EDUC 422 Blog #13

I must be honest, when I walked into class and dicovered that we were learning about Databases this week I was slightly intimidated. Though I have never used Microsoft Access I still had heard many horror stories about the program, which was the main source of my feelings of intimidation. Therefore when we were intoduced to the Inspiration Database program I was surprised how simple it was to learn about database. The most important benefit in using database in the classroom is organization. As students it is important that we have learned the organizational skills to make our schoolwork run smoothly. The majority of college students are juggling full-time classes along with the additional outside studies and homework, full/part-time jobs, family and friends. Therefore organization is the key to keeping our lives (all parts of it) together. This works the same in our future teaching careers. We have learned through observations and classroom readings and discussions the importance of organization to a teacher.

The World Wide Web: Interfaces, Dataases, and Applications to Education Article

This article was based on the "behind the scenes" information that goes into creating a database. First discussed how the databases work and what is included in order for the database to work. First is the web form which allows for the information to be entered into the database. (This includes the fields, pop-up menus, check boxes.) Next is CGI and PERL which refer to the computer language. An interesting part of the article mentioned the use of an "online discussion." This allows students to post comments and insights at anytime as well as respond to their fellow peers. As a college student who has taken a few online and part-online classes, I enjoy discussion boards because they allow students to speak thier opinion without as much fear as speaking during class discussion. As a student who has always been less apt to speak my opinion, the online discussions allowed me to feel more comfortable voicing my opinion, any ideas and even ask questions.

The Database: America's Presidents

This article brought attention to the six new literacies which include the following: compute, communicate, conclude, confirm, categorize, and classify. It is these aspects that will help both students and teacher to stay current with the constant growth and changes in technology. The everyday use of technology has been incorporated within the activities taught during class. I like this teaching method because technology (in this case a database) is percieved by the teacher as a necessary use of organizing infomation. If teachers that I had during my educational journey would have developed a path similar to this I most likely would have not developed such a fear of using databases.

Database Bells and Whistles: Organizing Data for Whole-Class Use

This article was interesting in the sense that it introduced the idea of databases as a possible opening of doors into new modes of thinking. By having students organize information into different fields forces students to think about the learned information differently therefore embellishing thoughts of crtical thinking. Not only do databases provide this, they also allow students to use the program to sort information, chart information inputed and therefore compare and contrast that information. It was interesting to learn that the example given was used with only one computer in the classrom. This is beneficial because as we have learned there are many schools and classrooms that do not have as many technological opportunites as others. Computer labs are shared with the entire school therefore use is rare. Using the database example where students can comment on each other is a great way of adjusting to the lack of supplies.