Final Reflection

I definitely think that integrating technology in education is very important now. There are so many different things I was taught I could do in this class. For example I never would have thought to make a class website that my students could check daily/weekly for assignments and updates! I also think it is a good idea to have students get involved in making websites of their own!

I didn’t know much about technologies in the classroom when I came in but now after this semester I know a lot more about them. I think this will really help my future students in my classroom because I will be more up to date and modern. I also want to add that this was by far my favorite class of this semester because we not only learned really interesting and fun things, but we also became really close as a class which was a ton of fun.

SmartBoard Reflection

From the article “Are Interactive White Boards Dead” I learned how expensive all the equipment can be ranging from a minimum of $4,000 all the way up to $6,000. Not to mention all of the heavy equipment that needs to be installed in the classroom before you can even use it! The most useful features I saw mentioned in the article were the highlighting tool, annotating, and being able to print what is on the board. For most teachers and presenters I would say it’s quite pricey when your students or audience could just take the notes themselves. This article also suggests using iPads or touch screen TVs in the classroom. Technology is just so advanced now that it is almost impossible to come by something cheap.

In the second article I read, “The Art and Science of Teaching: Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards” I learned of three other features that increased student achievement. The most interactive one would be the “hand held voting device.” I actually remember using this feature in my high school. We were all assigned a certain calculator that we got everyday and they were all programmed to the SmartBoard so when my teacher asked us questions we could all work the problems out and cast our votes. It was always pretty cool and we enjoyed that so it helped to get everyone working and involved.

Copyright Reflection

In high school most of my teachers went about talking about copyright issues by scaring us! It definitely worked and still works today. Not many people will knowingly plagiarize something and pass it off as their own if the threat of getting kicked out of school is looming over their heads. Sure there are still people who do that but that’s few and far between. I would like to talk to my students about it by informing them about the rules/laws, how to not do it, and how to check if they plagiarized something. Knowledge is key in an issue like this

Our stop animation video took a lot of time to do and was very frustrating with all of our technical difficulties so I would be kind of annoyed if someone used our video and tried to pass it off as their own. I don’t know if my group should have maybe included something to give credit to the music we found off the internet? We didn’t but we obviously didn’t create that song that played in the background.