Video Reflection 3

For my third video reflection I watched Connecting High School to Career on edutopia.  This video was mostly focusing on the idea of magnet schools and academies that prepare high school students for careers they want to head into in the future.  The good thing about these school is they challenge the students in way that are different from the typical high school curriculum and they have the opportunity to use technology in different ways as well.

These schools really enhance their curriculums by using real world experience and classes that are mainly geared towards what these students want to do when they head into the real world.  Cedar Creek in our area is actually an engineering magnet school in the area and students instead of taking all the "well rounded" classes for graduation, they focus heavily on the sciences and math that will prepare them to head into college to major in one of the engineering fields.  They use technology and are even discussing the possibility of working with colleges to get the students college credit.  The schools portrayed in this video were having similar experiences in their fields of choice.  They're integrating technology to create cures for cancer, their own cartoons, and green ambulances to cut down on the country's carbon footprint.

Using technology in the capacity it is used in the real world to teach students about it and how to use it is very cool.  I think that is one of the best applications of technology in the classroom.  It really helps them understand how technology can be used and it aids tremendously in their education.  I wish these schools were more prominent here when I was in high school.  My high school recently added academies that allow students to focus on careers in medicine.  They're looking to continue adding them to support this current trend and the use of technology.

Video Reflection 2

I watched the video Media Smarts:  Kids Learn How to Navigate the Multimedia World on Eudutopia. This video dealt with introducing students to more than the typical English language via books and grammar.  The idea was brought to teachers attention by George Lucas during a conference where he said he felt that film and video are types of languages too and they should be taught in classrooms.  This led states to create programs for children in schools of all ages that teach those languages.  The younger students were introduced to animation where they got to create their own little cartoons, while the middle schoolers looked at social media (which was not too much back when this was created) and advertisements to discuss the differences for genders in those two medias.  The students in high school were being taught to speak through their new language and create films that showed something they wanted to portray creatively.  The high schoolers also were able to take what they learned in class and be able to understand why things were chosen for the news.  It allowed them to dissect it for each component 

Despite this video being almost 8 years old, it is still very relevant today.  Today more than ever, especially in this area, media literacy and video programs are being created and funded very well.  It allows the students to engage in this other language and Lucas said, and they are able to creatively tell their stories.  Like I said in the previous video reflection, I used to partake in these types of classes (my last one was when this video came out, my senior year), and they really do feed into the creative side of language and allow us to use a different type of English.  I took several English classes that were aimed at journalism during my undergrad career and it made me like the subject more.  Teaching these types of lessons and using these types of technology to aid in it, makes students see a different side to something they've been learning their whole lives and maybe even renew their love in it.

Overall, I think looking at English differently and incorporating the new language that Lucas was speaking about will further enhance students experiences with those two things in school.  It allows them to creatively express themselves using old subjects to create new subjects!

Smartboard Lesson Plan & Reflection

Here is my lesson plan for the Smartboard lesson I did today about the Civil War which included a game of "Which state belongs to which side".

Rachel Worrall Smartboard Lesson Plan

Today's lesson on the smartboard went very well.  I felt that using the smartboard was much easier than the Ipads.  The smartboard is more familiar to us because we can use the computer and it's easier to make lessons with technology using the computer as well.

I really liked my lesson this time around as well.  I thought the topic was interesting and the game was a lot of fun, and if my fieldwork school didn't have a Promethean board, I might have been able to see it used in a real school setting.  I think everything had a good time organizing the states into either Confederate or Union sides.  I also think the map, which was provided by Smart tech in the program, worked well with the lesson I was teaching.

The software was very similar to powerpoint, but did take a bit of time to learn to navigate.  Once I figured it all out, it made it easy to work on the project and figure out how to do what I wanted to do.  The only thing I found odd, was there was no "show" view.  You're always in the program and there is no show view like in powerpoint, so I found that students were constantly selecting things and then it would mess up the selection of the next thing in the game.  I had to constantly keep clicking in the blank space so it would not interrupt the students and their game play.

Overall, I think this lesson went much better than the Ipad.  There are advantages to using the Ipad, but I think the smartboard is the winner with me.  I find it easier to use, by both me and the students, and I think it allows more student integration into the lesson with technology.

Video Reflection 1

I watched the Building Career Skills in Video Production Class video on eutopia.org.  I found it very humbling to see another school on the opposite side of the country have a program very similar to the one I took when I was in high school.  I took three years of media and in those three years, I took every media course my high school offered.  However, those students have way more than we did when I took the class.  They have much better technology and equipment than we ever could have imagined.  I also liked how they got to go out of class and use it.  When I left, we were just beginning to work with organizations outside of the school, like with the police department to do a video on safe driving.  Most of our work was done for the daily announcements.  These kids were doing actual real productions, the kinds you would see being done out in the real world.  Heck, this class even had better equipment than my college TV studio had!  And more work to boot!

This class really prepares these kids for the real world, especially if this is the field they want to get into.  They seem to be learning more technology and more of the field than I did when I was in high school.  It wasn't until I was in college that I got to use technology similar to this and learn the field in such a way that it would prepare me for the real world.  It's amazing how these kids will be able to walk into any job or college program and immediately know what they're doing.  It will really help them once they're ready to take that step.

I also feel like the technology was really being used to aid in their education.  It's not often that a classroom has that much technology or a teacher who knows how to use it so well.  These kids were able to learn it in a fun environment as well, which makes learning fun!  I would love to teach class like this, if an opening ever were to become available.