Interactive Lesson

          For the past couple of weeks, my technology in education class has been learning how to use the SMARTBoard through the Notebook software. We explored many effects and advantages this tool can offer to teach a lesson. I can say I was trilled when I found out we will be learning how to use the SMARTBoard for I have always wanted to use it. As the class investigated the variety of tools Notebook has, on our own, we were given the task to make a five minute interactive lesson and teach it to the class.

          To begin creating a lesson, we had to choose a grade level and subject to teach. We then had to find the standard that would go with the lesson we wanted to prepare for the class. As I began contemplating what I wanted to teach, I realized that I needed to know what the students in the grade would already know and do not know. I eventually decided to teach a lesson about weather and temperature to a Kindergarten class. While I was making the lesson, each student had to use a lesson plan template to lay out everything we were going to teach. On the lesson plan template, there were many things involved and had to put to make sure what I was going to teach is correct to what I would write. Creating an objective was a bit difficult because I had to make sure I had all the requirements which were the condition, verb, and criteria in the correct order. It was easy to write down what my students should get out of the lesson but I had to make sure I put how well they needed to preform to fully show most of the class understood what I taught.

          After finishing the layout of my lesson plan, I created a Notebook file to make my lesson come to life. At first, I found it difficult to figure out what I could possibly do in five minutes with the activities I planned out. I already knew some aspects of what Notebook could do before actually using it on my own which helped with the process of making slides which my " Kindergarten students" could engage in. Once everything was completed, I had to practice many times teaching the lesson and using the slides to make sure everything worked and was smooth. I found out that it was difficult to actually time my lesson due to the fact that I was not sure how long each activity would actually take since it depended on how fast the students would understand and do the activities I planned out.

          In the end, I thought my interactive lesson went well. I learned even more about the SMARTBoard by actually engaging with it rather than watch a teacher use it during class. Through this experience, I now have more confidence to use the Notebook software and create a lesson for my future class to engage in rather than sit and listen to a lecture. I now know how to write a proper objective and know how to engage, connect, and launch my lesson. This has been a wonderful experience and I would be looking forward to use SMARTBoard in my future classroom.

Experiencing Twitter

When I was first told to use twitter in my technology in education class, I thought to myself, how am I going to use twitter when I barely even use social media. The only social media I have, and rarely ever use, are Facebook and Snapchat. I became skeptical of the idea that twitter could be used for educational purposes. In the beginning I had difficulties understanding how to use twitter and was not thrilled to the idea that everyone could see what I tweet, who I follow, and who follows me.

As I created the account, I was still a bit unsure for the reasons to use twitter as a future teachers and kept forgetting to look at my twitter on a daily basis. Once I started to understand more of what this social media was and how it could be used, it started to grab my attention. Twitter allows people and organizations post about infinite ideas, ways to incorporate technology into education, etc. While using twitter, there have been many articles I found interesting and helpful from how teachers use a variety of websites in their class to ways of engaging students in a classroom to make learning fun. I have been following a few organizations and people who have expanded my knowledge of what I could implement in a classroom that I would have not thought about before.

I found twitter helpful in a way of trying to figure out how technology could be used in a classroom without distractions. I now know of different website that could be used for multiple purposes and not just for a presentation or lesson. Some website can allow a collaborative project which every student and even the teacher can be involved in. Not only this, but by using twitter, I have found that even parents can be involved during class from home with a touch of a button. Parents can see pictures and type to their children to see what they are working on when the teacher gives the students a chance to use technology.

In the end, I have found twitter to be useful for teachers to gather ideas and even communicate with other teachers, organizations, and other people. Twitter allows people to see and engage in chats with people they do not know but have a similar goal. I personally may not use twitter as often in the future, due to not using social media constantly, but if I ever need ideas or need to find ways to use a certain website, I may search on twitter to see what I can find. Using twitter has been a nice experience and I will be looking forward to finding more ways to connect with others and gather creative ideas for my future classroom.