digital stories

In class on Tuesday we spent the day learning about digital stories and how they can be used in tbe classroom. I liked the idea of using them to make subjects we teach more interesting. I liked looking around at all of the ideas for disital stories such as putting a video on it, sound, etc. It is a good idea to use for teaching! I also finally came up with a subject that I will be interested in centering my digital story around. My subject is stars. How they originate or come to be. As a younger child this is something that was always of interest to me so as a teacher I would be excited to show and tell students more about stars. The beauty and wonder of stars! This project does seem a little overwhelming but I am excited for it as well.
-Kristen

I really enjoyed class today. Mostly because I got to participate by doing our group presentation on Sternberg and his theory. Alot of the time I like to listen in class to others experiences because I learn so much! I do so much listening that I don't put as much effort into participating as I should. I always learn so much in this class though! I really enjoy it, and though its 3 hours I am able to stay focused and pay attention the whole time. Which is pretty unusual for me! We also talked alot about inclusion today. It is something that is very interesting to me because I know it will affect me in my classroom. And I will need to learn how to provide and help those students with special needs that could be in my class. Some of my opinions about inclusion were also changed today as I realized that we need to use labels to figure out the problem and best know how to help the student. But at the same time not use the label as a negative thing. I realized how important it is to be very careful about the things you say as a teacher to your students! It has a huge impact on their confidence and what they believe they can and cannot do.
Thank-you also for that movie on tourettes. That is something that is new to me, and to actually hear those kids talk about it made me feel so much compassion for students that are 'different' or have one type of disability or another. I enjoyed class today very much!:)

Very interesting to take because I have never done one before. I didn't feel way dumb after I took it probably because I took it by myself and didn't have to compare to someone else's score:) It was fun to take but I definitly don't believe it could be very accurate for anyone. It is a test, so is subject to many different things. Not very reliable but I guess could give you somewhat of an idea.

Today I had a really fun time in class!
I learned how to utlitize using this site http://sites.google.com/site/kristentheteacher/about-me in which we made a page about ourselves. I really liked doing this because we got to do it about ourselves and put pictures on it, colors, a background, anything we wanted! I could use this as a teacher by doing a spotlight for each child every week and then putting it up on a projector for the class to see. This was a really interesting thing to learn and I had fun doing it!

This bias test was very interesting. The first one I did was on race. I was happy with my results because I believe they are accurate and it is something that I really value. It said I had little or no automatic preference between Eurpopean Americans and African Americans. And it is true I really don't. I have been raised that way, mostly because of religious beliefs and values. I was suprised to see that the people that have a strong automatic preference for whites was 48%! It was crazy to me that so many people are really predjudice. And as a future teacher that scares me to realize that other teachers I work with might have biasis towards' certain students in there class.
The next test I took was on bias towards genders. My results show a strong association of male with career and female with family. I was not suprised by these results at all! This is what I was raised to believe and this is still what I believe. My mom was always at home and my dad at work. I believe this is how I will have my own family as well if financially possible. My outlook on this comes from religious believes and my own personal values on the roles of men and women. But as a future teacher I realize that I will need to put aside those beliefs and not let them influence the way I treat the boys and girls in my class.

gmail/document

In class on Tuesday the really interesting thing that I liked learning was on gmail. We learned how to pull up that document and all type at the same time on one document. It was amazing! I couldn't believe I hadn't learned that before because I have had gmail for a long time! I was excited to learn this because I think it will be fun to use as a teacher! My students would be able to have fun working in small groups on a paper and being able to write and give imput all at the same time through the computer. I would even use this resource right now while in college. It is such a convenient way to put information together with a group of people. Thank you for teaching us so well how to use it. It was nice to spend all of class practicing because it really stuck and I would be able to do it again!

This multiple intelligences test was very interesting! It was pretty cool to find out which areas I am strong in and which ones I am definitely lacking in. My high areas were kinesthetic and Linguistic. My lowest area was logical. I think the results of this test were right because these are the areas that I do enjoy and succeed in. It was also good for me to see the results because as I teacher I will realize my strengths and weaknesses in teaching as well. I will be able to improve if I recognize and work on my weaknesses as a teacher. This also helped me understand how different every student learns just as I learn better in a certain way.

In class we talked about gender differences. Something that I thought was really interesting was when we watched the video that showed the school in which the genders were segregated. We talked alot about whether this was effective or not. Most people thought it would be better gender segregated but, I think that it is better when both genders are in the classroom. Although the result of the experiment was higher test scores from both the boys and the girls being in speperate classes, I think that result is dependant on alot of different factors. One conclusion cannot come from this experiment. It would have to be tested many times with different age groups. And every child is so different that I don't know whether it could ever be proven that it is more effective to have genders seperate in elementary school's. Children learn things from each other whether boys or girls. Being in a class with the other gender can help a child learn how to be more socially prepared for later years in school. If boys and girls were seperated in their elementary years they might have a hard time adapting to being co-ed in junior high and high school. This effected me as a later teacher because I will want to try and make my class accomidating for both girls and boys. I believe I will also be more sensitive to the fact that boys and girls do think differently. I will have to be able to involve many different factors into my teaching to make learning fun for all my students!

For this assignment I decided to research the correlation between learning and the home environment. Growing up in a home environment that was very accomdiating and encouraging to my learning needs I wanted to do this research to better understand what it would be like for a child with a home environment that was not supportive. There are many factors that make a difference in a child's ability to learn but I have realized that their home environment plays the biggest factor. Children being able to have access to learning manipulatives outside of school is so important! Items such as books, puzzles, magazines, pictures, journals, and music. Also having opportunities to participate in hobbies and experience museums, ballets, and concerts. All of this plays such an important factor to a child being excited to learn and encouraged to learn. Sadly many children in the United States do not have all the opportunities to grow and learn as some of their other classmates may. Even looking at my own family I have been able to see that we have been more successful in school because of a more supportive home environment then alot of my peers. Children already come to school with their own schema of the world which was learned in their home from their parents and family. Environmental factors do account for a child's success in school! This article and a few more that I looked at were very interesting and gave me a different perspective of the factors that influence a child's ability to learn.
http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0040-5841(197206)11%3A3%3C190%3ATHEAAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&cookieSet=1

From class today we talked about different ways to experiement. I really liked how the information was taught by splitting us up into groups and having us present. I learn alot better this way because it is more hands on and not all lecture. Thank you! The studies we learned about were correlational, descriptive, and experimental. It was fun to do activites with each of these different ways becuase I was able to understand them alot better. From this class I am also realizing more about myself. More of my own strengths and weaknesses as a future teacher.
Learning about these studies is so important to me because I csn apply them in my own classroom as well as in life in general. To figure out many problems you could use these different methods of experiementing. It is important to be able to look at a situation from many different angles and be able to try and test to see what works best.
Now I want to use what I have learned to better teach my students and find their needs and situations. If I can conduct small, even personal experiments with my students to better understand them it will definitly help me be much more successful as a teacher. There are so many different ways to help a child learn and as a teacher I want to be able to utilize what I have learned to provide for a better learning experience!

The first day of class

This first day of class was a little bit overwhelming but I am excited for all the new things I will learn! I actually learned alot of new things from just today. I learned alot more about a blog account and how I can use it to put pictures on and to write my reflections for the semester as I am right now.:) I also really enjoyed learning about a site called www.voki.com. As a teacher this would be an awesome way to teach my students or even bring some humor into the class. Kids would enjoy this website! I also learned alot about a email account that I already have. Its the gmail account. I didn't even know there was so many things you could do on it! There are so many resources that I could use when learning more about the material I will be teaching to my students. Alot of information was taught in class today I just need to process it all:) I am excited to be taking this class! -Kristen Finch

HI!

I am just testing for my instructional media. I found out about a new link today http://www.voki.com/