Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The Year in Technology
Please share your thoughts and feelings on how the use of technology impacted you as a learner this year. To improve my teaching, I want to know how the use of the blog and glogster may have affected your progress in language arts. Would you recommend that I continue using them next year?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
27 comments:
I thought technology helped me this year because it helped me inprove me grades and allow me to access the homework that was assigned without a hastle. The websites that I used were The Blog, Moanalua Middle School website, SnapGrades, and MMS Orchestra Homepage.
Some improvements that I think are useful for the blog is maybe something like external/quick links in the sidebar (i.e. MMS Website, SnapGrades, etc.) Post up the homework in it own thread, and maybe more assignments on the blog.
At first I largely disliked the idea of the blog, but as the year progressed I have found that it has its benefits, and now I find it to be quite a good idea. At first I disliked it due to the a few facts, the first being that everyone could see my thoughts and feelings on the subject. The second being that usually I do not do my homework at my house, and when I am not there it is hard for me to do a computerized assignment. The third and final, I will shamefully admit was due to the fact it was another assignment you could collect even if we did not have your class that day. Towards third quarter I started to appreciate it a bit more because I found I tended to learn more using it then doing standard paper and pencil work.
I think it has increased my skills in language arts because, even though they are short and relatively easy assignments, they carry a large lessons within them, for example I found them to be highly effective at teaching grammar, punctuation, and correct use of words. I think it tends to be highly effective in these areas due to the fact that you correct them and critic them in front of us, whereas with other forms of assignments it is difficult to do this, and I think this helps us because you are having a two way conversation with us about what we did wrong and how to fix it, instead of you writing comments on our papers. For these reasons above I not only encourage you to continue the blog, I encourage you to convert most of next years homework onto it.
Tech. really improved my language arts and and overall grade. Things like the MMS website, Snapgrades, Teenbiz and the MMS orchestra website really improves my overall grade. My grade would be unbelievably low without these things like the teenbiz I would be low on reading non-fiction (I really don't like it haha) and snapgrades helped me keep track of my progress and helped me get back on track and I would be totally destroyed if I never had the MMS website to look for my HW.
Some things that could be improved is to have more assignments on the blog and to show homework assignments also on here.
THANKS MRS.NAGAJI FOR YOUR WONDERFUL TEACHING SKILLS!!!
Honestly, I'm not all that fond of technology. I thought the whole idea of having this team blog was really lame and not very beneficial to our learning. But turns out, it wasn't too bad. I guess it was good that we went over our posts in class to correct our mistakes. The only con though, was that at times it took away too much classroom learning time. However, the blog did fail to teach me something other than what I already knew. But on the contrary, evaluating everyone who participated as a whole, many did seem to learn from simply correcting their grammatical errors along with spelling mistakes. Plus, we got a few glimpses of everyone's thoughts when they conjured up sentences for our vocabulary words. There would be silly stories; others revealed a few facts about the writers themselves.
The glogster was something I actually enjoyed doing. At first, I detested the whole thing because it seemed like too much effort. But the glog was actually one of the very few projects I completed by the given due date because 1) It was convenient for me to start on it because I was already on the computer. 2) Designing your own blog with additional graphics was fun. I also enjoyed seeing everyone else's individual glogs and comparing them to one another; they were all so unique. I would definitely recommend the glogster for students in the following years. The blog isn't such a bad idea either.
Technology this year has impacted me in a way that it never had before in my life. This year alone, I took a whole year's worth of Geometry on an online course. Thanks to technology, I have another high school credit for math. Without technology, I would have had to re-take Algebra One all over again even though I had already passed it last year.
In an increasingly technological world, many schools are now having students due online homework. This can be an advantage and disadvantage to students. Since my dad is in the military, we have to move, or get new orders every three years. It can be difficult sometimes, especially when we are living out of a hotel and are waiting for a new, military house to become available or when we just got our house and are without our household goods and internet installed yet. Some military families can be living in a hotel up to a year so online homework can be extremely hard for them to complete. I know when I was trapped at the Navy Lodge on Ford Island for four months, it was hard to get all my online homework done on time because I had to share the computer with my brother and I had to have it done by 9:30 PM so I didn't keep my whole family up all night.
Another disadvantage of technology is that sometimes when you are doing a homework assignment, like for Geometry, the program would not like to save or the program would like to go non-responsive on you and will completey erase your work. For example, I was doing a project for Geometry this Monday after baseball practice (8 PM after dinner). Every assignment is due at 11:55 PM on a specific day. I worked on my project for three hours straight, and saved as I went along (so I thought), and saved it one last time and exited out of the program. I went tosubmit my project and it didn't save. So I had to redo some of the project and re-turn it in late the next day.
Even with all those disadvantages, I still recommend having some online assignments, as long as you have an alternative way for that student to complete the assignment if they don't have access to a computer and the internet.
I think the blog was a very useful tool this year because you could see the mistakes you made in front of the class. The blog also gives you a piece of mind of what other people think like so you get to know them.
The glog was great for projects because you could relate things to a certain topic while still personalizing it to fit your style. I honestly recommend you keep the blog and glogster to teach your future classes.
Throughout the year there have been many times we used technology for our lessons. Using technology for school is actually really good because it's something the majority of students use today. This also helps every student better their technology skills for future things they'll need to do. Glogster was a great experience for me. It let me show my creativity in a way I'm good at. I highly recommend you using it again. For students who aren't the best artists it's great because you can express yourself in pictures, backgrounds, and music.
Using technology for assignments is that little break that every student needs from the pencil, and paper. It gives us a reason to really go on the computer, and use our resources. The blog is also great because it gives us a chance to express our opinions. I really enjoy the blog also. In the beginning, we had to make an account, which will help us in the future with jobs, and college. Using technology for our lessons helped me so much this year!
At first im like what how are we going to use computers. Then I learned about teenbiz, snapgrades, and homework on the site. After a while I got used to it and checked the homework to see if i forgot anything. With the blog it was much easier than writing it down.
I think that technology helped me improve a lot this year. When we first started using the blog, I have never got a point for my vocabulary sentence until the 5th or the 6th time we did it. Because we go correct our sentences in class, I kind of got an idea of what I did wrong and how I should improve on it. This also helped me a lot on my vocabulary test because going over it in class, reading other people's sentences and correcting it helped me understand better of the vocabulary words. The blog not just helped me understand better on the vocabulary words, but also how to use the word in a sentence of a theme, how text structures work (Main Idea/Supporting Details, Problem/Solution, Chronological Order, Comparison/Contrast & Cause and Effect), and how literary devices work (simile, metaphor, allusion, personification, irony, symbolism, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, repetition, etc.) Since we also use the blog to help us with some of our works or books (poetry response, invention essay, Chinese Cinderella's responses, "The Outsiders", "Chinese Cinderella"), I think that I improved a lot on responses and I have a better understanding of the books we read. Like the poetry response, I understood better of how poetry and the literary devices work so I was able to understand MY poetry better and I was able to write a great poetry response.
Glogster helped me improve in someways. First, we did the "Peer Relation" glogster. We first did a lesson about peer relations and conformist/non-conformist. After writing down about my peer relationships, I was able to think for the first time about my friends and being a non-conformist. This was also like an opinion about the book "The Outsiders". The other one we did was the Chinese Cinderlla connection and this helped a lot on understanding the book and myself. I think that it also showed my understanding of the book. Glogster is also fun enojoyable to do so I was able to do this project really early and everyone else that doesn't do their work as much was able to do the glogster too.
Other technology like teenbiz also helped me improve. It helped me understand better on an article and I was able to get a good score on activities.
Mrs.Nagaji, I highly reccomend you to use the blog and glogster next year because I'm sure that it'll benefit your new students and it'll help them improve on many things like how I improved during my 2 years of middle school.
i highly recommend you keep on using the same technology throughout your teaching carrier. It will benfit student a lot and is tons of fun even though its more work for you! haha :p. But, i really enjoyed mainly the competition. i liked competing with other periods and winning the prizes. I also like competing in the class to see who could get more words/ points on the blog. It was really fun learning better grammer and how to use different things in my sentences like metaphors, similes, illusions, and some time two at a time! You always challenged me and i always wanted to do all ten words and help out the class. It also made me stride for an "A". Thats why you shouldn't stop the blog!!! The glogster was fun too as wel but not as fun. It took a lot of work in the long run but loked pretty cool at the end with all the animations. i liked expressing my feelings on the glog about the cinderella book and peer relations. i liked to make my golg rwally creative and wack. It was fun so dont stop it either. haha thanks mrs. Nagaji for all your hard technology work this year for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And i highly recommend to use it next year.
I think that this year we started to use technology more often. I honestly like using technology for learning. Using things such as the blog and glog was very interesting. It was a new thing to experience. I thought that it was very amusing. My favorite part of the glog was to see everybody's different glogs. It was amazing to see all the different variations of glogs. I personally would rather do the glog rather than a book project. This is because for the glog, you get to play around with all the different types of texts and backgrounds and everything.
Blog was even more fun than the glog. It was so astonishing to see how aggressive everybody got over just the recognition of winning. I really like how you used many variations for the blog. For example, you had us use our vocabulary word and use a literary device. Also, I remember you had us write some on certain topics. I didn't favor the responses on the blog so much though. I liked trying to beat all the other classes with simple things like metaphors or using irony.
I think that the incoming seventh graders would really enjoy doing this. I encourage you to continue using them next year.
Technology impacted me as a learner a lot this year. It really helped me with my grades and stuff. One thing in particular is Snapgrades. With Snapgrades, I was more aware of my missing assignments and what I needed to improve on. I was able to get better grades than what I got in elementary school.
I think that the Blog is convenient for most students our age because most people our age are on the computer a lot. The competition between the Blog Sentences is a good thing in a way too! It boosts more kids to be more creative with their sentences (by adding more than one vocabulary word/ literary device). Correcting those sentences in class using the Blog also helps everybody learn from someone’s mistake… Not just one person. Lastly, it lets students kind of keep in touch with people that have moved to somewhere else.
I think that the Glog is an interesting project to do. It brings out the creativity of people, especially the people that are into technology. It also shows what kind of music they listen to (or something like that). Last thing really cool about the Glog is that you get to see all the beautiful final products other people have made. That way, it helps some people get a better idea of what suppose to do (kinda).
I really think that the incoming seventh graders would really enjoy these technology stuffies, therefore I greatly encourage you to do this again next year!
I definetely recommend you to use all these different website again & again. To be honest i like using technology more than anything else. Especially for learning. Using the blog & glogster was really interesting because when people made mistakes on the blog it was okay because we all can learn from other people' mistakes too. Some people put humor into their responses too, which made it even better. The best part is when we had competitions on the blog because every single period was very competitive during the challenges & that made a lot more people want to do their homework. For the glogster, it was fun because we got to be creative during those assignments. We also was learning something from other people's book at the same time. It was kind of cool too because we are the only team that uses glogster & blogs. That is how i feel that technology affected my progress in language arts [in a good way].
Overall I think technology has really impacted the way I learn and do things in life. The first time the idea of us-students expressing ourselves in assignments through the Blog and Glog made me feel weird. Then as I went through the assignments through the year I grew a new perspective about these websites. There are two other sites that can annoy at times, but help me at other times too. Those websites are Snapgrades and the school website. Snapgrades has let me know what my progress is daily, but it also gives my parents another reason to patrol my life. The Moanalua Middle School website is awesome because it allows me to check what my homework is. Technology has helped me all this year and I advise my english teacher to keep doing what she is doing with her students.
One reason why I think technology helped me this year because it expanded my vocabulary. Like the challenges for the blog were really frustrating because there was a new challenge every list we got. Technology also helped me with my spelling and grammar corrections. Glogster was the funniest lesson I did because sometimes I got to pick my own theme and song. I also got to talk about a book or a subject.
Honestly, i thought using the glog and blog to help us learn was really weird and pointless.
As the year progressed, i realized that using the blog was helping me correct my writing mistakes. I liked the idea that we took the time during class to help each other correct the mistakes so that we would get better at writing the "perfect sentences" and win. I also noticed that from using the blog so often, i was texting with better punctuation and spelling and such. I thought it was fun seeing how silly the stories could get, and even discover the great poets people had inside of them.
The glog was also interesting to use, even though we didnt use it much. I thought it was just as fun as the blog. (even thought it took a little longer to make) But i also thought it lacked something. Although it was entertaining to see how creative and comfortable some people were with expressing themselves on the glog, i didnt think it was as beneficial to our education as the blog was. I really enjoyed doing it though. I loved seeing how artistic and imaginative i could be while completing the glog. All of our glogs reflected what type of person we are, and i loved seeing that whenever we shared our glogs with each other.
Overall, i would love to hear that you would continue using these websites next year. I think the upcoming 8th graders would have a blast fighting and competing against other periods to be crowned the WINNER for that week. I encourage you to maintain the use of this technology stuff and carry it on to next year's students.
Thank you Mrs. Nagaji for a wonderful 8th grade year. We'll all miss you!
I think that throughout my year of 8th grade, the use of technology has definitely impacted me as a learner this year. The use of technology was good because since many students been using technology often, this was something that could keep them busy and not always go on facebook and etc.
When we first used the blog I found it fun to express my words, thoughts, and feelings. I liked how most often we used the blog to post our vocabulary sentence at first. Posting our vocabulary sentence helped us correct our work together in class, and having that idea on what we did wrong, and what we could do to improve. It has also helped me because you get to have an idea what to write about, and see what your classmates has posted. But just to keep in mind, it didn't just helped with my vocabulary sentence and getting to learn new words, but it also helped me learn different types of literary devices and text structures. Also the blog helped me with my responses which was my biggest fear in English because that isn't my strongest thing to do in English.
With the help of the glogster, it only helped me in some ways. It helped me understand peer relations, non-comformist and conformist. The glogster helped us to express our thoughts, words, and feelings as well. It has also helped us to show our creativity in our pictures, music, and any work that's been done on our glog. Plus, I enjoyed seeing my classmates work on what they have done.
Mrs.Nagaji, I honestly have to say that I highly recommend you keeping the same technology throughout your teaching career. Since it was a great benefit for us for the past two years of middle school, then it would be another great benefit for the next upcoming students. It would bring both learning fun and educational. You should also do that thing where you add up the points with every period and see who wins in the end. Also, you should pass out those grace notes and teenbiz pass to students who deserve it. This was a good break of using paper and pencil. Using technology for our lessons made a big difference in learning and helped me improve alot this year! Thank you Mrs.Nagaji for a wonderful 7th and 8th grade with you. Even if you were a challenging teacher for me, but at least I have tried to fight my way through and pass my middle school years in team 8c Po'okela. The team where we never gave up. Dont worry, I will definitely use your strategies for my high school years, and at least come to visit you once in a while, as well as for the other teachers in team 8c. Also, thanks for helping me improve my English better. Please keep in mind that We will always miss you! (:
I actually thought the idea of the blog was kind of lame at first, but after a while when it started getting competitive it was really fun. Not only did it let us have fun, but also gain lots of knowledge at the same time. I liked how we saw each other’s in class and corrected it so we know what we all have done wrong (if it was wrong). I thought the glog was going to be hard, because I didn’t know where to start. After a while I started to get the idea of it and have lots of fun with it too. I liked how we got to be creative and show ourselves to classmates and learn things that we may have not known, while still using the knowledge that we learned from school. I thought snapgrades was going to be good so I could keep track with my grades instead of it to be a surprise at the end of the quarter. I liked how I could go on it every day whenever I wanted, and most of the time it would be updated so I could see how I did on things I did during the school day.
The blog and glogster helped me in language arts, by helping me with my grammar which was a problem for me before. Not only did it help me with my grammar, but also responses and reflections. Sometimes we will do responses on the blog, and we did reflections on the glog. Those two websites helped me in Language Arts by a great margin; it actually helped me finally get an A in your class!
Yes, I will highly recommend that you continue using them, I’m sure they will benefit your next team like how it benefited me.
The use of technology this year has had it's ups and downs. The ups were that using Teenbiz and the Blog most of the time I didn't have to worry about forgetting my homework because it was online, and the assignments for the Blog and Teenbiz raised my homework percentage by a lot which gave me a better grade overall in language arts. The downs were that if my computer wasn't working I couldn't do my homework, and if I missed a couple blogs it could bring my grade down. Overall I think it helped my grade and I learned a lot from using technology this year.I would recommend using technology next year because it helped my progress in language arts and it made your class a lot of fun(:
The technology has impacted me greatly. It has been a great help to me since i am able to research more informations online. The snapgrades were one of the greatest on online technology, because of their system i was able to check my grades and able to turn in my missing assignments on time.
The blog and the glogster has affected me greatly too. It has help me too see other people's opinions and the way they speak and share their ideas.
I would definitely recommend that you continue using them next year!
At my first thought I thought the use of technology for class work,homework, and projects was a really good idea. The first thing I thought of was how much our generation loves to use the internet in our daily lives. We use technology on a daily basis almost all the time.So to use technology for things other than facbook and youtube and make it a fun thing was clever minded.Education should always be a fun thing and using computers and laptops instead of old fashioned pencil and paper is fun for the student body. And it seems like more people would do thier projects using technology than having to write it down or draw it out. And technology gives us students a more of an open mind.
For example the blog; I think that the blog is way for fun than just going home and wrting a sentence then turning it in. I think that it opens our minds, because when you go on the blog you can see what other people think.And then you have a wider perspective as to what your first mind came up with.
And when we had projects with glogster I really enjoyed that because I felt that I could express myself more freely. For example I could add music to my project .Which I couldn't normally do with a pencil paper project.And I think that it's just more fun, not with just english but with every subject.
The only bad thing about the use of technology when doing work for school is that, when you complete a project and say the power goes out and you lose all that work. Then you have to start all over again. Which can ge very irrataing because I know it has happend to me. But I wouldn stop that from having fun with the use of technology next year.
I hope that you do keep using this blog for next years seventh graders I think that they will enjoy it.Because i had alot of fun with it this year.I think it's a good technique and it's original.Technology has deeply impacted our generation's lives.
I think that technology helped me become a better student this year. I think that because with technology, I could check my homework easily on the Moanalua Middle School website, and I could also check my current grades and missing assignments on SnapGrades. But with technology helping me this year, it also kind of not helped me since when I go on the computer I would always get distracted by something, and that made me lose a lot of time, time that I should be spending on homework.
The use of the blog and glogster affect my progress in language arts. Those two things has affected me because with the blog I could read other peoples posts and compare them to mine, doing that I could check my work, and make sure it was on topic. Glogster has also helped me this year because I could read what other people thought about the topic.
As technology advances, humanity has a growing dependency on it. However, I really enjoy this blog spot. In terms of the blog, it is waaay easier than the classic pencil and paper method. It is also more modern, seeing how many Americans use twitter and facebook (although they tend to overdo it). As for the glog, it is tiring, it takes a lot of work, and it takes a long time, but it is all worth it when you see your finished product. It also reflects a bit of your personality when everyone sees how your glog turns out. All I can say is that my bro would be either really excited or really in need of yours truly when introduced to both the glog and the blog.
At first, the idea of writing on a blog for homework sounded abstruse to me and I didn't really like the idea. However, I have learned that it wasn't all that bad and it enhanced my use of technology greatly. For example, by using so much technology in language arts this year, I have learned how to use different tools on the computer that I never had before. Also, it will definitely help me in high school and later on in life.
The use of the blog and glogster has absolutely improved my learning. Sometimes I was not quite sure how the homework should be done and when I see the other student's post, I know what to do. By knowing what to expect of the homework, has helped my grade and has kept it at a high level. The use of the blog and glogster makes learning fun in language arts and makes it easier to learn new things. Using the blog and glogster is also earth friendly because we don't waste/use paper that kill trees.
I do agree that you continue to use blogs and glogsters next year. Your students will be more knowledgeable in using the computer which will benefit them later in the future. Even if they might not like it at first, they will eventually realize it actually helped them and it is a way to make learning fun. It has definitely helped me.
Post a Comment