Concerning Concepts

          After reading the readings for the week and watching the podcast I do have some concerns and questions. Math that moves: Schools embrace the iPad was one article that I did find interesting, but I did have some questions regarding the iPad. I understand that the iPad is a huge tool for education, but is it still a tool if not every student has an iPad? In a lot of the schools only the teacher has an iPad. How does that help the other students learn? Some teachers plug the iPad into their computer, but I feel the students will learn more if they have the it in front of them. I feel like the teacher might lose control of the students if they are focused only on one screen. How would you handle this in the classroom if the students become off task while the teacher is trying to use the iPad?
          From the same article, I found interesting that some people feel differently about the iPad. "There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines," said Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, who believes that the money would be better spent to recruit, train and retain teachers". This quote really made me think about the benefits of the iPad. Even though the iPad is used an a lot of school across the United States, what are the benefits to using the iPad? I haven't done much research on this, but I am going to look into this a little bit more. 
          I have never really thought about how districts could be spending the money. Some schools are spending a lot of money on iPad's, what else could these schools be spending the money on? Some schools, my brother's high school, Wayland Union Schools, got iPad's given to them by the Gun Lake Casino. Every student in high school has one, but Wayland didn't spend any money on them, they were given to the school. But, if Wayland would of spent the money on those iPad's the whole community would be upset because they could of used that money toward something else. This is something that needs to be looked at for each district because it is going to be different for them all. 
           

Concepts Learned

During this week's reading I learned many different ideas. The first one being how to write a technology infused lesson plan. These are the simple steps to follow: (Always remember ASSURE)
~ Analyze
        * Who are our target learners?
              - We need to think about who our learners are and what their prior knowledge is. We can't reach a lesson about addition if the students don't know their numbers. We have to take that into consideration when we think about planning a lesson. Especially with technology, some of the students might not have any technology at school and might not even know how to use a computer. As teachers we need to look into that and see if the lesson will be able to accommodate all of these students. 
~ Standards and objectives
        * In order to write my own technology infused lesson I need to know how to write effective objectives. In order to write an effective objective I need to remember ABCD, which is as follows:
            -A is for Audience- Who is our objective written for?
            -B is for behavior- What are our learners skill and capability
            -C is for Conditions- What is the environment and material for the learner

            -D is for degree- What needs to be done by student in order to be satisfactory 

~ Strategies and technology

        * In last weeks lesson we learned about many different strategies and how to use them. I learned that for each objective we should have two different strategies. One that is teacher-centered and one that is student-centered. I also learned that it is very important that us, as teachers need to select media that best serves each strategy. 

~Utilize technology

        * For the lesson try to find the right technology to use. The teacher needs to be educated on what they are using also (Teachers need to practice with the technology). 

~Require learner participation

        * I will always want my students to participate in the classroom discussion or be actively learning through the lesson. This is important so we can see what some of the students are understanding and what the students might need more help on. 

~Evaluate and Revise

       * At the end of teaching a lesson it is important for us to look at the lesson and see what needs to be changed or taken out. Just take some time and kind of reflect on the lesson and write down some notes about how you think it went. 

As you can see, I have learned more than three different things from the readings this week. I am a math major and we don't write objectives or lesson plans like this. The readings this week really helped me with how to write a technology infused lesson plan.