Course Reflection

Today is the end of class. I really enjoyed working with my group members and all of us had a great progresses in the past seven days. Both the blogs anf the website had been completed as well as we can. With this eight days’ work, I gained a lot of learning experiences.  I think it is a meaningful progress and have a sense of achivement. We started by creating and arranging our own blogs. Gradually, we combined what we learned with the links what were made by other technology tools, and then uploaded them to our blogs. In the process, we’ve learned how to insert the web links and pictures into articals and knew how to open them in the new windows. The blog enables us to show our thoughts and own styles through the articals and the blogs’ decorations. We can change our covers, heads and icons to the favourite styles.

Besides, we learned lots of technology tools in the periods of completing blogs. I think most of them are easy to use and if they can be used in the classroom. I like the tools name classfojo, wenjuanxing and the padlet most. As classdojo is a technology tool which was made especially for teaching, there are many useful tools in it, such as the timer, tables and so on. It also can be used to make score for children’s daily life and give a quik reponse to their parents. Wenjuanxing is easy to operate for everyone and it have many functions. You can make a survey, evaluation and test as fast as you can. It can be used in many cases and statistical data formation table automaticaly. Besides, the padlet is useful in classroom teaching because of it’s ibility to post almost everything on it. With the electronic white board students can post their assignments on it and it can be seen clearly. You only need to share it with students by sending the URL or embed it in blog or website once you create it. All of the three tools can improve the work efficiency and make less mistakes than the traditional handing homework’s ways. Everything can be showed clearly so that students can absorb knowledge completely. I will surly use them in my teaching.

But I may won’t use the polleverywhere, testmoz and loopster. Although they are professional, they all have an useful function respectively, their use is relatively single, and there are many better tools can replace them. And as wenjuanxing can be used to make tests, surveries, evaluations and many other things. It’s function is more comperehensive that I only need this tool instead of all of them. And the loopster is a good tool to edit videos. But for me it is an strange tool and I am more likely to use an editing tool names Ai JianJi. I think this tool is more easy to use and more simple for me.

During my group making our own website, I think the communication, assistance and cooperate are the most important three things in understanding the course content and learning better during the group work. In the eight days, as long as I meet something disunderstand, I will ask my classmates and Dr.Wang, my course teacher, and they will explain and demostrate for me patoently. This is the importance of communication. Besides, when we were making the website, there so many resources and requirements that cooperation and help for each other is really the necessity. A person can not understand all the technology in a short time and accomplish a great workload. These elements helped me have a better work.

Certainly, I also felt that our group still have something should be avoided and improved after these days. In the process of setting the lesson plan and teaching videos, we haven’t enough coordination that some of our content only can be put in one day’s assignment. And our ability of typeset and make website still need to be strengthened. I saw some of other groups’ typsetting are great and we should learn from them.

In this class, I seems good at the blog decorating and use the tools which have definite requirements and purpose. But if teacher asked me to create a new video and she didn’t give me a certain way of doing, I will unable to know at once and think about the topic for a long time. Creating may one of my shortages and I will ask others more and practice thinking by myself more to improve. In the future, I will continue to study hard to became a good teacher. And I will incorporate the content and technology tools which I have learned in these days into my future teaching life.

Day Seven

Online Questionnaire, Worksheet, and Quizzes

Today we studyed how to use the polleverywhere, wenjuanxing, and testmoz. Every of them has their pros and cons. The polleverywhere enables teachers to set a clear schedule for children’s study and it can evaluate the childrten’s final performance according to corresponding courses requirements. It can be used everywhere and the form it mage is clearly for everyone to see. But it requires you to register and login to view, and there is a certain degree of professionalism that people who isn’t cannot set the right assessments. And its typsetting is not well enough for everyone to read. This will influence someone’s view and know their children’s daily condition.

The Testmoz is convenient to make the test papers and variety of options in it. But, correspondingly, it is only for the production of papers, and other functions are not very comprehensive.

And wenjuanxing is a good software for everyone to make surveys, tests, evaluations and many other things. It is very easy to use and there are many choices that it can almost meet every of your meets. You can send the link ti your friends by the social applications like wechat, QQ, etc. You can also get a data form at the last that wenjuanxing will form it automatically. It’s disadvantage may it is just because of its  lots of options and full functionality, it’s a bit hard to handle.

Besides, there are many other functions in the wenjuanxing. It can not only make surveys, tests and evaluations,but also get the results of these questionnaires. After people complete the questionnaires, online wiill automatically form the responses, you can let them become the pie table, lines, chart tables and many other forms. It is facilitate the investigation of people to sort out and summarize information. Besudes, the maker can also add red raffle in it. As do a survey is in trouble and wasting their time for some busy people, but if there is a red envelope, you can compensate and thanks to them, and it can make more people be interested to participate in the investigation.

These tools are all very useful and can be used in many stages, so that we can also uese them into classroom teaching. Teachers can use the polleverywhere to set the assignments and the everyday aims to children, they can make out a schedule and then they can give the assessment to students. The testmoz is a convenient software for teachers to make the daily tests. It will save the teacher’s time very effectively. Besides, the wenjuanxing can be used in many situations such as investigating, making tests, evaluating and many other things. That’s really an useful software in  teaching life.

What’s more, these projects help me to meet the ISTE standards about design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments. Teachers can use these applications to evaluate, design anddevelop. All of them can give teachers rerally geat help like searching, reporting and so on.

Here is my rubric.

Here is my quizzes in testmoz.

Here is my questionnaire.

Day Six

Today we learned enhancing teaching and learning through the use of digital story-telling.

Digital story-telling is a new digital tool to help ordinary people to tell real-life stories. It is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. The digital storytelling is generally not so long which are only about 2 to 5 minutes, but it can be effectively applied to nearly any subject. As students seems caould not take a long attention and the stories should interested them, digital storytelling is a new tool for them and also interesting enough. We can tell everything as this for students. So it is convenient for us, too. With storytelling, we can introduce new materials, help students learn to research and analy large amounts of content. What’s more, it will help childrfen organize their ideas as they learn to create stories for an audience and represent their ideas and knowledge. If things continue this way, it will develop and pracrtice children’s individual ability and imagine.

We also created a video today which was about the what we had learned in the past few days’ lessons. There are many chooses for us to create and edit the video.  All of my group choosed the most convenient way to make it. After we created it,  we used the Ai JianJi to edit and compound it. It is easy to use because of its clearly sign and simple operation mode. When we editing the movie, we found that it sometimes hard  to combine voice with the pictures of the movies perfectly. And we cannot compound them together and upload it because it is to big at first. But we finally found that it can enter audio and video separately. Besides, Dr.Wang Told us that we needn’t to add all the videos together and this made our work easier.

If someone want to use videos in their class, I think it is better to create the videos more simple and easy to understand. And the time of the videos shoul not be too long, otherwise, children may have no patient to see all the videos. The content in the videos should also be as interesting as possible so that children will more happier to learn knowledge.When letting children to create stories, they should be given individual space and enough time to create. We needn’t to give too more help for them, only some suggestions are enough.

Besides, the audio and video projects meet the ISTE standard about the faciliate and inspire student learning and creativity. Digital storytelling can make the classroom atmosphere and children will able to organize their ideas as they learn to create stories for an audience and represent their ideas and knowledge. Students may meet some challenges in the process but it’s just the best way for them to improve themselves.

Besides, there is an example about the video.

And there is our group’s view on digital storytelling.

Day Five

Audio Editing

Today we learned to teach children through the way of science and technology. We used to record audio and video means and division of labor, and then we were able to show our previous production of the lesson plan we made before. And we will up load our results on ours blog and our group website. At first, we created audio files to teach the content in the lessson plan. As our lesson plan is about learning piano, my task is to teach children to understand the treble clef and bass clef, and they also need to know how to draw them. My other group members’ assignments are let the children learn sitting, gestures, know the keys,  the staff and the ascending and descending.

I used my phone to edit the audio and saved it in Mp3 format.  Now the mobile phone’s function is more and more useful. I used the phone’s recording function and then upload to pan.baidu.com, share the file with everyone with the link. It is very convenient. And I have no problem in the process of doing these things. But I still met some challenges in recording. I couldn’t read it clearly and full and emotion. That means I  couldn’t know when I should read fruently and when I should pause for a while. Thanksfully, I was able to read it fruently and soounds better than the first time with the help of my groupmates and Dr.Wang’s explain at last.

All of our audio materials will upload to the course site our group created on the Course Materials page and this is my link of audio editing.

Video Creation

We were also asked to create an about 2 minutes video to teach the content. Most of us use phones to create the video, too, because of its convenient and we also had not any other facilities for us to record it.  The video will also be uploaded on my blog and our group website with a MP4 format. During rhis period, I also had more problems. Firstly I can not avoid the noise around me. Secondly, because it is a mobile phone recording, editing is a problem. Besides, I did not know how to change the video cover at first. Later, I found that the cover can be changed in the process of uploading it to the youku. And when I recording it, I timed out if I have something wrong or need to change a page and then keep continued after prepared all things necessary. This replaced the video editing and it had achieved good results. That’s also thanks for my friend’s suggesstion and I also recommendded this method to others. I achieved a lot in the video creation.

This is my video creation which was uploaded on youku.

Day Four

Website Design

Today we tried to created a website which is based on our lesson plan which was set on the day before yesterday. The website was divided into five parts: Home, assignments, course materials and resources. We share out the work and coooperate with one another.

With today’s course, I learned that web page is the bacis element for esteblishing a website. It likes an electronic file that everyone can read it if you have the link. You can set several web pages to show different content. The web page is different from document page. A docunment page can reserve text, pictures, graphics and many other things. It can also achieve good results by composing. Web pages can include all the documents’ content but it consists of codes. It needs web browser to open.

Website is the integration of all kinds of web pages. It can be seen as website is a theme, and all the web pages in it is its branches. we need to plan our site with a storyboard ahead of time because  its complicacy. A good website should contains lots of classfications and if you don’t plan the format in advance, it may looks disordered and illogical. You can also create the website easier with a good storyboard. An interesting and good-look website is able to attract people’s attention and make it spread further.

In the process of creating the website, I met a lot challenges. At the first time I set a new web page, I can’t find where  to create and it is also hard to put the ‘Home’ and other four parts together on the first page. We finally sloved these two problems with exploring and the help of teacher. We found we can set them on a column names ‘my site’ and ‘page’, respectively. It is also have a qusetion on how to insert the links in web page, but we finally find we can click it and put it in the words.

This projevt helps me learned the ISET standard– facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity. After teachers teach students how to design the website and tell them the assignments, then they can create by themselves. This is a challenge for them but is also a new way for them to do homework. They can also decorate the web page with they like. It can be greatly encourage students to give the rein to their imagination and more learning energy. A website can contain all the document they want to show and learn. What’s more, it theirs own space that nobody else can interference them. They can do everything in the website.

This is our group’s website link.

Day Three

My experience with class management software: classdojo

Today we learned a new online software names classdojo. It is a kind of free education software which  is convenient to manage children’s behaviors in class and keep in touch with the students. Teachera can give every student a certain score according to their daily performance. As teachers may manage several classes, classdojo can sum them up and see every child’s score clearly. Parents can also know their kids’ real-time dynamic through view the class. They can keep community with teachers however busy they are. Except for recording children’s daily behaviors, it also can be used to do many things, such as timer, make pie chart, upload photos which about children’s activities and so on. As an example, if students carried out an art activity, teachers can take photos for them and share the pictures ther drew. These functions are all very easy to use and useful. You can learn more ideas from this page.

From this project, I learned how to use this software and knew more about the usage of technology in education. Technology is changing our daily life even the teaching style. The classdojo is a good example for me to know. If I become a teacher in the future, I can improve my work efficiency with these kinds of softwares and it is also a good way to encourage students to get better. Children will mow what behaviors are good and what are wrongs through it and classdojo can stimulate their interesting because of the cute page style.

In the class teaching, I will use it to collect and statistics the data from students’ daily performance, and make out measures to treat children accordingly. I would like to add their scores if they can help each other, patiently, hard-working or many othert good behaviors. Constantly, if they go to school late, bully others, sneak off, etc. I will deduct their marks. With the scores, I can know clearly about every students’ conditions and their problems can be easier to find and slove. What’s more, I can give their parents a clear data and explain to them more convenient.

As classdojo is a kind of online software, it is an useful creati0n in the model digital age. There are five ISTE standards at all, and I think this project can be connected to the standard of model digital age work and learning. Classdojo can manage students’ behaviors in class and connect students in a community well, it is also a good tool for parents to view the class and get to know what students did in class and how they did their work. This function accords with the point of ‘communicate relevent information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats’. This software can give claer data for eveyone and this will imporove the working efficiency. Besides, it is able to let students upload their projects, share movies, conduct discussions, and others. So it is also conform to the standards ‘using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation’. With the model digital age’s coming, teaching is more convenient for teachers and change the teaching styles.Certainly, I think it is also engages in professional growth and leadership.

This is the screenshot of my classdojo.

Integrating electronic white board in classroom teaching

Padlet is an electronic white board that we can post everything we want to show to others such as the website link, document, picture, test and many other things. In my opinion it is also like the blog’s function but this tool not only can show to others, but also can add things in spite of you are not the owner. If you want to display something or do a demonstration , it is also a good choice.

It is useful in classroom teaching because of it’s ibility to post almost everything on it. With the electronic white board students can post their assignments on it and it can be seen clearly. You only need to share it with students by sending the URL or embed it in blog or website once you create it. This kind of technology will improve the work efficiency and it can make less mistakes than the traditional handing homework’s ways.

In my opinion, this project is as a kind of new technology tool as the classdojo. Certainly, it is made for both students to post document and sharing instead of only showing content for others. It is also connects to one of the ISTE standards–design and develop digital age learning experience and assesments. Padlet may make a great change for students’ working strategies and the style of doing their homework. They would no longer need to use many books and take a heavy bag to pack the necessary things. It could show everything clearly so that students can absorb knowledge completely. This tool can also improve students’ technology skills at the same time. Our teaching style is changing with the development of technology and model digital age.

This is my pedlet.

Day Two

My understanding on the flipped classroom

In this morning, we learned a lot about the flipped classroom. We knew what it is, why the flipped classroom developed, how it worked and let the children learn knowledge more convenient with insterest. There are two specific innovators (Johnathan and Aaroms Sams) played a key role to the creation and adoption of the flipped classroom model. With the flipped classroom model, children can study wherever they are and teachers can even teach them online. This kind of teaching method is more convenient and comfortable.

As I am a college student, I am hope to my professors can use this method because so that I can begin to learn when I want instead of walking to the classroom on time everyday. It will save much time for me and I can also own more individual space. No one will influence me. Besides, if I forget some knowledge in class, I can only miss it or I will spare more time to learn it, but the flipped classroom can let me easier to catch up with missed work. What’s more, it reduce my anxiety about homework. If I can teach a class in the future, I will also use this method. Becaues in this way, I only need to create one video and all of my students can watch it and I needn’t to teach them again and again. This will improve my efficiency.

Working experiences on creating a lesson plan with the flipped classroom teaching model

Then I involved in my group to discuss the componenets included in the lesson plan. Our lesson plan is teaching children to learn piano. We met a lot of challenges in the process, such as we cannot got a specific schedule for children’s learning activities at home, and sometimes our plan was set too hard to students to complete. But it was also exciting because I think the group work is interesting and it is a good change to improve my knowledge. I learned a lot about the flipped classroom and mastered it more skillfully through the process of discussing. I knew the flipped classroom deeper after the discussion and I hope I can use it in the rreal life in the future.

view my lesson plan:Final Flipped Classroom Plan

My experiences on working on the survey

In the afternoon, we used this survey website to create a survey about our lesson plan–learning piano. As I have ever made a survey before, I think it is just easy for me to do and the page is easy to use, too. What the challenging about creating it may it was my first time to use English to do this and the questions of learning piano were a bit hard to create because it should be logical and practical. And I learned a lot about the flipped classroom through the survey and discussion.This experience may also developed my computer skills.

Please view my survey.

About Joyce and ED326

My Chinese name is SHENGYIN JIn, and my English name is Joyce. My major is Early Childhood Education. I choose this major beacuse I am very interested in keeping in touch with the children and I believe that it is a glorious thing to be a kindergarten teacher. Researching preschool children’s psychology is also very important to let the world has a better development in the future. If I become a teacher, I would like to give children a freedom and active environment. I will let them think more and ask more questions, instead of always let them keep quiet or teach them knowledge unidirectional.

In today’s class, I saw three videos which recorded the preschool children’s study life in foreign. It was so different from the kindergartens’ teaching methord in China that Children have a more free learning environment and teachers use more technology there. Teachers use ipad to let children look and listen stories. They use computers teach math. Besides, they also let them playing and listening music by computers by themselves. Technology seems more and more important in teaching life. It is really useful to make children learn faster and convenient to use.