Week 7 and Tech Explorations 19 & 20

The Brain

This was a very taxing assignment for me.  The material was a little dry and there was a lot of it, but I survived and I’m glad I got to read it.  The excerpts from Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain provide findings from research on arts in early education and its correlation for math and science and a general improvement of cognitive skills.  The main word I took from the research is “correlation”.  Is it just a correlation or does arts in fact have an impact on learning?  Or is this simply a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” debate?  Are people with musical talent predisposed to success in math and science or are technical people who find math and science easy the ones who also enjoy and practice the arts?  This might be oversimplifying the topic and I am not refuting any of the research but I know plenty of people who break this mold and many that fit the mold.  The bigger question is what can be done to expand on this concept?  I doubt many school boards are going to allow for more art and music time in place of math and science.  As a matter of fact schools are always looking towards Art and Music classes as the first place to cut funding to balance budgets.   I do think more research is needed on this topic.

Understanding Childhood Brain Disorders

I chose this topic because my brother, who is special needs, was diagnosed with AD/HD and I have always been interested in brain disorders in children.  This webcast was recorded in 2008 at the Dana Center in Washington DC with Dr. Denckla and Dr. Kagen. 

Autism, defiance and AD/HD are often called a disorder and not a disease.  In fact, types of “disorders” like these are diseases and these diseases need to be treated individually and not just lumped together as mental disorders.  The example given that cancer or epilepsy, 100 years ago, were considered as all-encompassing diseases. Fortunately, cancer is now treated differently for what type you have.  Skin cancer is treated one way and lung cancer is treated much different.  This is the direction that mental disorders need go.  Autism is not an all-encompassing disease and we need to get to the point of treating it as such.

Two items that did alarm me is the examples they gave on socioeconomic factors being misread as mental disorders (uneducated parents not reinforcing school work being read as attention deficit in the classroom) and academic milestones being moved up one or two grades and being used to determine mental health. (ie Algebra use to be a 9^th grade skill and now it’s a 7^th grade skill)

Growing up with a brother that was given medication for most of his adolescence life it was reassuring to hear the doctors say that medication is not the answer and that medication with social skill intervention is the best method.  I was also glad to hear them say we are overmedicating children.

 

Web 2.0

For my web 2.0 application I have chosen Glogster.  I chose this because many of my students are visual learners and this fun graphic blog will keep them interested.  Plus it easy to use and has professional looking result.

McCracken County Schools only started on Friday so I haven’t been able to work this into a class yet but if the teacher is willing I think it will be a fun project.

First I will give the students a topic to blog about.  “My Summer Vacation” and give simple guidance on what to include in their blog.

·         Type a narrative on your summer vacation

·         Add photos of any place you visited

·         Fondest memory of summer

·         Activities with friends or family

·         Present to the class

The goal of this assignment is to get students back school mode.  Skills used will be writing, oral communication, creativity and computer entry.

The grading of this material will be based on a simple rubric:

	1	2	3	4
Content	One activity Completed	Two Activities Completed	Three activities Completed	All Activities Completed
Text and Pictures	Text and Pictures do have little relation  to Content	Text and Pictures have some relation  to Content	Text and Pictures relate to Content	Text and Pictures Relate and Reinforce Content
Presentation	Presentation covered one activity	Presentation covered two activities	Presentation covered three activities	Presentation covered all activities

 

 

Tech Exploration # 19

Delicious http://www.delicious.com/ , Historypin - http://www.historypin.com/  , diigo http://www.diigo.com, Calculators http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/calculator and http://www.softpedia.com/get/Science-CAD/Big-Simple-Talking-Calculator.shtml

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	Delicious while being an easy to use “Favorite” or “Bookmark” organization site commits one of my Cardinal sins for online software.  It lets you look at the software and do a few mouse clicks BEFORE you can create an account.  Then it asks you to use your Facebook account to long into the software.  I think all Facebook users are tired of seeing countless ads and posts saying your friend is using XYZ software.  Now that that’s off my chest, it’s easy to use and you can take your favorites with you when you move from device to device.  It will really speed up researching if you use two platforms like a tablet and a desktop computer.  In the past I used to email links to myself and now I could just use this app.   Historypin is a website that lets users add to and comment on “pins” about history much like a combination of Wikipedia and Pintrest with a History twist.  I liked the concept of this site.  You can tell history through words and pictures and keep peoples interest.  What I did find is that the pages load slowly and the search box is finicky.  Being a user based product I worry about content being accurate or biased but I have not read enough to form an opinion on this site as far as that.  The example timelines are a wonderful idea and I think could easily be used in the classroom.   Diigo is like Delicious only better.  Not only can your organize and save your favorites and bookmarks and access them from any computer you can also markup websites and post sticky notes to the websites for later use.  You can also save websites with a cache type feature that way if the website is a fast changing site you can go back to the one you were using by the time and the day it was saved.   The PBS calculator is a very childish calculator that gets pretty old really quickly.  It’s slow and only does basic arithmetic.  It is a very whimsical looking device and I think only kindergarteners or first graders would like it. The Softpedia calculator is a little better.  It is much larger and looks more professional.  It has several higher order math operations and is not childish.  The voice can be turned off and it’s fairly fast.  This calculator would be used by more people than PBS but with all online calculators if you are doing something online and need a calculator you have to close and open windows.  I typically will just grab a more powerful handheld calculator in that case.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	I can see students using Delicious to keep school based research organized with home based research with the bookmarks being saved online. This allows the user to use any computer to access favorites.    History pin is much like Wikipedia, it’s a great tool to get an idea of what happened in history or in what chronology but it is not a reliable source for research.  It would be a good tool to pin a history lesson to and let students go out and get but you will have to limit the site to that type of research.   Diigo would be useful in many of the same ways as Delicious.  In fact it can be used even more since you can markup and place notes onto websites instead of just bookmarking them.  Just like Delicious this would be good for students that have to work on 2 or more computers to do their school work or for teachers that have a work and home computer.   The 2 speaking calculators are kind of fun and I think younger kids would enjoy the pbs calculator but it is so basic only k-1 might use it and while the softpedia calculator has more features than the pbs one it is still lacking compared to a cheap real calculator.  Their only saving grace is the speaking feature which may be needed in the case of a young non-reader or a special needs student.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	Delicious does what it claims, you can bookmark websites and retrieve those bookmarks on any computer.  I do not like the fact that it asks for your Facebook account which you know will only add to the spam on that site.  It is free and can be logged onto with other criteria so I can recommend the site but that being said Diigo will do the same things in a much better package.   Historypin is a lot like Wikipedia and Pintrest put together.  The website loads slowly and the search feature is less than stellar.  It does do all that is claimed and it is pretty fun to use.  Historypin is a neat idea and if used only for reference and not research I can recommend the site.    Diigo is a website that I have no problem recommending.  It does what is says and is pretty easy to use.  I like how you can add notes and highlight items on websites and then look at the site from any computer that you have access to.  I can really see myself and students using this one.   The online calculators.  While they do what is promised and if you need the speaking function for a young or special needs student I would recommend both of these.  If you are looking for a powerful online calculator you need to look elsewhere.

Tech Exploration # 20
Math wiki - http://2write4math.pbwiki.com / and a PicLits http://www.piclits.com

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  Be thorough in your response.
	2Write4math is a wiki that contains information on writing and how it relates to learning mathematics and how it can foster improvement in other subjects.  The wiki is a little hard to read when you first get on the site and I followed several links that were busted so I’m not sure how current the information is that is presented.  That being said the wiki does offer lots of information on writing and math and math in general.   Piclits is a site that lets you created inspirational pictures like you see on social media and just the internet in general.  The site chooses a picture and offers drop down words to create a saying or you can just make one up freestyle.  This is a cute website that is fun for the user especially ones with creative imaginations.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  It does not matter if it is in your field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in educational settings.
	2write4math is a totally new way to think about math and writing about math.  I think that writing about math can help unlock a student’s mind about a subject and get rid of the fear of the unknown aspect of new math ideas.  The wiki describes 5 steps in the process and I think implementation would require more than a teacher’s decision.  You would have to talk to the school board about using this resource.   Piclits is a fun way to get students to caption pictures or think about the captioning that is used for pictures.  You could easily use it in a grammar, writing or literature type class where you could grade their work for thought process or grammar.  It could also be used to start a brainstorming session by using a picture with a caption or outlandish expression.  I can see many uses for this application.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.  Why or Why not?
	2write4math is one of those sites where it would take a long time to digest the extent of the webpage.  Any method used to get kids to learn can be an asset but something like this really would require the school board or at least the principle to buy into it before it could be implemented.  That being said I do like the concept but can’t totally recommend the website because it might be a no go with the school.   I can recommend the Piclits website.  It’s fun and easy to use.  You can use it in class to motivate or give students something to write about or you can use it for other purposes like decorations.  It’s free so that’s another plus.