IT 442 Blog

Educational Games             The website I decided to look into is called ICT Games. It has a bunch of different games for both math and literacy. I found out about this website because of my practicum. My cooperating teacher sometimes will have the students play a game that can be found on ICT Games called Shark Numbers. In the game, the students work with place value. They see a set of blocks on the screen and they have to pick the correct number. If they get it right, a dolphin will jump across the screen. If they get it wrong, a shark will take a bite out of their boat. The kids have so much fun with it, so I decided to look into it a little bit more. As I did, I found ICT Games and saw all the different games that it had for a variety of topics.             I think that these games are best used as a bit of practice, rather than the initial instruction of the concept ...

Teacher and Classroom Blogs             I found several blogs that I thought were pretty cool. I will show you some of them here. One I found is called Kinder Craze. It is run by a woman named Maria Gavin. She currently teaches kindergarten but she did teach first and second grade previously. She says that she tries to make her classroom a warm, cozy, and happy place because she spends more time there than she does any other location. I chose this blog because it was interesting to see all the posts about how to set up a classroom. She has one that I found very interesting about how to set up a classroom library.             Another blog I found is called the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis. She is a full-time classroom teacher and an IT Director. She hosts a podcast called the 10-minute teacher. She seems to be very adamant that we should say learning differences...

What is Meaningful Technology Integration?             For me, meaningful technology integration is when students and teachers both use technology in a way that enhances the learning of the students. It means that the teachers are not the only ones using technology. The students have access to it as well. The teachers are not just using technology for the sake of saying that they are using technology. I think another important part of integration is the cooperative efforts of the students. They should be able to work together using the technology. A picture I saw on twitter made a table of the differences between technology use and technology integration. One of the characteristics of technology use was that it was sporadic. I know a lot of classrooms that have SMART Boards in them. The teacher will use it to show examples of what the kids are supposed to be doing. In my practicum, my cooperating teacher will put on a game called...