Survey Says...?!

Today we talked about using spreadsheets in our classrooms. They can be great tools for the teachers. It is a great way to store data, whether it is grades, assignments, and pretty much any other thing that you can think of. That way, we could even make charts that would show where all our students are at, or who is falling behind. As far as participating with the class, you can take surveys with your students, make data charts, and all that good stuff. We did a chart with M & M's and the colors that people had in their packets. For the younger grades I wouldn't think that they would be able to use spreadsheets as much, but as the teacher you could still record data. With the older grades it would be a lot of fun :) I think there are a lot of positive ways that you could use these programs.

We also learned how to do surveys in google docs. This would be a fun activity for the kids! They can see what they like as opposed to their friends and any time that kids will love anything that they can do with technology.

Surveys are FUN! So you should take my FUN SuRvEy!!

G-g-g-google Docs!

Google docs would be such a fun way for my students to be able to express themselves through writing. I like that it allows them to work in groups and share their ideas.

I'm still not sure which grade I want to teach. I am definitely leaning more towards the younger grades, but for the sake of this I am going to go with 5th grade. I feel like at this age they will be more computer savvy.

With google docs, my students can collaborate on different ideas. They could write short stories, poems, and conduct research together. As each of them find information on their topic, they can post it to their google docs and help each other with the information that they need. The only problem I can think of is that there may be some students that do more work than others. At the same time, children like using computers, so it may be motivating enough that they would all contribute. Another way around this problem would be to assign each child in the group with a different sub-topic that they are responsible for.

All in all, I think that google docs would provide a positive learning experience.

As far as contributing to the Utah Core Curriculum, it allows them to:

• work and present with various forms of media
• practice their spelling
• practice comprehension as they work with others
• identify author's and reader's purpose
• relate prior knowledge to text

...and many others!!

Copyright Laws!

Today I was able to learn a bit more about Copyright Laws and how it is going to apply to me as a teacher. As a teacher, I am going to want to use many different sources in order to enrich the learning experience of my students. I want to make sure that I use sources legally.

I didn't realize that there were so many little things that needed to be taken into consideration when using a material from someone else. In the case studies, when I brushed over them, I thought that it was easy to know whether or not the person in the study needed to ask permission to use material. After reading through them a little more, it seemed to be a little more complicated than that.

Something that I found to be very interesting, was that the Copyright Law applies the moment there is something tangible. I never would have thought that something written on a napkin would be eligible.

It will be very useful to know about the Copyright Laws!

YETC Awesomeness!

Today we went into the YETC, and there seemed to be a lot of really useful things in there. I never thought about all the ways that we can implement technology into the classroom! There were so many fun websites. I liked the spelling website. That would be such a fun way for children to do their spelling! I also liked the organizational tools that are out there. I think that science is taking more of a back seat to language arts and math, and there were so many resources that will be useful in bringing more science into the classroom. Also, I know that for me it is nice to be able to have all my things in one place that I can get to easily. As a teacher, I can use these organizational tools to keep myself on track.

I think there is still so much to learn, and YETC has a lot to offer!