Hardware and Education

Chapter 4 talks about all the different hardware available for educators. As educators these days, we must keep up with the changing society so our students won’t think we are old school as well as to keep our students engaged in our lessons. In the chapter I learned about ASCII which is the most commonly used coding scheme for representing data on computers. I also learned about the different components of the system unit, like the motherboard, the CPU, memory, ports and connectors, and so much more. All of which I have heard of before and just pretended like I knew about them, which I knew nothing at all. This chapter really helped clarify things and now when I hear these terms I can put in some of my input. Also in the chapter I found out there was more input and output devices then I would have ever imagined. I thought the only input device was the keyboard but come to find out there is so much more then I would have realized, and most of them I have used. For the output devices I knew a little bit more but was still shocked to find out how many devices there really was. This chapter also goes into a lot of detail about storage, and all the different devices you can use as storage. Reading through this section, I realized that I have used pretty much everyone, with one or two exceptions. As an educator, you much familiarize yourself with the different types of storage as you will be constantly using them to get your ideas back and forth from home to school and vice versa. Also some computers now-a-days don’t have floppy disk drives and if that is what you are using then you much know how to use a cd-rom drive instead.
Just last week I have started an experiment for one of my classes. This experiment is going to looking at sea urchins and if they have a preference for decorating with shells in three different areas. The three areas are a sandy bottom, out in the open, at the edge of the sea grass bed (there normal habitat), where they are susceptible to predators, and in the middle of the sea grass bed. As a scientist I would think that in the sandy bottom area they would decorate more since they are the most exposed and need to hid from predators. But to come to a conclusion I must do a couple of experiments first. Once I collect my data, I input it into Microsoft Excel and from there am able to do a regression line, find an R2 value and see if my data is significant. This is just a small example of how I will be using technology in my future.
Since my last posting I have learned a new program called Inspiration. This program is very interesting and neat to learn about. I never really have used organizational charts before, unless you count the F-CAT where you are trained to do it before you start your writing. I had always seen them done in the books and thought they looked very professional, never giving them more than a thought. Inspiration really opened my eyes to this new way to teaching/learning and once I got the hang of it and understood how it worked and what is should look it, then it was very easy and ideas just started pouring out of me. As an educator, especially one going into the science field, this method of teaching seems like it would be a good asset to my classroom. Things like the water cycle, or the scientific method would be very easy to demonstrate using these organizational charts.