Thoughts on the Summer Tech Class

                The first part of class was very informative. I was appreciative that there was a wide range of content area teachers and from a variety of school types. I found it interesting how the available resources changed between the different school. I had not realized just how flexible you have to be as a teacher. The panelists also had some amazing insights into how to get students involved and to help them by using different forms of technology. There was a point in the presentation when we started talking about different websites that are useful in getting around certain things that may be blocked by the school. I liked this becuase I think that there are some amazing websites out there that can be useful, it is always nice when somone points out the ones that work.
         
                   In the second part of the class I liked being able to reflect on the class as a whole and to hear about what the other groups panels talked about. I can honestly say that I do not share many of the other MACers opinions in regards to this class. I found this class to be useful and helped me to think of ideas of how to get the students more invovled with technology. I will admit that there were some things that I initially was skeptical about, such as video games in the classroom. I agreed with all the benefits that video games have for students, expecially with regards to their ability to form strategies and pedict future consequences and to promote higher order thinking in the students. After today's class I have come to realize that the games I was thinking about are not necessarily all the games that are out there that students would also find stimulating. I was very interested to hear about quia.com and to hopefully be able to explore this in the future.

                  I understand that this class was short and that we will be taking this class again in the upcoming semester. With this being said, I also understand that not everything that everyone in the class wanted to know about could be taught. For example, I would have loved to learn about more math programs, however, I also understand that this subject has a very limited scope to less than 10 people in the class, so this is not always pratical. I think that the websites and tools that we have learned about in class are useful in the broad sense. These tools are here should we ever need them and we know how to use them. I am not saying that I will necessarily be using every single thing that we talked about, but I know about these resources and I know how to use them effectively which is important to me. Also, another thing that these tools are good for, is helping students manage their online lives. Granted some of the students may not have as intense online lives as some of us, they will. Helping students to grow comfortable with these tools and letting them to decide which ones are best for them is important. Not everything we learned about has to be tied to a lesson plan, we now have this knowledge whcih we can share with our students to help them become better at using technology in a productive and efficient manner.

We all have different likes and dislikes, each of the told we learned about had enough options to reach all us in some way. You don't have to use everything, but one day when you need dropbox (or whatever) you will have the skills to us it. This is what I have learned from class this semester.

Awesomely Appalling

         For my two readings from edu bloggers I read the NSTA blog on the Science of the Summer Olympics (http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2012/07/30/science-of-the-summer-olympics-missy-franklin-fluid-dynamics/comment-page-1/) and the blog Learning Math, Teaching Math (http://www.edb.utexas.edu/empson/?p=68#respond).

        I found the blog from the NSTA to be interesting in that they provide a video series (for FREE!) in conjunction with NBC about how the science of the summer Olympics. I found this to be interesting because this is something that all student can get behind and have an inherent interest in. I have thought a lot about how to use current events to make math interesting and engaging for the students. This is something I would definitely like to learn more about and to use in the classroom to teach a variety of concepts.

        The second blog I found was on how (even adults) have trouble with fractions and subtraction of decimal numbers. Although, I don't disagree that this should not be happening, the only way that we can prevent this from happening in the future it to teach the students we have about fractions and about dividing decimal numbers. Again, I find that students think this is difficult because they do not see how this will relate to their lives, however, this blog show a clear example of how you may need to use this information in said future.

        I find it interesting the things that we can come up with to help get students engaged in and interested in math, however, at the same time I find it appalling that we cannot make the current curriculum more engaging and exciting for students to learn. If we could do this with fractions and decimal numbers then maybe students wouldn't have such a hard time with this concept.