Meaningful Technology

     Technology based rubrics are helpful for students and teachers. For students especially with an online class it is easy to see exactly what you are required and how you will be scored. Most teachers do not hand out rubrics and just hive you guidelines. A rubric online is detailed and has exactly what needs to get done  On the other hand, they are not updated that often and usually get reused without being looked at it. It is hard for some people to learn that way because all they are doing is reading something.     
     Clicker technology is something I have experienced in school. I do enjoy doing them and think they introduce a different kind of learning. It gives the class a break from the every day lecture and gives them an opportunity to do something different. It can be limited in the fact that students do not get to verbally talk about the questions and are given options to chose from. It would be had to use in a math class because students would be less motivated to work out the problem to just use mental math instead of working it out. Overall, I do think they are good and are a good activity for students to do.
      Kidspiration and inspiration are good things from what I looked at. It seems that they would both be helpful in collecting thoughts and ideas. It seems like it is good for visual learners and students who need more reinforcement on their assignments or homework. They can actually see the material and make connections with it on the program. They get pictures with descriptions talking about the pictures.
     Overall, I think these technologies would be helpful in a classroom. They give children options of different types of learning. They are all used for different things. Rubrics are good for long term projects or group projects. Clickers are good to assess the children’s knowledge on a subject or a small quiz grade. And the inspiration is good for younger students and I do not see how I could use it in my classroom.

Digital Storytelling

      Digital storytelling is when students use their creative skills to create a storyboard on a paper, use a camera to shoot their video, and finally edit their video on a computer using some software. The students usually combine text, video, graphics, sounds, etc to create their critical thinking skills. The majority of the planning comes in the beginning stages called preproduction. It gives the students the opportunity to produce their ideas on paper before filming. I think it would work in classroom because I have done similar things to this and my own classes and I enjoy it. It is a break regular school work and gives students a chance to work on something outside of the box and be creative with it.
      Other methods suggested in our book to help students in math are to use different kinds of manipulatives, computer graphics to emphasize graphing, and graphing calculators. All of these things will help students to better visualize what exactly is happening when they are working out a math problem. A lot of students know the formula or do as they are told, but do not understand the actual process or why they are doing it that particular way.
      I think that it is possible to learn from TV. It may not be the best way to learn something from the TV, but it can happen. In classroom use, it would be more efficient if the students were given a lecture or information on a topic and then watched a video on it for reinforcement. This way they have more background information on the subject or material they are learning. This way they are not basing all of their learning from the TV and have other knowledge as well.

Jonassen, DJ, Howland, JH, Marra, RM, & Crismond, DC (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.