Journal 3: SHOULD CELL PHONES BE BANNED FROM CLASSROOMS?

In this article, Josh Allen and Liz Kolb give their opinions regarding the question on whether cell phones should be banned from the classroom or not. According to Allen cell phones should not be used as a teaching tool and should be banned from the classrooms. According to him, if schools were to accept cell phones as teaching tools not all students have the kind of cell phones with the features require in order to be used as educational tools. In the case that schools were to provide this kind of cell phones it would be better that the money were spent in more appropriate and advantageous tools as laptop or other technologies. According to Allen students already spent too much time using their cell phone for not educational purposes and if cell phones were to be used in the class room it would reduce the already reduced time students spent in the classroom setting.

On the other hand, Kolb is of the opinion that since cell phones is a technology many students already have, instead of wasting time and resources trying to ban it from school settings, teachers and administrators should try to find ways to use cell phones as educational tools. She mentions that cell phones can be used to construct knowledge, collect data and as a collaborative communication tool. And with the many features basic cell phones have, cell phones can be a good assistive technology for students with special needs special needs. Also since many cell phones can couple with free Web 2.0 tool students can create innovative class projects. Also cell phones can be used to keep constant communication with students and parents. And to resolve the issue of students being distracted by cell phones during class students can compromise to turn in their cell phones and pick them up when the class ends. According to Kolb currently students do not know cell phone etiquette and by allowing students to use their cell phones as educational tools teacher can teach them proper cell phone etiquette.

Should cell phones be banned from classrooms?
Before I read this article I probably would have said yes. After reading this article my answer has change to it depends on whether the students are willing to compromise to not use their cell phones during class since it not only distract them, but also his/her classmates and teachers. It also would take hard work from teachers and administrators to come up with good educational activities where students could use their cell phones. Another issue that I think should be taken in consideration when considering whether to ban cell phones in school settings is what is going to happen with those students that happens to not have cell phones or be able to afford Internet. After ensuring that all students have access to this technology, setting boundaries for the use in cell phones in the classroom and having educative lesson plan including this technology then I think it would be alright to use it in the classroom.

How would I see myself using this technology in my classroom?
Although I think I would’t allow my students to use the cell phone during my math class I think that if they have access to the Internet I think I would have a blog, wiki, or forum where students could ask questions about homework or questions about class notes. However, if there are students with special need, for example hearing impaired students I would allow these students to use the cell phone during class if they have a program like the one Kolb mention in the article that can record audio on a cell phone to create text-written e-mails which would actually facilitate their learning in class.

Journal 2: Document Sharing, Web 2.0

In this times where everybody have busy schedules it is hard to reunite with classmates or coworkers to work in project that requires us to work together. For those people and many others electronic collaboration documents are a great option. Electronic collaboration documents are online applications similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Although you don’t have all features as in those programs, the WebPages that offer collaborative documents offer enough features to have a nice finished document.

With collaborative documents, unlike other applications, you can upload documents and edit them and save them online or save documents created in these online applications and save them in a format that can be opened in the most common programs as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. And since you can save these documents online you can access and edit them from anywhere. Another great point of collaborative documents is that you can, as the name says, create a document and invite other people to be able to edit that document at any time from anywhere. With collaborative document people can work in the same document at the same time. Before collaborative documents working in projects or reports which required people to contribute to develop a document was rather confusing and a long process since usually you had to send them by email and wait for the others to review, comment and make changes, which was quite hard to manage. In general collaborative documents is a great tool for teacher, students and all people that what to be able to create, edit and access their document from any where they have internet access.

Before I took this class I didn’t know there were these kinds of application offered online, at least not for free. In this class I was introduces to my first collaborative documents application offered by google.com, I was quite impressed that our technology is this advance. How ever, form the tool discussion treads I learned that there are many other sites that offer applications for collaborating and sharing application, many of those for free, which would be great for students. Some of those pages are:
YourDraft (http://www.yourdraft.com/) which is a WYSWYG online editor which allows you to save and share and publish as HTML, it does NOT save previous versions. The good thing about this site is that you don’t have to register and you can give the right to other to edit or only read your page and add replies.
ZOHO (http://writer.zoho.com/) has many similarities to the application google.com offers but there are some applications that are not offered in google.com. Some of the applications in Zoho can be added to the windows office toolbar to enable quick upload. One new application that google.com doesn’t have but that may be very useful is Zoho virtual meeting.
Writeboard.com is like a wiki.
writewith.com and writeboard.com are online collaborative word processing.
YouFig.com offers is collaborative applications, but unlike other you have two windows one where you can hold a discussing on the document you are editing and in the other window you have the actual document. The documents can be edit and save as html or text files. You can put pictures and videos to you documents. Each document can be collaborated by 8 people.

Other web pager that offer collaborative applications are
Think Freehttp://www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfoScribble Wikihttp://scribblewiki.com/main.phpSkrblhttp://www.skrbl.com/
and
http://www.stixy.com/
http://www.spruz.com/

Journal 1: Software Review (iMovie & InspiredData)

InspiredData
For software evaluation I chose InspiredData. I created a math lesson plan for grades 9-12. .It consisted of creating two table, one table contains the data of a ball that was dropped from a height, the entries in the table consisted in the height of the ball taken at certain times intervals, the entries for the balloon’s table consisted also about the height at the same time that the ball.

I liked using InspiredData. I tought that it was easy to use after a saw some of the tutorials in Atomic Learning, although this program has some similarities with Microsoft Excel there are some of the features in InspiredData that do not work as in Excel, like pressing enter to insert more rows. Although for the students I think would be easier to use this program that Excel since it does not have many command and for what I saw this program is more kid-oriented. However, for teachers I think Excel is a much better option since you can do more stuff in it.

I would like to incorporate InspiredData in to my future classroom. I would make lesson plans in algebra where they can enter different data for different variables and see how the change in values affects those variables, and graph that data to see how it looks. Another good activity would be to have the students make surveys using InspiredData and collect the information and see have them predict some of the result and then compared them with the results from the surveys, and see if there are any patters they can generalize.

This was my first time using Atomic learning tutorials. Although I learn better in face-to-face situations, I liked this tutorial since the videos where small and right to the point and didn’t require us to read pages and more pages of instruction. I think Atomic learning is of great help for those people that are using a program for the first time and just want to get started, especially for kids since the videos actually show you where the icon and commands and do not overwhelm you with information.

iMovie

I really liked using iMovie. I though that iMovie was easy to use. Even though during class that there are many thing to remember (especially to save your project often while working in it, I had to redo it since something went wrong), I think in general is very self explanatory. What I like the most is that Apple offers many of tutorials in it webpage. I think students will find this program very fun not only for educational purposes but for personal since it so easy to use.

I think this program would be hard to use in a math classroom. But I think it could be useful to communicate with parents by posting videos online. One assignment where my futures students can use iMovie, give them a set of problems and asking them to choose one and explain it in a video to their classmates. This would make the students to actually understand the problem in order to be able to explain it, with out the pressure of speaking in front of the class.

JOURNAL 0 - INTRODUCTION LETTER

My name is Nora Lazcano. I was born, raised in Mexico. I moved to United States in my second half of my freshmen year. Currently I’m working to get my bachelor in mathematics, this is my senior year.

My experience with computer technology has been limited. When I was living in Mexico many school where still using typewriter, it wasn’t until grade 10 when I was able to take a computer class where they showed us how to use Word, PowerPoint and Excel and how to use the internet. In college I used Mathlab for some math classes and the internet I mostly use it for e-mail and to make searches for homework and topics I’m interested on. In university I was introduced to WebCT as a tool to turn in homework and to communicate with the teacher and my other classmates.

When I was younger my dream was to be a teacher but as I grew older I have become interested in many other stuffs, so right now I’m undecided whether I want to be a teacher or not, but I’m taking this classes so when I finish with my bachelor I have more options.