One-to-One Computing From My Perspective

To me, in theory one-to-one computing systems seem like a great idea for classroom use. I have no problem with getting laptops into the hands of students because by the time they gradate high school, because many of their future careers will be computer based. Also with Apple making useful and quality education apps what seems like every five minutes, and the fact that laptops look a lot like gaming systems, which really engage kids to want to learn, I have to say that I would like to work in a school where this is happening. However, what I see as a potentially large problem with one-to-one computing is the fact that school districts are so money conscious, that they would spend a lot of money on all of the technology, but be cheap with providing teachers with the professional development, and employing a technology-help staff member (such as the ties office helpers) to be able to teach a technology integrated class everyday with computers, so that it is beneficial rather than distracting to the students and teachers. As the article stated, “Buying laptops is the easiest part of the process, but too often school districts neglect such fundamental items as providing initial and ongoing professional development for the teachers and providing sufficient tech support,” What I feel that that school's will not consider is investing money in preventive and proactive variables such as computer's getting viruses, student's breaking the computers, compatibility issues, privacy and home access, and individual teacher's personal experience/confidence/preference/teaching style when it comes to integrating technology into the majority of their class day.

Google Docs AHHHH

Ok so Googledocs was hard for me. I found the last Youtube video with the guy who actually walked through Googledocs on his computer the best tutorial for showing how to open a doc, edit a doc, and share the doc with other people. However, none of the tutorials showed how to view the revision history (which I found myself on the file tool bar), and none of the tutorials showed how to publish the doc to the web, or how to download a copy of the document, (which I also figured out from messing around with the technology). Really the hardest part of this module for me was putting the completed resume into my Weeby web page because of size formatting issues, and whenever I uploaded the document to my web page, the tabs and margins in my resume went all crazy. I finally ended up going to class, and having Chris walk me through how to place a public link to my Googledoc resume, because Weebly wasn't going to show the resume in it's correct formatting any other way. I also put a copy of my resume in PDF form on my webpage because Chris mentioned, in class, that PDF form allows the viewer to download the resume with any type of computer without having to worry about compatibility issues. Oh yeah! Another issue I ran into was when I invited all of my housemates to view and edit my Googledoc. One of my housemate Caroline said she could see my doc but could not edit it. We later found that the issue was that she was not logged into her gmail account, which she needed to do before Googledocs would allow her to be able to edit the document. As far as use in the classroom, I do think that Googledocs would be very usable as long as there was, for example, one computer lab hour dedicated to getting every student a Gmail account and a showing all of the students to make their classmates full collaborators in the group's presentation/document. I also think that the teacher should do a survey of the class's home technology equipment to see what students have home computer systems (and what kind) and which do not, so that the teacher is not assigning work that cannot be completed by every group member, because of a lack of access to technology.Lastly, the fact that Googledocs allows the teacher to see the revision history, the teacher could see which student contributed the most, or least. But the instructor should also see that if one student did the lion share because they could work at home while another student could not because of no home computer.

Education Topic: What I don't Get about My Own Education

I am not seeing a whole lot of science education in my current placement. In fact, in talking with my classmates, really none of them are either. I think the main problem with education today is that elementary teachers are expected to teach every subject area, even when they have little to no pre-service education in that subject area. If I were in charge, I would improve elementary education in the US by making it mandatory for students to “switch classrooms for subject (such as science) area teaching” in the grades as early as the first grade. Along with this practice, I would also change the way pre-service teachers are educated. What I mean is that pre-service teachers would get more education in their subject area they have chosen, (three years instead of two), and that all of the subject area classes would be based on learning the material and THEN ALSO making lesson plans for teaching the material in a classroom. Take my ‘Language Arts’ classes I am currently taking to fulfill a LA subject area credit, as an example of how I am NOT mastering HOW to teach language arts, but just learning about it. I am currently in English 140- Scottish literature. This class is a great class and I am learning a lot about the Scottish culture and I took it because it both sounded interesting and fit my schedule, BUT in my future real career world, this information is practically useless. I will never use anything I have learned from this class in teaching special education or regular education to K through 5th grade. So why is this class fulfilling a LA credit for me then????? This is where the problem starts. So if we changed all of the subject area courses that pre-service teachers had to take, to make them useful for K-5 teaching, and also made sure that teachers were only hired in as “science teachers” if they were certified to teach that subject area, and if first through fifth grade students were switched to a real science teacher’s classroom during science instruction, THEN I feel elementary science (and really all subject area) teaching and learning, would improve in US elementary schools.

Choice Technology: Prezi

I heard about Prezi being talked about in class so I decided to explore this new technology. First off there is a free version of Prezi you can sign up for which is a big plus. Also on the Prezi homepage there is a free video tutorial that shows you step- by-step how add text/image/video, orient the text/image/video, and size the text/image/video. Prezi also uses a zoom feature in its presentations that lets the author zoom in on a detail of an inserted picture/video, for the watcher to focus on. Prezi’s zoom out feature is also cool because it can show the whole ‘flowchart’ of ideas so the watcher can see the ‘big picture’ of the presentation. Prezi also has a navigation button (that’s what I am going to call it) that allows the author to make the presentation move left, right, up, down, spin, or follow a winding path of information. I really feel that since PowerPoint hasn’t really changed much in the last 15 years, that Prezi has a real chance of outselling PowerPoint, and could become the new presentation computer program that is a staple on all laptops and computers.
The disadvantages that I see with Prezi is that when I watched the Introduction to Prezi Tutorial and the Your First Prezi Tutorial I felt that Prezi was going to be very fast and easy to create and publish with. But when I opened my first blank Prezi to work with, I felt that creating a Prezi was much harder and takes a lot longer than the tutorials portrayed. Also another disadvantage that I saw with Prezi is that to get all of the features that Prezi offers, you have to pay for the ‘platinum Prezi’ version. To me, realistically, I know that PowerPoint is free and can be found on thousands of computers in schools, the library, and computers labs, so in this category PowerPoint does win. Also I think that Prezi can be used for any subject area because the gist of Prezi is that it just shows the flow of ideas, which is a component of math, literacy, science, and social studies. Furthermore, I think that Prezi should be used for short lectures versus long lectures because Prezi seems like it will be more time consuming per section/idea. Lastly, I think that Prezi could be a teacher tool to make short presentations for any grade level of students, and could be a presentation tool for older students to use as long as they understand the sometimes-difficult directions and how to upload pictures and videos to Prezi.

Here is a an introduction video as to what Prezi is