Dr. Alice Christie has been an educator for forty years. Through her website, Dr. Christie shares her thoughts and experience with others to help teachers learn and become better equipped in the classroom. On the website there are several areas to explore that can be of help to teachers. They include: educational technology, classes available for teachers, workshops, guides on geocaching, searching the web, web design and publication. The section that I found most interesting was the one on educational technology.
I believe that as a teacher it is important to use the classic methods of teaching but also in this technological era i think it is important to use technology to help children learn. On this page Dr. Christie set up she gives a guide to the many different technologies that are out there and how they can be used in a helpful way. She lists twenty-two different topics which are explained and told how they can be helpful for students. This is a great tool for teachers because it teaches them how they can further their students knowledge of technology.
iTunes University
iTunes U is a program through Apple iTunes where teachers can provide digital lessons to their students. The teacher can video or record on a topic and then post it on iTunes U. This can be helpful for teachers because they can have all the information they have taught on in one place for any student to use at anytime. They can also make sure everyone is learning at the same pace so that if one child is not understanding they can learn at home as well. In college this would be a great tool in case the teacher has to miss a class so instead they can post their lecture on iTunes you and tell students to go their to check it out.
For students this is a great tool for learning. They can not only learn from their own teacher but hear what other educators have to say on certain topics. Also if a child is sick or has to miss class for some reason, a teacher can upload their lecture to iTunes U so they won't be left behind. This is also a useful resource for outside projects and papers that students might have. For a student this program would be very advantageous.
iPods in the Classroom
Classrooms today are full of interesting and useful technology but who knew that an iPod could be used as a tool for learning! I had no idea that this would even be an option for teachers to use because i use my iPod for music and that's all. When i researched the topic more I found that this idea has grown more and more popular. On one site that I found a teacher had gone to a webinar on how to use iPods in the classroom then he blogged his notes to share with other educators. He found there are several ways to use and iPod for instance taking notes, copying links and taking screen shots. He learned that using the microphone in the iPod can help students work on a class project or podcast. Also it could be used to listen not only to music but audio files such as famous speeches with the transcripts on the iPod.
It can also be used a personal presentation tool. A student can save each powerpoint slide as a jpeg then download each on to the iPod. It can also be used for studying digital flashcards which students can make or download on to their iPods. iPods can be used as a source for reading books or stories. For example the iPod can read up to 4,000 characters of saved text files which means they can hold thousands of books. This information on iPods amazed me and I have found that they can be very helpful for educators to help teach their students.
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