Chapter 7

There are three criteria educational technology must meet in order to be considered "appropriate". First, it must be considered appropriate for the educational situation. Secondly, it must be motivational. Finally, it must promote learning at the correct levels of student ability and academic achievement. Evaluation should occur before instruction, during the instructional period, and after the instruction has occurred. At each of these stages, you should continuously evaluate and revise. There is a wide variety of resources available to educators that will help them determine the appropriateness of educational technology. These tools come from a variety of sources including school districts, state Department of Education, professional educational organizations, catalogs, colleagues, published evaluations, conferences, and most popularly, the Web.

So what exactly should you be looking at and looking for when determining the appropriateness of educational technology? Software evaluation rubrics can be very helpful. They provide important evaluation criteria including content, documentation, technical support, ability and academic levels, technical quality, and ease of use. Evaluating web resources is also very important to do, as discussed in the class when we created our own web evaluation forms. Evaluating technology integration is taking a look at the big picture and seeing if the school as a whole is properly utilizing and implementing educational technology.

Since my last post, I learned many new things about Wikipedia! I have used Wikipedia extensively in the past to conduct research and gain information. It was especially enlightening when I did a speech on different kinds of wine grapes. However, I had no idea it was an interactive Encyclopedia, where you could add your own information at any time! I had no experiencing design a site of my own, so it was a really cool experience for me. I do think Wikipedia sites would be a great tool for teachers who shared something in common, such as subject area or grade level taught. Also, reading chapter 7 taught me that it is not only important to use technology in our schools, but to evaluate and ensure appropriateness of those technologies.

Chapter 6

Curriculum can be defined as the knowledge, skills, and performance standards students are expected to acquire in particular grade levels, or through sequences or clusters based on subject matter units of instruction. The Departments of Education provide districts with documents called curriculum frameworks or curriculum guides, which describe curriculum standards and the benchmarks for learning. Sometimes there are Grade level Expectations (GLEs) and Mastery Objective Checklists built into the curriculum as well. In current years, technology has become a huge part of our curriculum. Technology integration (also known as curriculum integration) is the combination of all technology parts, such as hardware and software, together with each subject-related area of the curriculum in order to enhance learning. One example of this movement is attempting to put computer labs in every school and, in many cases, even multiple computers in every classroom. Today you don't only just use computers in your computer class. You will be using computers and technology in basically every one of your classes, regardless of the subject area!

This chapter also discussed the learning process and the many benefits technology brings to it. Authentic learning experiences are instructional activities that demonstrate real-life connections by associating the concept being taught with an actual real-life experience. Active learning occurs when students become engaged in inquiring, investigating, solving problems, and formulating and answering their own questions. Can you think of any device or tool that is more capable of promoting this type of learning than a computer!? It also promotes and enhances anchored instruction, problem-based instruction, and discovery learning. Two popular softwares that have proven to be great learning tools are Body Works, used to teach concepts about the human body, and Microsoft Encarta, an interactive computerized encyclopedia.

Recently, I have been practicing Microsoft Word through SAM training and tests, as well as through creating my web evaluation form. I always considered myself pretty proficient with Word, especially compared to how little I know about most of the other computer programs out there. However, my recent usage has opened my eyes to whole new wonders about Word! I did not know that there is a Forms toolbar where you can create form fields to be filled in and check boxes to complete. You can then protect the document so those who access it can only complete the form; the system will not allow them to make any other changes. I believe I will often create these types of forms throughout my educational career. I also learned how to do a “mail merge” on Word. This is a very efficient way to compose the same letter addressed to many different people. Also, it was pretty cool to create a web evaluation form. The lack of credibility of online sources is something I am aware of, but I had yet to consider its ramifications in the classroom. After the activity, it made me realize that it as an issue my students need to know, and I plan to use a similar form when I have a classroom of my own.

Chapter 5

Interactivity is one of the vital features of digital media applications. It allows for individualized instruction and exploration. Digital media is those technologies that allow users to create new forms of interaction, expression, communication, and entertainment in a digital format.Multimedia simply means "more than one media", but they do not necessarily have to be digital. The text and graphics found within digital media software is a great asset to those who are visual learners. Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is the standard for how digital musical devices represent sound electronically, allowing the the composition and editing of music! Similarly, the Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) is that standard for video compression and decompression.

Computer-based training (CBT), also referred to as individual lead training (ILT), is a tool that allows you to learn by using and completing exercises using instructional software. This is popular with employers in many fields of business. E-books are a popular way to reference certain parts of books by a click of the mouse.Project Gutenberg is working to make thousands of e-books free to everyone! Virtual reality is also based off of digital media. It also makes online classes and distance learning possible! Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), tutorials, and educational simulations are among the many educational software applications that exist today!

Since out last blog, I learned about Google Scholar as an easy and excellent way to search for scholarly journals and articles. By conducting our web hunt, I learned that there are free, easy to use online websites that allow you to convert to different units of the metric system, and to convert American dollars into any other type of currency! How cool! Chapter 5 also enlightened me on some of digital media software that exist today. I have had previous exposure and experience with quite a bit of it, but I did not know all the technical terms and jargon for all of it. Now i feel like I could speak about it in a more professional, informed way. I also was not aware of all the applications that were directly related to education, so it is comforting to know there are so many options as a student and a soon -to-be teacher!

Ch 4 Blog

This chapter gave an overview about computer hardware and how it may be applied in a career in education. A system unit is a boxlike case that houses the electronic components a computer uses to process data. It is typically metal or plastic and serves as a protector for these electrial components. Data representation for a computer is digital, which means it only understands the on state, represented by the numerical digit "1", and the off state, represented by the numerical digit "2". This numbering system is called the binary system, and each of the on or off digits are called"bits". Bits then form together to create more complex units of data. When eight bits combine to form a unit, they are called a "byte". The system unit consists of many components, with a large number of them residing on the motherboard. Some of these components include the CPU, control unit, arithmetic/logic unit, system clocks, and many types of memory. Ports and connectors are used to attach external devices such as modems and printers. There are four types of input: data, program, commands, and user responses. Input devices include the keyboard and mouse. There are also four types of output: text, graphics, audio and video. Comon output devices include monitors, printers, and fax machines.

After browsing through some fellow EME2040 students' postings, I found that I share a lot of similarities with them! It seems we collectively tend to have the most prior experience with PowerPoint and Word, but want to learn more about Excel and Inspiration. Hardly anyone had used or even heard of Inspiration prior to this class! Many of also were also pleasantly surprised to know that there were so many technological tools geared toward teachers and education to make our job a little bit easier. I also noticed that a significant number of students wanted to learn about web design. I also noticed that a handful of students, like myself, had already taken the computer literacy course here at FSU, which gave us background knowledge and a head start on SAM and some of the skills we will be expected to know in here!

Since last posting, I brushed up on my Windows XP skills and learned a few new things about it as well. I did not know how to format or copy a disk until I learned how to do it on SAM. I also learned how to save documents to different formats such as the .rtf format. Also, I I learned the basics to Inspiration. I did not even know that this program existed, but I think it is really cool! Concept maps can be a great learning tool, and Inspiration makes them fun and easy to create. Finally, I learned about some of the more technical aspects to computer hardware. I now know about all the different units on the motherboard and exactly how to define bits and bytes!