Final Reflection on Literacy with Technology Course

This is my overall reflection on the course. I feel that that 21st century learning and web 2.0 applications are extremely important topics and are things that teachers today need to be aware of. The classroom is a different environment from what it was several years ago. Teachers need to be able to change with the times. This class did a great job at pointing this out. I was introduced to many great programs that I will surely be using in my classroom. I think that it was a very worthwhile experience and that I will be taking a lot of information away from it with me.

With that being said, I would like to point out the difficulty of the course. It was extremely difficult at times to know what was required. It was a summer course so I understand that there is a lot of information that needs to be covered in a short period of time. Sometimes the assignments were vague and it was difficult to understand what exactly was required and when it was due. I collaborated with other members of my group, and they all had similar complaints. The group work also made the class somewhat difficult. It was difficult at times to communicate electronically between all of the members of the group. However, we were able to make it work and I feel that we made some high quality projects for the course.

With everything taken into account, it was a great class that taught me many new things. I feel that I am very computer literate and know my way around the internet. Even with that being said, I still learned new things. In today's world, things on the internet are ever-changing. There is always room to grow as a professional, and that is the number one thing that I will take away from this course.

Engrade Critique

This is my critique of the gradebook program Engrade. I really liked this program. This program far surpassed the program that we used last year at the school I was teaching at. I really liked how easy it was to input grades and have them weighted accordingly. It was very easy to add in extra credit points as well. The layout of the program was very simple and easy to understand. It was easy to get started creating a class and entering grades. There was nothing that I did not like about this program. The only thing that I would do to this program to improve it would be to make it so you can view all your tests as an average in one column and all of your quizzes as an average in another column (etc). This would provide the teacher with feedback to help drive instruction. I think that engrade is a great program for students and parents due to the ability to print up grade reports with the click of a button. One of the best features I found was the ability to print out a missing assignments report. This will allow you to quickly print up reports for students to see what assignments they are missing. This is a valuable resource for teachers as well. Teachers do not need to go through each individual assignment looking for what students have not completed it. I think that these features, along with the ease of entering grades for assignments, makes this an EXCELLENT gradebook for teachers. If my school next year does not have a required gradebook, this may be my choice. It was great getting to know the program and I would suggest EVERYBODY check it out if you are looking for a easy gradebook.

Picasion Slide Show

One of our assignments for this week was to create a slideshow .gif using Picasion. The slideshow needed to contain screenshots of some of the activities that we have been doing up until this point. My slideshow contains a screenshot of my blog, my WDYDWYD project, my individual wiki, my group wiki, and my twitter account. This was a very simple task and Picasion made it a snap. Here is the link to my Slideshow gif: Picasion Slideshow Animation

21st Century Scientific Literacy

Scientific literacy is often defined as a student’s ability to identify and differentiate between a topic sentence and supporting details in technical writing, obtain a wealth of information such as scientific vocabulary and terminology, and a have the ability to write in complete and correct sentences and successfully convey their ideas to a reader. Scientific literacy is a much deeper idea of understanding in the sciences than simply the ability to construct a sentence correctly or regurgitate a dictionary of scientific vocabulary. The theory behind this definition of scientific literacy was that every person who was scientifically literate would be able to communicate effectively with one another. A scientifically literate person would be able to differentiate between a hertz as it refers to computer technology and the car rental company named Hertz. This is true because people would be able to define scientific words, but this does not transpose into scientific literacy.

Science is about discovery and experimentation. It is about the search for truth through observation. An important fact that many students do not recognize is that science is always changing. An example is that Teflon was discovered accidentally through a botched experiment to create refrigerant. The idea that just as much, if not more, can be learned from our mistakes is of key importance for students to understand. The true understanding that science is about discovery and experimentation is the real definition of scientific literacy in the 21st century. This is was teachers should be promoting and striving for in the classroom.

Initial Thoughts on the Teaching with Technology graduate course at Mount Saint Mary College

This is just a quick post to give my initial impression of Ed 5700. This is an online course and is the first of this nature that I have participated in. I must say that I am very impressed with the help that the professor, Dr. Smirnova, has given me in catching up in the course. I signed up for the course and emailed the professor about when the first meeting was going to take place and never received a response. Dr. Smirnova just spent quite some time online helping guide me through the moodle site and get me caught up on what is going to be expected of me during this semester.

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Bill and I am a graduate student at Mount Saint Mary College. I have almost completed my M.S.E.D. degree and should be graduating in December of this year if all goes well. I am currently a full-time teacher at Valley Central High School in Montgomery, NY. I teach four sections of Regents Chemistry. This is a leave-replacement position for a teacher that left on maternity leave. I am currently looking for a job for the upcoming school year and have a couple of prospects in the works (I don't want to say too much for fear of jynxing it). My number one hobby is my car. I am a senior member of several car forums and love to spend any free time that I have playing under the hood of my car. A new hobby that I have recently picked up is photography. I have not taken any formal classes but am teaching myself. I prefer to learn things this way because I seem to have more success teaching myself (The internet is a wonderful thing). I will make a page for some of my photos that I have taken so far. I have been asked to attend several car meets and shows around the Northeast to photograph the events. I have a love for photographing cars (as you will see in many of my photographs). I am also an avid music listener and attend concerts on a regular basis.

Enough about me, onto the course. This seems to be an exciting course with alot of potential for growth. I know some of the people that are in the class already and am looking forward to meeting those who I do not know yet. This seems to be a class that has alot of work required for it, however I feel that I am very computer savy and should have no problems with it.

Until my next entry....