Aimee+Wiederrich

EDU 240 Aimee'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.
 * TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
 * 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.

A. Microsort Publisher is a great program to use to create a newsletter for the classroom. This program is very easy to use and has many options of things to create. This is a great tool for educators to use in the classroom so that the parents can keep up with their students classroom. My son's teacher sends home a newsletter every Friday. Her newsletter tells us what standards they are working on, who will star of the week, if snack is needed, and important dates that are coming up. The newsletter formats are easy to follow and have a wide variety of colors, fonts and imagaes to choose from. This program gives a newsletter a more polished look then a regular word document does.

B. Kidspiration is another great program to use in the classroom. This program shows diagrams of how things work together. There are many different structures to choose from or students and teachers can create their own. This would be a great way for students to diagram out a structure for a book or story. They could answer different questions about the story like who the main characters are or what happened in the story using a sequence diagram. I had never seen or used this program until this class and I cannot wait to use it in my own classroom. **    2.     As **//RESEARCHER//**, the educator seeks to improve educational practices within the school setting, using an inquiry approach to serve students more effectively. I really enjoyed picking a topic of my own to learn about. I knew a little about virtual world's so that is the topic that I choose to research more about. I learned so much more about this topic by having to research it myself. I liked going out and joining the many different virtual world's and playing around in them so that I could get a better feel for them. Because of that I found excitement in teaching the class about it later on. I feel that by going into these virtual world's that I was learning more about what my futute students will be like and get to know what they are into after school. My own children think that it is cool that I understand Webkinz and Millsberry and that I can help them find cool places to go visit on these sites. I believe that this will be a good thing to have in my classroom. I think that as an educator you should experience what the students are finding on the internet to make sure that you are introducing them to safe environments, and who knows maybe you will find a really interesting one before they do and you can start them on it. This is a great way to get new information out to students. If when you are researching something that the students are talking about and find that it is not such a great site for that age group you can voice your concern to parents, students, faculty, and principals. Some parents do not realize that some sites on the internet are not very good for their child's age range.
 * 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? **

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 technology program that I would like to use in my classroom is the Microsoft Publisher. I feel that this program is a great way to make a newsletter, brochure, calendar, and award certificates in. This way parents can know what their children are learning at school. Making calendars in this program is very simple. Students can use it for a snack calendar or for an incentive to good behavior. The students can expand on what a brocure that goes home is saying. This way the parents can ask questions of their child about what they are learning in school.

B. An internet site that is good to keep the lines of communication open to students and parents is blogger.com. This website is an excellent tool for the classroom. Parents can log on to see exactly what is expected of their child and they can see their child's progress in school. Not only is this a great parent-teacher communicator it is great for teacher-student interaction. If a student is sick and needs to know what they can do to stay caught up on schoolwork they can log in and check it out. Students are way ahead of their teachers in technology so this is one way for students to see that their teachers care about them, by having their teacher get to their technology level. **  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?

A. I really like the website youtube. It is a great place to look for information on the topics in your classroom to make that topic really stand out. The videos are made up by a variety of people so it can capture an interest in the class. This site is blocked at many schools, but can be sent via a link through e-mail or a flashdrive so that the teacher can still show it. Many students are watching youtube videos outside of class so they will think that this is cool that the teacher even know what it is. There is also a teachertube website that is also a great website. I found one that is a teacher rapping about math. It is very cute to think that someone would think of putting that on a website. As educators we really need to keep students interested in learning and one way to do this is to find out what will capture the students attention and bring that to the student at their level.

B. A technology program that I used was the album maker website. This website has place to download the program to your computer. The program is easy to use and students can have fun creating an album of memories made throughout the year. As a teacher you could take pictures of the class and download them to your computer into a file that is easy accessible to the class. I think that digital cameras are an awesome technology tool in the classroom. I have seen teachers taking pictures of their students playing on the snow hills at school and creating fun albums that they can post on the bulletin boards. The students enjoy seeing themselves playing and having fun with friends. These are memories that last and last. Parents are always taking pictures of their kids when they are little and this is a great way to show parent's that their child is having fun at school too. **