I participated in a Tapped In session on July 1 about science resources. I was disappointed by this session. The instructor let it be known that he was a math teacher, not a science teacher, and that he was tired of leading this chat every month. He presented two science search engines, asked for volunteers to become science group moderators, and changed the subject to setting up K-12 classrooms, which was not helpful to me as I am not yet teaching. I expected more useful material.
Critical thinking is all the rage in modern education. As a teacher-to-be, currently enrolled in education classes, it is hard for me to imagine that there was a time when students were expected to simply memorize and regurgitate facts. Today’s students are asked to make deeper connections and gain true meaning from their studies. According to the Critical and Creative Thinking page on Eduscapes.com (http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm), “critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing, and critiquing.” Simple memorization is no longer an accepted means of education.
I plan on expecting great things from my students. The more you expect of an individual, the more he or she will become capable of. I plan on incorporating other subjects into my language arts curriculum in order to deepen my students’ understanding, perhaps through using historical fiction in order to help students draw parallels between English and history, or by asking them to journal after taking on the personna of a child their age who lived during the colonial period. By making material more relevant to students, they will be able to gain a better grasp on the information and they will be motivated to ask questions and think critically.
Students tend to be interested and enthusiastic about technology. Projects immediately become more engaging when students are able to put their technological knowledge to work. If a teacher is able to get his or her students interested through the use of technology in the classroom, students will have a greater desire to think critically and explore subject matter.
Screencasts are recordings of activities that are occurring on a computer screen. I chose to create my screencast as a how-to involving aspects of the Microsoft Excel program. These aspects included bolding text, sorting information alphabetically, and changing font color. By watching my screencast, viewers can follow along to see exactly how a change to my spreadsheet was made.
Screencasts could be useful in the classroom. When dealing with new computer technologies, students can become frustrated and lost. If a teacher takes the time to create screencasts showing step-by-step procedures, students can look back at these screencasts in order to get back on track. For example, many high schools now provide their students with e-mail accounts. Before these accounts can be used, students must activate them. A screencast could be used to demonstrate how to set up an e-mail account. Students would be able to access assistance through the screencast at any time.
The Tapped In Tips & Tricks session offered some interesting suggestions on how to use the Tapped In professional community in order to meet teachers’ needs. Within the site, teachers can converse with others in various forums about numerous topics. My favorite tip from the Tapped In leader was setting up a virtual classroom for students to use in which the teacher can monitor student discussions and choose where students can and cannot go. As a future middle school teacher and current middle school sub, I have seen how students of this age inevitably end up in places where they should not be while using the Internet, regardless of the blocks that the school system places on their network. It is nice to know that I have the ability to exert this type of safety control in my classroom while allowing my students to experiment and learn through technology.
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