All About Interactive White Boards

Interactive whiteboards are becoming a popular trend in education and early childhood education in particular. It engages the children in a way that may not happen on a traditional whiteboard or large group situation. Chapter 1 of Blanche O’Bannon’s Engaging Learners with Interactive Whiteboards provides a great introduction to the concept.

1.1 Introduction
This page states that there are many resources for teachers at Promethean Planet. This includes pre-made interactive features such as pull tabs and magic revealers. It is also stated that while many teachers have adopted use of these boards in their classroom ye there is little empirical evidence about their effect on children’s learning. There are even third parties who create content for the interactive whiteboards such as the Public Broadcasting Service.

1.2 Effective Use
This page explains many options for use of interactive white boards in classrooms. These include child response systems, videos/music options, shared reading, and drag and drop features. I see a lot of use of the interactive white boards in my practicum placement. Children will often be seen watching videos, playing drag and drop games, signing into class, and writing their letters.

1.3 Instructional Benefits
This section mentions some benefits including options for multimodal representation, ease of getting children’s attention, better classroom management, and active learning. I think that these are true in the case of early childhood education because there is a visual presentation of the concepts. For example, children can watch their noise level with a visual representation of
 the volume

1.5 Instructional Challenges
There are many challenges that are described in this section. Some of which include a lack of teacher knowledge and competency with the board. This means that the teachers are not using the board to the most of the board’s ability. I definitely see this becoming a problem in early childhood education as it is much easier for the children to learn to use the board as a substitute whiteboard than it is to learn to use it in other ways.

Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Historical Context 
 
John H. Jung begins his article by explaining the history behind many of the technological advances in education. He discusses the early days, when teachers began using films and lantern slides. Technology has come a long way since then, with personal laptop computers and tablets in the hands of most students at any given point in the day. The author mentions an ironic quote from Thomas Edison in 1913. “Books will soon be obsolete in schools.. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with motion picture,” he stated according to Reiser and Dempsey in 2007. While I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this, especially when considering very young children, it is interesting that Edison supposedly saw the technological overtaking around 90 years before it actually came to fruition.

Motivation 
 
Jung states that the “driving force” to adopt technology in the educational classroom comes from three places: “nonprofit organization, commerce, and education” (p. 2). Here he is referencing pushes

such as the ISTE standards, the NETS-S standards, and even No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed by George W. Bush in the early 2000’s. He also mentions that while many teachers agree that we
should integrate technology into the modern classroom, opinions on how it should be executed varies greatly. He mentions that constructivist educators want to use technology for “project based learning, real life problem-based learning, collaborative learning, active learning, and alternative assessments” (p.3). I agree with this. I would not want to incorporate technology into my classroom if it kept children from interacting with one another or working on critical thinking skills. I wouldn’t want to hinder them by giving them meaningless screen time that doesn’t further deep thought and learning. Boise State University has published interesting student work regarding constructivist theory and technology to their educational technology site that I thoroughly enjoyed and suggest everyone take a peek at.

Classroom Technology Samples

In this section of the article, the author explains various examples of technology being used in the classroom. Some of which I have much familiarity with, such as Interactive Whiteboards and Student
Response Systems, and others that I have no experience with in the slightest, such as Robots and
Really Simple Syndication. For use in an early childhood classroom, I see the value in using an interactive whiteboard, as it cuts preparation time down for the teachers (it is MUCH easier to design activity materials on the computer than crafting them yourself) and the children get to explore things that may not be seen without technology such as going on a google maps exploration to see environments and places that we don’t live near.

Concerns about Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Jung describes 5 barriers for technology advances in education. The very first he describes is Unwilling Teachers. I have seen this many times. Older teachers are typically unwilling to change their teaching methods when given new tools, because they can teach just fine without all the “fancy new gadgets”. It’s not needed for them to help their students become successful with their content
material, so they don’t see the purpose. This also points to teachers, like me, who believe that screen time isn’t very appropriate for very young children unless there is a very specific purpose. I don’t want my children engaging with the iPads in the classroom more than the children around them. So while iPads and computers are available to use, they are not introduced until later in the year for a center and are used in very specific ways. There are, however, many early childhood teachers embracing this trend and have found this technology very beneficial in their classrooms.

Recommendations
At the end of the article, the author recommends that teachers who have never included technology before make a gradual transition and be patient. While these are easy ideas to come to terms with, they may be harder than one might thing. Many schools are jumping into technology use; creating online portfolios for teachers and children, and requiring video recordings of children performing skills. Other ideas that Jung presents are educating the children (the users of the technology) about copyright and fair use. I think that this is great idea, as I was never taught about these things other than plagiarizing authors of books. However, I think this may be a more difficult task for teachers of young children.

Wikis in Education

What's a Wiki?
This is a question that I had asked many times as I typically assumed that it was related to Wikipedia. That makes the most sense, right? Well according to TeachersFirst, I was sort of right. Their definition of a Wiki is any website that allows visitors to become participants; meaning that anyone can edit, create, and delete information on the site. This is like Wikipedia as visitors are continuously editing the pages of the site.


Whats the difference between a blog, like the one here on Blogger, and a Wiki?
 This is too something that I found interesting. A blog, by definition, is more closed ended. There are typically a few content creators allowed to post while everyone is allowed to comment. However, not many people have the ability to edit comments or content on the blog. Wikis, however, are much more open. Anyone can change or delete others' posts and comments. One thing noted by TeachersFirst, that this may trump personal opinion, and hinder individuality.

Three ways to use a Wiki in the classroom

1. TeachersFirst states that a good way to use Wikis in the classroom is to post writing prompts weekly, allowing the children to have the whole week to post and edit their responses. It is also a good idea to ask them to comment on their peers' responses. This helps build the classroom community, and has the children thinking critically about the other child's ideas.  

2.  Create a weekly blog team consisting of two or three children to write a summary of the week on Fridays. These can be built by classroom helper systems if need be. Have the children write out the classroom events that happened and invite parents and children to comment on the summary. This helps link home to the classroom and provides children who were home sick with needed information to come back well prepared.

3.  Children in elementary school settings often have readings that they need to complete. These are usually in the forms of leveled readers or passages from a textbook. Assigning a reflection post about the readings will help children recall what they had just read and allow them to think critically about it. Provide the children with thought provoking questions about the story and invite them to dig deep between the lines.

While these are all great ideas, I do not believe that Wikis are appropriate for child use in the prekindergarten classroom, however they may be beneficial in a Kindergarten classroom. I am looking forward to seeing how this technology is used in my Kindergarten placement in the spring.

Copyright, Fairuse, and Permissible Amounts

The University of Maryland has published a website that explains Copyright, Fairuse, and Permissible Amounts for educators. As defined by UMUC, Copyright is a piece of legislation that protects authors of art, literature, and works that explains information or ideas from intellectual robbery. This gives authors the control over how their work is used and consumed by the public.

In order to be copyrighted, the work must be fixed, original, and original in some way. If a work is fixed, this means that the information is written down, posted online, or stored on some sort of electronic device. If a work is original, this means that the author has created this idea from his or her own expression or ideas. Works do not have to be completely original to be eligible for copyright, they can be adapted or combined form other works or ideas. If a work is creative, this means that the work is beyond the original. In order to be eligible, a work needs only to be ever so slightly creative.

There are some things that cannot be copyrighted, though. These are considered public domain. Ideas, facts, names, and short phrases are some examples. Slogans, however, can be protected by the trademark law.  Works created by government officials while they are on duty are not eligible to be copyrighted.

Fairuse, according to UMUC, is a limitation on the copyright holder's exclusive rights. Individuals may use copyrighted materials but need to consider these main points: the purpose of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount/importance of what's used, effect of potential market of product.

Educators have rules about how many times they can copy a work, how much of the work they can copy, and how much planning it would take to get permission to copy the work.

What counts as Fairuse according to UMUC?

1. novel or book chapters
2. a newspaper article
3. short stories, essays, poems. 
4. chart, graphs, diagrams
5. poetry

Some actions should be avoided when considering Fairuse. These are: using copyrighted materials for commercial use, using the materials repeatedly, using a work in its entirety.

<Copyright
                                   Trademark>

Award Winning Teacher Blog.

Ms. Cassidy's Classroom is a blog intended for sharing content with parents of her first grade students and other educators. She shares posts about daily happenings in her room. She also collects anecdotes of each child's learning on this site. I believe that she has the children create their own blogs, and post certain things to this blog. These anecdotes include drawings, videos, images of the child participating in something. This provides parents with easy access to what their child is doing in the classroom. It also helps the teacher keep up with important anecdotes that may become lost in the classroom. While the posts that are currently featured are from the very first of the year, the work samples are small and the children are spending much time simply learning routines. I see this blog becoming more of a staple of their classroom learning as the children progress through the school year.

Here are some images shared as anecdotes:

 

Here are some  images shared as whole class blog posts: 

I feel that this very beneficial for certain classrooms and grade levels. It certainly works well for this teacher. While her organization is wonderful and her pictures are cute as a button, I would worry about confidentiality with this blog. I know nothing about these children, but their images are posted online for the whole world to see. I would probably use a password protected blog, if anything. I would also not require the students to make and keep up with their own blogs, but my four year olds are on a much different level than these first graders. I like the idea of keeping up with anecdotes digitally, but again would keep them on a password protected blog or mobile application such as Seesaw. My question would be about how to make these "edublogs" private. I know there is a setting on Blogger (or there use to be) to make people put in a password when loading the page, but not sure about "edublog".

Welcome to my blog!

While I'm not new to blogger in the slightest... see blog from freshman year of high school... this is my first time blogging for educational and professional reasons. I am a senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, majoring in Child and Family Studies with a concentration in Early Development and Learning. This will lead to me being licensed to teach children with and without disabilities from birth to age six. I have gotten the opportunity to work with Preschool and PreK children through my educational endeavors as well as paid work. I hope to teach in a Voluntary PreK or kindergarten class upon graduation in May. The official title of my degree will be: Bachelor of Science in Health and Human Science.

This blog was made for the purpose of our educational technology course in the teacher licensure program here at UTK.  However, I figured the very few readers of this blog may be interested in a little bit about me. In my early years, I enjoyed web designing and video editing. While I'm noticing that these programs have changed a bit in the past 6 years, I am still familiar with Photoshop, Lightroom, Sony Vegas Pro, Gimp, Wordpress, and various web tools. I have also dabbled in Photography, but this endeavor never got off the ground as I was bumming cameras off my friends and could never commit to buying one. The link for that fabulous abandoned site can be found HERE. My hobbies now include watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Playing with my black cat named Stormy, and spending time with my significant other, Nathan! oh, and sleeping. I am realizing as I begin my student teaching experience that sleep is very important and one of my favorite things to do.

Oh, and I am a founder of Phi Sigma Pi Eta Theta Chapter here at UTK. It is a gender inclusive honor fraternity that became chartered this past spring. I have served in several leadership positions during this process such as: Public Relations Committee Chair, Recruitment Advisor, and Recruitment/Initiation Committee Chair.

With that, I leave you all with a few pictures from my life... in case you're curious.

Christmas 2015; Gatlinburg, TN

Receiving our charter; Phi Sigma Pi National Convention 2016 Kansas City, Missouri