Jennifer Deyenburg is a teacher in Alberta who has developed and maintained a blog throughout her career which offers insights on teaching through the use of different technology tools. Throughout the video Jennifer discusses many different ways of how she has incorporated technology in many of her classes including in a Kindergarden class. Her ideas for incorporating technology for instructional purposes into this young of a grade were fascinating to me. For a example, she discussed how having students in kindergarden blog helped them learn their capital letters as the keyboards on most computers is in capitals. She found that this often motivated students to learn their capitals more quickly because they couldn't wait to start using a computer! To branch further off this idea, it would also be useful to use key boards in this way so that students could learn to associate the capital letters to their regular letters. For example they would hit the capital E and see that it came out as 'e" - this would be a good visual for them to learn both types of letters.
I really appreciated the discussion Jennifer had around video conferencing and the idea of connecting her students to a world they have never thought/heard about before. Kids are self-centered.... there... I said it. It is hard for them to fathom a world bigger than the small community they know because everything they know happens in such a small circle. The unfortunate truth is some children never grow out of this and remain this way as adults. The idea of connecting our students to other classrooms around the world is such an important one to me. This use of video conferencing is so important at this age because it teaching students to be responsible global citizens who understand not only the environment and the community they live in but also many other communities around the world. This not only ensures our students have a strong sense of the world they live them but it provides them with the experience to talk with people their age and learn more about the interests of kids their age all over the world! This is such a neat idea to me.
I attended french immersion schools throughout my life and in elementary we video conferenced with another school in Quebec and became pen pals with them (yes we still used 'snail mail' and I loved it!). To be totally and completely honest, I do not remember much from elementary (is bad memory hereditary? ;s), yet I still remember the day we VCed with the class in Quebec and how cool we all thought it was that we were seeing these people and talking to them without being in the same province! I hope to give my students this same excitement and experience one day that they can remember years after.
Significant comments:
http://eportfoliomcnulty.weebly.com/2/post/2013/07/communication-ii.html#comments
http://jenseducationportfolio.weebly.com/3/post/2013/07/topic-4-communication-ii.html#comments
I really appreciated the discussion Jennifer had around video conferencing and the idea of connecting her students to a world they have never thought/heard about before. Kids are self-centered.... there... I said it. It is hard for them to fathom a world bigger than the small community they know because everything they know happens in such a small circle. The unfortunate truth is some children never grow out of this and remain this way as adults. The idea of connecting our students to other classrooms around the world is such an important one to me. This use of video conferencing is so important at this age because it teaching students to be responsible global citizens who understand not only the environment and the community they live in but also many other communities around the world. This not only ensures our students have a strong sense of the world they live them but it provides them with the experience to talk with people their age and learn more about the interests of kids their age all over the world! This is such a neat idea to me.
I attended french immersion schools throughout my life and in elementary we video conferenced with another school in Quebec and became pen pals with them (yes we still used 'snail mail' and I loved it!). To be totally and completely honest, I do not remember much from elementary (is bad memory hereditary? ;s), yet I still remember the day we VCed with the class in Quebec and how cool we all thought it was that we were seeing these people and talking to them without being in the same province! I hope to give my students this same excitement and experience one day that they can remember years after.
Significant comments:
http://eportfoliomcnulty.weebly.com/2/post/2013/07/communication-ii.html#comments
http://jenseducationportfolio.weebly.com/3/post/2013/07/topic-4-communication-ii.html#comments
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