E-Books in the classroom

With many classrooms around the country, textbooks are a thing of the past. A new device called the E-Book is being used instead of reading from paper. This is an electronic device that you can buy books to download on. Digital Owl is one of the first businesses to use this device and put it in some Florida schools with laptops and electronic books. There are a lot of controversies over these new E-Books because some studies have shown that there is a decline in speed and comprehension while the students are reading their assigned texts on these. There have been more studies that have also said that children become more tired when they are reading off of the screen instead of off print on paper. I feel like this is a very beneficial tool to a classroom because some students may like having this instead of lugging around a 5lb book. This brings up another advantage to these E-Books; they are very light and easy to use on the go. I have known people to use these devices when they are driving because their E-Books/Kindle's read aloud. Personally, I believe that these will soon be in every school around the entire country and children will learn to love them.
Here is another article relating to the E-Books and how they work.

Image is from flickr creative commons by jblyberg

Smart Boards In the Classroom



Image from Flickr by Dan Zen


Smart Boards are appearing in classrooms around the country. They are an interactive way of teaching your students. First you connet to your computer and then the two work together when you write on it to recognize what is being written. The screen has digital cameras included that help track the contact and then the sensitive touch screen produces the images that are being drawn or written on it. The screen is very durable and anti-smudge/anti-glare that is a big help for classrooms, especially those that include windows that produce a glare. Also on the board there is a digital tray that includes pens, an eraser, and buttons to for an on-screen keyboard or also a right click option. This is very beneficial for a classroom when you need to work on an interactive level with your students and it is easier than using a chalk board or just a plain old white board where you can't allow images to appear. This website shows instructions on how to properly use a smart board in the classroom for a Windows program. Included I have added a video from YouTube by a 5th grade teacher, Lora Holt at LBJ Elementary in El Paso, TX as she explains how she uses her smartboard in her elementary classroom.

Technology for At-Risk Children



Image from Creative Commons: Purplelog

 While researching technology in the classroom today, I came across this interesting article describing how using technology in a classroom is beneficial for children who are at-risk. This provides cooperative learning skills, teaching them how to work together and collaborate. The technologies used in the classroom are not made to only teach basic skills, but instead, they are real-world applications that support research, design, analysis, composition, and communication to the children. Recent findings indicate that by not challenging at-risk students or encouraging them to use complex thinking skills, schools underestimate students' capabilities, postpone interesting and meaningful work they could be doing, and deprive them of a meaningful context for learning and using the skills that are taught (Means & Knapp, 1991). Here is a website that is fairly similar with the technology for at risk children.

Communities of Practice (COP's)

The Educational Technology department has been looking into developing a series of six online communities called COP's. While creating these, they hope to not only improve learning, teaching, but also assessment and the school infastructure. They will be used to judge the quality and quantity of the content that the educators are providing. Community wide learning will soon be implemented into the classroom through online databases available 24/7. These will benefit not only the teachers that will be using this system but also the children that these will be helping. There is always room to grow when teaching and assessing a variety of students.                                                                               Picture by: GoogleImages

This website will give you a further understanding of COP and how it is used.

University of Northern Iowa

Photo by Emily

University of Northern Iowa