#8 Blog

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The technology that stood out to me the most at the Sports Psychology lab are the glasses. This could be very beneficial for an elementary school to invest in to gain results as to what certain students look at during a lecture and if it relates to their success in the classroom. With this type of technology, teachers would possibly be able to place students that have wandering eyes in certain parts of the classroom to help them focus more.

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According to Vanderbilt University: Center For Teaching, there are six categories of Blooms Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Through these six categories, Powerpoint presentations can support student learning. These presentations give students the knowledge and topics needed for each lesson, and making sure they can recall information of that given topic. With Powerpoint, students are able to comprehend the information given and possibly go back to make sure they comprehended all of the material. These teachers can use presentations to make the students apply the information to "abstractions" through activities. I will be able to analyze their comprehension results of the information through the activities given and possible quizzes. I, as the teacher, will use open-ended questions within my presentations to make these students think outside the box and use the synthesis technique to build on their prior knowledge. Lastly, I will evaluate the student's learning at the end of each presentation with a graded assignment that directly related to the presentation.

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The website I believe will be most helpful for me to stay informed of technology trends is The Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). The "Educational Leadership" tab has tons of resources and has monthly articles on ways to stay informed on technology trends. This month's article talks about how to make a lesson plan more interactive through technology and change it from a "lesson plan" to a "learning plan."

#7 Blog

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Assistive technology is "technology that help people with disabilities more effectively with computer equipment." There are alternate input and output devices for learners that cannot fully use the functioning computer equipment. A few examples of these assistive technologies are: a track stick instead of a mouse, a voice recognition, a magnified screen, reading text, or Brale keyboards. In the textbook, they mention writing technologies (people with cerebral palsy for example), reading equipment, text-to-speech software, Apple Touch devices, and many others. I have a friend that had a traumatic brain injury, so she uses an Apple Touch device to answer questions, talk, and play games that help her brain function. One game that she uses is a game that she touches a picture and it says the word. This helps her slowly process simple words again. In the classroom, adaptive technology might be hard because I would need to make sure all of the software for each student is up-to-date. Also, it will be hard for me to help each student on a different technology throughout the day. 

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Weebly is a website I have heard of before, but had never worked with. It took me a good amount of time to figure out what needs to be put into the website and how I need to put it in there. It was very hard to learn how to put the calendar in, probably spending an hour because Tockify wouldn't let me load it and Google Calendar was giving me a lot of troubles. If I could improve for next time, I would like to change my home page a little. Also, a little more assistance would be very helpful. Otherwise, this was a great assignment to learn how to make a website for my future classroom. I will most likely be using a website to provide my students and their parents with all of the homework and announcements for the week. 

Samantha's Kindergarten Class

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Diigo is a website that I had never heard of or used before. After using it for just a few weeks, I have learned so much. Finding sites and being able to post them somewhere with key words is great for teachers to interact quickly and find exactly what they are looking for. With a common "dictionary," it will be very easy for team members to post things and find similar sites easily. This is a great website for my future classroom and professional efforts to quickly be able to find the websites that I thought would be useful to my students. 

#6 Blog

The school website I visited was Riley Elementary here in Tallahassee, FL. It is a Pre-K through 5th grade school. The website is very interactive, with upcoming events, contact information, each individual teacher website, and even a tab for employment opportunities. There is a "Parent Portal" for the student's parents to look at grades and possible problems that are going on in the classroom.

Listed from the podcast, I plan on using Twitter as a way to stay up-to-date on current technology and different ways to teach in the classroom. Even after a few weeks, I have learned so much from different accounts that I am following on Twitter, from giving me ideas on PowerPoints to providing me with websites for mathematics help. With technology at our fingertips, it is much easier for people to communicate with one another, rather than having to sit through weekly meetings and seminars to go over all the information. Electronic spreadsheets is a type of technology that needs to be learned before going into almost any workforce. This is particularly helpful in education because I can make tables and charts for math problems, administrator for a high school club that needs to keep track of attendance and money, or creating data from surveys. There are so many different technology opportunities to accomplish professional responsibilities.

One of the technology items that stood out the most to me was the SmartBoard. I have been taught in elementary through high school on a SmartBoard, so I was accustomed to it already, but I did not know how many different features it came with. I hope that I will have a SmartBoard in my future classroom because there are so many different ways to make learning more entertaining, especially for young children with the interactive pictures. One of the techniques they showed us was how to move a picture on the screen around with a dice under a projector. The picture of an ear would be great for older students who are in science classes learning about body parts because now they can see from every angle, not just one angle that the textbook provides.

ILP "Design" - Edmodo

The Edmodo account is used for myself and teachers to find different ways to educate our students, specifically first grade. I have found some great websites from browsing on this site for mathematic and reading help. I also provided a quiz for my students on addition and subtraction. The group code for my Edmodo account is 4935iw. 

#5 Blog

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Web 2.0 tools are the newer version of Web 1.0, which now includes social media (Twitter), blogs, wikis, and Diigo. I believe it is hard to tell which Web 2.0 technologies will work the best because each grade level is different. As a future kindergarten teacher, I believe Youtube will be my best option because I could make interactive videos for my class to participate together, such as making math videos for counting items on the screen. For a high school level, I believe class blogs would be the best option because students will be able to feed off of one another and get feedback from their peers, not just a teacher. For a teacher, I believe Twitter will keep me up-to-date on new technology ideas and to become more professional, instead of having to constantly attend seminars to stay current. 

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An interesting web 2.0 tool that I might consider when teaching is Pinterest. This is a website or app that is used to pin millions of items, such as decorating rooms, mathematics problems, or even workout routines. This will help me in the future with different ideas on how to better my teaching skills through helpful tips and blogs from other teachers. Also, as an elementary education teacher, they have great ideas for different projects that help with learning things such as math or history. Many people post educational quotes or the top books of the month, so this can be very beneficial for future and current teachers. This website is very easy to access through a phone or a computer. This is the link to the website: https://www.pinterest.com

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From the technology advancements in chapter 12, I believe gamification holds the biggest promise for education. This is because educational directors and teachers are always trying to find better ways to keep their students engaged and interested in the topic at hand. Games and interactive videos are going to help students learn more about the subject than the typical lecture. Games can be for almost any subject and grade, such as naming states of the United States or a mathematic adding and subtracting game. In kindergarten, I will use games for counting things, learning the alphabet, or even for reading help. Animated videos can also be used for history and science lessons for information, such as timelines or processes. With these gamification tools, education will become more beneficial for all students because there will be more ways for teachers to help students succeed in the classroom. 

#4 Blog

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I have been a part of Twitter for a few years now. I go in phases when it comes to Twitter and how often I go on it. I typically just use it for local and national news reports, such as following Fox13 Tampa Bay or NBC News. These help me stay current on the events going on around me, since it is hard for me to sit and watch the televised news on a daily basis. I also follow my hometown's school district, Hillsborough County School District, for updates on sports and events going on throughout each week. These Twitter accounts have been very beneficial, in order for me to know what is going on around me. Twitter will be helpful in my future career because there are so many different accounts that will keep me up-to-date on new technology and events.

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The digital divide is discussing students that do and do not have access to technology. The active learning software is "a diverse collection of academic software that can be used to enrich teaching and learning for both teachers and students." Within the active learning software, there are many categories, such as graphics, desktop publishing, etc. Many school assignments or projects require technology, so it is hard for the students without access to complete these tasks. An example of this is presentation software. Presentations in the middle school and high school levels are very common, but it is hard for students that have never used this particular software. Another downfall to not having access to technology is when teachers put up powerpoints or lectures on a website, which often help with upcoming test. Within the academic software, there are categories: tutorials, drill-and-practice, educational games, simulations, problem-solving software, brainstorming/concept-mapping tools, academic databases, authoring software, and content-specific software. These are different ways to incorporate learning in the classroom without the boring, old lectures.

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There are five points when evaluating a website:
-A: author (credentials, can you contact the author?)
-B: bias (is the resource neutral or biased toward the topic?)
-C: content (is it accurate with spelling and grammar? Is it appropriate for student-aged viewers?)
-D: design (is it visibly pleasing? Are the images clear?)
-T: technical elements (is it easy to navigate? Are all parts functioning? Is it a quick load?)

Another point that I personally consider when deciding whether a website is good or not is by the URL. I specifically look for ".edu, .gov, or .org." When researching for a class, I typically go to the FSU library website, which has many different databases to choose from with tons of topics, such as JSTOR or Academic Search Complete. These are all important points because I want to be able to have the most credible information for the topic that I am presenting.