Can cellphones be used in teaching???

The church I attend has been having us use our cellphones to give our opinions recently and it made me wonder about using cell phones in our own classrooms one day. I mean, everybody is going to have on soon if they dont at this point, many young kids have them when I got mine in high school, its crazy! Although I dont think that cell phones have a place in every situation, I think that they could be effective and useful in some situations. Just like in church, they can be very useful in giving and opinion on something and it can be fully anonymous. I was trying to look for other ways to use cellphones in a classroom and when I was researching, I found that people had been using them as resources like calculators, dictionaries, cameras and using the internet as a tool! Even though we could say that is a problem and distraction, it can also be very useful when some schools are not able to have them in their classrooms. You can have a group research something and not have to go to the computer lab, although activities including the cellphones would have to be planned thoroughly, it could be of a great use of a resource to teachers! Think about it! Its a new generation and even more new technology...how can we use it to our advantage??

iClickers

iClickers are relatively new to me. I have used them in two of my classes being here at Michigan State. I really liked using them but it had some major disadvantages as far as using them for learning goes in my classes they were used in. My first class was a lecture for an astronomy class and the questions were very hard and so you were just seeing what the majority of people were saying, and not worried about if you understood it or not, you just wanted to be right. They were not participation points, they were graded so you were more concerned about if you were right for your grade instead of why the answer was what it was. So that made a lot of cheating and guessing which did not enrich my learning of that class. In addition, students did not come to class because they would just give the iClicker to their friends and they were rotate just so that someone could click in their answers for them, you did not have to be present in class which does not enrich or help learning at all.
I understand that its good to grade the responses for iClickers because then that gives them incentive to guess right but at the same time, it can make students more concentrated on the grade then the material.
In my second class I used them in, they were used in groups and we could discuss with our group and then we would click in our responses and they were not graded but were instead participation points. This was a lab so showing up for class meant that you would also have to do the lab which had to be turned into the teacher at the end, so skipping class was not really an option. We did use them but not a ton, but I really liked that they could use the responses and then show us to see how the others compared. The step that this teacher took that my other one did not was that they would ask each group what they picked and their reasons for picking it before they would say the right answer so each group really spent time thinking about it instead of guessing, even though it was only for participation points.
I think that if you plan out the best way to use the iClickers, like my second class professor did, then they can be great tools for teaching effectively. As for the grade, I think that most ages can use these because kids are much better at using technology than we were and they continue to get better every year.
-when I was in fifth grade we did a similar thing in a math lesson and we would click in the right answer with little buzzers using a multiple choice question and so I think that upper elementary and so forth would benefit from using these if they are well thought out and organized.

I love baking

I love baking and was trying to think of ways in which to incorporate baking into teaching. Do you think that is a good idea with kids having different food allergies or do you think it could be a really good idea? I love doing things that are interactive and along with technology, I wanted to do things that are hands on that kids would also love doing because of the outcome. If it is food, they would be really inspired to actually do the project or work because food would be the outcome.
thoughts?

So Cluttered

As I am trying to keep my hold on all of the new technologies and web pages and blogs and search places, I am realizing how cluttered and un-organized all of places are. I would love to get the chance to organize all of it, because I cant stand when things are un-organized and so the fact that all my organization online does not exist is almost stressful for me. I am trying to figure out the best way for me to organize it all...

Trouble with technology

Speaking of technology, I really struggled with figuring out Photoshop...I could not figure out how to embed my slide show into my blog post. I think that I generally think things are much harder than they actually are and after some help from my friend, I realized how easy it actually is. I learned you have to go to share and then publish and its pretty simple from there on out. It is really cool to be able to use this blogger to share much information in many different ways. I cant wait till I am going to get to use all of this technology in my teaching some day to make my teaching the most efficient as possible.

Photoshop.com Album: My photos

Learning how to use Photoshop

I have had previous experience with Picnik but never any other photo editing site, but I recently learned how to use Photoshop in my class. It took me a while to figure it out, but I love a challenge:) This is a slide show which consists of three landmarks in my developing understanding of technology. The first picture is from Macinaw City and I took it and copyrighted it (as shown in an earlier post). The other two pictures are my screen shots I learned to take. The black and white one is me using Picnik to edit it. Hope you enjoy!
(featured above)