In this week’s assignment for my technology class, we had to create a curriculum page. A curriculum page is a “teacher-created document containing hyperlinks to teacher-selected Web sites that assist in teaching content-specific standards and objectives.” (Gunter, Gunter, Shelly, 2010, p. 418) Here is a link to my curriculum page, busmanager02 curriculum page. Please understand that this is a work in progress and not my final assignment or something I am going to give to my students anytime soon. This is an assignment that I hope to use at the end of the school year, so not only will this help me in this class, it will also help my students at the end of the year.
First, I continue to realize how important it is to plan out everything in advance. Even the little things like using computers in a computer lab are sometimes not the easiest things to do. I wanted my students to use Windows Movie Maker, PowerPoint, or Prezi to create a digital story. After creating my curriculum page, I realized I need to check and see if PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker were installed on all the computers and check to see if Prezi would run properly. Luckily all three programs will run efficiently on the computers in the computer lab. I have been teaching for five years, and the best advice I could give any new teacher would be to make sure you plan for every little thing you can think of to make your life easier. Of course always be flexible when turbulent situations arise in class.
Second, I think is very important to continue to learn new ways of engaging students. I hope to be able to create several more of these projects for my students to use in the future. These types of projects clearly keep the students more engaged and help foster learning compared to a traditional teacher centered approach to teaching.
Over the next few weeks I cannot wait to add more to this project and use it to help my students learn.
Resources:
Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6th ed.). United States
As an aspiring teacher I appreciate the advice you gave and will certainly take it to heart when my time comes to start my career in education. I liked you curriculum page and think you can go a lot of different interesting ways with it.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like your plans for using this assignment sound pretty interesting and your students will really enjoy it.
Oh how true this statement is….:”plan out everything in advance. Even the little things like using computers in a computer lab are sometimes not the easiest things to do.” I had the computer lab booked for one (1) week with my science classes. We got to the lab on Thursday and for some reason only half of the computers are working. So, no problem, we double up on the computers.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Friday comes along and when we get to the lab the students can no longer log into the computers. Apparently the county updated the system Thursday evening and neglected to verify that access was still available. So, you plan for the worst, but expect the best.
It rang so true when you said how “ very important to continue to learn new ways of engaging students” We, as teachers, need to resist the temptation to sit back on our collective laurels. We need to constantly learn new ways to excite, inspire, and engage our students. Each generation of students is surrounded by and adopts the technology of the day. So we, as the teachers of our youth, need to do the same. If we don’t, we quickly become irrelevant and loose our effectiveness as teachers. The digital students of today want to be engaged in the learning process; they do not want to just be sitting in class listening to a lecture or taking notes.