Week 5

Assignment #1

I have little experience with gaming involving the ELA. However, the experience that I do have seems to be effective and fun! There is a website that I like to use for the younger elementary grades called www.fun4thebrain.com. It has ELA games as well as Math games that are fun, addicting and hard to stop playing. Some of the games feature parts of speech, root words, sight words, syllables, and the breaking down of words. I highly recommend these games for those of you that teach on the elementary school level. The kids love playing them and it reinforces what is learned in the classroom.

Assignment #2

Philosophy of using gaming in the classroom

Teaching Perspective: The use of gaming should be used regularly to reinforce ideas taught within the classroom in the ELA subjects.

Technology Coordinator: Gaming can serve to be very important when used inside the school setting. Therefore, the right equipment should be set up in the proper location for the most effective use of the students and teachers.

Assignment #3

Below is the link to my PowerPoint containing a script to a possible game that I thought of. Hope you enjoy!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58823857/Week%205.pptx

Week 4

Assignment #1

One of my favorite games to play is Words with Friends. I find it extremely fun and addicting to play and it is pretty much an electronic game of “Scrabble”. Players must use random letters to make up words with different strategies. The goal is to have more points than your opponent when the game is over. For each word, you get a certain amount of points, depending on where you place them and how many points each letter is worth. Each letter is worth a certain amount of points depending on how frequently each letter is commonly used in words. For example, the letter “S” is worth less that the letter “Q”. There are also certain spaces on the board that give the player the opportunity to earn more points and strategize, such as double and triple words and letters.

The gaming element of text is the key element in Words with Friends. Text is what drives the game to its main concepts and gameplay. Besides looking at the letters that you need to make words out of, there are other features that text is the key component. For example, the scoreboard. The scoreboard is located away from the gameboard and shows the players’ names and the score. It’s a very good idea for the player to keep track of this because the player can strategize what kinds of letters to use and where to put them on the board.

The Visual-graphic elements are also very key elements to keep the game motivating and want the player to keep playing. There is a clear visual without any distractions to steer the player away from the game. It keeps the player focused on the task at hand and want to keep playing.

The sound element is very limited. There isn’t any music playing throughout the game, but there are little “blips” as the player receives and places letters and “chimes” to let each player know who’s turn it is.

The rules of this game are simple: make words using the letters given to you and score more points than your opponent.

Assignment #2

Grade: 5

Common Core Standards and Learning Outcomes:

5.RFS.3: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words

5.L.1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

5.L.3: Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading or listening.

Instructional Activities:

Students will be split up into pairs using one iPad between them. They will then go on to play a game of Words with Friends against their opponent.

Assessment:

As an assessment, the first few times the students play, they will be playing against their own high scores. Even though the students are physically playing against each other, they must keep track of their own score. The teacher will also keep track of students’ scores for progress.

What cognitive Skills this game helps to cultivate:

-Knowledge

-Comprehension

-Application

-Analysis

-Synthesis

What New Literacy Skills this game helps to cultivate:

-Reading

-Speaking

-Language

Week 3: New Literacies

Week 3 Assignment #1

“New Literacies” open up a whole new world of learning for students. Instead of just using pencil and paper work, students now have the opportunities to change the way they learn inside the classroom. Some of these tools might even seem very familiar to the students, which may make them more engaged in the activities when learning. In my experience, whenever students are given a piece of technology to work with, they seem to be more involved in the learning that they are doing. When students become more involved in learning, they tend to take pride in the work that they produce. When this is done, there is a much better outcome on learning. Using these “new literacies” can very much help students become more knowledgeable of the lessons learned in school. One student can be using Encarta Online Encyclopedia to find information about a particular president of the United States, while another student is using the Bing search engine to find out more about the Grand Canyon. These “new literacies” do not inhibit students from learning only through technology, but provide a gateway to a new type of learning.

Week 3 Assignment #2

The main idea that the ELA teachers I interviewed are incorporating into their classrooms/computer lab are online research activities. They integrate the technology of computers, search engines and online encyclopedias for students to conduct research on a particular topic.

What I can do to change their instructional practices to include the use of technology and the Internet in their literacy and content-area curriculum is to recommend using other technologies besides the computer to their curriculum.

There are some steps that will need to be taken in order for these changes to be made. The new technology that can be incorporated, oddly enough, would be the iPad. One of the resources that could be incorporated with the iPad could be the Dropbox App. This would give students the opportunity to collaborate among fellow students and submit assignments to teachers digitally rather than physically. The students can then check the feedback given by the teacher all by using the iPad.

Some ideas that I have for grouping students so that they will have equal access to technology in the classroom would be to give students access to their own portable piece of technology that will be used throughout the day. Although expensive, this would be a great way to utilize the “new literacies” theory within the classroom. If this goal cannot be achieved, then the next best thing to do would be to make sure that each student has equal opportunity to have time in the school’s computer lab to use the new literacies via computer, internet access and search engines.

­­­­Week 3 Assignment #3

Grade Level:

6

Topic:

Creative Writing

Standards Addressed:

ELA Common Core Writing Standards:

6.W.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which development, organization and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

6.W.6: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.

Learning Outcomes:

Students will:

-become more familiar with a historical figure(s) in history and

-put themselves as a character in their story collaborating with the historical figure they chose to include.

Technologies Needed: iPad

Timeline for Implementation:

Approximately one school week (5 days)

How it can be integrated and implemented in the lessons:

The iPad will be integrated by using the “Easy Writer App” for the students to type their stories. When the students are done editing and typing their stories, the App gives them the opportunity to send it to Dropbox. The students will submit their stories to Dropbox for assessment.

Assessment:

-Students will create a double spaced, three page story about going back into history. They will have to encounter a historical figure within their time travel and a dilemma that happened to that particular person in history. Students will have to include the dates in history that have to do with the particular situation. For example, if the student goes back in time during the World War II era, the student may include the date December 7^th, 1941 to indicate the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Week 1 - Intrduction to ELA

Within the new technological paradigm of teaching, more and more tools are being offered to teachers to help students enhance their learning. One of the tools that really stands out to me is the iPad. Its touch screen makes it very user friendly for younger students in the elementary school level. With the wide variety of apps available at your fingertips, there is an app or tool that can greatly help students of all different learning styles be successful in the classroom.

Reading:

With the iPad, you can download books that are level-appropriate for individual students with a variety of options to suit the students’ learning styles. There are options such as:

 “Read to me” where the book is read to the students while they follow along word by word. What’s great about this is that it’s not a robot voice just saying words, but it is a voice that the students enjoy hearing and each word is highlighted as the word is being said.  

“Languages for ESL Students” where students can read the book in their native language,

“Record your Voice” feature lets students record their voice while reading the story, and giving the teacher the option to save it. This is a great option to show growth within the students’ reading skills.

Writing:

With the iPad, there are different kinds of apps that improve a student’s writing abilities by taking notes, outlining, creating graphic organizers and even the basics of tracing your finger to make upper case and lower case letters.

Speaking/Listening:

Particular apps give students the opportunity to say things and record their voices for both fun and the use of the iPad in the classroom. With speaking and listening apps, the students can use a microphone located in the headphones, or use the microphone that is built into the iPad to hear their voice and listen to their recordings. These types of apps are very engaging for young learners and have no idea that they are learning!

Also, certain books give the user the option to read the story out loud and play it back to hear their voice. This is a great progress monitoring tool for teachers to record student data and to help them develop into better readers.

Language:

The possibilities for the use of the iPad are almost limitless! One can even learn how to speak another language just from using the iPad! These kinds of features are great for students either studying a language, want to improve the language of their native language or for ESL students that cannot communicate through the English language that well. There are features and apps that utilize the iPad’s capability to record voice narration and can narrate text in all different languages. The use of these tools is a great way to incorporate the iPad not only for instructional use, but for fun as well.

Media/Technology:

Since iPads are becoming more and more popular, it makes students very eager to use them in any setting (home or school). With that being said, why not utilize the iPad as much as possible in the classroom setting? There are a plethora of tools, techniques and apps to utilize student learning and development throughout the great use of this piece of technology. It gives the students motivation to learn kinesthetically rather than just pencil and paper techniques. They can conduct research for book reports, view interactive textbooks, and play games that enhance learning of all subjects!

ELA Teacher Interview:

I interviewed a colleague about the challenges of integrating technology in the teaching of ELA/Literacy. There are many challenges that she is facing with the use of technology in teaching ELA/Literacy. In her classroom, there is a SMARTboard, and two computers. These are the only pieces of technology that the school provides in the classroom. However, she likes to improvise when teaching. What this teacher likes to do is use a voice recorder as a microphone when telling stories. I think this is a great idea because it gives the students the feeling that they are on a stage and it gives the teacher ways to monitor language and reading throughout the year.

My school is currently in the process of incorporating iPads. There will be a cart with 25 iPads that teachers can sign up for to utilize the tools of this device. I’ll be sure to give you updates as the semester goes on!