Cooking with TPACK

In this task I was asked to take a tool and use it in a way that it's not supposed to be used and see if it would work. I was giving a cucumber and spatula. I had to peel and cut the cucumber with the spatula. I started to peel and cut it and it seemed to work but not very well. In doing this it made me think that in the classroom sometimes you are given things to do that you might not have the right tools but you can still make it work with what tools you have. If you'd like to watch the video of "How not to peel a cucumber" here is the link and have a good laugh.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5PELb9TrpU 

Reflection of Course

Is the summer really coming to an end? I can’t believe that the course is already coming to a close. Everything has gone by so quickly and I have learned so much and have so many things I can take with me on my teaching journey. At first, I was a bit worried about how the class was going to go because I had never seen a class set up like this and I did not know if I would understand the material or be able to grasp the functionality of the class structure. However, the class was set up so well and the quests were in order and easy to follow along. In this course, I learned how to integrate technology into the classroom setting in a variety of ways and through multiple mediums. I also learned how to use social media as a platform and how to expand this into my classrooms. With this, my students can expand their base line of technology all while learning and working together. I have also learned new ways to connect with other teachers so that I can learn from them and share ideas with them by fostering a community of educators. There is Google + and Twitter, both of which we had opportunities to utilize in the course and what we used to complete our course work. It is important for educators to integrate different technology into the classroom, so that the students will have the opportunity to learn and grow while utilizing their individual abilities. I believe that adding technology into the class gets the students to think and use their brains more while keeping them interested. It also allows them to be more creative by using the technology for the purpose of creating amazing presentations to show the class. With all of the technology the students will have the opportunity to connect more with each other in order to work on projects together. With the technology like Google Docs the students can start working on a document and the other students can log into it and continue working on the document right from where their peers before them stopped working. Moving forward, I intend to continue to find new ways to be able to integrate technology in my classroom so that my students will have ample opportunities to learn from the online community. As a PE teacher I will have the chance to utilize instructional videos and other filming applications to allow my students to learn skills from one another and video themselves, allowing for corrections and further skill advancement. Overall, this course has given me a chance to broaden my horizons and develop a new skills set that I will be able to utilize in my career. I believe a primary focus of this course was being able to teach and learn in a modern way, as new generations arise I believe it will be imperative to meet the children on their level and technology will allow me to do just that.

Digital Citizenship

When I began to think about the concept of digital citizenship, it had me thinking about what it truly meant to be a good citizen. I believe that in order to do that you need to be respectful, help others, be helpful in your community and when faced with choices do the right thing. I then began thinking about the digital world and what all can happen within the cyber community. To me, digital citizenship is staying safe when you are online and not clicking on something that looks suspicious or “click bate”, staying off of bad websites that may have viruses or lead to trojan horses, protecting your private information by not giving such things out to websites that are not securely maintained and protected, and by respecting others viewpoints and posts on the internet. If you disagree, it is best to scroll past or be polite when posting a reply or comment. I recommend for anyone to try not to get caught up in the digital world too much. Try to take a break and don't spend too much time browsing and/or playing or streaming. Lastly, if you see cyber bullying stand up for the person being bullied. It is not right to bully anyone and definitely not right to do it while hiding behind a screen and keyboard. Words can be hurtful and can lead to much more serious consequences in this world we are living in. Be a good digital citizen and stand up and stop the cyber bullying. In many ways Digital Citizenship and Traditional Citizenship are similar but in other ways they are different. One difference is the layout and security that comes with being on the internet. It's easier to get caught up in something on the internet than it is in the real world because people often disassociate themselves with those they are interacting with.

As teachers and educators we need to explain to our students what digital citizenship is and outline the importance that it can play because this generation is a generation of technology and we all use it constantly. That's why we need to help students be aware of the things that can happen on the internet and teach them what to do and what not to do. If we can start teaching students now they can start passing it down to the next generation and begin creating a more knowledgeable society as we are introduced to newer and more advanced technology.

If we can connect the traditions of a good citizen to digital citizenship and use them online, then I believe that the internet will become a better place for all to use and learn from. Technology and the internet can help us in so many ways but only if it is used in the right and safe way. I believe that throughout this experience I have had the opportunity to learn more about being a good digital citizen and it is my plan to put my new found understanding to good use as I move forward not only with myself but with my students as well.   

Gaming in Education

When you think of gaming so of you may be thinking of Call of Duty, Skyrim, or a sports game like Madden or 2K which are popular football and basketball games. These are the types of games that most people think about. These are the games that this generation is playing and talking about at school. This generation really likes to play video games, so if they are so interested in gaming why not add it into your class room. Gaming in Education is starting to grow thanks to the newer technology. I believe that if we can give the students something to relate too and something they love doing they will learn better. One of the games that I played before writing this blog was Geoguessr. It is a game where you are took to a place on earth with google maps. You can look around and and see different things like trees, mountains, lakes, or oceans. The object of the game is too pick a spot on the map and guess where they are. The closer you are the more points you get. You get 5 round to score as many points as you can. I believe this game can help student explore and learn more about our earth.

When doing this assignment it make me think back to some of the games that I got to play in school that I used to learn. Some of these games were number munchers, Oregon trail, and Math Blaster. These were games that you could play and learn from as well. I can remember loving to play number muchers and Oregon the most. I like math and history when I was younger and those two games had both. Number Munchers taught you about numbers and Oregon Trail taught you what it was like to be in the time of the Old West. I will never forget these games and how they helped me learn.

For our future classes I believe that we need to expand our knowledge of gaming and learn to incorporate it into our content and our lessons. All it takes is a little research and you can change the whole dynamics of your classroom. I encourage you to research and find educational games that will help you in your classroom.

Making My First Class Web Page

Check out my first attempt at a class web page.

https://sites.google.com/my.lr.edu/

dustin-triplett-class

Google +

For my class we took a quiz too see where we were in a social media aspect. For me the the quiz told me I needed to coonent on Google +. So I created a Google + profile and it was very easy to do. Google lead me straight through the creation of my profile. I really liked how easy it was and that it would be helpful to people that believe it would be hard to get connected and started.

The next step was to create a circle and add people to my circle. It was easy to do that too. I went to people it pulled up people in my email that I knew and could follow and add to a circle. I followed some of my classmates and created a classmates circle for us to be in so that we can share ideas and share things that we find online.

I will use Google + in the future to keep learning and expanding my knowledge and get to learn more and more about my content area that I can use to help create a better learning enviroment for my students. I can't wait to meet more people and connect with them and just keep connecting create a circle full of wonderful and creative people.

Hole in the Wall TED Talk Reflection

When I first started watching the video I was a little confused about what the title of the assignment meant when it said “Hole in the Wall”. Continuing to watch the video I began to learn why it was call that. He first talked about how schools are becoming obsolete and that for the future there may not be a need for schools. In jobs today, we do not write as much as we used to because of computers, With that being said, are schools preparing students for the jobs that will be waiting for them? I agree with what he is saying because schools are so focused on writing and math instead of things that they will be needing to learn to use in jobs today. He then switches to discussing about how he started and got the idea for the “Hole in the Wall”. \

This is Mr. Mitra… 

When Mr. Mitra was working on programing computers he was meeting with people that said they had bright children, but all the people that would say that were wealthy people that could afford computers in their homes. So Mr. Mitra decided to cut a hole in the next to the slums, he then placed a computer in the wall for the students to use and learn from on their own. He left the computer there and the children began to learn how to use a computer which they had never seen before. So he thought he would stretch out and put a computer in a more remote area. The same thing happened in months they learned how to use it. I thought this was amazing that people that have no idea about what a computer is but they were still able to learn and know how to work one with just months of exposure. 

With these experiments a success, Mr. Mitra started doing this all over in different areas and in these areas children who had never seen a computer were learning how to use them and teach others how to use them. It is just amazing how people can learn on their own.  He started having grandmothers in the UK skype in and help the children and other people learn. He refers to this as the grandmother approach This is where there is a person or grandmother in these instances that will question the learners and have them explain how they did something. The grandmothers did this and they encouraged the learners. Mr. Mitra says that encouragement is the key to the learner’s success. I believe that he is correct and that encouragement is the key and that as teachers we need to be that encouragement for the students and help them grow. One last thing to think about is what Mr. Mitra discusses for just a few minutes, that is what will learning be like tomorrow? Will we need school? That is something that we all should think about because the future is coming and schooling is changing all the time. Will there come a time that we may not need school anymore? I don’t think so, because I believe that we need teachers to be there to help learners through and encourage them like the grandmothers did. It is hard to say though because with the technology we have we can get information and answers in minutes. Technology is always changing and with that, the chances of school disappearing is always possible.

Sources:

Google Images

Sugata Mitra TED 2013 Winning Talk-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpcEpmNbHds&feature=youtu.be