Thunderstruck!

Nana..nananana..nana.. Thunder!! Oh man was this week so much fun. Learning to make a podcast was out of this world. I am totally sold on a mac too! I want one.. garage band is the coolest tool ever. Spencer and I had way too much fun recording and editing our podcast to make it enjoyable for the class. As this semester continues on I just keep getting more and more excited! Being able to use the things that I have learned so far in my other classes is so fun! Making google docs for group projects has been so convienent for all of us to contribute and finish our work on our own time from our home computers! I love it! The pod cast PSA was really cool and being able to make one for practically every aspect of my content area is so cool. I am totally loving learning in this class, and I can't wait to learn more. I am so excited to put into my classroom and keep the students engaged. I think that it will help my students succeed because I will be able to communicate with them on their level. It's great.

UEN

I do believe that the UEN website will be very helpful to me to use in my future classroom. There are numerous tools that I can use to help my students be engaged in learning and the process. This is a very helpful resource to add to my arsenal of teaching tools. I am going to teach physical education and as everyone knows that is not really everyone's favorite subject. I am only liked by the 10 to 15 percent of kids who are naturally active and coordinated, the rest just want out as fast as they can. If I can use these tools that I have found on UEN to engage the students and help them gain an appreciation or heaven forbid actually like physical activity then I will have succeeded as a teacher.

There are so many different resources included under the UEN umbrella that can be utilized in the classroom. The pioneer library is just one of the many resources that can be used. It offers many different catagories from k-12 to the university level. There are so many different resources like the emedia tool that has hundreds of images and videos to use in your classroom. The soundzabound tool is a wonderful tool that allows teachers to download from a huge library of songs to use in the classroom. The pioneer library also has links to many of Utah's newspapers and hundreds of others.

The interactives tool is awesome! It is a great way to engage students and get them to participate in physical education. There are some really good games that can teach them healthy habits and promote a healthy lifestyle. There aren't too many in my content area but I am confident that as UEN grows they will expand to physical education.

The lesson plans section is so great. To have all of that information available to us at our fingertips already compiled is amazing. It's wonderful to be allowed to view others creative work and bring some of their ideas into your classroom and mix it in with your curriculum. The core curriculum section is also so helpful.

There's a first time for everything

Holy moly.. I think my brain is mush. Learning about google sites has been amazing.. but extremely challenging. I didn't even know these tools were available let along at my fingertips. It has been a challenging and eye opening week for me. I am proud to say now though that I have created a website! How cool is that.. all my life I have just been a dumb jock that is terrible at math and now I can add website creator! woo hoo! Ya ya, it might be just a google site, but I still feel cool. When I finally begin teaching I will be able to use this site in so many ways. It will be like home base for everything! Being able to tap in with my students from wherever is so amazing it still boggles my mind but I am finally getting the big picture here. The video Pay Attention on you tube was so eye opening, to even dream about letting the students use their cellphones is beyond me, but after watching the video, it makes complete sense! Pod casts on their ipods of class work and assignments is just so exciting! I think that being able to use technology to engage my students and help them like the concepts that I am going to teach them will help me teach and instill the values that I want them to learn. Every week I am learning so much more and it's very exciting. But at the same time I also understand that I will always be studying and learning in order to keep up with the technology in order to keep up with my students. I think it will be a fun challenge. Having a class website is so crucial to me as a teacher these days. Being able to connect with my students outside of class is imperative if I want my students to succeed, and having this technology will accomplish this goal. Good week. Learned a lot. Bring it on and hang in there!

Fake it til you make it!

This week was extremely exciting and a bit overwhelming. Learning about all the different parts of the google website was like Christmas! I have had a GMail account for over a year, but that was the extent to my google use. Learning about google docs was so interesting! I had no idea that there was all the different parts in there! I am fascinated with the calendar, I must admit I spent a lot of time playing with the calendar. I also was very intrigued with the sharing part of google docs. The fact that we can share documents through the web and edit them from different computers is so cool! I have been thinking about how I can apply all this new knowledge to physical education. A lot of my teaching is going to be more hands on than in a classroom setting, but I do think I can utilize the calendar to my advantage by keeping the students up to date on assignments and what activities are coming up. It still boggles my mind that technology has advanced this much since I was in high school, and at this rate by the time I am in the classroom in is going to be even more advanced! Honestly I am a bit overwhelmed with all the technology but I think it's only because it's still so new, once I get the hang of it I will be a whiz! I really liked the video on you tube entitled I am what I learn, it was very motivational, and exactly what I needed this week. With all these new classes and this being the first semester in education classes, I have felt that my head has just been spinning. After watching that video and thinking about teaching, and helping students develop an appreciation and hopefully a life long interest in physical education, I feel a lot better and more motivated to work hard and reach my goals. I love to teach young people and I am very passionate about physical activity, now I just have to figure out how to work all this fancy shmancy technology into my classroom.. it will come to me.. fake it til you make it!