Assigned Blog Week 3

I have seen technology be very helpful in many of my college classes. For example, in TE 401 this week, we took a field trip to the MSU Children's gardens, and I was amazed at how much technology was integrated into that experience. When children come to visit these gardens on field trips, each of them are given a camera to take pictures of all of their favorite parts of the garden. What our guide told us was that there is no point in taking pictures if you are never going to do anything with them. Therefore, he uploads all of these pictures online so that the kids can view them, show their family and friends, and even print them off if they choose to.

It is also extremely important to the staff at the children's gardens to make the children feel connected, even in between their visits there. Therefore, every class that goes to the gardens has their own website called the "Wonderwall" where they can post science related questions, and expect answers to their questions to be posted within 24 hours. The children can also draw pictures to place on the wonderwall, and when there is more than one person in class on the wonderwall at once, the students can crash their lightning shaped cursors together in order to create thunder. Combining all of these elements makes this a fun program for the children, that they will want to come back to again and again. However, before the children are allowed to use this site, their teachers have to talk to them about the site being a privlidge. If any of the students post anything inappropriate, then their whole class will lose the privlige of using the website within about five minutes of the post being submitted, and their teacher will recieve a phone call about the student's inappropriate behavior.

There are two things that struck me about the technology that the children's garden is employing. The first was that they are very trusting of children. They gave the kids digital cameras to play with and allowed them to poste whatever they want on the wonderwall, trusting that the children would act responsibly. What I have observed is that when they give children these responsibilities, the students do not take them lightly. No elementary student has ever broken one of the digital cameras at the 4-H Children's Gardens, and there have only ever been two incidences of inappropriate posts on the wonderwall, both from students of the same class. The second thing that struck me was how much time the children's gardens were willing to put into developing technology that will be an effective way of reaching out to students. It takes someone a lot of time to make sure that all of the children's questions get answered within 24 hours, but it is important for children to know that it is good to wonder about the world and thatthere is a place that they can go in order to get their questions answered.

The final thing that the MSU Children's Gardens employ technology for is the creation of their website. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, you should do so. The link is http://4hgarden.msu.edu/kidstour/tour.html. When you follow that link, you will see an interactive map of the gardens with yellow dots that you can click on. When you click on a dot, it takes you to a specific place in the garden, and there are educational games that you can play at each particular spot. This is another fun way for children to feel connected with the gardens even after they have left.

My lesson design and instruction in deaf education course also utilizes technology in order to allow students in Hawaii and Guam to take our course as well. The professor's lecture is videotaped and viewed by these students. Since some of them are, themselves deaf, there are interpreters in my classroom who sign in front of a camera which is then broadcast to the students in Guam and Hawaii. This not only helps these students, out of state, but also helps me because I can go back an listen to parts of the lecture that I didn't really understand the first time. I can also improve my receptive ASL skills by watching the lecture in sign language. Finally, I am having my first experience with i-chat later tonight when I will be meeting the members for my group project who live in Guam and Hawaii. However, because of the time difference between these two places, it was very difficult to set up a meeting time. However, I believe that it is very beneficial to use technology to enable us to form groups with other students outside of our class; they will no doubt have different experiences with deaf children because the environment where they live is very different than my home environment. By comparing our experiences with their classroom experiences, we can broaden our perspectives on deaf education.