Cynthia+Coates

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I feel taking virtual field trips in the classroom is a great way to incorporate learning and technology. The students love technology and they will learn in spite of themselves when taking a virtual field trip. It is also a way to take field trips without involving money for the students. I must admit I would rather go there in person, but if you can’t it is a wonderful alternative.
 * __Virtual Field Trip Response__**

As a Media Specialist, I collaborate with the teachers all the time, and with these virtual field trips it can be a fun way to be an extension to classroom. Since I have 10 computers in my media center, and I am big on research projects, I would have them do a research project using the virtual field trip as one of their sources of information. In addition, I would have the students use print material as well. Doing this would give them a balance of using technology and using print material which I find keeps them engaged in the lesson.


 * __A Teacher Is.....__**

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I thought the learning style survey was very enlightening. I considered myself a visual learner and found out that I am primarily a tactile/kinesthetic learner and a visual nonverbal learner next. I found that most of the strategies that they offered are things that I do. It was amazing to see my behavior in writing, knowing that I actually do these things.

The CAST website had an abundance of information to offer to educators. The Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age had a lot of excellent resources. It is information that can be very useful if you take it a chapter at a time and let that information stick with you. I think it is the type of information that should be printed out and kept where it was easily accessible to be used when planning your lessons. I know printing the document out is not the “going green” way of doing things but sometimes you may not be at a computer when you are thinking about creating a lesson or the power might be out for example. For me, I might like to have the print version. The activities that I participated in did give me some insight as to how and why I do things which will in turn give me some insight to my students.

Differentiation is the “buzz” word today in education and in my school we spent a good amount of time on that subject. I was on the school improvement team and we talked about different things that we could put in place for the students where we could teach the same skill but meet the student where he or she was. One example is the program “StudyIsland”. This is a very good tool for differentiation and it involves technology all at the same time. So I feel the CAST website kind of went along with what we have been working on all year.

I would suggest the CAST website to the teachers and administrators in my school. I think it would be good to use as a focus point for a professional development day where the teachers could go into the computer lab and go through the website on their own and see how things would apply to them, what they could use and incorporate it in their lessons.

Since teachers are so bogged down these days with administrative work, I would like to see more examples, in a user friendly way, for them to really see how it could work for them.