In response to Kyle, I hope to do not a whole lot for the summer. I have about five weddings, am a bridesmaid in two of them, and am going to be busy catching up with family and friends so that when I move to Calgary I’ll have had my fill! Now about educational technology, or the technology that is less obvious. I know that when I was pre-interning in Pense they had a program on the computer that would read books to students. I think that Gloria has talked about these, but that is another example of a technology that could be used much more in schools to help struggling readers. As Laura said though, you have to make sure that students are learning how to do such things are reading, writing, and math on their own as well. We do not want to make our students dependent on technology to carry out these activities.
In response to Janick, in my internship I had the opportunity to teach students in Grade 3-5 Computers. You would not believe the things they are capable of. I think that Gloria has touched on this many times. There are programs out there specifically created for young children. I have many little cousins who are not even in school yet, as young as three years old, who have no problem finding their favourite Dora site and navigating through it to find the games or colouring book. They can do it all on their own if you let them try. Of course, they would need some instruction but computer technology is so interesting and captivating for them that they internalize what they have learned quite quickly. In a way I think that it is so cool that little kids can be that smart when sometimes I have trouble finding what I need on a site when I know it’s there. At the same time, instead of colouring with dump bucket in paint, it is important for small children to sit at the kitchen table and try to stay in the lines with crayons. We need to make sure that those fine and gross motor skills are still being developed so that they can navigate with a mouse and use a keyboard.
I want to make a comment on using Publisher and Excel. To me, Publisher is quite easy to use because it has similar tools you find in Word and PowerPoint, programs that I am used to using. Excel, on the other hand, is and has always been quite difficult for me to use. I think the little tricks Gloria showed us in class will definitely help me out a bit. If you’ve ever applied for a government job they look for people who can easily use Excel and other spreadsheets. I was never one of those people that got a government summer job!
Reflecting back to the very first blog that I made, I think that it would have been beneficial for me to take computer class in high school. I know that Information Processing and Computer Science would have helped me to know more about specific programs. Now with digital cameras it would be very cool if I knew how to make a movie using clips of the digital camera. There has been so much to cover in this class that I feel, even though I have improved my ability and skill level when using educational technology, there is still so much more to learn.
~Linsey~
