Thinking About Being a Teacher

I have been wondering about what I am going to do as a teacher. Though I do know a lot about technology, there is a lot that I am unsure about. I am worried about using technology only for the sake of using it. I am not necessarily a technology minded person, but I do know that technology is a very important teaching tool for my students. I am just trying to think about more that I can do in my English Classes. I like the idea about having my students search through virtual worlds, and creating movies with iMovie from Macintosh, but I am still concerned about what I am going to do to help my students learn more about the subject material through technology.
Though I do have a lot of concerns about technology, I am very grateful to have so much information so available to me through the internet. Certainly if I do one thing with technology, I will do a lot of research on the internet. There is a lot on the web just of lesson plans for teaching different ideas in English. I like the idea of doing searches for the questions to our answers in our classroom. I know that doing searches as a class will really help my students to see all the information that is available to them, and that they can find the answers to all of their questions if they just know where to look. Though I am still questionable about what other types of technology to use, I do know that I will at least show my students the great gifts that are available to them through the internet, and that they must not take advantage of al that they have.

Lesson Plan Overview

Students will read the book "Mississippi Trial, 1955" by Chris Crowe whilestudying the Civil Rights movement (which is a cross-curricular assignment withHistory (Savanna). The final project that students will create in order forunderstanding and assessment will be an iMovie documentary about the CivilRights Movement (with emphasis on the Emmitt Till case that started the CivilRights Movement). Students will use pictures that they have found from theinternet and other sources that were taken during the Civil Rights Movement forthe documentary, as well as record their own voices to narrate the movie;reading some of the excerpts from the text ("Mississippi Trial, 1955") thatwould relate to the photos used.This assignment would be done in 10th-11th grade because I want my students toresearch deeply into the Civil Rights Movement, and Racism; not all studentsfrom younger grades would be able to understand or be mature enough to handleeverything that went on during this moment in our history.Technologies that students will use are iMovie and the internet(online photogalleries and historical sites). Because of the information that the studentswill be able to access, I will have to teach my students how to borrow photoscorrectly, and to avoid sites that would be inappropriate (such as pornography)that students could easily access. Each student will also need a copy of thebook.Savanna and I are going to create an iMovie together, following the rubric thatwe want our students to use for their own projects.This assigment will satisfy 1,2,6,and 10 of the Utah Core Curriculum standardsfor 11 grade language arts.All in all, this should be an exciting assignment that will give the students anopportunity for creativity and better understanding of the Civil RightsMovement.
This is going to be a crosscurricular project that I will be creating with Savanna (History Teaching). Go to her blog to find out what she is going to emphasize on in her requirements for her classes.
www.savannasue.blogspot.com

What I learned from the Ethics Mini-lessons

Man. There was a lot that I learned that helped me to become more aware of copywrite laws. Both Natalie Cannon and Roxana Law taught me about what I should do in order to follow the copywrite laws that way I do not get sued, fined, or put into jail because a company finds out how I have not been using their products respectfully.
I learned that one should never show the full amount of a film, and that if you are in doubt about what you can and cannot use, just do not use it. Some sources you can use for educational purposes, but you should never make copies to distribute to your students. Another thing that I need to be careful about is making copies of poems and short stories out of texts. In order to satisfy copywrite laws you should never completely copy a text, you should just see if you can order a mass number of texts for a discounted price.
Also with songs you should never play a whole song, and do not give copies of the lyrics or the songs to your students.
These mini-lessons made me think back a lot about what my teachers did in the past because a lot of them could have been sued. One thing is for sure, do not do something because all of the other teachers have been doing it and are ok. You never know when you could get into trouble for using something illegally, though you were not doing it on purpose.

Lesson Plan Overview

Hey! I have decided that I am going to use the micosoft tool "Publish" if I can in order to teach my students how to publish their writings.
For my lesson plan I will have my students collaborate and make a book of for a story that they write. It is within this post writing project that my students will polish up their drafts and create a visually appealing work of literature. I will model for my students by creating a title page and the style for the rest of a "novel" that I have written. This lesson will satisfy objective 3 for standard 9 in a ninth grade English course (participate in a post-writing strategies to make writing public). I feel that it would be a fun way for students to make their writing more visually creative, and really think about how their design matches their stories. Tell me what you think!

Video Modeling Assignment

Hey. I am in English group 2 for IP&T 286. If you click on the link titled "Elisa's blog" under my blogroll you can read about what we discovered while viewing the two movies for our video modeling assignment. Have Fun!

My Rules of Thumb for Integrating Technology in the Classroom

Here are two rules of thumb that I consider to be the most important guidelines for using technology in the classroom.

Use Mindtools that will be effective in helping the students look at the subject material in an interesting and different way.

Always keep trying new things, do not remain stagnant on your own techniques. Keep integrating new tools every year.

Oh, and I cannot forget to mention that I did read the Roschelle article and scanned the Jonassen article

My Reflections on Past Experiences with Technology in the Classroom

Well. I have been thinking a lot about my own past experiences with what kind of technology my teachers have used in the past. Since I am an English Teaching major, I am going to focus on what some of my past English Teachers have done with integrating technology in the classroom.
There is a rumor among many students that English majors do not know a thing about technology. Well, in many cases this rumor is true. For some odd reason, I know many English majors who do not know how to do anything on the computer. Though I do not consider myself to a pro at computers, I do not understand how some of these students do well in their classes because there are so many requirements for researching on the web, typing up papers, and developing presentations that integrate technology.
I have found through my experiences that many of my English teachers in both Middle and High School did fit this idea that Humanities majors do not know which end is up in regards to technology.
All that I can remember my English teachers doing in High School was placing overheads on the overhead projecter that were difficult to read because the print was so small, and showing a lot of movie clips. Sometimes a teacher would have the class listen to a song on a tape player, but that was about the extent of the technology that was used in my English classes.
I hope that I will disrupt this trend in my classroom. Because of my experience at High School, I was very nervous and unsure of myself when it came to technology when I began College. It has been a working struggle to learn more about all the different things that one can do with technology, but I plan on continuing to learn more about what I can do to have a very interactive and fun classroom.
I do not know about any of you who are reading this blog right now, but I feel that English teachers who use technology are greatly underepresented, and I want that to change!

Just starting

Just typing this so that way I can set up my aggregator.