Blog Journal- - 8

While working with Diigo I have learned multiple skills. The most effective skill I learned was learning how to add sticky notes and share the comments to the class as well as responding to other classmates' comments within their post that were published to the group classroom. Diigo can be useful in my classroom by engaging the students to connect to each other as well as finding and annotating certain websites or PDF's. 

I could use PowerPoint to support student learning. While teaching my second-grade classroom about planets, I could have the students learning at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy which is pictured above. For remember, I would use the repeat function in PowerPoint to visually and hear things multiple times to remember. To understand, I would add questions after each slide to make sure my students are understanding the material. For application, I would have an interactive lesson plan to make sure my students could apply their knowledge to an activity, For analyzing, I would have the students be able to make their own PowerPoint lesson plan about planets to make sure they are able to break down the information and the component parts. For evaluation, I would have them grade my lesson plan that I taught and see if there are any misunderstandings or problems with the lesson plan I taught. For creating, I would have the students analyze my lesson plan and make a 3D object of the planets surrounding our system. 

How to stay up to date with technology trends as an educator

Technology is an open door and is always revolving. Keeping up with technology and teacher professional development can be difficult at times, but there are many resources that are available to all educators/teachers in the field. Technology always changing can be beneficial but it can also be detrimental. Beneficial in that, it is always improving and making life easier, but detrimental in that students have to get accustomed to the constant change in their learning and be able to adapt easily. There are many ways you can help your students adapt to these changes and the website I provided is a great start. As a teacher, you can also follow blogs that other educators post about and learn what kind of technology they're using while this answers those questions it also helps build your teacher professional development with other teachers. 

ILP #2: PLN

For my ILP #2 I used the online tool of Reddit. Reddit is a great resource and tool to use for engagement in conversations/posts and connections to other educational professionals.
Check out my project to see how I can use Reddit to improve my PLN as a teacher and individual as well as an example of a post that is current and could be used to teach students about an emerging topic.

Mel's ILP #2: PLN

Blog Journal- 7

Before this class, I just used Twitter as a social media platform to honestly repost/retweet funny posts and not much usage for connecting. Since using Twitter in this class, I have learned about the benefits Twitter offers from the online conferences some pages have to the simple fact of connecting with other individuals and engaging in a topic you are interested in. I have no experienced any issues while using Twitter. 

While working on the website design assignment I used my CRAAP skills to make sure my website was going to be acceptable to turn in and also for future use. I liked how we were able to make it our own and there was a lot of room for creativity. The calendar was kind of difficult to include in the website, but I was able to figure it out. Next time I would improve by adding in more information and also add in more events into my calendar for the whole year. This website design will help me in the future, by being comfortable and knowledgable in creating a website for my class and for the parents of my class to use. 

Mel's Classroom

It is important to have assistive and adaptive technology within the classroom to help support the learning of your students. Students do not all learn the same and it is important to adapt to their learning styles. Technology has been great in making ways to implement learning within the classroom using adaptive technology. I have experienced a smart board at the Tech Sandbox that was specifically a smart board for wheelchair accessible students. This smart board allowed the students to be comfortable at the board and able to engage in classroom activities regardless of the students limitations. I also have experienced online phonetic spelling software's that help many children with learning disabilities. Some challenges that I could see while using adaptive technology within my classroom is making sure the student is able to learn with the technology provided and also making sure there is no bullying within my classroom regarding the adaptive technologies I would use to help a student with disabilities. 

Blog Jounal- 6

For a school website, I used my old high school. Coral Shores High School is a freshman-senior high school. When the home page loaded I was able to see highlighted events (sports commits', science fair winners, how to keep the school safe, and a menu for quick links.) On the top of the page there was different tabs and I clicked on classes. There was only 6 teacher pages where you could visit their site. I clicked on an old teacher, Ms. Dehart and saw her site which included her name, homework assignments which could be viewed by monthly, announcements, a midterm review, helpful links such as Kahoot!, and files for the whole year of work. 

Coral Shores High School

I envision myself using technology within my classroom in many different ways. I really enjoyed seeing the teachers site's on my old high school. This wasn't something they did when I attended the high school. I would have my own site which could be accessed through the school's website. In addition to having my own site, I would include smart boards, Kahoot, power points, blogs, and maybe Twitter participation. Using these forms of technology would help me accomplish my professional responsibilities because I would be teaching my students how to work with technology, not against it. 

Visiting the Technology Sandbox was AWESOME! I really enjoyed it and had a great time seeing and using all the technology that is readily available and could be used to implement learning within my classroom. Some technologies that I experienced and could use in the classroom is the smartboard and the Dash robot. For the smartboard, I would implement it by having the students be hands on and be able to draw and interact on the board instead of old fashion where the teacher stands in front of the white board or chalk board and just teaches without any student interaction. This would be a great way for the students to be hands on and start understanding technology as well as word or paint functions. The other form of technology from the Tech Sandbox that I would love to implement into my classroom is Dash the robot. Dash was super cool and was interactive and even had his own personality which is designed to meet the elementary school level which would be great for my 2nd grade classroom. Dash had a way to make you fall in love with him. He was so cute! I feel the students in my class would really enjoy Dash and his personality and being able to basically have another "student" within the classroom that would help the students learn. 

Blog Journal- 5

Using Diigo was really interesting and a very neat concept. After answering the EME twitter challenge impression I noticed most students found Diigo very confusing. For me, Diigo was self-explanatory and a very cool and easy concept to grasp. I really enjoyed Diigo and especially enjoyed how you can share information with the whole class so easily as well as comment on student's posts and even highlight within the site you post. This is a great source to keep the class connected and have the class interact within one common workspace. So far, I have no dislikes on Diigo.

Blogging has been a new experience for me and I have actually really enjoyed it. Since being in this class, blogs are a great way to publish answers to discussions and be able to comment on other student's posts. I feel it brings the class together as a whole while adding a bit of uniqueness to each person's blog. I have learned how to make my blog aesthetically pleasing and how to add a copyright mark to what I am publishing.

For an interesting Web 2.0 tool, I have chosen Dropbox. Dropbox supports learning beyond the product itself. It allows students to build, utilize, and be accountable for their work. This is an application that comes from the Icloud idea. This will store all of the documents and data needed and can be accessed on any form of phone or computer. Not only could this tool be useful in my classroom, but in other classrooms and outside of school as well. I as a teacher will use Dropbox to build assignments and create lesson plans. All of this can be accessed at home or on the go! This would prevent me from having to carry around tons of papers and heavyweight from computers.

https://www.dropbox.com/?_hp=c

Blog Jounral- 4

Before EME2040, I would use Twitter as a platform where I retweeted information and funny ideas. Since being in EME2040, I have expanded whom I am interacting with on Twitter and using it as more of an educational tool to spread information. I have been interacting with students within my class, students outside of my class but in the same section, and also educators/educational technologies. Twitter has been beneficial! When there are certain assignments due in this class, multiple students will tweet about it or ask questions to other students via Twitter. I really enjoyed using Twitter as a form to connect with other students as well as educators around the world! I have retweeted and also have gotten followed by some amazing educators. Twitter would be beneficial to me in my future career by following discussions and engaging in social media tools that can help me in my future career as a social worker. 

The digital divide is the gap between people who do and do not have access to the Internet. The digital divide can affect student success in school either in a good way or in a bad way. If the student does not have access to the Internet in a school setting it may be difficult for the student and they would have to use resources around the school to achieve above and beyond within the school setting. Students who do have access to Internet can excel in a school setting. Being able to use the Internet is a great tool to use and expand on their studies. Some causes of the digital divide is geographical location, economic status, and school setting. Some educational settings do not have a way to access Internet and if they do not have access to the Internet outside of school, it may be difficult for the student to excel without the usage of the Internet. As a teacher, I may experience student's not having access to the Internet outside of school or their parents being digital immigrants, therefore the student may be a digital immigrant since their parents are not familiar with the emerging Internet/technologies. This could affect my teaching strategies as I plan to interpret many different educational technologies within my classroom. I would have my students take a survey before I begin the school year asking if they are familiar with the educational tools I will use. If the students do not have experience with certain tools I would make a lesson plan for each. 

Within my future classroom I would like to introduce Kahoot! and Iclicker as academic software for my students. Kahoot! is a great way to make teacher slides and take quizzes. I would like to use this with my future students becuase using educational technology will save paper for quizzes and is a way for my students to engage in a technological educational tool that will help improve their relationship with technology and it is an easy way for me to see scores of each individual student and gives me statistics as a teacher that would be important for understanding why certain students got certain questions right or wrong. I would use Iclicker for attendance taking. It is a great way for the students to check into the classroom and would take less time then calling out roll for every class. Being able to use Iclicker as an academic software I would be able to keep track of my students attendance technologically and the software has a GPS locator setting therefore the students could not check into the classroom without being physically within the classroom. 

ILP#1 Design- Kahoot!

For ILP#1 Design I decided to use the website/application Kahoot! Kahoot was an app I used in junior college which was utilized as a quiz for the whole class. This app allows the teacher to make quizzes with multiple questions, multiple choice or true or false, lets the whole class take the quiz on an electronic device at the same time, gives a unique pin code for each quiz, shows the teacher which students picked which answers, gives statistics on how many students chose what answers, and benefits the teacher with easy grading as well as saving paper. This app does way more than just quizzes! It comes with templates for quizzes, spelling practice with puzzles, meet your teacher and teaching with slides. Check out my voicethread link to find out how I will utilize this amazing educational tool in my classroom!

https://voicethread.com/share/13630804/




https://create.kahoot.it