Post due for 1/20/11

Great teaching and learning, I believe has to deal with the material and how the teacher presents it. The most memorable classes in middle school and high school all dealt with teachers who were enthusiastic about their material, knew what they were doing, and used different materials to present the topics. I know that I learn best when I have more than one way of learning material and when the teacher is enthusiastic and loud. Being that I am wanting to become a history teacher, there have been many experiences with my past history teachers that have shown me how exciting it can be to teach this subject and the many ways one can do so. I remember in my 9th grade European history class we had "stations" that we had to go to throughout the classroom for about a week. We were given a packet and we had to answer questions based on the information each station had. One station had a short movie on the computer, one was a poster-board with information, one was the textbook, etc. I really enjoyed this because it gave us a more hands-on experience rather than the teacher standing in from of the class lecturing. That was one of my most memorable experience with history before college, and there were many others in different classes. Now that I am in my Junior year of college, I have been observing and tutoring in classrooms for my field experiences for my education courses. Spring of 2010 I was in an 8th grade American history classroom and was able to see the different ways one could teach this topic to students. The students seemed to really like when the teacher would give assignments on the computer. One great assignment was to create one's own newspaper based on information on a Revolutionary battle. Each student got to pick which battle they wanted, and then on their own computers they had to do the research and follow the criteria in order to create a decent newspaper. Technology in this form was great because it got the students utilizing different search engines and the different ways to search for something. Also, they were able to figure out how to use a document and template to make a newspaper.

I want to be able to do similar things in my classroom that I observed in the 8th grade American history class and that I was a part of in my 9th grade European class. I want to create a more hands on experience for students because I know how boring a lecture can be even though I love the subject of history. Hands-on experiences, I believe, help the students remember particular topics better which let's them excel. I also want to have more universal design in my classroom. Universal design allows the teacher to have different ways and ideas of teaching a topic to help all students because each student learns differently. I want to be able to give outlines with fill-in the blanks while helping them on a smart-board, show a short 5-minute film on the topic, and do "stations" in my class in order for each student to retain and learn the subject better.

From experience, I have seen how well some teachers utilize the technology in their classrooms, but I have also seen how some teachers have no idea how to utilize the technology in the classroom. I hope to be able to learn every way I can to use technology in the classroom whether it be the computer, online games or quizzes designated for my subject area, the smart-board, etc. I am a huge advocate of using technology in the classroom, and anything that is given to me in a classroom, I want to be able to use properly and effectively so that way my students have the best advantages to learning the material. These seem to be the most challenges teachers face, and therefore learners seem to face the same issues because of the teacher's lack of knowledge.

I'm not sure if I have a lot of pressing questions, but I do want to know what websites there are that are fun, not too "young" for middle to high school students, but are informative and effective in my subject area (history). Also, I have no idea how a smart-board works, and I have seen many teachers fail at trying to use it while their class is in session, and I know that I do not want to be one of those teachers. Kids that are K-12 are raised knowing how to use technology and they love it. I want to be tech-savvy because I know that students will love the use of technology in the classroom.

-Danielle