EDEL 3250 Field Experience Service Learning Project

EDEL 3250 Field Experience Service Learning Project
Heather Allan and Elisa Kelson
November 28, 2010


1) Our first meeting with our cooperating teacher was the first week of November.
2) After discussing the curriculum our class would be studying during our field experience we decided with our cooperative teacher to create a digital story about Utah’s geologic features.
3) We started our digital story in the computer lab at UVU and continued work with our story at home on our personal computers. By downloading the photo story directly to our computers we were able to create and edit our digital story at home, making it much more efficient than trying to find times to meet in the computer lab.
4) We showed our digital story during the last lesson we taught about Utah Geography. We used it to give the students another overview of all of Utah’s geographic features before they started creating their Utah geography salt dough maps. The students loved the digital story and thought it was great to hear our voices on the movie. They enjoyed watching the digital story and it kept their attention as well as refreshed their memories of the different areas and landforms. The coordinating teacher as well as our field supervisor who observed our lesson both commented on what a great movie we had created.
5) We talked with our coordinating teacher about technology in the classroom and talked to her about creating a link to her blog and website, as well as telling her about the photo story program we created our story with. Our coordinating teacher used a apple computer so she would have to create her digital story with a different program. She enjoyed our digital story and the other vidcasts we created to supplement our lessons, but she didn’t use technology in her classroom very much the only equipment she used was the over head projector.
6) A) By going into this classroom we were able to show the cooperative teacher current technology could help enrich her lessons and help provide her students with more learning experiences. We could help her by sharing the information we have on creating digital stories and vidcasts along with giving her assistance in setting up her classroom blog and it’s links in her Canyon’s School District site.
b) By working in this classroom and seeing the need we were able to address a need in our community and assist in providing additional help in this classroom.
c) In working in this classroom we became very aware of the need for additional help in this grade level, since most of the classes were set at 31 students.

7) We were assigned to work at the Willow Springs Elementary located in Draper, Utah in the Canyons School District. This was a new school built only four years ago in a new urban higher income area. Our assignment was to work with Miss Crista Holt in the 4th grade. Our class had 31 students, with 18 boys and 22 girls.
We enjoyed working with Miss Holt and felt that she appreciated our help in the classroom. We assisted her in various areas with; reading groups, spelling groups, and math groups. She was good to communicate with us and let us know what she needed and also very easy to work with and helpful. We treated Miss Holt with respect and professionally and she returned that same respect to us.
She liked our digital story we created but I don’t know if she will herself create something of that nature. She didn’t use very much technology in her classroom and was only interested in having us help her in creating a blog link from her Canyon’s School District site to her blogger account. She seemed always so busy she was unable to devote the time necessary to create and use this type of technology.
She said our lesson was well done, and gave us positive feedback on it. She was always very supportive of our lessons and good to give us helpful hints to improve. We provided many lessons during our field experience teaching more than 8 different lessons over the three week period.
The training session was alright, she only had about 5 minutes in the morning before the students arrived. She was constantly busy creating her team lesson plan for the day, they made their plans for teaching each morning and lunch hour. We were able to discuss technology and talk about how we created our digital story and how she could put links to vidcasts and podcasts on her professional site. She was interested in putting links into her Canyon’s Site which could link her students and parents to her blogger account. We helped give her ideas of how to accomplish this.
This was a good experience and gave us the opportunity to discuss the tools we have already learned in our computer technology course with another teacher. Our cooperative teacher had also attended UVU four years prior, but her computer course was very basic and she said she had learned very little. I feel very fortunate to have had to opportunity to learn so much about technology over the past two semesters. Technology is such a benefit if used correctly in the classroom. It opens windows and minds to new ideas and gives everyone the tools to success.
Together our cooperative teacher and we were able to have a positive experience working in a classroom collaborating information with each other. As student teachers we gained the experience and were able to observe Miss Holt’s teaching style, and Miss Holt was able to observe the use of technology new to her used in the classroom to enrich our lesson. I felt we both gained knowledge from each other. It was a great experience for everyone.
During our field experience we were able to observe many areas involved in teaching. We were able to create interesting lessons, digital stories, and also use our interpersonal skills to help guide our students and help them learn and understand.
This was a great experience and totally worth the time and effort. We learned so much and enjoyed the chance to experience teaching first hand. We had many learning opportunities and experiences which helped us better understand and will continue to help us grow and develop into highly qualified teachers.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fETsgsoInYphPRXYoLjRAEJ2j_vzcP55Xitqlh_fdYQ/edit?hl=en

Final Field Experience Blog

What? The past three weeks I have had the most amazing time student teaching at Willow Springs Elementary in Draper, Utah. We were assigned to a fourth grade class with 30 students. It was a very exciting experience and I learned so much. We had a wonderful time teaching and being able to see our university lessons played out in classroom experiences. Great to see how the students responded to us and how we could create lessons which they could understand and enjoy. In looking back the most important areas that I noticed affecting our lessons were classroom management, lesson direction, expectation of students, and computer technology incorporated into our lessons. When I learn to master these areas I will know I am ready to go out into the world and teach. Our students loved the technology we used in the classroom, especially the YouTube digital stories we used to supplement our lessons. They thought it was great, and it held their attention so well. Also with the problem of teaching about geography without a map in the classroom (our class maps were broken during our visit), that was interesting. Thank goodness for technology, and being able to modify and think of other methods to teach. We were able to pull up examples of maps and different slides relating to our lesson so we were still able to teach the students about Utah Geography.

So What? Now we are starting to work on our Student Teacher Sample and the other various assignments relating to our teaching experience. This is a long process and it is such a blessing to be able to understand computer technology—so I am able to work more efficiently with my partner, and also I am able to create interesting projects with all of the tools I have learned from Doc Waters during the past two semesters. It’s a long process, but I’m not worried, I feel very confident in my knowledge of computer skills and I feel so lucky I was able to take this course. I loved my teaching experience and am so excited to start teaching and get out into the field and work. I have worked in many fields over the course of my life, and at 43 it is so nice to be back in school training to do something I love, and that will make the difference in the lives of children and in our community and world.

Then What? I am now thinking of all of the fun I am going to have this summer. I will be taking a million pictures and videos of every experience my family has in camping, traveling around the state—so I will be able to create some neat digital stories and virtual field trips for my future classes. In working with the students I can see how they enjoy seeing these digital stories and its fun to put in some of my own pictures and my own children so they can relate to the stories better. Plus we go to a lot of different interesting places I want my future students to see and experience. I am going to use my technology skills to start working on building an amazing site, which my future students and their parents will be able to easily use. As I worked in this class I could see all of the different areas which could have been improved by including more technology into the teaching and into the administration of the classroom. The possibilities are endless and I am so excited to jump in—Thanks Doc Waters for giving me the knowledge and the “spirit of discovery” to be able to learn and love computer technology in the classroom.

Field Experience Week 3

What? This was our last week in the classroom. We had a great experience and were able to use technology throughout our classroom time. We did continue to have technical issues with showing our information because of school Internet connections and so forth, but eventually we were able to have our final digital story work without a problem. The students enjoyed the digital story and thought it was cool to hear our voices recorded into our video- that was fun. They also enjoyed the pictures and picked up information from the narration. This helped them in being able to retain the information for the assessments and to be able to understand more of the different features. Over the week we created many different slide shows and information video clips for the students. This worked well and helped to enhance our lessons with large pictures the students could see well. Small printed pictures wouldn't have had the same impact. The students wouldn’t not have been able to see the pictures well and it wouldn’t have been as effective in teaching. Especially since our classroom maps weren’t working during our field experience. We talked with our cooperative teacher about technology and her main question was how to create a blog and link it to her Canyon's Site. We came in early and helped her look at options.

So What? As we looked at the blog she already had created and then saw her site, we realized it was probably most effective to put a text box into her Canyons School District Site with a link that would take her students and their parents directly into her blog. She doesn't use technology in the classroom but I think if she had more time to research and work with the different technology she would incorporate it into her lessons. I don't feel like any of her 4th grade team use technology and where she is new I assume she is just following their lead. I think they could really use a math resource site with games and additional information for the students and their parents about the math concepts they are studying, the students continue to struggle with the basic facts, addition, multiplication, subtraction, division--even though they are teaching them algebra. By giving the students a site where they could practice their basic skills maybe the students would be able to catch up and understand better.

Then What? I enjoyed my field experience and I also enjoyed being able to understand and be able to easily create digital stories to enhance my lessons. I feel that there are so many areas I will be able to incorporate technology into my classroom, the possibilities are endless. I plan to create sites to help with educating my students and games and links to help them practice and build their basic knowledge. I also love the idea of being able to communicate with my students and parents through a website, and I feel this gives them the opportunity to ask questions and understand the goals of my classroom. I also like the idea of giving my students the opportunity to learn technology themselves and help them understand these tools. By learning now they will be able to use these tools as they continue through school and it will help them work more effectively and also enhance their learning.

Week II Field Experiences

What? This week we started our actual teaching and were able to use technology with our lesson. We created a digital story about Lake Bonneville. Since our computers are not apples we weren’t able to directly play our video from our files, but we were able to upload our movie into YouTube and play it that way. This worked well and we were able to give the students an interesting look at the Prehistoric Lake Bonneville. The students enjoyed the visual effects and music with the movie and I think it really was the hook to get them interested in the subject and turn on their minds to learning.

So What? As we discovered our class needed some additional teaching on understanding maps, and their “global address” we were able to create additional digital movies which helped us explain and show through pictures where they are located in the universe. It was great to be able to create additional educational videos to match the new lesson we needed to create. I continue to enjoy the speed of working with movie maker—and I really like the special effects it offers. The kids love the special effects. We also were able to use the over head projector with our lesson; this helped us be able to show maps from their texts on the board, and other maps in books. I love the projector—it’s a great invention.

Then What? We talked with our coordinating teacher and we will be helping her set up a blog so she will be able to communicate better with her students and their parents. I think it is very exciting to be working in the field and seeing what a great benefit technology adds to our lessons and to teaching. I am so glad we have had the experience to learn all of these technology tools they are such a great skill to possess as a teacher. I will definitely be using more technology with my teaching this week, and I am not afraid to create other digital clips in a pinch. I love working in all of these different technology areas. The one thing I am looking at now would be purchasing an apple computer system. It’s been a great week.

Classroom Field Experience 11/5/10

What? This week we finished off our last two days of class preparing to go into the field and work in the classroom. We will be teaching five social studies lessons, and two arts lessons along with talking about technology with our cooperative teacher. It has been a good experience so far, and we have been able to observe for two days, then we will be presenting our lesson on Monday through Friday. Technology in the class has not been that impressive, even though this is a new facility. They are trying to do the announcements over a link, which our teacher hasn’t been able to coordinate the site or time— so our class hasn’t heard announcements all week and they haven’t participated as a class in the Pledge of Allegiance. This is when I would just do it the “old fashioned way” until they worked out the bugs. They do have an overhead projector with a reflective projector, that makes it easy to show your material to the students, I liked that. They didn’t however, have a microphone for the teacher—I felt like you couldn’t hear our teacher very well because she was soft spoken, I think it would be a huge benefit to the students in the back of the room to hear every word by amplifying her voice. The teacher has good control of the class though, and is doing a good job with her students—she just needs to incorporate some music and videos into the classroom, I think it would help enrich the students experience and help them enjoy class more.

So What? I plan to help encourage music and video’s by introducing them with our lesson on the geographic features of Utah. We had created a vidcast which we will use to help acquaint the students with Utah. Our video has interesting music and a variety of different pictures of Utah’s geographic features that will help the students see exactly what we are talking about. I would also like to bring some music into the classroom by giving them some transition music between subjects, and maybe even bring in some brain boosters to help the students get out their wiggles and then be prepared to start into the next lesson. We worked together as a class learning the new math methods on multiplication. I was glad I'd had Math 2010, because I didn't learn math like that when I was in school. I thought it would be very helpful for the students to have a link which their parents could watch on their home computers so they could understand the math problems they were working on. And also the link could have example problems and practice problems the students could work with and expand their knowledge at home.

Then What? I would put a link on my education site, so they could see what we did, and how to work through the problems. With the new math, I think it is important to empower our parents and students with the knowledge and tools to be able to understand and work together at home. By giving our students and their families example video's and practice problems we can help educate the parents to understand and be able to help their child. By working directly with their child parents can build their relationships with their children, and helping them complete their assignments and eventually succeed. If you are an “older” parent math is different than when we were in school, we just worked through problems using algorithms. Now the students are taught to understand bases, break out and many different methods which help the students form a deeper understanding. As a parent I would have had no idea what they were talking about, but by seeing a tutorial on these methods I could have learned along with my child, and we both could have gained this knowledge together. Great plan to encourage math to be “fun” if the students can work with parents, and also great for the parents to feel good about understanding and being involved in their child’s learning.