How to use some technology tools in my own classroom...

In this blog, I am going to discuss a few ways to implement technology tools in my own high school psychology class.  Throughout this last semester, I was able to gain some experience and use a lot of the tools that are out there for teachers.  A lot of the tools were quite fascinating and will give me more ways to engage the students in the course work.  I am actually excited to be able to use some of them.  However, since Utah doesn't have set standards for psychology and, as a psychology teacher, I have quite a bit of room to do what I choose, I will use a set of "standards" that the Davis School District has given their teachers to help them organize lessons.  I will mention three specific standards and which tool I can use for each.
One "standard" is the biological bases of behavior.  It is really interesting to teach about the brain and how it contributes to behavior.  The one tool that I thought of that I could use to teach this would be Wikis.  In particular, I wanted to use it as a way for the students to get into groups and create a textbook section on the brain where they need to research and post it in the class wiki.  This would give them the opportunity to learn about the brain, while becoming textbook creators.  They could add photos and anything else they want to and a wiki would be a perfect way to help them accomplish that.
Another one would be the "standard" on social and cultural dimensions of behavior.  This is essentially social psychology.  Many social psychologists have conducted experiments that were filmed or later commented about on TV programs.  One tool that I will use for this standard would be the download helper and MPEG streamclip.  A lot of the programs and videos can be found online and on Youtube and with this tool I could download them and use them for my class.
The last standard I will mention is lifespan development.  I would love to utilize the Prezi tool for many of the things I teach.  I really enjoyed making my presentation in class and I could see myself using it often.  However, for this standard it would be particularly helpful because I could use some of the grouping tools in Prezi for the different stages of development and the presentation itself is a source of help for the students to see the connections between stages while viewing the Prezi presentation without having to point them out.

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