What do you get with Alice, iTunes, and Ipods?

Dr. Alice Christie's Research Publications and Resources

Using Technology to Enhance Literacy in Elementary School Children is the link I chose to blog about. I am going to be an elementary school teacher, so I decided to look at this topic. I learned that you can use the internet to help students with their writing and communication abilities. She did a study on kids to see how they improved with their writing. She used second through fifth graders in the study. The average age was nine years, one month. She let them use internet browsers and emails to communicate with each other. I think this idea of letting kids email and browse to communicate is a wonderful idea. Letting kids blog is also a good way to improve writing. They will see what they are doing wrong, revise it, and type it again, and this improves their writing skills.

The browsing of the internet is helpful because we are starting to show kids how to research information early. They will be able to learn these resourceful skills early, and later it will just come naturally. She gave proof on this website of the kids improving their learning skills on web browsing.

Itunes Univerisity (iTunesU)

If you need information on how to use iTunesU: click here

ItunesU is a very helpful application on itunes. It will be helpful to both students and teachers. The way it helps students is that they could look up their lesson and other instructional information on their topics. If a student is sick a professor could put the lesson on the itunes program, and the student could listen to it and not get behind. It is also easy to download on an ipod so a student can take the lesson everywhere.

ItunesU is also helpful for teachers because they can continue to learn after leaving college. They can listen and download podcast to continue to research various topics. Teachers can use it to continue to further their educational purposes by keeping up to date on materials. They can also use it to supply students with lectures, so the student will not get behind when sick.

Ipods

Need help on using ipods for instuction? Click here

Ipods are more than a device for music and enjoyment. These days teachers are using ipods for instruction in the classroom. At Duke University, they supplied 1,650 ipods to students as an experiment and asked them to use them inside and outside of the classroom and these were some of the ways the ipods were used. They used the ipods to record lectures or information about projects. The students also used them to get a better comprehension on foreign language, because they could constantly listen, and hearing a language makes it easier to retain the information for later.

The ipod can be used for personal use as well. Students were using their ipods to put dates of major events for academic and personal events in a calendar application on the ipod. The students could put emergency numbers in their contact list; in case of emergency the phone numbers would be there. Students used it for an alarm to wake up in the morning. Ipods were also used as an external hard drive to back up computer files or to transfer files from one computer to another.

Click here to learn more about the Duke Ipod Experiment