Here is my chart that I made with the program Inspiration.

Journal 7-Internet Meetings

Technology is the branch of knowledge that deals with adapting your knowledge to technical means. In this tool that is found at (http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/649749:Topic:57289), the application of online meetings is discussed. This specific one is talking about using a study group app that can actually be added to facebook. The reason why I picked this tool to focus on is because facebook is already such a widely used communication tool between students and they are on it all the time already, so why not make it convenient for them and have them be able to use it for school purposes too? This can be used for schedules of classes, discussion boards, group meetings, online tutoring, questions etc. The one problem with this is that right now this application is currently targeted at students, but they are working on it to function as something that can be used by teachers to be able to join the study groups and take part in them too. I would use this tool with my students in the classroom. I hope that by the time I am teaching it will be set up as a functioning tool for the use of teachers also.

Journal 6-Software Review

I-Movie and Inspiration

I-Movie-
I really liked working with this program. It was very easy to use once you got the hang of it and there were so many different transitions and effects that can be put into video clips to make it look like you know what you're doing! It was simple to add music, voice overs and to edit the clips that we were working with. Sometimes, it was hard to get the music to end or in the right place and you hard to work with it, but it was always workable.

This software could be incorporated into the classroom by using it to post movies of the students so that their parents can see what they are up to. I can make the movie look more appealing and show what I want by editing it and adding transitions and effects to it. Also, this can be incorporated into the classroom by giving the older students a tutorial on how to use this program and they can use it in their class presentations or they can be assigned a project that has them show their proficiency in using I-Movie.

I learned how to use this software by a tutorial given by Professor Jeffery Heil in which he showed us how to edit video clips, add music, add transitions, add effects, do voice overs, make stand still photos and many more things. He made a short movie for fun while giving us this tutorial which helped us to learn the techniques of this program and to make our own movie.

Inspiration-
This program was amazing! It was so easy to organize everything into a flow chart. There were so many pictures to pick from to make your chart look very animated and appealing. It was easy to create one category from another, to change the font and size, and to add the pictures. I wold definitely reccommend this program to any future or current teachers. The chart that I created will be very useful to refer back to when I need to know the different activities and projects that I completed to fulfill the different National Education Standards.

This program can be incorporated into the classroom by using it to organize the students' semester and their work that will be completed throughout their semester. It could also be use to divide the students' work into what is due each day and this would be useful to the parents to be able to keep track what their children needs to complete for homework each night.

I learned how to use this program by a brief tutorial from Professor Jeffery Heil in which he showed us the different ways that we can use Inspiration and the main concepts of how to use it. It was very helpful and I was able to make a chart from this tutorial.

Journal 8

Curtis, Diane (2002, November, 11). A "Fantastic Super" Use of Technology: Closing the Digital Divide. Edutopia, Retrieved October 10th, 2008, from http://www.edutopia.org/fantastic-super-use-technology

This article is about Mary Scroggs Elementary school, technology based and advanced school. This article informed the readers about how the use of technology has transformed their school in a positive way. Mary Scroggs Elementary school was given a grant to provide computers for the schools and internet access devices to the families that don't have computers because this elementary school committed to integrating technology into their everyday curriculum in an effort to help decrease the digital divide. Technology is used everyday in the ways that the teachers are emailing their parents everyday and using that as their main form of communication. The teachers are also using the computers with their students in a way that they call "looping". At the end of the day, the teachers ask for the highlights of the day from the students and then type their answers into the computer with the students following along and reading aloud their answers. The parents also have access to this website so they can keep up with their students and what they did that day. The parents can also go to a webpage that each teacher has designed for their class that includes newsletters, volunteer opportunities, homework, student work etc. This article also had a paragraph that discussed treating teachers as professionals. Mary Scroggs Elementary School does this not only by giving them the use of technology, but also by letting the teachers of the same grades have time to plan together, paying the lead teachers and the curriculum specialists more and by having the inexperienced teachers work with the more experienced teachers. 

What if more schools started following Mary Scroggs Elementary's example and began integrating technology into their school?

The integration of technology is going to start to close the digital divide the more that schools begin to do this. It starts with one, but it needs many. This is going to give the students a chance to learn how to use computers which they will need to know for their future. It also gives the parents a chance to learn how to use the computers as the use of technology is soon becoming a necessity in our everyday lives, this is very important for these parents to learn how to use technology. This will help to start close the digital divide by making more people technology literate. 

What would the collaboration of teachers do?

Well, there are more and more interactive websites out there that allow teachers to collaborate and build on each other's curriculum and ideas. What this would do is take the competition of from between teachers. This might seem like it could effect in a negative way. However, if the teachers were collaborating and feeding off of each other's ideas and competing in that way, it would give the students an environment that is not competitive in the fact that they are trying to outdo each other, but it would be competitive in the fact that they are trying to make the curriculum better and give each other different ways to make it the best learning environment for their students.