Bell

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__Reflection to Learning Style__ I am of the Visual/Verbal style of learning. The site's definition is: "You learn best when information is presented visually and in a written language format. In a classroom setting, you benefit from instructors who use the blackboard (or overhead projector) to list the essential points of a lecture, or who provide you with an outline to follow along with during lecture. You benefit from information obtained from textbooks and class notes. You tend to like to study by yourself in a quiet room. You often see information "in your mind's eye" when you are trying to remember something." This is me in a nutshell. Whenever there is an exam to study for, I lock myself away in my room. I write an obscene amount of notes from lectures and books. Preparing for an exam, I'll look over ever single page at least twice. I can't study with noise around me. If there is noise and I still review notes, I try my best to block out surrounding sound. Sound really does throw me for a loop and my thoughts can be scrambled at times. That's definitely something I need to work on. The site suggests I write out flashcards. I go about writing what is useful entirely on paper. The last time I used any type of card for school related work was Junior year of high school where we had to use 25 notecards per source for a "National History Day" project. We had to have seven sources, so I looked at this requirement as wasting 175 note cards. Since then, I use cards for leisure-related work, such as things to recall for later and ideas for stories. The site also suggests using highlighters in books. I am not defacing a book, sorry. Nonetheless, this whole Visual/Verbal style suits me just fine.

__Reflections to Cast__ I found the CAST website to be, at times, very helpful. My problem was the extreme amount of information presented in parts of the chapters. There would be sections in a chapter that went on for so long and lost my interest at a few spots. While the information concerning the brain explained how students learned, the terms could be difficult for those without a working knowledge of how the brain works. There could be students and teachers who may have heard of these scientific terms but they hadn't used that knowledge in a long time. Thankfully, these spots did not consume the entire chapter. Besides those flaws, the CAST site was very helpful. Setting clear goals is probably the important thing I am going to take away from all of this (not much to take away, but it is the most important to me). I like structure. A lot. I like to look in a syllabus and plan when I am going to read a chapter and when I am going to work on a project. Not having a calendar for when events happen drives me nuts. I want my students to be completely prepared, to know what they have to do and when. I want them to know what they are going to learn on a specific day, in a specific week or month. I enjoyed the brain network activity more than the UDL activity. My interest in the UDL activity was limited because the three activities suggested really don't appeal to me at all. The activity threw me out of my comfort zone, in a way, but it was more along the lines of throwing me into an area I had no clue what I was doing. I chose the hiking one because it was the closest activity I had actually attempted before but that was a long time ago. I had no clue what I was doing for that activity and the CAST site should include other options. As for the brain network activity, I was very interested in learning how the three networks worked. That was presented excellently and was enlightening. I feel very strongly toward differing one's teaching style to get your lessons across to students. For one, not everyone learns the exact same way, so it is good to know that there are many ways to teach students and make sure your message is reinforced. Also, teaching one way can become boring to students and the teacher. You change your style of work and you become committed again, not standing up in front of a class spouting off information in a droning voice. When the teacher is committed, students are more likely to learn, react and respond more to the lesson. I would like to see more examples of implementing variations of teaching in the classroom. It's one thing to come up with a great idea. It's another to actaully put it into use. Some people need more than just a written explanation of how to do something. A lot of times, people need examples to help reinforce what they had just learned.

__Assistive Technology Reflection__ There is a myriad amount of technology available that students can use to assist in learning. Sadly, as the second video pointed out, people don't know these items are available. Being disabled and not receiving the full potential of learning is no longer about exclusion from general education classes with non-disabled students or not having the funding for equipment (as there are laws to prevent both of these). This is now about not knowing this technology is out there. Parents, other family members, teachers, and school officials all have to be actively involved in making sure that disabled individuals can function the best they can. This can be accomplished through many of the sites that are listed in the assignment document, among others. There are sites that sell so many items that can help individuals and I had no clue that there was so much available to people. The most impressive site given to us, in my opinion, is assistivetech.net. It is incredible how many items are available to people, not just learning tools but items to help daily life in general. There are grips for people with muscle difficulty and can't reach far places. There are walkers. I chuckled when I saw the automatic card shuffler and I realized that some people can have problems shuffling cards. The little things make life so enjoyable and a lot of times we forget that some people can't enjoy the little things like playing cards (among other things). Just like the card shuffler, there are other items that a person may never think would be needed for a person who is disabled (like the 22 inch bath sponge). I am not the most gung-ho of people when it comes to integrating technology into the classroom. I am more interested in giving lectures and using textbooks. That being said, I am entirely for using technology for people who have learning difficulties and needs. If a student wants to learn and they need something that will help them, they have to have it. No ifs, ands or buts. We, as teachers and prospective teachers, cannot allow a student who needs technology to learn fail because they didn't have the technology. With any student (with or without a disability), a teacher cannot stop trying to help them. They have to do their very best to make sure every student learns and the technology available promises that every student has the chance to learn. I do not have an experience with a person with special needs, but I will have many in the future. I know there will be students in my classes that will have special needs. I will do my best to make sure they go home having learned something. I will do my best to make sure they can complete their homework and finish their tests to the best of their capabilities. There are many individuals, then, now and in the future, who have needs and there are many things available that will enable them to learn. I will do my best to make sure they do the best they can. Change the style of how I teach or search the internet to see if there is anything available for the classroom, I will do my best.

The virtual field trips are very cool. Visuals can help a lot more than just reading the text or hearing a lecture. The "formation of a rock" website was very creative. The visuals would definitely help students learn that process a lot faster. The Smithsonian site was so detailed, I was just blown away by it. There was one room with a camera design next to an exhibit and clicking on it enlarged the display. If the site could do that for more of the exhibits and make it so the text boxes could also be enlarged and read, that would be a fantastic alternative to going to the museum. I would have to seek out more sites to see what is available before using a virtual field trip in class. These were just general sites for a range of studies, so not everyone could use all of those in a class (elementary school teachers come to mind for people who could use many of these sites as they have to teach a range of subjects). The site with Egypt would be good to use if I ever brought up the pyramids and mummification in class. The Memorial Hall and Lewis & Clark sites would also be useful, but that would depend on the grade level I taught. The Library of Congress could definitely be used in class. The others do not hold much potential for the History teacher (except a few sections in the Smithsonian) so some searching for other sites would be needed.

This is the LINK to my Digital Movie. The video is about who went about discovering the world was round, not flat, and who proved that it was round. I had been taught that people in 1492 believed the Earth was flat and that Columbus disproved it by finding a route to "Asia" that went around the world. It was only a few years ago that someone said "People knew it was round for a long time." I was a wee bit upset that teachers were delivering the message that people were clueless about the Earth being round until Columbus came home. So I whipped up this video to prove that the idea was out there for 2000 years that the Earth was round and it was proven almost 1700 years before Columbus made his voyage.

__Final Reflection__ There is a growing dependence on using technology in the classroom. Looking back at grade school, I notice that the amount of time we spent using computers grew the higher my grade became while other technology advanced. In elementary school, there was hardly any computer use. Up until fifth grade, we used computers solely for "game time." There were elements of education in some of these games but the students were not paying attention. Their eyes were glued to the screen and they just wanted to keep playing. Instead of learning about a part of our nation's history, students were focused on getting to Oregon or shooting bison and rabbits in "Oregon Trail." In fifth grade, we had computer labs so that we could learn how to type properly. There were two classes that would go to the computer lab where one class would go one Monday and then the other class would go the following Monday. That year, we had a lot of Mondays closed due to snow and my class probably missed many computer labs in the winter (the teachers were so unorganized and didn't say "Oh, you lost last week, so you can have this week.") Technology in the class back then was a television on a cart. Students were excited to see a television in the class and, to our minds, television meant fun. If you can associate fun and learning, you have a surefire plan on teaching. Lessons were dull and boring. Television was not. Or it would become boring once the video being watched became boring. Besides that, we had an overhead projector. That was it and students learned probably just as well as students today with more technology in class. Middle school had televisions in every classroom and overhead projectors, high school would follow suit. There were computer labs in both schools and we would occasionally go to the computer labs to use them, but they weren't integrated in normal class unless you were in a computer class. However, this was the time when teachers started encouraging outside research (outside meaning outside of the library). There was a whole host of websites with information for us to use in our reports and teachers encouraged that. As I got higher into my education, I had a greater dependence on my computer at home. It wasn't about using it to play games anymore (though I still did), it was about using it to write papers. It was so much better than writing with pen and paper or using a typewriter. But in class it was all about the teacher. It was all about the teacher in front of the class giving lectures and that was how I want to teach. In college, everything changed. PowerPoints were big when I started and now there are whiteboards. I like PowerPoints, that was creative. They are a lot better than the old overhead projectors. Then I took a class called "Integrating Instructional Technology" and I learned that schools are going to have computers in every class, there will be whiteboards and using technology is the only way we can teach students. I am sorry, but that is a little too much. We are bowing down to the idea that we need technology or else students won't learn. There is the idea that teachers must "entertain" their students, draw their attention with showy technology. We can't rely on technology as if it were a crutch. Some teachers, the ones with technology in classrooms who don't use it, may have little understanding of how the technology work or realize that they could grow to rely too much on technology, that they can't teach without it. Case in point, on the final day of class for "Integrating Instructional Technology," the projector worked but the whiteboard didn't and the teacher would not start the lesson without the whiteboard working. There are good aspects to technology, it can help teachers get their messages across in lessons a little easier but teachers cannot use technology as a crutch, that they cannot teach without it. Technology is a tool to help us. If I must use technology, so be it, but I will not overuse it in my classes. I expect to use PowerPoints and worksheets, computers only when the need came up.

**Spoken as a true Behaviorist!**
 * I am probably in the exact same spot I was in at the beginning of the semester when it comes to me wanting to use technology in class. I have seen some value to technology, that there are many things out on the internet to help teachers, but in all seriousness we cannot rely so heavily on it. My generation of teachers wanted to be teachers because they were impressed by the way their teachers delivered their lectures. PowerPoints are useful, a vast improvement over overhead projectors, but I want to rely on an array of my abilities, to not have to look at a screen and read off of it while calling that my lecture. I want students to use books before internet sources (articles online from printed material that is credible can be used before generic websites). This class was enlightening and I have learned more about technology that can be used in class but I stand by my beliefs. I will use some technology in my classes but I will do the majority of my lesson as a lecture.**