’ blog.  This would enhance the sense of community in our classroom and give the students to a chance to publish a story we all can see that includes not only their illustrations and writing, but also their voices. 

Again, depending on the ability level of my students, I could use the voicethread program with them for so much more than story telling.  I could have students work in groups to research different geographic regions of Alaska, for example, and present their findings to the rest of the class using photos, illustrations, writing, and their voices.  Having my students complete projects such as these allows them to collaborate with one another because they can easily view each others’ work and can receive feedback from their peers.  It will be my job as the teacher to facilitate the voicethread activities but I want to give my students more responsibility of their own learning by allowing them to collaborate with their peers as well. Having my students create these voicethread presentations and posting them on our classroom blog will be a powerful tool in giving my students a sense of belonging and accomplishment. 

Technology: Enhancing Collaboration Between Teachers, Students, and Teachers AND Students Since (insert year the first piece of technology was introduced into a classroom)

How can technology enhance collaborative learning between teachers, between students, and between teachers and students?

            Although integrating technology into the classroom may seem like a daunting task for many educators, I believe that it is well worth our time for many reasons.  Taking the time to integrate technology into our classrooms will help us more effectively share information with other educators, more effectively present new material to our students, and encourage our students to use technology to publish their work and collaborate on projects with other students.  Because of the many steps involved in integrating technology into one’s classroom, it is easy to see why many educators are hesitant to take on the task.  Educators must first decide what kinds of technology tools might enhance and enrich their current curriculum, become comfortable with the technology they wish to use, decide the best way to integrate the technology into their lesson plans, experiment with the lessons in the classroom, assess the success of the lesson, and decide how to refine future lessons using the technology if necessary (McGrath 1998). 

            McGrath (1998) interviewed a group of teachers who were at the forefront of using computers and the Internet in innovative and compelling ways in science in mathematics.  One of the most important improvements these teachers observed after integrating computers and the Internet into their curriculum was that the technology increased their students’ motivation.  Constantly working to increase student motivation is crucial because students who are motivated are more receptive, more engaged, and more likely to learn and retain what they learn.  The author goes on to list eleven more ways that teacher-student collaborative relationships are influenced by technology but I felt that this was the most important.

            Blogs are also a great way for teachers to collaborate with one another, students to collaborate with one another, and for teachers to collaborate with and give timely and interactive feedback to their students.  Blogs are very diverse because they allow one to publish written responses, videos, graphics, etc for their classmates to view and comment on and for their teachers to view and provide instructional feedback on.  A teacher can create one blog for their entire class that anyone can post on or they can ask students to create their own blogs to post assignments on and use to interact with one another (Pitler et al. 2007). 

            I used blogs as an example to explain how technology integration can positively influence the collaboration between teachers and students because I really like how we were asked to construct blogs to post our assignments on for this course.  I had never constructed a blog before and assumed it was a tedious process but I was proven wrong once again!  It is so easy to simply click on a classmates’ blog link, read their posted response, and continue a discussion.  We can easily share helpful educational resources with one another through our blogs by simply posting a website and giving a very brief synopsis of it.  I also like how easy it is to get feedback from our professor.

           

References

McGrath, B.  1998.  Partners in learning: twelve ways technology changes the teacher-student relationship. Technological Horizons in Education Journal.  Vol. 25.

Pitler, H., Hubbel, E.R., Kuhn, M. & Malenoski, K.  (2007). Using Technology With Classroom                Instruction That Works.  Denver: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.

Collaboration Sensation!

Let’s Collaborate!

1.      www.dropbox.com

I very recently discovered the awesomeness (no this word is NOT in Websters Dictionary!) of the drop box website.  I used this website to share about 50 PDF files with an old professor and it was as easy as 1, 2, 3.  You simply highlight the files you would like to share, “drop” them into a “box,” and invite the special person to view the files by typing in their e-mail address and sending an e-mail.  It is free to sign up unless you want to share insane amounts of files; then there is a small fee to be “dropped” into someone else's account.

2.      Illuminate (UA Online)

The on-line technology integration class we had last week was my first extensive experience with the Illuminate software on UA Online.  It was surprisingly user-friendly and easy for me to figure out and navigate.  Usually I look more like a cave man discovering some rudimentary tool for the first time when figuring out new software programs.  I am sure it helped to have some tech-savvy classmates standing by in case you know what broke loose.  I really enjoyed how everyone involved in the Illuminate session could be interacting and could somehow show that they were following along, even if they were not the ones speaking.  It will take a little practice to get totally familiar with this software but I think I will enjoy it.

3.      Google Docs

I do not have any first-hand experience with GoogleDocs but from what I have heard it is a fantastic file-sharing program.  As I stated in class last week, I am used to sharing files with people by e-mailing them, having them corrected using something like track changes, and then having them e-mailed back to me with revisions to be made.  When working on a group paper, for example, it would be much more effective to have one document that everyone can view, edit, and revise without having a million and one versions floating around cyber space.  I would love to become more familiar with the GoogleDocs website.

The Adventures of Tinkerbell Voice Thread

Here it is, enjoy!

http://voicethread.com/share/2303146/

The Use of Technology in Elementary Classrooms

The Use of Technology in Elementary Classrooms

For how much access there is to technology in the majority of elementary schools and classrooms today, it does not seem as if technology is being integrated into them nearly as much as it could be.  I believe the main reason for this is because many teachers have not received appropriate training on the technology their school has available so they do not feel comfortable integrating it into their lessons.  Arends and Kilcher (2010) discuss the importance of using computers (or laptops) during instruction.  The internet is a tool that any elementary student can be taught to utilize for educational purposes to some degree.  While some schools may have one computer lab that all classes must share, many classrooms have their own sets of laptops with internet available for student use.  Students can use the internet to find information on a topic they were just introduced to or to conduct further research on projects they have been working on for a while.  I have seen the internet used as an educational tool frequently in secondary classrooms, but not so much in elementary classrooms.

            Barone and Wright (2008) discuss how they integrate digital and media literacies into a fourth-grade classroom in Fernley, NV.  They exposed students to new literacies with innovative text formats via the internet, had students further research topics on the internet, critically evaluate the internet sources, and communicate using word processing programs, e-mail, and chats.  They stress that there key elements a school must consider before deciding to use such a technology-based literacy program.  These elements include having the necessary technology available for use, enough time for teachers and students to learn to use the technology, and a technology support team.

            Although we have not had the students use the internet in my host teachers’ third grade classroom, we have had them use other forms of technology.  The laptops that are available to our classroom have a software program called Kidspiration installed on them.  So far we have had the students use the base-10 math program on Kidspiration to help them practice their place-value skills.  The students have used the AlphaSmarts a couple of times already for the publishing step of their writing pieces.  We also use the ELMO and the flat screen TV in our classroom on a daily basis to present information to and model lessons for the students. 

Pitler et al. (2007) discuss how the Kidspiration software can be an effective learning tool for many reasons.  One of these reasons is the idea mapping/brainstorming tool it has that we used in our first Technology class.  Students can use this idea mapping tool to organize their ideas during the first part of the writing process.  It allows them to not only see their own ideas written down but they can also move them around on the screen and link them to other ideas.  I know not a lot of schools in Juneau have purchased this program but almost, if not all, schools have at least limited access to other word processing programs that would allow their students to do similar tasks.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to using technology in the classroom, we just need to educate more teachers about what is already available to them so they can put it to use!

References

Arends, R., & Kilcher, A. (2010). Teaching for student learning: Becoming an accomplished             teacher. New York: Routledge.

Barone, D.& Wright, T.E. (2008). Literacy Instruction With Digital and Media Technologies.  The Reading Teacher, 62(4), 292–302.

Pitler, H., Hubbel, E.R., Kuhn, M. & Malenoski, K.  (2007). Using Technology With Classroom                Instruction That Works.  Denver: Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.