A Digital What?

That's right.. a Digital Goonie!  After going through all the different blogs from the Educational Technology choices the digitalgoonies.com blog caught my attention.  First and foremost, the name itself is rather catchy, and therefore is what intrigued me to look into it in the first place.  The lastest blog post in this blog is titled, "Time for a Qwiki," which I think is cleverly named in reference to talking about Wikis.  The explanation of a Wiki Page given briefly in the blog post is basically a bunch of images and a narrative story brought together in a kind of slide show story telling way.  This one inparticular was all about the Dallas Cowboys football team and the words were narrated right to you!  I have worked with a WikiPage before in my UnderGrad, but I did not know that they can be read right to you!  One other blog post in particular that caught my attention was from January and it talked about copyright and digital imaging.  This was important because that is what we are learning about right now in glass.  Did you know that you cannot just take a specific image from the internet and use it for yourself to do projects and what not?  You can't!  You have to look into seeing if these images are copyrighted or not and then, if they are not, you are more than welcome to use it but you have to make sure first.  This blog explained to teachers that they need to let their students know which images are okay to be used and which are not, and by showing the students these tools to know the difference will help them to, "not get arrested" as the article's image displays.  I liked that it talked about teachers actually being able to be fined because they are basically "stealing" these pictures from the internet without realizing that these pictures, mostly, are copyrighted.  I cannot wait to look into this digitalgoonies.com blog in the future to see what else they have blogged about and what informative information they are putting out there.

Inquiry-Based Learning

After reading about Inquiry-Based Learning, I realized that the emphasis about this particular subject ties in very well with my concentration in English.  I am interning now at a Charter School and I am realizing that through observing other teachers, mainly English teachers, they are really using inquiry learning more so than traditional learning.  They really want their students to ask questions and figure out understanding and meaning, not just learn something and repeat it back to them verbatim.  Especially with a focus in English, I have come to see that when reading texts with the students, they come up with a variety of different meanings and interpretations and all feed off of what each other can interpret.  I have definitely used inquiry based learning when I substitute at the Charter School and do reading exercises with the students.  I like to read a passage with them and see what they think, and when they ask, "Ms. T what do you think," usually I tell them that I know what the text is about but I want to see what they can squeeze out of it.  I am a firm believer that depending on the individual, all texts can be interpreted a million different ways.  When you use prior knowledge and have a connection to certain texts it is even more different than if you did not know about it prior to reading it.  As far as how will it be intergrated in my own classroom, I want to create an enviorment for my students to not be scared, nervous, or embarrassed to ask a question or to put their opinion out there.  I was told all through school that it was not about the answer, it is how you got to the answer.  I can have th same answer as twenty of my classmates, but there is also twenty different ways of getting to it, and that is the important part.  I want to be able to have my students construct their own meanings and understandings of the information that is provided to them and put it to good use.  Memorizing something over and over and repeating it back is not going to give students a chance to learn, they need to come up with their own meanings and put the data to use and that way they can think about what they have learned and how it applies to them as an individual.

Diana's Education Page

Diana's Education Page

UDL Concept Map

My concept map outlines the "what, how, and why" of learning and explains what each of those individually mean.  The sun in the middle of my map is showing the UDL learning is geared towards all types of learning and capabilities.  The rainbows of the concept map show what individuals bring to the table and show that they are all given equal opportunites to learn. 

Students Excited to Learn!

The PhotoShopped image that I made is a little boy excited about seeing Egyptian Pyramids.  I wanted to use this image because, when I become a teacher I want my students excited about exploring and learning about new things.  I believe that this will be useful in the classroom because, it is not just a picture of a child with a book reading and trying to comprehend what is going on, but instead it is a child that is exploring the world and other cultures.  It is opening up new doors and actually bringing students and different cultures together and having them see that it is fun to explore.