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Monday, August 30, 2010

Secondary Ed Sections

I found this reading to be interesting and very useful. There were tools I had never even heard of mentioned in the reading, such as the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Scale, which is a really helpful tool to develop writing skills. I also had no idea that grading software exists; with this software, there is no need for a teacher or TA to do any grading whatsoever. The teacher can focus on lesson plans more than would be possible if he was trying to grade 100 papers as well as get the plans completed.

The reading also increased my knowledge in the areas of classroom response systems and Wikis. I have seen these before, but only because the Office of Residential Life uses a classroom response system during spring training and as RAs, we use Wikis to make any reports to ORL.

There was also valuable information on note-taking and writing tools for students mentioned in the reading. I never would have thought about using the Track Changes tool in Microsoft Word to help students learn to ignore unnecessary information by simply striking it out with this tool. Using PowerPoint, a student can make his own combination notes, which can help a visual learner to connect photos to the information he needs to learn. The AutoSummarize tool is also beneficial when a student is writing a paper because he can use the tool to ensure that he is, in fact, making his point as he believes he is.

I had no idea about most of the technology the reading discussed, and had it not been for IWU, I would have known even less. It is really important for more shools to start using technology in different ways. It is not fair that certain students have access to more technology, while other school districts are still simply writing on white boards and chalkboards.

2 comments:

medwards said...

I'm also really amazed by all of the technologies you mentioned. I can't believe that Microsoft Word has so many great features that I never even knew about. Learning about all this technology is really exciting for me, but, like you said, it does make me think about all the students who will never have the advantage of using those technologies in the classroom, whether it's because of lack of funding, or lack of teacher awareness, or whatever it may be. I'm really glad that we're learning these things so that we can do our best to integrate them into our classrooms.

Annie Tillmann said...

In the secondary reading, the text discussed how word processing can be used for note taking and how it is imperative to take good notes. I was really intrigued by this, mainly because I don't remember being taught how to take notes within a classroom. I really liked the "t" model. On one side you put a summary, another you draw images and the third section is used for very basic notes/cues.

In the el ed reading, I really liked the idea of using color to identify the different parts of the writing.