Jacquie+Emanuel

EDU 240 Jacquie's FINAL ** 1.    As **//COGNITIVE MEDIATOR//**, the educator helps students to become independent learners who construct meaning by combining new information with their own background knowledge. **Discuss two assignments that you completed using a South Dakota State Standards topic in your major area of study. Describe each program and then tell how you could use that program with your students to enhance their technology skills when you start teaching.
 * TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

A.** One assignment that I completed on a topic in my major area of study was a PowerPoint on cyber bullying. I used the PowerPoint program to put together a presentation on a topic that I feel a school counselor would encounter at some point in his/her career. I selected the topic of cyber bullying. PowerPoint allows one to put information together in a presentation and organize it in an original way. It is a very effective tool for showing students how to do things on a step by step basis. You can choose how you want your presentation to look and include pictures and videos from all over the internet. PowerPoint also allows you to make a custom photo album. I could use this with students to help them present topics to the rest of the class. I could also use this program to show them how to do other things. PowerPoint is a great program for all ages because of its variety of different skill level options. PowerPoint is a very effective program for students and educators when presenting to a group of people.

Scavenger Hunts can help students with technology by making them practice using the tools by themselves. They are given a step by step process but are required to do the actual work on their own. Scavenger Hunts would be helpful in enhancing a student’s technology skills because they make the student search and try things on their own, but at the same time they are following the guidelines of the teacher. Scavenger Hunts would also be beneficial for students to make on their own because it teaches them to research for site on the Internet on a specific topic. It would also teach the students how to create links in Microsoft Word. 2.    As **//RESEARCHER//**, the educator seeks to improve educational practices within the school setting, using an inquiry approach to serve students more effectively. **How has completing research in this class (reading the textbook, researching sites on the Internet, creating a presentation for class) helped you to become a better teacher candidate?**
 * B.** A second assignment I completed on a topic in my major area of study was scavenger hunt. This scavenger hunt included both Microsoft Word and the Internet. In Microsoft Word I linked the title of the Website to the actual link on the Internet that the student needed to go to complete the task. This is a very helpful tool that can teach students how to do different things and find different content on the Internet. I used the topic of college visits in my scavenger hunt. I gave a Website and then had the students do two things on or using the Website. These tasks included answering questions based on the Website and interacting with the Website itself. Once they had answered the question or done the activity they could write their answer, or the proof that they had been to the Website, in the Microsoft Word document. I used a variety of differnt Websites and asked the students to do something different on each page. Some of the things were more complex than others.

Completing research in this class has helped me become a better teacher candidate by building a foundation for my knowledge of technology. I have now started a list of Websites by researching on the Internet that could help me in my future career as a school counselor. Finding these sites helped me to learn how to search effectively on the Internet and will save me time in the future. By creating a presentation for the class on a single topic I have learned how to create an effective presentation and PowerPoint that could be useful in my future career. From this project I have learned more than I ever thought I could learn about iTunes and Podcasting. I now know how powerful Podcasting can be in a classroom, and if I were going into the teaching field I believe I would create a class podcast of my own. Reading the textbook has broadened my view of the Internet as well since I had not heard of the majority of the things I read about. This knowledge will help me when working with a group of students who are digital natives and know more about technology than me. I know much more about the technology that exists now than I did before taking this class and I believe that puts me one step ahead of others in my generation. 3.    As **//COMMUNICATOR//**, the educator is skilled in modes of communication that will enable effective communication and collaboration with other educators, parents, and families. **Discuss one Internet site and one technology program that will help you to communicate to your students and their parents when you become a teacher? Describe how you could use each one to communicate to either students or parents when you are teaching.

A.** One Internet program that will help me communicate with students and their parents is blogger.com. This Website would enable me to communicate with students and parents because it would be open for all of them to see and it could be updated according to what we are doing in the class. The students and parents could both see the posts and add their posts and comments to the blog. This could even be opened to the rest of the classrooms in the school allowing parents to compare what each class is doing. Using blogger could be a great way for students to get to know me, their counselor, and others in the class. Also this would be a great way for parents to get to know the counselor that will be involved in their child's life. This would be a great way to give updates to those in and out of the class.

4.    As **//EVALUATOR//**, the educator maximizes students’ learning by using a full range of formal and informal information-gathering processes in order to respond appropriately to student individual differences. **Discuss one web site and one technology program that you used and evaluated this semester? Why did you find each one useful and how might you use them in the classroom when you start teaching?
 * B.** A technology program that will help with communication with students and parents is Microsoft Publisher. This program will help with communication because of the variety of templates and things that can be done using the program such as newsletters and brochures. This technology program could be used to make brochures and newsletters to hand out to students and their parents to inform them on what is going on in the school and the classroom, or to give helpful tips when it comes to things like college planning. Each month or quarter a new brochure or newsletter could be sent out explaining what will be going on in the next month/quarter. This program can be used to send out informational content, class content, and content on me the counselor. In my experience newsletters and brochures, which can be made using Microsoft Publisher, are an effective way to communicate with a large amount of people.

A.** One Website that I used and evaluated this semester was KidsHealth.org. This is a great site for parent and kids of all ages. It gives a variety of different topics for a student to browse. It is very informative and puts the information in language a student would be able to understand. Being in the school counseling field, a site that gives information for students on anything from alcohol to sex would be very useful to me. I would use this site to help teach students about the different topics presented on the site.


 * B.** One technology program that I used and evaluated in this class was Microsoft PowerPoint. I thought this was a very useful program even though I mainly used the basic functions. There is so much that one can create using this program. Presentations and Photo Albums are the two main functions of PowerPoint. I used both of these functions and found them both to be very easy and fun to use. There are so many different tools and formats that can be used to create one of a kind presentations. I would definitely use PowerPoint in the classroom if I was going into the teaching field, and I will definitely use it as a counselor. I can create presentations on topics like cyber bullying and college planning to present to students. PowerPoint would be an effective way for me as a counselor to present to a large group of students.