This course focuses on how to use the Internet for teaching and learning. It helps students develop skills and strategies in integrating the Internet as an essential resource into the curriculum.
This
course has changed my mindset on technology. I learned various tools,
websites, and online courses that can be used in the classroom. I thought I was
tech savvy but throughout this semester I learned that I am just mediocre. I
enjoyed creating my personal blog. I had completely forgot that I created blogs
when I was an undergrad and it was a great way to refresh my memory.Creating an online course was a challenge for
me.It took up way too much of my time
and I think I was overthinking too much.I have learned different Internet tools that I will be incorporating
into my lessons.I enjoyed review
Effective Literacy websites and I also wish to incorporate it in my teaching as
well.I am stunned at Google Earth and
all its potential to integrate it in the classroom.I just wish students could use it with the
mobile carts but you need permission to download it.But using it on my personal laptop will still
be amazing to navigate the Earth with my first graders.Overall, I have become a more tech savvy
person and learned that I need to check out all that the Internet has to offer
for teaching.
Funbrain (https://www.funbrain.com) is free website created for kids in
grades Pre-K through 8th grade.It provides games, books, and videos, that help kids enhances skills in
literacy and math.Each game, book, and
video is tagged with key subject areas and skills, such as counting, vowels,
and spelling.
Funbrain has various games that
promote literacy.Grammar Gorillas
reviews kids on parts of speech, Word Confusion allows children to choose the
correct word to complete the sentence, Spellaroo makes kids identify the
misspelled word in sentence, and Sign the Alphabet helps students practice
signing the alphabet.Other games
include vowels, vocabulary, word
concentration, verbs, and more.
Funbrain reading has numerous books
that students can read as eBooks. The website has books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Judy Moody books, Stink books, Tom Gates
books, and more.Funbrain videos
features animated storybooks. The animated stories come from High Five magazine
and features fun characters.Each video
provides a description of the story and the video has captions so kids can read
along while watching.
Overall, Funbrain is a colorful and fun website that kids
will enjoy.The games are fun and loads
fast.There are no pop up adds after
playing.There are many books that
students can read and purchase.They
have numerous videos that promote storytelling and well as encourage students
to read along with the story.
Storyline
Online (https://www.storylineonline.net) is a SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s award-winning
children’s literacy website.It streams
videos featuring actors reading children’s book with elaborate
illustrations.Actors include Oprah
Winfrey, Kristen Bell, Ed O’Neill, Viola Davis, Elijah Woods, and many more. Storyline Online allows children to engage
themselves in reading and storytelling.
Storyline Online has about 50 books
that teachers, students, and parents can use. Each book has a detailed description
about the author, illustrator, and publisher.It also contains the suggested grade level, the actor reading the story,
and the run time of the video. At the bottom of the story description users
have the options to buy the book and provide Activity Guides.
The Activity Guides provides a
detailed lesson plan for teachers.The Activity
Guide provides a synopsis of the story and theme in the story.It provides step-by-step instruction to do
before viewing, during video, and after viewing the video. Each viewing gives
Common Core Standards, objectives, materials needed, and procedures.The activity guide also contains Reading
Response, Writing, and Across the Curriculum Activities.
Overall, I think Storyline Online is
an engaging website that captivates children by their creatively produced storytelling
videos.Reading aloud to children helps
to improve reading, writing, and communication skills.Storyline Online is another website that
instills and inspires a love of reading in children.
Reading
Bear (http://www.readingbear.org/) is a free online program that is a part
of WatchKnowLearn.org that supports beginning
readers with phonetic patterns and vocabulary skills. Reading Bear has about 50
presentations. It builds on consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, CVCE words,
syllables, digraphs, initial blends, vowel teams, and more.
For each phonetic pattern there are
seven different kinds of presentations. It starts off with Sound it Out Slowly,
then Sound it Out Quickly, and Let me Sound it Out. That presentation says the
word in different speeds and illustrates a picture, shows the word in a
sentence, and illustrates that sentence. When the sentence appears you can
pause the video and click on any word and it will sound it out and say it.The
presentation also includes Audio Flashcards, Silent Flashcards, Audio
Sentences, and Silent Sentences. After each presentation you can Take a Quiz
and also Review the whole unit.
Each presentation has control
buttons that allows you to go around a presentation. The Auto button plays the
presentation as a video.If you turn it
off, you can use the arrow buttons to go back and forth. On top of the
presentation, you can control the presentation size.Reading Bear also has a settings button that
allows users to change the font or always show video of word spoken.
Registering on Reading Bear is
optional but if you do register it will show the percentage of presentations
you’ve mastered, and how many you viewed. Checkmarks, stars, and numbers let
you track how many times you viewed a presentation, or parts of a presentation,
and also whether you’ve mastered the words.Reading Bear is an excellent website for young children to build and
master phonetic sounds and words.
When I was introduced to the course, I joked to myself that the number of times I've come across any piece of technology was close to infinity. Technology is a big mystery as it is into coming up with a plan to introduce, to inform, and to educate students on digital literacy. I think that for many, putting technology and education on the same bar is going to be a great challenge. This course has thrown packs of punches for me but I'm ready to go forward.
The reality of learning is continuously changing. For the last 30 years, the Internet has revolutionized how learning is facilitated more than the radio or television ever could. So I'm ready to go to this digital learning gym. I was challenged with my health issues and the limited amount of time. Yet, I found it motivating. I had personally proven that ED 638 enhanced my schema in utilizing Internet for teaching and learning. In fact, it was fun and incredibly motivating. I have learned many things while completing assignments for this class. While reviewing Google Docs, Google Classrooms, and Google Slides I discovered three amazing tools I plan to use with my students in the future. I came across many websites that I believe will be engaging as well. Most of all, I proved to myself that despite the difficulties in scheduling and with my limited knowledge of technology, I still made it through the course.
Google Docs is a word processor that is free, a web based software offered by google drive service. This service also includes Google Sheets and Google Slides. Google Drive serves as a collaborative tool for cooperative editing of documents in real-time. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users are able to see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. Changes are automatically saved to Google's servers, and a revision history is automatically kept so past edits may be viewed and reverted to. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Files can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes. People with prior experience with MS Word will find that Google Docs uses a similar interface, with some advantages. Thus, the ease of use makes it a competitor to the traditional word processor.
Google Classroom ties with Google Drive, Google Docs, and Gmail to assist educators to go a paperless mode. Students can be invited to classrooms through your school’s database, through a private code that can be added in the student’s user interface or automatically imported from a school domain. Google Classroom focuses on integrating tools in current use to help educators deliver instructions outside the classroom setting. It simplifies the process of making announcements, sharing materials, and collecting student work.
Google Slides is a presentation program, free, web based software offered by Google with its google drive service. It allows multiple users to collaborate on a presentation at the same time.
The "linked" slide feature is new and interesting. It lets you maintain consistent content across multiple Google Slides presentations. Simply copy a slide from one presentation, then paste it into another. When you do, a prompt displays with the option to create a "linked" slide, which is a slide you can update whenever the original slide changes.
This feature is helpful when displaying data that may change over time, such as charts and company logos.
