Tech Research Article 1: RAPS 360

Mindplay has come up with a new strategy to find out the reading levels of students and how to keep up on their progress. It is called Reading Analysis & Prescription System 360 (RAPS 360). This version of RAPS is more comprehensive and it is quicker and more effective. It can diagnose a full spectrum of reading difficulties that the students might face from grades 1-10. You test the student’s ability to read and comprehend grade level passages and then diagnose further based on their proficiency levels. It provides a baseline that the student is on in each skill area and measures the student’s progress. It can target appropriate interventions based on the student’s needs and abilities and helps improve reading proficiency. Progress reports within the whole district, the whole school, the class, or the individual student are available. Also, a great thing about this program is that is automatically creates and individualized education plan that stays with the students and parents receive summary reports that may give recommendations for intervention at home to help children meet their reading goals. Teachers can group students together based on their skill level to provide an intervention. This program uses graphics and tables for easy comprehension. RAPS 360 is a useful tool for tracking yearly progress for the students, the school or the district. This program was due for release in fall 2008. When you use this program with A Spanish Support Module (if needed) and Fluent Reading Trainer (FLRT) it is called My Reading Coach and are all made by Mindplay. These are great programs for helping students because it not only has assessment to determine primary level reading skills but it also focuses on phonemic awareness and phonics and the measurements on vocabulary word knowledge and reading comprehension skills and fluency rates.It is great because it is like a reading specialist is working with every student.

Tech Research Article 2: SchoolMail

SchoolMail is an application from ePals that connects students from the US to almost every continent in the world, allowing them to be pen pals and communicate with each other. This provides for exchanging cultural experiences with one another and gives students an edge in cultural understanding. SchoolMail is a free school-safe email for students in grades K-12 where they can talk and collaborate with students worldwide in a protective and safe way. This program features monitored mail, instant language translation for eight different languages, virus checking, anti-spam filter, spell-checker and manuals and tutorials. It blocks all teasing and threats, racial attacks, hate messages, sexual harassment, vulgar speech and outside predators and it is free. All you need is a computer with an internet connection. Wouldn’t it be so great to have your students email another student from a country they may be learning about and ask them questions. They will learn and remember a lot more when it is coming from another student around their age. It is so great. From the moment students can type and spell until they graduate from high school, SchoolMail operates the same way. Teachers can monitor all incoming and outgoing messages and block or regulate attachments. It is just such a great way for students to learn about a different culture and get excited about learning about it. I would love to use this. I know this is not a new technology but it is a current technology and I didn’t know anything about it. It was very interesting to learn about

Lessons Learned

There is so much technology out there. I feel like I know how to do things with technology but then I hear about things that I have never heard of. I forget that the students today for the most part will know more about technology because of the time they were born. I look at my grandma who is afraid to use the computer and email and I think it is so weird but it is only because she doesn't know how to use it and it isn't something that she is familiar with. I hope that I do not feel too scared to use a technology. I guess I just have to keep my mind open and try to learn things as they come. I can take classes or online tutorials to find out more information so that I do not get in that state of being overwhelmed by technology. Technology is a great thing and there are so many things out there that I can still learn about so I need to be open to these things and learn from everything. I am worried though about students not getting the people skills that they need from technology. I don't know, maybe in the future people wont need to meet face to face like they do today, so they wont need the same skills. It is just so weird how things change. I will need to keep with the times so that I can teach my students how they will need to be taught in that time. It will be interesting to see.

My Beliefs

I totally believe that technology should be integrated into the classroom. Technology is our future. I can not imagine what new types of technologies there are going to be available in the years to come. We need to keep up with technology and let students learn through technology because they are going to be doing everything else with technology. More and More students are being diagnosed with ADHD because the students are acting too hyper and cannot concentrate. This is happening because the students are used to all the stimuli at home like the internet, television,computer games, video games, cell phones, ipods, etc. They learn to handle all the stimuli happening all around them that when they get to school and they sit in the same classroom without computers or television or cell phones they don't know what to do. It is not interactive enough for them. I think that it would be great if more schools had computers in their classrooms and involved technology more. They should allow students to explore the internet and digital cameras and other programs on the computers. This can be done at the early grades too. My niece is almost four and she searches on google for toys and the princess videos. She knows what to do. Students are being interactive with technology at a younger and younger age. Their world is so much different than the one i grew up in. They need to be taught different. They need to be taught in ways that are familiar to them which is technology.

The only thing that scares me with technology is less interaction with other students. Just with people my age, they have noticed that we do not know communication skills. That we just text instead of calling and you do not get the same interaction. It is scary that the students may not be learning valuable people skills and how to talk to one another face to face. I know it isn't something that is too bad right now but I think that when we integrate all this technology, we must make sure we have a balance and that the students still get the interaction that they need from the teacher and the students.

Strengths & Weaknesses

There are a lot more things about technology that I do not know very much about than I thought. I always felt very comfortable with technology and computers. Most of the questions on the survey I answered novice or apprentice. Mostly because practitioner deals with writing lessons that help students understand the concept. I have never taught any student these things. As a teacher though, I do plan to teach my students about technology for what is appropriate at their age level. I understand how to install software and access programs in other drives I feel like the only reason I would not consider myself more than an apprentice is because I have never taught students about these things. That is how I feel about all most of the apprentice ones I gave myself. There still are more things I would like to know and get more familiar with though. The biggest thing is the copyright laws. I know about them, but I am not as confident as I would like to be. I feel that I obey the copyright laws but when I start doing more things with technology, it will be harder to make sure I am doing everything I need to. Also, I do not know enough about the adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs. I would like to learn more. Also there are so manyaudio and visual devices that I would like to learn more about, along with multimedia and graphic organizer software.

I chose the Copyright Crash Course Online Tutorial to help improve my knowledge on the subject to help me feel more confident about the stuff I use. It shows you how ownership of copyrighted materials works, what is fair use and when and how to get permission to use someone else’s materials. There are links to pages in the Copyright Crash Course and to the copyright law. There is a 12 question test that you take at the end of the tutorial in order to earn a Crash Course Certificate. I would definitely feel more comfortable with using other people’s work if I know I am obeying the copyright law. There are so many resources you can use from other people, you just need to know how to get the permission and how to give them credit. This information is very important for teachers to know when they are getting lesson ideas from the internet.

I also wanted to do the Grolier Online Tutorial. Grolier Online has two interface. One is Grolier Online Kids for children in grades 3-5 and Grolier Online Passport, is for older students and adults. There 50,00 different websites you can go to and a few hundred thousand magazine articles appropriate for students. There are multimedia presentations, interactive atlas, and dictionaries. This is a great place for students to research. This tutorial shows you all the things you can do on Grolier Online. If you do this tutorial you will know what is available for your students. So this would be an advantage for me. I will know the possibilities of what this website is good for. It is definitely something that would help me out in teaching world.

Webquest reflection 2

We finished our webquest in class this week. It is really neat! First you start out on a title page that says "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". It has a picture from the storybook. Then teachers click on the teachers button while students click on the students button to view the slides they need. Then they can go through the process clicking on the words that lead them to the different pages we created. The process page for the students view tells them some information about one of the stages for caterpillars and butterflies then they click on a link and see the images that show this happening. Then they click next and they have to answer a question about what they just learned and saw. If they get it right, a slide come up that says "GOOD JOB!" If they didn't get it right, a slide comes up that says "Try again" and they would try until they get it right. They would do this with all the questions. When they get it right, they also get a little pom pom that they would add to their caterpillar and at the end, they add wings that they colored. after the questions, there is a link that sends them to a video that shows a fast forward of a caterpillar making a cocoon. Then another one showing the butterfly coming out of the cocoon. It is fascinating. Then for a conclusion, there is a little activity on the web that they put the steps of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly in order. This was fun to do. I can use this same idea for many different subjects to teach students. It shows that even in the young grades you can integrate technology into the classroom. I think that the students would really enjoy this.

Webquests

We learned about webquests. They are activities that the students go through where they use the web to go to different sites and pictures. You could make a webquest to teach anything. They are really neat. There is a teacher view and student view. The taecher view will be helpful while looking for a webquest that fits with what you are teaching. There are websites that help you creat a webquest. We are creating a webquest in class. Our group is doing a first grade webquest about how the book The Hungry Caterpillar. We will talk about how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. We will go through each step and have a question they need to answer. When they answer it, they add a little pom pom to their caterpillar they are making. When they are through, thery should have added wings to their caterpillar to make a butterfly. It will be very cute! I am so excited to use webquests. I think it is a really good idea to use webquests for a book you are reading in class. I think that it makes the students relate more to what is happening. There are so many things you can do wit webquests. I am really excited to use them and I am so glad we are getting a chance to learn about the way they work and how to create them.