Final Course Reflection

I went into this class, IT 365, not knowing what new things I was going to learn. I figured this class was just like any other computer class I have taken, and I was not going to learn anything new. I have to say, I was completely wrong when it came to thinking I was not going to learn anything new. I learned more from this one computer class than any other computer class I have taken. I did not know I could do half of the things we did on the computer before taking this course. I think this was the best course I could of taken for teaching because technology is truly taking a huge part of today's society and now, because of this class, I know how to do these things on the computer that we, as teachers, need to know.

I had a few strong points in this class and many weak points in this class. The stronger points of this course I had were when I did the movie assignment, Google Groups assignment, the Turnitin assignment and the Blogfolio. The reason why these assignments were my stronger points of this course is because I have done each of these assignments in a computer class before, or these assignments were a little bit easier for me to understand how to do them. My weaker points of this course I had were when I did the Concept map assignment, Web Tools assignment, and the Assistive/Adaptive Technology assignment. Each of these assignments were a little more challenging for myself. I had never done any of these assignments before in a different computer class. I was unsure where to start with these projects, but with my teacher's and peers' help, I was able to figure out how to do the assignments. I have a few future learning goals that I plan to meet in order to improve my weaker areas. One of my goals for my weaker areas is to continue to learn more about these assignments that I did in this class, so I can continue to teach my students and myself how to do these things on the computer. Another goal of mine is to be able to show my students how to do these things with the computer; this way I am getting practice while they are learning about it. My last goal I want to accomplish for my weaker areas is to continue to work with these assignments we did, so they are easier to do and I can become a master on the computer.

I plan on integrating technology in my classroom when I become a teacher. I plan to have the students type up some reports and assignments on the computer. I plan on having the students do games on the computer to help them enrich their learning. I will have the students use the Internet to look up items that we are learning about in class, so they can learn more about the subject matter. These are just a few ways I will integrate technology into my classroom when I become a teacher.

Assistive/Adaptive Technology

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JO47Ujpg4pSWw5SVM2ZS1sRlk/edit

Title Page:

Learning How to Use Print Screen Page:

Low Vision Computer User Page:

Magnifier Page:

Alert Sound for the Caps Lock Key Page:

 Visual Alert Flash Page:

On Screen Keyboard Page:

The Letter "C" Modified for Sighted, Visually, and Hearing Impaired Students Page:

The Letter "B" Modified for Sighted, Visually, and Hearing Impaired Students Page:

 

Free Photo Sites Page:

Free Sound File Sites Page:

Mouse/ Pointer Options Page: 

Before being assigned this assignment, I had no clue any of these things were able to be done on a computer. I learned how to do all different types of things from just this one assignment. I knew that there was a way to do this stuff on your computer, but I figured I would have to pay to buy it in order to use it. The good thing about this assignment is it showed me different things I could do to make sure all the students in my classroom can be included into the assignment, even if the students have some sort of impairment or disability. If a student in your class is a low vision computer user, all the teacher has to do is change the display to a high contrast extra-large scheme. If student has trouble seeing the text on the screen use the magnifier to magnify the same screen the rest of the students are looking at. If you have a student in your class who has a physical disability that makes it easy for him or her to accidentally engage a computer key setting, then set an alert on the computer to go off when the students hit the Caps Lock key. If you have a student in your class who has a mild hearing impairment, set a visual alert on the computer to flash if the student hits the Caps Lock key. If you have a student in your class who has a physical impairment and as a result he or she uses a pointer to access the computer, then have the student use an On Screen Keyboard instead. I also learned how to take a picture of the computer screen. It is not hard to do at all. All a teacher has to do to take a picture of their computer screen is press the Ctrl key + the PrntScr key. All of these things I learned to do in this assignment should be used by every teacher to include a disabled child in the classroom. I think the NETS-T Standard that this assignment falls under is "Model Digital Age Work and Learning". I think this is the standard for this assignment because in this assignment I had to figure out all of the current knowledge of technology I could use to make sure the computer screen was suitable for all of the students, in my classroom, to be able to use and see the screen clearly. When I use this in my classroom, I would have to communicate with the parents to know what modifications needed to be made, and I would have to talk to the student with the disability to make sure they are able to see and use the screen after I have made the modifications.   

Ethical Uses of Technology (Turnitin Assignment)

My First Turnitin Assignment Submission Percentage:

For the first submission, we had to go to a couple of websites and find the answers to the teachers questions. She wanted us to copy and paste the answer straight from the websites, so we could see what it looks like and what percentage to look for when a student plagiarizes. I received an 88% on my first submission.

My Second Turnitin Assignment Submission Percentage:

For the second submission, we had to go to a couple of websites and find the answers to the teachers questions. She wanted us to  paraphrase and use our own words to answer the question she wanted us to answer. She wanted us to see what it looks like and what percentage to look for when a student does not plagiarize or only has a little bit of plagiarism . I received an 0% on my second submission. 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JO47Ujpg4pWkJWUHRhbTdhWWc/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JO47Ujpg4peE5SUUk5X21QQ0k/edit

Turnitin is a great way for teachers to see if their students are plagiarizing their papers or not. All teachers have to do for their students to turn in an assignment to Turnitin is make an assignment upload window to their class website. After the students write their papers, all they have to do is go to their class website and go click on the Turnitin assignment upload box the teacher has setup. From there, the students follow the directions to turn in their assignment and then submit it. When the students submit their assignment, it is sent to their teacher and the teacher can see how much plagiarism is in their paper or if there is not any plagiarism at all. The students can also see what percentage of their paper is plagiarized. If their paper is twenty-five percent or less, they do not have too much plagiarism in their paper. The reason twenty-five percent or less is good is because Turnitin picks up any common words or sayings used and count them as plagiarism. Turnitin also take direct quotes as plagiarism if the student did not put parenthesis around the quote in their paper. If the student’s paper says they have ninety percent or more plagiarism, the student has plagiarized their whole paper.  After the teacher gets the students percentage for their paper, no matter what the percentage is, he or she should look over the student’s paper where they say there is plagiarism and make sure that it is really plagiarism because it may not be.  I think Turnitin is a great website for teachers to use to give them an idea if their students plagiarized their paper or not. Turnitin is not hard to do at all, the teacher just has to set it up, and the students just have to turn their papers in. I think every teacher should look into using Turnitin when they assign papers to their students. The two NETS-T Standards that I feel this assignment falls under is " Model Digital Age Work and Learning" and "Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility". I think this assignment falls under this standard because in this assignment I had to copy and paste a paper and then type up another paper on a website and use this current new knowledge of technology to turn in a paper to see how much plagiarism was in my paper. My students would have to be able to locate, analyze, evaluate and use information like I did to turn it in to this new form of technology they have come up with. This assignment also makes the student document any types of references the student uses or the student will be penalized for plagiarism.

Web Pages (My Website)

My Website Link:

https://sites.google.com/site/msamandaginnsclassroomwebsite/

We had to make our own website in this class. We had to go through Google to make the website. I did not know that you could make your own website through Google before I was assigned this assignment. I thought it was a really great resource and learning experience by making this website. We each had to make a website for a class that we would one day teach. On our website we had to include a home page, course information page, personal page, and a web resources page. I did my website on a Kindergarten class I hope to one day teach. On my home page, I included a picture of myself, an introduction into my Kindergarten class, my e-mail address, and a list of items you can find on each of the pages of my website. On my course information page, I included the classroom rules for my students, a list of materials each student will need during the school year, the homework calendar for the month, and my e-mail address at the bottom of the page. On my personal page, I included a picture of myself, a list of my experiences thus far, a short biography of myself, my hobbies and interests, clubs I have been involved in, and my e-mail address at the bottom of the page. On my web resources page, I included five educational websites that my students can use when they are at home, an explanation of the websites, a link to the websites, and my e-mail address at the bottom of the page. I truly enjoyed being able to make this website even if it was not for a real class of mine just yet. I will definitely continue to keep up with this website that I have started, but update it to my actual class when I begin teaching. I think it is a great idea to have a website for your class. It gives parents the opportunity to see what their children are learning in the classroom, keep up with their work, and communicate with the teacher and other parents, and many other things. Every teacher should have a website of their own for their classroom. It would not only help the parents stay in touch with what we are doing, but the students can go on the website as well and see what homework they have to do or review what we did in class that week. I think if a teacher decides to setup a website for their classroom, they need to make sure they keep up with the website and update it every week and check it every day. I feel that all of the NETS-T Standards fit this assignment because the parents, teacher, facility, staff, school board, and students can all use this website to stay involved in what is going on in my classroom. The website also helps keep everyone using this website structured and organized.

My Movie

A Link to My Movie:

http://youtu.be/nGvWK016Ops

I thoroughly enjoyed being able to make a movie in this class. I think that making a movie is a great idea for teachers to do, for their students and maybe even the parents of the students. Teachers can take pictures of the students doing different projects, activities and having fun in the classroom, and use those pictures to make a video for the students and parents to see at the end of the year. The teachers cannot make a movie, though, if they do not have the permission of the parents to take pictures of their child. The teachers do not need to share this video online; they can just share it with the students, parents, faculty and staff. As a gift to your students for the end of the year, you can make them a copy of this movie for them to look back on and see all the fun they had when they were in your class. I think making movies for the students to see is a great idea, and they are original and more personal. The film for the students is not hard to make. If you have Windows Movie Maker on your computer all you need is pictures, music and you can add narration and animation to your film in Windows Movie Maker. It is a really good program and very fun to make. The NETS-T Standard that I feel this assignment falls under is "Model Digital Age Work and Learning". I feel this is the standard for this assignment because I am using my current knowledge about movie making to make a movie for my class. Also, because in the future when I am making a movie for my class and their parents, I will let the students, peers, and parents put their input of what the movie should be in the end of the year film I will be handing out to their students; since they will be watching the movie as well.

Web Tools

My Test:
http://www.classmarker.com/online-test/start/?quiz=jhg50a2ae99e5635

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JO47Ujpg4pRnlPUlM0OWJkdms/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JO47Ujpg4pVHVuMmlNUzZBT2c/edit

I had a great time working with the different web tools. I thought it was really neat to have websites that would help you make up your tests, rubrics, puzzles, and find different worksheets for the students to do. These web tools are a great resource for teachers. They give teachers the opportunity to use the internet while making their test, rubrics, puzzles, and worksheets. Teachers are able to spend less time trying to figure out how to set up a test. All they have to do is go in on http://www.classmarker.com/ and fill in the blanks to the questions they have for the test. They also get to choose if they want to use multiple choice, true or false, free text, punctuation, or essay questions on their test. The teachers can also assign the test right there to their class online, and have the students take it online instead of wasting paper. I thought that was a really good idea for teachers to do for their students. I never thought a rubric would have been easy to make, but the website we used sure did prove me wrong. The website http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php is a great website for teachers to use to make up a rubric for a project. The website lets you pick out the type of rubric you want to use, and then it gives you ideas to put in your rubric or you could type in your own ideas, for what you will be looking for in the project. We used the website called http://www.abcteach.com to find different worksheets to use to go along with our project. This website had all sorts of different worksheets teachers could use to go along with almost anything you could possible think of to teach. Of course, you would not use just worksheets to teach the students what they need to know, but this website is full of different worksheets to choose from. The last web tool we used to create a puzzle was the website http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/. This website was really neat to work with, and can be very beneficial to teachers. All the teacher has to do is type in the words they want to use in the puzzle and the website will make the puzzle for you. These puzzles are great for the teachers to have for when students get done early so they can find their spelling words in the puzzle, so they have something to do and the students are not bored. I truly enjoyed using these web tools to see an easier way to make tests, rubrics, puzzles, and to find worksheets.

The NETS-T Standard that I feel fit this assignment was "Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments". I feel this is the best standard for this assignment because we had to act as if we were the teacher. We had to design and evaluate authentic learning experiences by making a test, a rubric, a puzzle, and a worksheet through different tools on the internet.

Online Social Networking (Google Groups)

This assignment was really neat, and a fun learning experience for me. I never knew that with a Google account you could do all of the things we did as a group. For our story, my group came up with a story about a little girl named Shirley Curly who loved lollipops. Her favorite lollipop flavor was green apple because it was like biting into a real, delicious, juicy, green apple. One day, she bit into a blueberry lollipop and she became very surprised. The blueberry lollipop tasted like cherry instead of a blueberry. She became very mad and decided to never eat a blueberry lollipop ever again. Although she had said she would never eat a blueberry lollipop, she could not contain herself when she came across a beautiful lollipop dreamland one day after school. The dreamland had all different kinds of flavors of lollipops. The last lollipop she decided to eat and give one more try was the blueberry lollipop, and it was everything she hoped for. I really enjoyed being able to see that we could work as a group to add to a story our group leader started. I think this is a great way to have a group write a story because the teacher is able to see that each student put the same amount of work into the story. I will definitely use an assignment kind of like the one we did in this class, so I know that all the students in each group actually did their part in the assignment. For this assignment, we also made a presentation through Google. I really enjoyed being able to make a presentation through Google. My presentation was on the Five Senses. I did this topic for my presentation because I figured I could use it in my classroom when I begin teaching. It was really neat to see the different things you could do to the presentation through Google. Before doing this assignment, I did not know there were such documents for you to use through Google. I only thought Google was used for receiving and sending e-mails, as well as searching the Web for different items you are looking. I was completely wrong. I am glad I learned about these documents in Google, and I learned how to use them. I will remember these things when I begin teaching and use them in my classroom as much as possible. The NETS-T Standard that I feel this assignment fits under is "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity". I feel it fits under this standard because the Google Groups assignment made the students work as a group to think of how what to add next to the story. We were able to support one another and use our creative minds to make our story unquie.