Chapter 11: Engaging Teachers and Students in Learning and Self-Reflection

Focus Question 2: How can teachers and students use digital portfolios as tools for learning?

A digital portfolio indicates who a teacher is and what that teacher knows.  It is used to display academic achievements and classroom lesson plans.  A teacher should display their teaching philosophy and other experiences on their portfolio.

It is important for a digital portfolio to be continuously updated, and past work be worked on again to show reflection and growth.  It is not simply a scrapbook of the past; it is a growing and evolving work.

A digital portfolio offers ease of access and portability, but it also becomes a disadvantage when introducing it to someone who has little digital skills (this number is becoming fewer though).

Tech Tool 11.1 TaskStream

Task Stream is a very clean and inviting website.  I think they do a poor job at introducing their purpose.  I would have no idea that they were a portfolio-building website until I got to Pricing-benefits to students.  I do not like that it costs $42 a year so I will be avoiding this tool. However, the screenshot in the book looks very clean and much like I would organize my own folders on my computer.

Reflection:

Digital portfolios I think are extremely important for teachers today.  I do not find the idea of creating a heavy 3-ring-binder portfolio very inviting.  It is also very easy to forget where you have things filed, and with the use of an e-portfolio could be easily searched.

Technology tools in democratic classrooms I believe that it is important to have the children feel like they have a say in what they are learning. I believe that they get more excited the more you involve them.  Doing activities like peer editing and self-evaluation allows students to become the teacher and self-reflect.

Student participation systems and clickers are wonderful tools that don’t put the student on the spot.  This tool could help an introverted student who is struggling while engaging kids that are hyper by giving them something hands on to do.  No one loses with this tool because the teacher can address all the questions that weren’t answered right in the moment and not put pressure or embracement on any of the students. 

Chapter 10 Promoting Success for All Students through Technology

Focus Question: What are differentiated instruction (DI) and universal design for learning (UDL)?

Differentiated instruction is an instructional approach that gives students “multiple options for taking in information and making sense of ideas”

Teaching with DI allows teachers to meet the specific needs of students and achieve their maximum interest.  I experienced this with an English teacher of mine who would allow writing assignments to be done in different formats such as essay, poetry, PowerPoint presentations and comparison journals.  My favorite, at the time, was writing poetry, and my final product was more impressive to my teacher and classmates because I cared about what I was doing because it was fun.

Universal design for learning is the application of universal design principles to educational settings. UDL applies recent advances in the understanding of how the brain processes information to the design of curriculum that can accommodate broad student needs.

An example of Universal Design would be a ramp that makes a building wheelchair accessible, yet at the same time it also makes the transition easier on walkers and people loading things into a building.

An example of UDL would be PowerPoint’s used for hearing impaired students can double as reinforcement for “normal” students.

Tech Tool 10.1 Extra-Large and Online Calculators

The Martin Dale Center website was extremely hard to navigate, and hardly seemed to have any organizational purpose.  Clicking through the website I was never sure where it was going to lead me to. Chinese grammar, genome of the honeybee, and Nautical Archaeology are some topics that this site led me to.

Regardless, the point of the tech tool is to point out the usefulness of over-sized calculators.  Which I agree, is a great assistive technology tool for those who are visually impaired or have motor skill problems.  I do not believe that over-sized calculators stimulate conversations about what the word calculate means.  Calculators have a practical use but should not be overused.

By CanadaPenguin on FlickrOkay so this is a hilariously large store display calculator, I don't think calculators get any bigger than this!

Reflection:

Differentiated instruction is important, but I also think it’s important to expose all students to multiple ways of doing things. However, I do not believe that Universal Design for Learning is necessarily a good thing. The accommodations made for students with 504’s are not automatically what is best for regular students.

Calculators are a wonderful technology.  They have allowed us to progress in unimaginable ways just like computers.  However, it is vitally important for students to grasp the manual concepts of math.  They need to be able to critically think about math and not just punch in numbers.  Calculators can be a great tool for checking your work, or speeding along upper level math.  It has no place as a frequently used tool in math.  It is a “sometimes” tool not an “always” tool.

Speech recognition software and text reading software are tools that have helped the visually impaired people of this world out tremendously.  Once again, this is a “sometimes” tool for regular students.  It should not supplement their manual writing and reading practices.  “Too much of a good thing” is absolutely true when it comes to technology and students in some cases.

I can see the advantages and disadvantages of storybooks in a classroom.  I believe the best way to use this tool would be to go over a reading section, check for comprehension, and then use a storybook to reinforce the information learned.  Teachers who use storybooks as the only source of information on any given topic are greatly putting their students at a disadvantage.

All of these tools can be utilized in any classroom, and the technology is welcomed.  As a teacher I’ll need to recognize when these tools are doing harm versus good.  I believe some teachers have crossed the line where their students become dependent on these tools where that need shouldn't be there.