week 4

Five ways to incorporate Microsoft Excel into my school’s curriculum:

1.        Math

I think it would be a fun idea to do something in Excel with calculating averages, using numbers that the children find in the classroom.  One idea is to have them do some kind of physical activity like jumping jacks and find the average number of jumping jacks that could be performed by an elementary student in a given amount of time.  They could use an Excel spreadsheet to record their data.  I would have them find the average first manually and then teach them how the formulas can be plugged into the spreadsheet to find the same answer.  I like anything that can get the kids up and moving and burning off extra energy.  It would be something they would have to work as a class on too. 

2.       Science

I would use the Excel graphing feature to teach the children about natural science.  I’m thinking something like bird-watching would work here.  We could have a column with all the names of our birds and then just use Excel as a logbook of how often we spot the birds.  Depending on how we enter our data and how we graph it we could show which birds were spotted most often or how often a particular bird was spotted over a certain period of time.   

3.       Reading

So I have to admit that I regretted my decision to try incorporating Excel into every subject when I got to reading.  But I have an idea!  We could do a project in Excel where the students record how many pages of a chapter book they can read in a certain number of minutes.  Each student would have a spreadsheet where they would put the number of minutes they read each night in one column.  The fun part would be experimenting with different situations and how they affect our reading speed.  Each child would do a few nights of quiet reading first to get an average regular reading speed.  We could then do a night where we try to read with the TV on.   Then we could try to read and play a video game at the same time.  Then try to read while talking to a friend on the phone and so on and so forth.  I think I could teach the children something about healthy study habits by showing them in a graph what noise and double tasking does when you’re trying to read!  Plus they’d be learning how to graph data in Excel J 

4.       Social Studies

I would do something similar to the “planet weigh-in” activity but I would compare monetary values.  The class would be learning the names of different currencies and comparing their value to the American dollar.  We would plug formulas into Excel using the American dollar as a base value.  We would have a column of different items and a column of how many dollars they cost.  Then we’d have a column for each of the other currencies we were studying (Euros, Yen, etc.) and we’d have a formula for each that would multiply by whatever fraction of a dollar each of those currencies is. 

5.       I would also pitch Excel as an administrative tool for collecting and analyzing data concerning attendance, grades, test scores and even behavior in the classroom.  If I had a project for my students that had multiple steps involved I would definitely want a way of tracking how far each student was from completion.  Something like this would be easy in Excel because the empty cells would make an incomplete assignment crystal clear. 

And now…once again…Google Docs!

The feature that I love most about Google Docs is the “share” feature!  It keeps students connected to their classmates outside of class and helps them to stay interested because they can see their creations evolving as other students give their input.  It is the perfect tool for the Net Gen because they are all about instant access and communicating to work together.  If children are going to be online then they need to learn to be responsible online.  Using Google Docs is kind of like having your teacher online with you, guiding you to use applications responsibly and to access appropriate sites.  Just as students are collaborating with their classmates they are also collaborating and having dialogue with their teacher; dialogue that wouldn’t happen if the student-teacher relationship was restricted to the classroom.  Plus it cuts out a lot of paper and ink! 

week 3

Social Bookmarking is tagging and cataloging sites for easy retrieval.  As a student I can use Social Bookmarking to create lists of sites that I have used for a particular area of research.  Also, I can search others’ lists for similar sites related to whatever topic I am working on.  In the Educause article “7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking,” it is illustrated that the keywords or tags another user applies to a certain site helps the researcher to direct their focus on more varied paths.  The concept of sharing through Social Bookmarking presents opportunities to more easily and effectively broaden the scope of our online research.  I like the collaborative nature of Social Bookmarking; it takes a lot of the guesswork out of evaluating sites because others have already reviewed them and commented on their quality and relevance.  As a teacher I think I could use Social Bookmarking to help my students identify the kinds of sites that are worthwhile.  In their own use of Social Bookmarking for research they would learn to evaluate the information on a site not only using their own judgment but also the judgments of those that have reviewed the site before them. 

week 2

The readings for this week again alleviated some of my fears about teaching in the Net Generation.  I worried that my students would be so locked into technology that they wouldn’t have time for human contact…boy was I wrong!  It looks like the trend is to use technology to enhance and broaden human contact, which is a relief to me as a budding teacher. 

Technology is a readily available, natural part of daily life for a lot of kids.  It’s inevitable that they will use it to do what they do best – socialize!  The challenge raised in the text again and again throughout our reading is for adults to get on board.  Even though there’s a serious deficit between how kids are living and how they’re learning right now, I think it’s going to start closing up more and more rapidly.    

I was excited to see other students’ perspectives on educational blogging in the “Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0” article.  Blogging is a great way to use technology to re-focus education on the student.  A student-centered education in the Net Generation should be social and community oriented because those are traits that students value. 

It’s neat how easily web resources (like photo-sharing, blogging, podcasting, et cetera) translate into teaching tools.  If I were learning how to teach from a textbook and with paper and pencil I would be learning how to teach kids 10 years ago which wouldn’t amount to much of anything.  Learning to use technology in the classroom is a necessary part of learning to teach and I am excited to learn more!  It’s even fun! 

One thing that I kept noticing in the articles and that struck me as a good point is that students are at risk online.  Sending them to a place where they can access anything and be accessed by anyone is akin to sending them out on the street alone during school.  So I think it’s very important that we teach kids about internet safety and educate their parents as well.  Even if they don’t listen we have to teach it.  When we did our in-class Wordle experiment one of the words my partner offered was “naïve.”  It’s so true!  I get so caught up in how smart and adaptive and innovative and just awesome this generation is and I forget that they are kids!!!  So, teaching internet safety is one thing I would like to learn more about.

And Now… Google Docs

I have mixed feelings about using Google Docs for the Technology Lesson Plans Project.  I love that it makes it easy to share my work and I can definitely see how it would have benefits for group projects.  Most of my problems with it were formatting issues.  I created my document first in Microsoft Word which is where I went wrong I think.  For some reason copying and pasting the entire document didn’t work so I did it in pieces.  Then it ended up looking nothing like my original Word document because the tables from the websites were spaced funny.  Next time I will create the document in Google Docs and see how that works.

week 1

The readings for this week shed some light on some fears that had caused me to hesitate when considering teaching in the net generation. I was afraid that I just wouldn’t be able to connect with my kids…that they would be totally wrapped up in cyberspace and have no capacity for human contact. Several points from the readings illustrate that the technologies utilized by today’s kids don’t turn them off from the real world; instead they are more connected because of technology. The natural learning abilities of the net generation are described in the text: “The Net Gen is oriented toward inductive discovery or making observations, formu¬lating hypotheses, and figuring out the rules.” The article on the “21st Century Digital Learner” stressed that Net Gen students value interaction with a teacher who is passionate about their subject and motivates students toward the same passion. Another fear that I had about using technology in the classroom is that it just moves too fast and that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. My students would end up thinking I was totally lame if I didn’t know how to use the latest and greatest gadget. The ‘Digital Learner’ article helped me identify with other teachers that feel the same way but are trying to do the best they can with what they have available to them. I think that as long as I can make learning fun and engaging for my students it won’t really matter if I’m using a smartboard or a chalkboard to do it. I’m looking forward to learning more about how to use technology to do that.


I was always kind of skeptical of webloggers and facebookers and myspacers. I thought of them as vain people who liked everyone to know what they were doing at all times. The video about blogging that we viewed in class and the article titled “Blogs: Webs of Connected Learning” really helped me to turn that around. Now I’m beginning to understand that using the internet is just a way of expressing and living and learning that comes really naturally to kids who were born into the net generation. Who am I to teach against that?! Why shouldn’t students use these skills in the classroom? I guess part of my hesitation was just pure jealousy. We didn’t have this stuff when I was a kid :( I’m also afraid that my students aren’t going to know how to write with a pencil and spell and do simple math because there are gadgets that will do it for them. If I had had a teacher that was gung-ho about the latest and greatest calculator technology would I have learned my times tables the same way? I see how technology can benefit a classroom as far as making the learning experience more varied and interactive but I guess my fear is still that it will replace the person to person learning that I experienced and that I really loved and valued. From the readings, especially those with student comments, I gather that what students are really looking for is a balanced learning experience that involves some instruction from the teacher but also some independent discovery. I’ve started to change my attitude toward the net and I think it will continue to change as we keep reading and learning.

practice post

this is a test.