ICT Presentation

I thought this was a pretty cool presentation to wrap up the class. The 2 guys had lots of neat information for us to use in a class. I think its scary how advanced we are becomign technologically but thats a part of life. It will be cool to see what will happen to us as teachers and when we are ready to retire in terms of what students can do with technology. I am a little aprehensive about using cell phones in class. Im glad the technology is avaliable but I dont think I would use it in my class. I think with the ways things are with cell phones that it will get some flack from parents and certain administrators. I agree with the fact that we have to teach students about the future rather then the today. They are the future and becoming more advanced then we can imagine so we have to keep up to date and focus on their skills and get them ready for their own lives.

Computers in the classroom

For our Reading thinking Writing class we have been asked to find educational sites to share with the class. I have noticed a wide variety of sites that offer educational games for students. I started playing some of these games and found majority of them to be very worthwhile and challenging. This also related to our Filtering assignment for IFE. A lot of schools filter any type of game sites and that is taking away students learning. Students learn in different ways and an interactive game may be a great way of teaching them the material. I found a lot of great sites that offer games for science, math, language arts, health and more. They range from strategy, action, adventure, rpg etc. With the rise of technology games are a new and exciting way for student to learn. We need to start incorporating them as part of lessons, filler time at end of class, use for reviews and just plain fun.

Distant Learning

This is a really easy topic for me to talk about. Reason being was that I took a number of online classes through Webct while in High School and also had the opportunity to revise and change a GIS online class while student teaching. The presentation was very informative. Lots of information was provided for those who have not used distant learning. Its great that anyone can work online. I felt that with my busy hockey schedule that webct was worthwhile and allowed me to work at my own home on my own time. One thing I really liked about the presentation was that there was an example online where soon to be teachers can view how it is organized and the layout of the site. One thing I do not like about webct is that it doesnt work for all classes. By this i mean Biology. I took biology online and i did learn some stuff but it was not the same as being more hands on like disecting a frog, or looking at cells. An online class for this type of subject is difficult because of all the hard components need to be covered in a word format with essays and small assignments compared to doing more visual learning.