June 30th Class

Today in class we had to opportunity to learn how to use the program Picasa. You can crop and improve all of your pictures with this. You can download it for free from picasa.google.com Try it out it is easy and most importantly it is free!

Week Two Lesson Plans and Technology

For our second week in class we talked about lesson planning and using technology with your lesson. We were able to watch an experienced teacher show us some cool things that can be done with a smart board. I have seen these used a lot during my observations at the schools and they are amazing. The students love to use them and they are very efficient. I am hoping with some practice to be able to use a smart board for many lessons in my classroom. It is important to plan your lessons but also important to remain flexible. It is ok if you don’t get to everything on your lesson plan but not okay if you didn’t plan enough and the students are left with time they are not learning.

Summer School Week One

For my technology class this summer one of our assignments is to post on our blogs each week what we learned about in class.

For our first week of class we talked about designing our own blogs as well as students in today’s world and how technology savvy they are. Last week we also had to take a teaching PE class and our teacher seemed to be really impressed with the technology that we brought to class. She was impressed with everything from the MP3 players we used to being able to type up our lesson plans in class on a laptop. It is important to be up to date on these things so that the students we teach don’t leave us in their dust.

We also had the chance to visit the Utah Educational Network (UEN) website. This is full of great resources not only for teachers but for parents as well. The website allows teachers to comment about things that they have found helpful.