Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create 3D models of anything you like. The program was designed for architects, civil engineers, filmmakers, game developers, and related professions but is not used by educator and students in the classroom. All models on SketchUp are made up of edges and faces. Edges are straight lines, and faces are the 2D shapes that are created when several edges form a flat loop.
In the classroom, students can use SketchUp to visualize geometry and math concepts, create models to learn about architecture, design full-scale 3D environments, and easily share designs with others.
I think this would be a very great tool to use in a classroom! The program is free and also seems pretty easy to work with.
An interactive whiteboard is a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A projector projects the computer's desktop onto the board's surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or on a floor stand.
Interactive white boards are phenomenal tools. They are used in many schools as replacements for traditional whiteboards or flipcharts or video/media systems such as a DVD player and TV combination. Users can also connect to a school network digital video distribution system using an interactive whiteboard. Interactive whiteboards can also interact with online shared annotation and drawing environments in the form of interactive vector based graphical websites.
Ways to use Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom • Save lessons to present to students who were absent • Use the built in maps to teach continents, oceans, countries, or states and capitals. • Present presentations created by student or teacher • Teach whole group computer or keyboarding skills • Brainstorming • Reinforce skills by using on-line interactive web sites • Teach editing skills using editing marks • Use highlighter tool to highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. • Use it with Kidspiration or Inspiration • Teaching students how to navigate the Internet • Illustrate and write a book as a class. Use the record feature to narrate the text. • Use the Interwrite software to create lessons in advance at home or at school. Then save them for future use or to be shared with other teachers • Teaching steps to a math problem. • Have students share projects during Parent/Teacher/Student conferences • Graphics and charts with ESL learners and special ed students. • Electronic Word Wall • End each day by having students write one thing that they learned
I have not gotten to use a white board first hand yet, but I hope in my second and third field experience I will get too. I also hope someday in my own classroom I will have one. They are great tools to get kids involved.
A virtual school is an institution that teaches courses entirely through online methods. These schools offer many different classes at every different grade levels. One very known virtual school is the Florida Virtual School. It was founded in 1997 by Julie Young. There are an online elementary, middle, and high school program. FLVS is free to Florida residents who fund the program though state taxes. For 2 semesters of courses the fee is $750. Some of the courses they offer are Keyboarding, Language Arts, Reading, Spanish, Math, U.S. History, Web Design, English, Latin, Chinese, Algebra, Biology, Economics, and Physics.
Cyber education has many other advantages: • It permits students in small, rural, or low-wealth school districts to take specialized courses that would ordinarily not be available to them. • It provides home schooled students with instruction in subjects their parents might not be able to teach, such as foreign languages or computer skills. • It meets the needs of school phobics, those in hospitals or recovering at home, dropouts who would like to get back in, expelled students, single parents, and students in other states or even other countries looking for nontraditional educational solutions. • And, in an age when many of our schools are overcrowded or crumbling, cyber learning makes financial sense, too, because schools using distance learning do not need to modernize or build new buildings in order to provide quality cyber instruction.
I think virtual school is a very cool thing but it won’t work for everybody. Some students have to be in the classroom and being doing hands on things to understand the concepts that are being taught.
I found this article on the BBC News Website. This article was interesting to me and I wanted to share it with all of you.
This article is on technology and what effects it has in classrooms. The study surveyed 267 people ages 11-18. Of the students surveyed, 63% felt addicted to the internet and 53% to their cell phones. Eighty percent first used the Internet between the ages of five and 10, and 58% first used a cell phone between the ages of 8 and 10. About half of the students said they spend around 30 minutes a day on their phone and 17% said they spent at least 3 hours.
I believe that cell phones in the classroom are very distracting. Students can spend a whole class period on their phone and not get anything out of the lecture or activity. This can very crucial to their grades. Teachers also have developed a concern about text-messaging abbreviations which young people have grown accustomed. Students are using them in their homework unconsciously.
