ILP Toolbox - Kahoot!

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Post 10

My hope is to be a world history teacher for high school.  There are so many amazing and fascinating websites pertaining to world history that printing articles or pages would be impossible! Data collecting tools would be a perfect way to provide extra reading to my students that I find interesting or that goes along with our lessons. I could also use some questions from specified extra readings as extra credit on tests or quizzes. I think that would be a cool way of incorporating a bit more fun facts into an otherwise pretty strait forward curriculum.

When going through my classmate’s blogs, I really like seeing the screenshots of their projects. It is really fun to see if we chose to do a topic similar or different and see why they decided to research what they did. Its also interesting to see everyone else’s comments on the technology we have gone over in class because even though we read the same book and sit through the same class, each person takes away a unique thought or outlook.

As I continue to go through my journey of becoming a teacher, I want to really solidify the skills I have acquired this past semester. Hopefully, I can work more on using the available features in Microsoft to make my work more interesting. For new technology, I just want to continue exposing myself to what is coming out and learning how to use the technology well and effectively. I know that YouTube usually has some very helpful tutorials so watching how to use/incorporate certain technologies in the classroom will probably be my go-to learning device.

Post 9

The “flipped classroom” is a relatively new concept that is being introduced to upper level school grades. This is when the teacher provides a lesson, usually recorded, to the students to review before coming into class. The students then should participate in active learning in the classroom. In theory, this is a cool, productive concept. However, in reality, many students would not review the material before and because of that not fully learn and understand the material. 

Open sources are a great resource for professionals looking to further their knowledge on a topic or to gain insight on a new subject. These resources are open to everyone, usually free or at low cost and can be relatively easy to download. There are various levels to resources as far as difficulty as far as skill level and developmental courses that build on one another.

The skills I have acquired from the PowerPoint assignments will be very beneficial when I begin my teaching career. Being able to add fun touches to my presentations such as pictures for bullet points and making animations and transitions more effective. Also being able to create non-linear PowerPoints is going to be very helpful in creating games and fun quizzes for students. These are also skills I can teach my students and create assignments on PowerPoint that are more exciting than standard presentations.  

Post 8

The Dynavsion active and interactive learning machine would be really awesome for students who suffer from ADHD or even some levels of autism. The machine has the user say aloud number combinations or solve various levels of math problems while simultaneously hitting buttons when the light flashes. Being able to not only get to practice math but also getting move and be active is very stimulating and can be very beneficial for so many students. This can also be helpful for shy students in my opinion because they are able to get up and move and have fun while having to speak up with solving problems.

PowerPoint is arguably the most common and easiest form of information delivery as an educator. With PowerPoint, we are able to pose more questions for students and provide more interactive assignments. Memorizing is a good skill for game shows, but to truly develop an educated mind, understanding concepts and how information can interact is essential. PowerPoint can help the educator accomplish this for their students.

Blogs are a great way to stay informed on what trends are happening and how well technology is being incorporated in to classroom. Lisa Nielsen is an educator who runs “The Innovative Educator” blog. She decided when she was in public school that her teachers taught in a very boring and irrelevant way. In an effort to change this, she has incorporated technology in unique ways to create a more interactive and exciting learning environment.  

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/

Post 7

There are so many assistive technologies out in the world. Virtually anything can be made possible with technology. These can include inspiration that can help reading and writing, CoWriter to help remember words and their meaning, and audiobooks that allow the student to read along. I personally have not used these technologies, however my doctor uses dragon dictation during appointments instead of writing her own notes to gain a more accurate description of health and provide quicker appointments. With any technology, glitches will occur. This is the biggest issue I foresee in the classroom. When a teacher is planning a lesson around using a technology and it does not work, frustration and inefficiency occurs.

I acquired many skills while building my webpage. Since I have never experienced building a webpage, this was completely new to me. I ran into some issues with the formatting of the site itself, I had problems figuring out how to make certain paragraphs look the way I wanted and have the layout I envisioned. Although I did get frustrated a few times, I eventually figured out how to cooperate with the site and I believe created the website I had pictured in my head beforehand. In the future, I would definitely add more details and give the page a more sophisticated, finished look. I think that having a class website is extremely helpful, they can help not only my students remember assignments but also myself and keep the entire class, me included, accountable for assignments and lesson plans.

Diigo is such a great resource for group or class collaboration. The site allows for the creation of groups and anyone in a group can bookmark a website for the whole group to see and review. Not only does diigo allow bookmarking, but also annotation of those websites. Any group member can leave notes, highlights, and tags on a page. This would be perfect for group research projects.

Post 6

I was not able to access class websites from the school’s website, so I looked for the class website by itself. Once I did this, I was able to access various classes from the high school I attended. Most have a similar color scheme (orange and black for the school colors) and many also include some picture of a lion (school mascot). About half of the websites include pictures of students doing an activity the class can be represented by. The information included a general explanation of the courses, prerequisites if necessary, and contact information for the school.

 I see myself using and updating a website, blog, or microblog in my classroom. I feel like these are all really great resources for students and parents. With this, keeping reminders for my students and myself become for efficient and hopefully more effective.  I also will definitely take advantage of recording and lesson planning programs. When lessons are made into digital files, the following years of teaching will be much less work as far as planning goes.

For sure I will be taking advantage of the technology of the smart boards. These are amazing, especially for classes that need to get up and move once and awhile. Being able to solve problems on the page, and having the advantage of being able to incorporate movements and activities into the lesson is so great for visual and kinesthetic learners. Not only can the board connect to your computer, you are able to save pages of work done on the board which is perfect for students to review. I think that any subject, any grade, and any teaching style have options for being able to use smart boards effectively.

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Post 5

There are so many improving and emerging websites and pages to use in the classroom. I think that technologies that are simple to use and can incorporate faster, more efficient communication are the best for classroom use. These technologies can include twitter, which is great for fast reminders, blogs, can be used as or to submit assignments, and diigo, for efficient collaboration in collecting data. Technology use also really depends on the age group. For example, handing out iPads to a kindergarten class and having them each set up and manage their own website may not be the best idea, but using the same assignment in a high school class would be very effective.

Delicious is a really great resource for teaching. The site allows the user to save and organize links that will always be ready use or go back to. This makes lessons and planning much more efficient because having all the sites saved in the same place can cut down time spent on trying to find the cool picture or informational webpage.  To check it out, click HERE.

In my opinion, cloud computing is the technology that holds the biggest promise for education. Cloud computing is already so useful and convenient for storing webpages, pictures, songs, documents, ect. With growing innovations in technology and a growing rate of available space in many devices, I believe that clouds will enter the classroom very soon, if not already. Sites such as dropbox and google drive make sharing information so easy and multiple people can look at and edit pages simultaneously. These sites can also be accessed through apps in any device. 

Post 4

Twitter has been a really fun assignment for me. Although I have a personal twitter as well, I hadn’t gotten that into the network mostly because I did not exactly understand how it worked and wasn’t very motivated to figure it out. I have really enjoyed being able to follow certain education pages such as Education Nation and edutopia. I am able to keep up to date with the happenings in the education world much more conveniently. I think twitter is an awesome resource for teacher use, tweets are short, sweet, and to the point which is what most students prefer when getting answers to when assignments or tests are due.

The digital divide has a most prominent influence on students in rural areas. Many will not have computers at home or have very limited access. These students may not be familiar with such programs as Math Analogies and Reading Blaster that can provide assistance in learning a topic. As a teacher, I also need to realize that not every student knows how to operate Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to make presentations. These setbacks not only result in a slower learning environment, but will also cause students to be unprepared to enter the 21^st century work force.

When evaluating a website, you should always look for the currency, authority, accuracy, and objectivity of the website. These will give insight into how relevant or current the website is, if there are errors, or if there is any bias to the page. I also look for how neat the website is. If the page is cluttered and links are not easily accessible I will most likely move on and not use that webpage. This is important to me because I need to make sure I am receiving the correct information and if links are messed up or confusing, I may jumble some of the information.

Post 3

I feel most confident with all of the multimedia standards. Since I have personally been through all of the standards during my time in grade school, I feel confident in my ability to integrate many various forms of the same content in my lessons and also assign projects to my students that I know will allow them to gain knowledge for themselves of incorporating various forms of media in their own work. I have been familiarized with incorporating articles, videos, charts and also being able to analyze and compare the different medias. I feel very confident in my ability to pass this knowledge on to my students.

The book gave a few options for search engines to use in the classroom, however, I believe that using google may end up being simpler to implement in the classroom. Most students and I are already very familiar with google so I would not have to take the time to teach myself or my students the process of an unfamiliar search engine. I would implement technologies for collaboration and make requirements to include various resources that include different media types. Ideally, I will be teaching middle school or high school so positive digital citizenship should already be introduced. However, many students at this age may feel above the rules or may be more inclined to disobey set expectations. In this case I will be sure to stay consistent with instructions, punishments, and being sure to lead by positive example.

The newsletter assignment, to be honest, gave me a bit of frustration. Word can be temperamental and uncooperative. This being said, I did learn to incorporate decorative details such as borders and shading of certain paragraphs. This will highly improve the look of many of my future projects and assignments. I also learned just how much word can work against you, this will be extremely helpful in future assignments so I can expect issues and allow extra time for completion. 

Post 2

I have used Microsoft Word every year as a student since at least fourth grade. Whether it was for typing an essay, preparing paragraphs for a science fair project, or simply typing a word to make sure I was spelling it correctly on paper. MS Word is how almost all my teachers typed their syllabi, test, and worksheets.

Copyright was a pretty big deal in my high school, there was a no tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. I have encountered many of the websites discussed in the text, such as TurnItIn. I believe that if content is copyrighted then the one who has the rights to the context should be compensated for the usage by others, so as a teacher I would employ websites to ensure my students were creating their own work and ultimately understand the material without having to take thoughts from others. I did think that not being able to google search an image to use in class lessons could be difficult, but after viewing the images MS has in clip art, I no longer see that as a major concern.

I think that Twitter and other such networks can be super helpful to keep in contact with parents of students in my classes. I could also tweet homework and test reminders for my students. Twitter can also create surveys so I could gage how well my students feel about their knowledge on a subject. I could also take the network out of the classroom with advertising school events and/or games.

Post 1

Computers are a very useful tool for both students and teachers. Computers are a useful tool in preparing presentations, lesson plans, taking attendance, and communicating with your class. Students need to be able to navigate computers so the will be ready to enter the 21st century work force. However important, incorporating some of the always new, changing, and emerging programs takes up time and financial resources that many teachers and schools do not have.

Like many other forms of standards, the ISTE has pros and cons. The fact that students are mandated to learn certain technological topics by specific times, I think is extremely important. However, there are situations where some students may not have the same access to practicing skills which creates an unequal learning curve. One of the included standards that I think is awesome is the communication and collaboration. This is something that as a younger student I did not get immersed in which has created difficulty as I have had to work in many groups over the past few years. Something I might have trouble with as a teacher would be facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity. The reason for this is that each student has different motivations to learn, and learning those and trying to incorporate them into lessons for each student seems incredibly difficult.

To be a “digital native” means to have been born in the era of technology, not knowing a world/life without it. For the majority of my age group I would say I agree with the term, however there is a minority who do not have access to technology and do know a life without it. For me, most of what I know about technology has come from my teachers, they taught me how to use a mouse, type, navigate Microsoft (all at different points in my education, of course). As for myself and future students, it is hard to say just because who knows what new and innovative technologies will be out in the world in 10, 20, or 30 years from now. I would love to say that I will know more and be more in tune with technology than my students but that could very potentially not be the case.

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@lbs2040fsu

My previous experiences with technology have been somewhat mixed. With technology such as my own phone and computer I do just fine, however, when I encounter something new or different, I get very frustrated and I usually end up taking some time to come back to the device. With that being said, most of what I know about technology has been through trial and error and sometimes I can never accomplish the task again. This could also be because I never read the instructions...

I hope to take away multiple incites from this class after the semester is over. The first and most important to me would be to learn how to incorporate new and updated technology into a classroom setting properly. I also would like to be able to  move more efficiently and smoothly through software I have already worked with.

I am a very visual learner. I remember what I see, this I already knew. Something new I discovered though would be that as an intuitive learner, I tend to make careless mistakes so in future work I should really go back and make sure I did everything correctly.

 :)