Recess in Elementary Schools

Recess in Elementary Schools

Emerging Technology #2

For my second Emerging Technology post I decided to use Picnik. Picnik is a free online photo editing and sharing program. Users can crop, edit colors, add frames and stickers, and much more. After a photo looks the way you like it can be uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, or just saved to your computer. I found Picnik very easy to use! You can upload as many pictures as you want to work with. When you pick a photo, the toolbar on the page is very easy to follow and understand. First you do the basic edits such as cropping and color. Then you can move on to make the picture more fancy. You can add text, frames, stickers, and other fun effects. There are tons of options for all the fonts, colors, stickers, frames, and everything! After I created the picture I liked I just saved it to my computer, then I easily uploaded it to this blog. The best part about Picnik is that it is free! And you don't have to sign up or create an account! You just go in, create your picture, save it, and its over! (Of course, you can create an account and pay for some of the premium options.) I think this would be a good way to create pictures to use in a scrapbook. I always see a lot of people post pictures on Facebook that have been edited on Picnik. I reccommend that everyone try it! It's kind of fun! Don't think too hard about it, just go for it and you will probably end up with something you like!

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Critical Thinking paper

            Students all over the country struggle in mathematics. Middle school students in the United States have continually scored lower on mathematics tests than students in other countries (U.S. Department of Education, 2008). This is definitely something to be concerned about. Mathematics is probably the most important subject taught in schools. People need to know how to handle numbers, mostly with money, in order to survive in society. I just heard a story about eight people who went in for a job interview. The interviewees were given a basic math test. Seven of them failed and the one who passed got the job. So, mathematics is a very important subject. Members of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have decided that math can be used as a connector to many subjects (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2002).

            STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is a program designed to come up with ways to integrate and improve students’ performance in these areas. The focus is placed on teacher development, a variety of curriculum, and specific STEM class time (Patton, Cronin, Bassett, & Koppel, 1997).

            Studies and experiments have been developed to test how well subject infusion benefits students. Overall, the results show that infusion is very beneficial to the learners, especially those in the bottom two quartiles (Burghardt & Atkins, 2006). I found it very interesting that students who scored lower in the past had the greatest improvement when taught with infusion methods. I think it is because they learn better with hands-on activities. It seems as though people who score lower on tests tend to find it easier to learn visually rather than from just reading a textbook. Infusion was never specifically pointed out to me in school, but looking back I can think of some times where it was used. I took an economics class that infused mathematics and business a great deal. We had to create a product and figure out how to make it and sell it for a profit. It made using math interactive and almost fun! I find mathematics to be very boring. I do not enjoy looking at a book and solving equation after equation. By integrating the math into the economics class I was able to learn in a much more entertaining way for myself. Learning to use percentages to figure out sales and creating equations to use to solve for the income needed to make a profit was easier to understand when trying to apply it to a real-life situation. I believe using real-life situations is the best way to learn mathematics. I am one of those students who always thought ‘Why do I need to learn this? I’ll never use this information!’ I think a lot of students have this attitude. So when teachers are able to show how we can use it, students are more willing and eager to learn. I think hands-on and visual teaching should be used as much as possible. Almost everything is easier to talk about and think about, rather than to actually do it.

            The Google SketchUp program seems really neat. It was the most interesting idea to me in the article. I tried to think of other ways to add it to the classroom other than as architecture. It’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe it could be used in a creative writing class. Teachers could have students write a story or poem and use Google SketchUp to design the room or house the story is about. It could also play a role in a journalism class. Students could use it to design graphics for the school newspaper. Personally, I am going to play around with it and design my dream bedroom.