Week Seven

This week in class, we worked with mobile devices and became more familiar with the SmartBoard and all the equipment in the front of the room. I personally have always felt that hands on activity and less screen time in the classroom, because at home students are most likely getting only screen time, so my thought is why feed them more in the classroom. I also think that their communication skills go down the drain when they are simply only using different technologies. After looking through the IPod, I actually found an application that would be very beneficial to students. My group and I found a Spanish application that allowed the users to become more familiar with the Spanish language both visually and gave them the chance to listen to it being spoken. This would not be something that I would using to teach the language, but I do think it would be a nice reward for the students to be able to use!

Week Six

This week in class we searched through different podcasts, and actually made our own. I had heard of podcasts before today in class, but I never really knew what exactly it was. I quickly learned that podcasts were something kind of like videos, or sometimes just audio sounds teaching anyone about a variety of different subjects. To look for the subject, you simply type in the topic you want a podcast on and then look through them. For me personally, I had a specific image in my head of what I was looking for and I could not find it, but I did find other things I could use in the classroom. Instead of a video of the water cycle I found a simple song that would help students to learn the water cycle easier. The podcast was really fun and simple to make, and would be something that I could possibly use in my classroom.

Week Five

Today in class we learned about using clickers in the classroom and other options of the same idea of clicker that do not cost as much money. One option for a cheaper way to do clickers is doing m.socrative.com for the students, and the teacher has to be at t.socrative.com.

We also spent a lot of time looking at different websites, and seeing that even though they look valid, they may not be. When we have students do research we need to give them websites to search instead of letting them just google anything that they want to.