Electronic Contact Assignment

I contacted a teacher in Georgia her name is Jessica Zeback. Mrs. Zeback believes in using technology in her classroom. While teaching elementary special needs children, she tells me of the many different ways that computers and other devices can help these students. Different types of educational games such as the Leap pad and V tech equipment are in her classroom ranging in help from numbers, to the alphabet, shapes, colors, then reading, and sentence work. Everyone has seen these things on tv and in the stores, I think they are really neat, and believe that they can help these children to. While in the class, if a student is behind or needing assistance in a certain area, these technological tools are used to keep other students occupied so the teacher can solely devote that small amount of time to insuring that the student needing help understands what is going on. There are also a number of things on the computer that help students in the class. There are web sites with games, videos and powerpoints that assist the children in many different areas. Mrs. Zeback has not used ACCESS labs or Smart boards, but these are avaliable to the school.

Education/Math with Technology

As we all know, technology is our future. In the classroom there are a number of ways that technology can be used in helping students. Does any one watch tv, there are so many tools that come on commercials that that are designed to get the younger generation focused on technology. There are Leap pad, V tech and many many other things that involve children in technology. Of course these are out there to help them with the alphabet, shapes, colors, and so much more, but actually learning to use them and remembering is great for these kids. I know parents whose small children know more about the computer than they do.
There are many ways that I want to use technology in my class, I think it will be a good learning experience for the kids I want us to learn how to use equiptment, how to take care of it, and then the varity of ways we can use it as informal and educational tools. It's just really great, when I was in school there was not as near as much technology as there is now and that was only four years ago.

Fixed vs. Growth

In the podcast by the University of Stanford, they tried seeking solutions to how children learn and what we can do to help. You see there are two types of learners fixed and growth their names kinda describe them. Fixed is when the person is set in their ways they do not care about trying to learn anther way. Having a growth learning style is wanting to exercise your mind to gather more information or just having a wide range of ways that things can be done. This pocast was very interesting as well as informative, for I had never heard of this before.
I think that future educators should use this information in our classes. If we have students are set in their ways, we should promote different activities and exercises that could help expand their view of what ever we may be studying at the time I think it could enhance their overall learning experience. For those who are already in the growth learning style maybe they could help the others by talking about how they like to study and how they look at things in their work ect. I know that I did learn from this podcast and hopefully I can use it in my future teachings.

Science Podcast's

We have been looking at a variety of pod casts lately. This week I watched some video podcast dealing in the area of science. There were beautiful pictures and great videos that can be used in the classroom as well as at home. There are a number of ways that we as future teachers can use these video podcast in the class also assigning them to go along with homework if students have the ability to go online while at home. One way that I just thought about was maybe creating your own podcast just giving the information that you picked from the text. Then in class you could play it and let everyone listen instead of a lecture, you could add a PowerPoint with it or pictures or even do the video podcast with something you put together yourself or that you find online. Let's use our imagination, and come up with new ways of teaching so that our students will not get bored, and want to learn. Maybe they can even come up new ways or have different ideas that can help us help them.