Reflection on Cool Tools for Schools

I thought the website Cool Tools for Schools is extremly useful. I shared it with many of my colleges. My daughter even played with it over the weekend. I think I will definitly use Cool Tools for Schools with my students.
I liked Photobucket for working with your photos. I think this would be very useful for a science project. The students could take pictures of their science project at different stages, and then  make a video out of their pictures.
Prezi looks easy to use for presentations. The presentations can be shown on a white board. You can zoom in and out of a picture during the presentation. The pictures can be arranged in different ways and you can express many things at the same time.
Cool Tools for Schools is a neat website. I think the students will like to use it, and it seems to be user friendly.

Reflection on the video of "Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education"

The video was very interesting because he did actual experiments with computers and children. I thought his idea to place a computer in a hole in the wall was odd at first. It was amazing to watch how the children interacted with the computers and each other. I was surprised at how they were able to learn more as a group than alone and how one child became the teacher. I was also amazed at how fast they were able to find the answers to his questions in the Italian school.
Sugata Mitra's experiments showed us that children are capable of learning so much with computers. I wish our students could use computers more. I know at me daughters school, she does not get to use the computer daily. Some of her classes do study island and sometimes they look up information to write papers. But I do know that each of those projects are done independently. They are not allowed to work in groups. We have so much to learn to help our students learn more.

Chapter 5 Reflection

I thought Chapter 5 was very informative. I had never heard of several of the assistive technologies and programs. I am going to do more research on the Text - to -Speech software. I would like to get that at school and at home for my son. He has autism and has a lot of problems with speech and language.
Ira Socol was awesome. I loved the Skype with him. It was very interactive. He is an amazing person. I hope I can figure out how to help my students the way he does. He really inspired me to learn more and that we do not have to teach all kids the same.

Reflection - from 9-7

Last Tues. I missed class because my daughter had her first volleyball game in Wheaton. She is in the 7th grade and plays on the county team.
The drive to Wheaton was very long and it rained hard the whole way. Wheaton is out past Rocky Comfort and it is a small town. They have one school for all of their grades.
The 8th grade played first and the Mustangs lost in two matches. They played pretty good . The 7th grade played next. Wheaton only had four 7th graders, so the 8th grade played with them. The 7th grade lost in two matches. My daughter only got to play a very short amount of time. She grew about two inches during the summer and has had a lot of growing pains and has missed some practices. The Mustangs were nervous and tried hard but, it wasn't enough. They played hard.

Chapter 2 Reflection

In the second class I learned how to find my g-mail account and I posted my reflection on my blog ( I was having problems with that). That was a big relief! Im not really sure about the Google Reader, or what we plan to use it for. I hope to learn more about it.
I am learning to be more confident on the computer. Although, it sometimes takes a couple of tries to understand all the steps to get things done. I am sure this class will help with that.
I enjoyed "Ken Robinson says Schools Kill Creativity." He was funny and insightful. I discussed some of his topics with the teacher I work with and she agreed with him. It is actually very sad that he is right.
You said to tell you if you talked too much, well ... you did. I think our goal for next week should be to get out of class five minutes early. I did not get the cut and paste steps on Google Reader. One of the other students showed me how to do it. Maybe you could write the steps down or show us on the projector very slowly.
I enjoyed the class. We always learn something new.

Kellie Pankau