Reflection to viewing of video “Reading Film-The Story of Movies”

My reflection after viewing this video was great! I think this is a great way to incorporate multi media in the classroom. This helps students create critical thinking skills. Filmmaker Martin S. created this program when he came to the realization that kids needed tools to interpret the visual imagery their immersed in everyday. Think about it...in this generation everything is more technology based. Students no longer really figure things out on their own. They have the technology right in front of their face where if they have a question they can just type it right into google and have an answer like that. Students get their information from the television or movies. So this program is a plus because it will help them realize that not everything they see on television is one hundred percent true. The goal for teachers and students is the have the students look at film through three different lens, 1.) film as a language, 2.) historical cultural document, and 3.) work of art. As it said in the video, your training they eye and the heart of the student to look at the film in a different way and ask questions. I couldn’t agree more with this statement. When you look at something you need to be able to draw questions and observations from it. This program is doing that by helping students achieve and strengthen their skills in critical thinking. Wait there’s even a better plus to this program. IT’S FREE! That’s right! The Story of Movies curriculum package which includes lesson plans and dvds is available free of charge to teachers around the country. I really like that because it’s nothing extra that you need to pay for, for your students. Overall, I really enjoyed watching this video and this would be great for a middle school art teacher to do with their students.        

Reflection to “Life of the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education”

My reflection to “Life of the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education” is one hundred percent agreed! What first struck out to me was when the author stated, “the way we are educating is based on nineteenth-century ideas and methods. Here we are, entering the twenty-first century, and you look at our schools and ask, ‘Why are we doing things in this ancient way?’ Our system of education is locked in a time capsule.” I couldn’t agree more with this. Everything in today’s generation deals with technology. Everything is becoming touch screen. Schools are slowly adapting to having their textbooks as ebooks. It’s crazy when you really think about it. The biggest thing is to teach communication in all forms. Yes, today you see people texting all day with their phone in their hands and very few actually know how to communicate well. So with that being said, it’s important to teach communication. In a classroom, your students could communicate through any subject really whether it’s music, through the rhythm of the song or in english, through the writing of their story. As I kept reading this article I became more and more intrigued with it. The last section, “Do you think the education field will get your attention” really caught my eye. The author was telling us that the problem is that people don’t get the bigger picture, which is very true. People don’t seem to understand how important education actually is. A country as a whole survives on its education system. Without education, how would the president be running our country as a whole. I liked this line, “The society that has a great educational system becomes the prominent society because that’s the way the human race survives.” As I said before, without the education system, then our country would NOT survive!  

Response to “Why some schools are Selling their iPads”

After reading this article I agree with the iPad not being the best interactive device for learning. This article had me thinking again about technology in classrooms. Laptop tablets are a great substitute to iPads. Now I have both an iPad and also a Google Chromebook. I never touch my iPad because I get so frustrated eveytime I go and use it because it never allows me to do what I want to do. I have a difficult time opening some programs and typing on it. Now my Chromebook I absolutely love. It’s great because it’s super light and everything is right on your Google drive, which saves automatically so you don’t have to worry about losing any of your information. The ipad is great for apps which the Chromebook does lack, so I will give the iPad that point there. Chromebooks are also a lot cheaper than iPads. an iPad is usually around $500 where I bought my Chromebook for about $230, which as you can see is a huge price difference. I really liked the quote in this article, “Students saw the iPad as a ‘fun’ gaming environment, while the Chromebook was perceived as a place to ‘get to work’.” This statement in my opinion is 100 percent correct because on the iPad students could get distracted with all the apps and very overwhelmed and have a difficult time focusing. I know I do when I go on my iPad, even my iPhone. Whereas on the Chromebook it is perceived as place to work because there are no apps on it for the students to mess around with. Overall, my reaction to this article is that I agree that there are better devices out there to be used in classrooms than the iPad.         

Response to “What will it take for iPads to Upend Teaching and Learning”

While reading this article I thought to myself it valued many great points. I thought to myself that yes technology and education could mix together. We have to start understanding that times are changing and technology is becoming bigger and bigger each and every day in in the classrooms. For example, textbooks are now available online and mostly every child today has either an iPad or and iPhone or some type of touch screen item. The world is changing and each generation is becoming more technologically advanced.

So my reaction to this article was surprising. I found it very interesting that some schools are now depending on only iPads for teaching their students. No more pen and paper. Everything they do is on the iPad. Now to me, I would not like that because to be honest I’m not the biggest fan of technology. I need to be able to have it right in front of my face on writing, not on a screen and same goes with writing also.

The part of this article I found interesting to me was the math class section. I thought it was neat how Doroquez uploads the day’s notes onto the education social networking site and then he’ll explain or review a skill by projecting the worksheet onto the whiteboard and then break students into groups to practice. His students can work out problems by being able to draw them out on their iPads and then they can turn their work into Doroquez through an app, which is called Notability. It’s just crazy to think how much you can really do with technology.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this article. It definitely opened up my mind to what is happening in classrooms with technology. Also, it’s crazy to think that by the time I become a teacher, technology in the classrooms will be changing once again.

Weekly Linky Party

So I decided to just stay with the new blog I found this week. On Saddle Up for Second Grade, Marcy posted Five for Friday weekly linky party. Marcy shared on her blog five things her class did this past week. She found five for Friday on Doodle Bugs Teaching Blog. Five for Friday is a weekly teacher linky party where you post five random things from today or this past week on your blog. Then you come back and link your blog post up at the bottom of this post in the linky tool.Grab the button above and link back to this post on your blog. 

While looking at Marcy's Five for Friday I came across one of them which I found very interesting. Marcy received a set of iPods from Donors Choose and her students were so excited about using them. She introduced Listen to Reading to them and it was a huge hit! Below I posted a picture.

 

It was just crazy to me that students are using iPods in class now. Technology in the classrooms is changing every single day. Next week I will be checking back with Saddle Up for Second Grade and also Step Into Second Grade.  

Saddle Up for Second Grade

So this week I am taking a break from Step into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons blog and I decided to find other 2nd grade blogs. There are so many out there. I came across a blog that really caught my attention. It's called Saddle up for Second Grade. Marcy is a second grade teacher in Texas. On her blog she lists her lessons plans for the week, which I find that very helpful for teachers. It gives you some ideas on what to do in your classroom. Also on her blog, she even has Instagram photos that she takes of her classroom and what activities they do that day. So this week I’m going to talk about her lesson plans. Marcy explains how she plans her week. First she meets up with her partner teacher on Tuesdays to talk about the upcoming week. They both teach the same concepts so they brainstorm ideas off of one another. Then on Wednesdays she plans everything out, which sometimes it may roll into Thursday or Friday. Marcy plans out her full week in five subjects (math, reading, ELA, writing, and science). All of her lesson plans she posts on her blog you can click on the picture and download it to your computer. Here is an example of her math lesson plan for the week.

Here is an example of her writing lesson plan for the week.

Her lesson plans are very helpful for teachers. Especially if you're ever stuck and need some ideas to teach your students. Overall, I really enjoyed reading her blog and I'm going to check back in a couple of days to see if she adds any new posts.