Learning with Technology is FUN

Greetings parents, grandparents, and friends of our class,

I would like to thank you all who have put time and effort into joining us in our school blog. It is us who are here that make the education of our children important. We know that as time passes there are dramatic changes that some of us don’t agree with. However today I would like to show our families and friends how technology today is an important process in our student’s life. I need the help of our parents to make our PTA a strong force to help raise funds to better the technology in our classrooms.

I know most of today’s parents think that our children are just using the Internet for entertainment. Yes that can be true but there are many other things that our children can do while on the internet. The following website is and educational website that students k-3 can use to learn alphabet and reading it is http://starfalls.com  the web site is free and parents I encourage you to visit it with your children. There are also many programs that can be bought to help our students today. Micro soft office student edition has all the essentials needed for most students to write reports, PowerPoint’s, and excel. These programs help them in the educational learn process. Our society is depending more and more on technology that we as teachers and parents need to allow our children to explore it.

We all know that theory is what our education is about. Theorist all have different ideas in how our children learn and what is best for them. I want to inform you about two theorists who have very similar ideas in how the learning process takes places. First Robert Gagne, his theory is that all of these learning conditions “require different teaching methods since each of the skills are also different in origin, use, analysis, and synthesis” (Klinger, 1999). This being that all of our children are different and will learn differently. “Gagne identifies five major categories of learning: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes” All of these different learning categories also remind me of another theorists who also thought that every child learned differently. Howard Gardner, there are nine types of intelligences according to Gardner. They are as followed:

1. Visual: Students learn by seeing.
2. Verbal: Students learn by hearing and writing.
3. Mathematical: Students learn by problem solving.
4. Musical: Students learn by hearing rhythms and patterns.
5. Bodily: Students learn by doing.
6. Interpersonal: Students learn by working with other students.
7. Intrapersonal: Students learn by working on their own.
8. Naturalist: Students learn by comparing and contrasting things.
9. Existential: Students learn by making connections between themselves and the things they learn. (McKenzie, 1999)

So the two theorists both believe that there are different ways a child can learn. With reading and writing the computer can be helpful in almost all of the intelligences that Gardner has mentions. The starfall web site enables the child to see the word that they are reading and also says the word out loud. So this will help with the visual and verbal learner. So not only as a teacher but you as parents need to see that our future depends on what our children learn today. For older students Microsoft office has the programs to teach them to write correctly and gives them the ability to use their hands and eyes to see what they are working on.

Parents I would just like to thank you for the time you have spent in reading our blog and want to encourage you that our PTA needs all of your support to make the future for our children happen.

Thank you and hope to hear from you all soon,

Ms. Gonzalez

References:

Grabe, M. & Grabe, C. (2007).  Integrating technology for meaningful learning. (5^th ed.).  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Co.

Klinger, K. (1999). EDX 1201x: Unit 2: Lecture. La Jolla, CA: National University Online. Retrieved January 18, 2009, from National University Online

EDX 1201x website

McKenzie, Walter. It’s Not How Smart You Are, It’s How You Are Smart! Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 1999. Retrieved January 18, 2009 from http://surfaquarium.com/MI/overview.htm

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.