CED 525 Class Two Reflection

As I often do, I found the collaborative nature of this class to be most beneficial. I most enjoy hearing what others have implemented in their classes and the applications that can be done when students are older. As a teacher of young students, it is often difficult to visualize how these ideas could be used with older students. My classmates help to bring that to life.

I found several ideas that could be of use on AT&Ts "Knowledge Network." Some of the sites I found were new or ones I had forgotten about (such as PBSkids.org). Others were new to me. While A&T has many valuable resources, I found Thinkfinity to be much more extensive and better maintained than AT&Ts. Even so, it is a wonderful resource that I feel is less well-known than Thinkfinity.

The portion of the class dedicated to online quizzes was way beyond the scope of what my students are capable of doing. I could see creating a quiz for a review type game to be completed as a class on the SMARTBoard or overhead projector. Other than that, it's beyond my students' level. However, it is an interesting concept.

I'm very skeptical of the idea of using social networking sites for instruction. As I've talked to my friends who are "Facebook Junkies," they've been impressed that we use Facebook in class. However, they too are skeptical of how to use it for instruction. Ideas I've received include setting up group meetings, discussing educational topics on people's walls, and forming groups from which study teams could be developed. I see a site like ePals being much more educationally focused and more plausible for school districts to consider allowing. In short, I see possibilities with social networking; however, I think that it needs to be given more consideration before we dive into it.

Thinkfinity Reflection

Wednesday's class opened my eyes to a plethora of new resources to use in the classroom. In the past few months, I have become bored with my typical computer activity to be an exploration on www.starfall.com While the resources there are wonderful and my students love to use it, I was frustrated with my inability to find other decent sources. While I found all of the sources investigated to be rich with ideas, I found ReadWriteThink and Illuminations to be most applicable to the the special education resource room. I was most pleased with the interactive student "games" on ReadWriteThink. There were a number of good phonics and phonemic awareness sorts which would easily work in our curriculum, require minimal prep, and be easily accessible to my students. I also re-discovered the PBSKids website through ReadWriteThink and am looking forward to using their materials in my classroom.

Since Wednesday night, I've been telling everyone about Thinkfinity! It's truly a wonderful educational resource that fits well into teachers' budgets.

CED510 Reflection

This course has extended my knowledge of opportunities to use technology in the classroom. Conversations amongst fellow students and their successful use of technology in the classroom were most beneficial in extending my knowledge and challenging me to use the technology in the classroom. I particularly found the databases of teachers' compiled lessons (such as IDE@S, NetTrekker, etc) to be a useful springboard to extend my ideas of technology integration in the classroom. From one of these sites, I developed an interactive book that my students and I developed in the classroom. The application was enjoyable and educative for my students in learning literacy content and computer skills. For me, it was an extension of how to teach these skills in a resource room when basic skills are very minimal. In summary, the greatest gains from this class occurred from the opportunity to interact with professionals in the field to share ideas and extend student learning.

Issues and Implications

The use of technology in education and society creates many new issues. The use of technology is drastically changing the demographics of the workforce. With many manufacturing jobs being forced to third world countries in exchange for technologically advanced jobs, voids are being left within the US's economy. As a teacher of students with disabilities, the jobs that my colleagues and I often prepare our students for revolve around the manufacturing world. Without this vital niche in society, many people who were once capable of holding moderately paying jobs are now left with minimum wage jobs or no job at all. An unintended effect of the technological advancement of our society will likely be a greater divide between the rich and poor and a higher unemployment rate.

Paralleled with this, greater disparities in socioeconomic equity and access are likely to result. My experience has been that the wealthier and more educated families who are often better in supporting students in traditional learning tasks are also the families that have computers and web access at home. Additionally, these students are learning vital computer survival skills which will open additional job markets for these students. With limited budgets and an increasing network of excellent free web resources, I increasingly find myself referring families to web-based activities as reinforcement of skills taught in class. Clearly, my "haves" have a greater access to these activities than my "have nots." Many also have challenges with gender equity resources on the Internet. While inequitable sites do exist, with careful review and screening, it is possible to find many unbiased sites with equal or better academic content. One of my favorites is www.readinga-z.com. This group of web sites has a number of downloadable books which are representative of a number of cultures, genders, and diverse topics. It is truly an amazing site!