Digital Citizenship Inside Elementary School.

 

Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents to understand what students,children,and technology users should know to use technology appropriately (Ribble).This is an important concept to teach in elementary school for the safety of the students. With just learning how to use technology and the interent it is important to teach them the good site from the bad site but to not scare them away. Using technology can be fun, you just need to teach them how to use appropriate sites. Refer to my post below for more information on Digital Citizenship inside elementary school. Refer to my work cited page for information from my presentation.

Learning to Unlearn

In the classroom there are always going to be things you have will have to unlearn. With there being so many new things out and the world constantly changing you are always going to be unlearning implied knowledge. This may be a challenge to some people.  There are many things you have to unlearn that all takes place in the classroom. Keeping your classroom current with new technology makes a big difference in the classroom and to the students for better learning opportunities for them.

In a classroom there are many things that the teacher has to unlearn, there also things that you have to relearn. It is not what we already know it is something new and different from what we already know. You have to relearn and construct new knowledge that improves practices. Doing this relearning keeps you up to date with the new technology out there. Having new technology in your classroom is a great way for students to be able to use the new technology,  by relearning how to use it and incorporating in the classroom it is beneficial to everyone.

Interactive Whiteboards in Today's Classroom

In today’s classroom many Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) have been introduced to the classroom. I feel that the IWB’s are a great learning tool to have in your class. They are great ways for the students to get involved in the lesson with it allowing the students to come up and use the whiteboard themselves. They also have a lot of different options for the teachers to use for their lessons that you would not be able to do anywhere else.

However I don’t find that they are a necessity. Although they are a great tool I don’t think that each and every class would need them, depending on the teachers teaching and learning styles. Referring from the article in the Washington Post it said, “My kids were bored with itafter about three weeks."  It could be a good tool to have but it could become just the common board that everyone gets bored with. The teachers have to keep the lessons interesting not just use some new whiteboard to get the kids involved.  

Differentiation could be used when referring to the IWB’s because in the classroom the teacher could use the whiteboards to do different group activities with it or the IWB could be used at a station for the kids to go too. It would also give them the opportunity for the students to use the board in different ways along with playing different games and fun group activities. This could be a great tool for differentiation.

Twitter and Me

My experience with Twitter is great. I have had my own personal Twitter account for at least two years now and I am on it many time throughout the day. I like checking to see what my friends have tweeted and getting involved in conversations with different people as well as seeing the famous people I follow and what they are doing.

On my professional Twitter account I really enjoyed in class how we used it to take our quiz. Since I am familiar with Twitter I was able to understand easily what and how to use it. I also liked how we use the hashtag with the class name so it was easy to follow the conversations that were going on while taking the quiz.

In teaching and learning I could see how Twitter could become very useful in a classroom. If the entire class was using it, it would be easy to follow conversations in the class if you missed class one day or if you wanted to add in your opinion as well. Teachers, students, and facility members could communicate very easily and quickly. I find it very useful in teaching and communicating back in forth with your students. I also find it useful because if you know that your students are on twitter and like to use it, more school work might get done because they will be on something that they like and like to do.

The Final Frontier

For this assignment we were instructed to read the article "Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The Final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology Integration?" After reading the article we were grouped together to make a power point presentation on google drive on what the article was about and how Technology should be used in the classroom and provoke people about the good side of the use of technology.

The article discusses how teachers use technology in the classroom and the different ways technology is a good thing to use in the classroom. It also discusses different teachers and statics and how they use technology in their classroom. It discusses different beliefs in other classrooms and the knowledge of teachers and their use of technology.

After being grouped together and collaborating with the group I realized that we all better understood the article better. After collaborating we all worked together and did our part of the presentation. We even discusses getting online at the same time so we could all work on the power point together and make comments to each other if we had questions. It was a good experience because we all worked together and did our parts and helped each other.

In our presentation we discussed the types of classrooms and the types of teachers beliefs. We also included the teachers experience with technology in the classroom and their thoughts. We added a chart of the statics from the article along with a video on the ten best reasons to use technology in the classroom. We added links to outside sources and finished the presentation with our thoughts on the use of technology.

All About Me

My name is Ashley Wilson I am studying early childhood education and am 20 years old. I am from Kane Pennsylvania which is a very small town about two hours from Edinboro. I have two brothers and one sister. I really enjoy playing basketball and my favorite NBA team is the Miami Heat. I also enjoy going snowboarding and cross country sking in my free time. After college I would like to teach kindergarten or first grade.

                          I am not very good at using technology and do not feel that comfortable using technology to learn but am excited to be able too and use new technology to improve and feel more comfortable with it. I feel as though technology is a very important part of learning especially in todays world with there being so much technology out there. I feel like a good way to learn is through technology and there are so many different ways you can use it.

In teaching I also find technology a very helpful and important way in learning. Being able to make powerpoints and present them to your audiance is a great way to  teach and also have other technology resources close by.
  I believe that technology is very meaningful and also important thing in teaching your students.