I pulled three main internet resources from Roblyer’s text and researched them, determining their usefulness as an in-class resource for students.  I chose them for their ability to provide primary and secondary documents for students and will be viewing them through that lense.  The three websites reviewed are the Historical Text Archive, the University of Virginia’s VIRGO catalogue, and the University of Oklahoma College of Law’s online document library.

            The Historical Text Archive [ http://historicaltextarchive.com/ ] contains roughly 750 articles that are well sorted by region and time period, such as colonial Latin America or 19^th century United States.  It contains more detailed organization for US, Latin American, and Mexican history, with broader collections for Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Many of these articles also include photographs of their subject material or person, and perhaps original writings pertaining to the subject.  It would be best suited to finding articles written about a subject rather than primary documents, and would be appropriate for mostly high school students, or advanced middle school students.  Much of the material covered in the articles isn’t of a subject covered in public schools and would have to be integrated some other place.  The site also had a great number of links to other sites, similarly sorted by region and other categories such as economy, politics, and wars.  Overall the site was useful, but was skewed towards representing US, Latin American, and Mexican histories.

            The University of Virginia’s online text search engine, VIRGO, was an exceedingly useful tool, I feel, aside from the gruesome URL [http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog?f%5Bdigital_collection_facet%5D%5B%5D=UVa+Text+Collection&facet.limit=500&id=digital_collection_facet&sort=year_multisort_i+desc&sort_key=published&width=490 ]  It is a search engine database that contains numerous documents, images, interviews, plays, and all manner of other materials that could be used in a classroom setting.  The bounty of information is a certain positive, but as it is a university’s private library website, I suspect there could be documents that have not yet been scanned into the digital archive that exist only in hard copy at the school.  Another criticism is the difficulty searching by topic rather than specific document; searching for “World War II” brings up only one document relating at all to World War II, most of the results being plays, historical fiction, and other miscellaneous items, possibly due to poor tagging of individual items in relation to topic.

            The final site I inspected was good in only one observable respect.  The University of Oklahoma’s Chronology of US Historical Documents [http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/ ] provided links to each of the inaugural presidential addresses, which is a useful topic when studying the American presidency.  However, of the other documents, I would estimate that at least 20-30% of them were dead links, based on the searching I did.  These dead links would come to a page indicating that the library was searching for a new document to link, disappointing considering it is a collegiate archive.  Many of the more “famous” historical documents, such as the Magna Carta or the Emancipation Proclamation, are linked correctly, but others, such as the Truman Doctrine and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech are not.  The inconsistency of this website on matters other than presidential inaugural speeches makes it not worthwhile for procuring primary documents for a classroom setting.

I found that the book titled Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching was a helpful resource to learn more about effective ways to incorporate technology into the curriculum, how it has positively effected students test scores, and ways teachers can use technology to increase their productivity. 

A study funded by the Milken Foundation and reported in Education Week discovered that higher achievement scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were associated with specific forms of technology used as specific grade levels.  For example, “fourth graders whose teachers used computers for math/learning games performed better than fourth graders whose teachers did not (11).”  These studies clarify that students are not achieving higher scores by simply using computers, but by using them in a focused and goal directed way.  Computer games focused around a specific math standard will allow the students to work independently/student directed; while at the same time forget that they are learning because they are engaged in a game. 

One of the hardest jobs of a teacher is to think of creative ways to motivate students to want to learn.  Chapter one discusses how teachers are now benefiting from using the television-like aspect of computers and multimedia to not only capture their student’s attention, but also keep it throughout their instructions (12).  Students today are surrounded by technology, and by having it used in their classroom will grab their attention because the students are able to relate to it. 

Not only is technology beneficial for the students, but it also increased teacher productivity.  Teachers are now using word processing, spreadsheet, database, gradebook, graphics, test generator programs, as well as e-mail to communicate with other teachers (13).  By having teachers take advantage of technology, they now have more free time for direct contact with students.   This section of the book reminded me of the technology used in my sixth grade placement.  The teachers save a lot of time by using an online grade book to keep track of grades and calculate the students’ averages.  

The first session I attended was called, Easy, Efficient, and Essential Technology Tools and was taught by Barry Jahn.

I found the book Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching a great resource.  The chapters pertaining to content were not long or difficult and therefore a good resource for teachers that don’t have much time.

One of the key points that they made was that technology does not raise achievement; rather, its use should encourage higher level thinking.  They also talked about the rationale for having technology in the classroom, mainly it can motivate, create and support unique instruction, increase teacher productivity and it supports the needed skills for the coming generation.  The integration of technology into the classroom can foster creativity, motivate students to learn, optimize limited resources, assist students in self-analysis and problem solving, increase literacy, foster group cooperation, and address multiple intelligences. 

However, technology has its problems, the first being cost.  Some schools can afford technology, some cannot.  It can therefore cause the achievement gap to widen.  There has been a debate over whether technology should assist in an integrated curriculum or it should be subject specific.  In addition, technology is rapidly changing and the complexity of the new programs can be off-putting.

Chapter 11 dealt with math and science technology.  It emphasized that technology is a tool, but not a pedagogical tool.  The basics still need to be learned by the students.  It is rather a chance for students to go above and beyond and develop their thinking skills.  Many argue that students should still know how to do it all by hand while others seek a balance.

Included were also a large number of online resources.

Math Forum        www.Mathforum.com

• Problem of the week
• Lesson plans written by other math teachers that are free to access
• Limitations-must be a member to access all content and it isn't free to be a member

Texas Instruments Website            www.Ti.com/calc/docs/resource.htm

• Lots of lesson plans that use calculators
• Access to handbooks for TI calculators
• I already used a lesson plan from them “Are you interested in my dream car” and it walked me through every step on the calculator

Eisenhower National Clearinghouse    www.goenc.org

• A vast amount of material to be used in the classroom, mainly lesson plans
• Refining results is not easy, so it can be overwhelming
• Website has changed because of loss of government funding, unsure of future of website

 

Cynthia Lanius Collection             www.Math.rice.edu/~lanius/Lessons/

• Looks like a great interactive website, however it says that the interactivity does not work on Explorer, only Netscape, no mention about Safari, so that part is not really viable if using in a classroom with PCs
• Lots of “real world” applications

History of Mathematics       http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/

• Immense amount of material
• Great for history teachers too
• Rather difficult to navigate because of the sheer amount of material and the formatting isn’t great. Reminiscent of webpages of 10-15 years ago.

PBS Mathline                       http://www.pbs.org/teachers

• Really easy to use, lots of lesson plans for all content areas. Most link to multiple subjects. Easy to see what they contain.
• One draw back: many schools have blocked PBS, so you would have to work with the tech department.

Similar to Catherine, I found that the "Where's Mommy?" app could be an extremely useful potential tool for teachers. Although this app seems juvenile upon first glance, it can be modified and made more sophisticated. Also, this app can be used in any subject area. 

    Similar to other comments, i enjoyed Joe Morelock's Keynote presentation.... shouldn't we all due to the accessibility and speed that technology can bring content information and relevant images to our classrooms?
    The two parts i particularly liked;
    A) The thought that integrating iPad's into the classroom was not in Canby school districts 5-year plan, as they only came onto the market 16 months ago. This asks the questions,

1. Where is technology taking us?
2. What technology will be available in another 16 months? and
3. What jobs will be available to our students once they graduate high school or college?

    B) James Cameron's quote,
        “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.”
    We have read in various literature over the past few months the importance of setting high goals for our students to succeed; we also need to set high expectations for ourselves as educators.

    Greg.... i did read your whole article; not long winded at all.... anyway, i went to the 2nd session with Lisa and Anita, which covered the data assessment part of our work sample which Pacific Uni don't necessarily walk us through. I found it really interesting and would love to share a few details about it to anyone interested, i have some example files of Lisa's work from last year and the link to the website she and Anita designed to help us all through what we should do after we have collected all of this data from our classrooms.
    Shame we could only go to 2 classes.

One of the biggest ideas that I came home with from the conference was the idea that technology is a great resource in reviving the creativity in our students.  From the opening discussion of how implementing technology in the Canby School District increased test scores to having students use technology in the classroom to create and demonstrate their own understanding of ideas and concepts.  In the first session, I learned how to implement games and activities in the classroom by letting students create their own.  Then I attended a session that discussed and provided resources for students who were interested in computer science and creating their own Apps.  The conference gave multiple strategies for providing students with ways to explore and create methods for understanding. I would recommend the conference to fellow teachers and schools.

I have to admit that I could think of a lot better things to be doing on a Saturday morning at 5:30 than climbing these older bones out of bed, holding in the nauseousness while someone else drove, and then desperately trying to find a restroom just as SOON as the car stopped.  I knew better than to eat anything found in the foyer of the convention hall, crumbs and the like seem to cause my asthma to act up.  I also had SO MUCH homework that needed to be done, so naturally my mind was in other places.