Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Twitter and Me!

When I heard that we were going to have to create a twitter for this class I was not happy about it. I do not have a personal account for a few different reasons. I do use facebook, but that is the only internet social website that I use.  However, once we started the account for professional reasons, I started to understand the reasons behind the professional account. I did not like doing the quiz online, only because I am still new to twitter and I am not very quick about it. I understood the concept of it, however being new with twitter makes it very hard to move around on the website. 

 
Overall, I think that Twitter can be a great tool for teachers that are teaching High school and College. I do not see how Elementary children should be using twitter. A lot of children do not understand how dangerous the internet can be. Another concern I have is if teachers wanted to use twitter, outside of the classroom they are expecting every child to have access to a computer and the internet. You never know what a child's life is at home, and putting something like this in the classroom I think would be okay, but should not be expected to be used outside of the classroom.
 

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Final Frontier

In this article I found that the way that some teachers lack of technology skills to be mind blowing. When I was in school we always used power points for many different presentations. In middle school and in high school we were expected to complete computer classes that would teach us the ins and outs about excel, power point, word, etc. The class was mandatory and had to be passed in order to graduate. I think that some teachers when they get to be close to retirement they loose their technology skills. And since these types of teachers didn't have to do computer classes, they feel like technology in the classrooms is unnecessary. I do agree that technology is very important in the classrooms. Teachers need to know what is the "new" technology these days. Technology changes so much throughout the years, teachers do need to take classes to be most up to date. For example I graduated high school in 2008 and I have never heard of a smart board. My first observation I was in my moms friends classroom and she kept talking about this "smart board" I was so confused and blown away that in just a few years they have created something that I have never heard off and these children knew so much about it. This is why teachers need to be up to date with technology when going into the classrooms.
Using the collaborative tool in the classroom is very important, for a few different reasons. Teachers need to make the students feel like they mean something in the classroom. When students feel that they mean a lot the classroom is going to run more smoothly. During this presentation myself, Hayley and Meghan worked very well together and were able to talk about the presentation at anytime which helped complete the project in a timely manor. We were able to be collaborative during this project.