Week of February 12 - Blog

Chapter 5
Chapter 5 was a little overwhelming with so many types of software. I feel a bit of information overload. K. I enjoyed finding out that so many different options are available to educators , however I do not see how one keep update on all of them. Not to mention that they change or come out with new things all the time. I guess that is kind of point of technology integration, to learn to learn and to be able to adapt and change. I felt that some of the software programs were a little to specific and several things could be accomplished with fewer programs with a little more training. I did like the idea of lesson plan, rubric, and test generators. These programs seem like they could really assist in some of the paperwork teachers have to manage. I do not know how much these various programs cost, but if they are expensive, I was thinking that schools could have a lab for just teachers. That way they could share the computers and software. They could even create “libraries” that could be shared. This chapter also made me thing about Group 2’s Venn diagram, how is it was divided into Student, Teacher and Both categories. I put the programs from this chapter into those categories and came up with the following:


Students
· Electronic encyclopedias
· Electronic Atlases and mapping tools
· Electronic dictionaries and thesauruses
· CAD
· Music editors, sequencers, and MIDI tools
· Microcomputer-based labs, graphic calculators, and calculator-based labs
· GIS/GPS
Both
· Desktop Publishers
· Graphic Document makers
· PDF and forms makers
· Statistical packages
· Computer-based testing systems.
· Draw/Paint Programs
· Image editing tools
· Charting/Graphing tools
· Clipart, animation, sound , video, and font collection
· Outlining and Concept Mapping

Teachers
· Test Generators
· Rubric Generators
· Worksheet and puzzle generators
· IEP Generators
· Electronic Gradebooks
· Student Information systems
· Student Response Systems
· Lesson planners
· Scheduling and time management tools
· Reading Tools


Some of these arguably could have been more in the “both” category, for example a test generators is used by the teacher to create a test, but the students are the ones taking the test.
In conclusion, there are a lot of tools available to educators, it may be time consuming to evaluate them all and learn to use them, however some can not be ingnored because of the value they bring to the classroom.