Technology+Resources

=** Technology Resources **=

** Podcasts **
A technology resource I have learned about this week is the podcast. It is a voice recording made by recording a person's voice on the computer. A podcast is used to listen to others ideas and thoughts. People record their voices by using a microphone and recording their voices on the computer and broadcasting the recording to people over the world wide web.

The podcast is a technology based tool that gives people instant access to music, voice recordings, news, and any other information that can be voice recorded and played on or downloaded from the web. In order to use this technology you need a computer, a microphone, and internet access. First you record the voice with a good microphone. Make sure the voice is strong and audible so it will be heard by the people listening. After this is done, the recording is ready to be uploaded to the internet.

Promethean Board
Technology resources are a great way to actively involve children in the classroom. Technology I use in the classroom includes the Promethean Board, digital camera, and UnitedStreamline. I use the promethean board daily to engage my students in their learning. The promethean board is similar to a Smart Board. It is a big screen that is hooked up to the computer. I use it to teach shapes, colors, and letters. My students can participate in sorting shapes and colors. We use real life pictures to sort the objects, for example, a clock for a circle, a windown for a square, a door for a rectangle, and a slice of pizza for a triangle. The students begin to relate shapes to things in their environment. My young students get so excited to use the promethean board. They look interacting and using the pen to write on the board. I have also found that when using the promethean board my students want to practice writing the letter of the week. Giving them a pencil and a piece of paper is boring for them. Creating the letter on the board is more meaningful because they are using 21st century technology and doing it interactively. We also match pictures that begin with the specific letter. It is a great visual for the students when we are looking at the letter and words that begin with that letter. To use the promethean board, you simply need it hooked to your computer. You turn the screen on and pull up the active software for making documents. You can create new documents and use it as a white board, or you can have slideshows previously created by the teacher. These slide shows would be things such as sorting shapes and colors. I would already have the large shapes drawn and pictures at the bottom for them to sort. The promethean board comes with a pen to use to interactively write on the screen. This piece of technology is even great for creating the morning message and having students interact and work on reading and writing skills. While using markers on a white board used to be so exciting for us, using the marker to write on the promethean board while choosing different colors and such is exciting for our children today.

Web Pages
Web pages have been in existence for a very long time, since the birth of the Interent going public in the late 1980s. Web pages are used to display and retrieve data. Originally, the concept of the Internet was used for military purposes in the 1960s. However, as technology improved, so did the Internet. Today, almost everyone in the world has viewed at least one Web page. When people figured out how to create their own Web pages, the number of Web sites grew almost exponentially. Today, Web pages are not the only thing out there. With the idea of Web 2.0 and 3.0, you can do almost everyhing over the Interent without purchasing any programs. For example, you can use Google Docs to create documents like you would in Microsoft Office.

The great thing about creating Web pages is it does not cost much to create. In fact, you have the programs on every computer to create a Web page. All you need is a Web browser and Notepad (for Windows) and that's it. The next thing you would need to do is create a Web page using HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This is a time consuming process because it is a program language you will need to learn. If you do not have the time but have the money, you can use Microsoft Word or Adobe Dreamweaver, the best Web design program on the market.