Reflection

I had the problem of coordinating a whole school's class webpage, including full administrator privileges for the right people (administrators) and good security. I found the solution in the capabilities of moodle beyond what I thought it could do, including six different levels of access (administrator, class-creator, teacher, non-editing teacher, student and guest) for better control and security for grades, student contact information, etc. Moodle, with built-in security and access levels, is much easier and faster to use to coordinate many teachers teaching one class (Physics One, for example) or giving limited access to an aide (non-editing teacher) or just having college students learn what a class website entails (guest). It was eye-opening also on how complex the world of a school can be, with coordinating schedules of the students and the teachers to make sure everything works well.

PS My PPT is taking a long time to upload but should embed within a few minutes.

Revision of Final Project

I decided, upon further exploring Moodle, from a high school teacher's perspective( having gotten access to my mentor teacher's class websites) rather than just a college class TA (where I had limited access), that I could do my project on this grading/class management program instead.

Final Post

• How have you used technology to increase your knowledge in your content area?

I use technology all the time to increase my knowledge of physics. For my more advanced classes, I use computer programs often to help with the hard math or to graph for me. I have previously used simulations for physical events or systems such as circuits or nuclear reactions. When I need to refresh myself on more basic topics, I often will quickly look up formulas on wikipedia or a college professor's webpage. It is faster and more comprehensive than looking things up in my old textbooks.

• How have you used technology to collaborate with classmates?

Most of the collaboration I have done with classmates has just been messages back and forth via email or sometimes Facebook. Often we will include attachments so that we can see the formatted document quickly and easily. I have also used Google Docs to make a document or project available for modifying online.

• How might you use technology in your classroom?

I really like the variety of effort physicists around the world have put into education. I think a physics classroom can really become insular, forgetting that there is a huge world out there, of a) physics going on everywhere and of b) physicists ready to help the next generations. Two main ways to tap those resources is through simulations (developed by many different professors and scientists), because we can't put a nuclear reactor in the classroom but we can put a rather good simulations, and through video chat. If a professor doing research at a collider can get Skype or Youtube access (pretty easy, I'd think), they can communicate with your students and show them the cutting edge research.

• What did you learn in this class?

One main thing I learned is that technology can only improve your teaching through good preparation. Youtube or Blogger or Moodle are easy but can't be learned over night. Also technology problems are a big issue and you have to have learned everything well ahead of time and taken care of any technology problems.

• What will you use that you have learned in this class?

I think making the class website was the most valuable part of this class. I really needed to hammer out good ideas for calendars, class syllabi, homework help, and on top of that, get all the technology to work. I think that will be huge as I become a full-time teacher.

Project 3 Technology

I am going to do Project 3 on SkyWard. It seems like a typical student management program, useful for recording attendence, posting a calendar, or recording grades, but another physics teaching friend pointed out the integration of Special Education paperwork into the program. So, one can find IEPs and other information on what special needs students have right by their names on Skyward. I want to explore how that will streamline the process of keeping track of and giving special attention to students with disabilites. There will be hundreds of students over the years with various disabilities and it will be vary useful to have a more foolproof way of organizing and displaying (to myself , counselors, administrators and anyone with a need to know) Special Ed information for students.

How does a teacher protect his or her students on the Internet? I think this will become a more and more crucial problem as grading and lesson plans are as often as not done on a website. I think the biggest things we can do is use a good class management site/program that is secure. The students' grades (academic internet safety) and possibly contact info (identity internet safety) are on these sites. Keep your own computer password protected and your room locked too!

IP&T Movie

This video will help me teach about collisions and momentum since I can't use a pool table or have car crashes in a classroom.

I skyped with my sister Amanda who lives in New York. It was pretty straightforward to do but our Internet is pretty unreliable so we couldn't chat very long. I think the technology could be very useful in the classroom especially for an expert talking to the students. Say you wanted to have a university professor of physics talk to the students but the only ones you knew were 2000 miles away at BYU, so you could skype and they could show some of their equipment or even some of the research experiments in progress without the safety hazards and travel expenses. I would definitely do this as my only contacts with physics professors right now are at BYU and I plan to teach in Pennsylvania. I also have a brother-in-law who is physics PhD and a hurricane expert for NASA and he works in Maryland. It would be possible but not easy for him to visit a class so I could skype with him and he could talk about some of the actual applications of physics today.