blog post 8

Welcome back to my blog. Spring break was a nice time to relax, but now we are back and in full swing with school. Today, I wanted to reflect some on my experience with Diigo. I really enjoyed being to annotate articles online and have all my highlighted portions or notes saved in one location. I think this could be very. useful later on for writing research papers. I will definitely be showing it to my students. It can also be useful for sharing that information with a group as well as having group discussions on one specific topic. Honestly, the list of potential uses goes on forever, so I recommend checking it out.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a model looking at a breakdown of the different parts of learning. The application of PowerPoint can be used at each level of these in order to reinforce it. For example, if I were trying to teach my students multiplication, I could have my students use PowerPoint to create their own presentations with problems they have come up with on their own. This would reinforce the Create part of the Taxonomy. To reinforce the level of Evaluate, I could use PowerPoint to present both incorrectly and correctly worked out multiplication. I then would have my students Evaluate the problems by having them explain why they are correctly and incorrectly worked out. As part of the Analyze step, I would have my students compare and contrast multiplication and division problems using the SmartArt create portion of PowerPoint where I would create a ven diagram for them to use. For the apply step, I would use PowerPoint to present problems for them to solve by applying their knowledge. For the Understand part, I would assign my students a project where they would use PowerPoint to teach the class how to do multiplication. And finally for the Remember step, I would use PowerPoint to repeat the important information slide after slide to increase their learning.

click here for website link

Teachers are the driving force of the innovation of technology in the field of education. This is because they are the ones who directly use this technology. I found the above website and included a screenshot as well as a link to it. This website talks about the different trends in educational technology which would make it a good one to check out in the future in order to see where the future of technology in the field of education is going. It is important to have a good understanding of this in order to keep up with and continue to promote the advancement in this field. 

blog post 7

We've been using Twitter in class to build our PLNs. I did not have a Twitter before this class, so I have had to adjust to using it. I've learned Twitter has a lot more functions than just looking at GIFs or sharing random thoughts of the day. I have enjoyed seeing how people have discussions relating to professional development and their opinions on teaching topics. I think the access it provides to so many different individuals as well as news is super beneficial to staying up to date on what is going on not only in your professional field but also in the world. I think my biggest issue that I've had with Twitter is that I struggle to remember to Tweet on my own; I have to set an alert to remind me since I was not accustomed to regularly using this app prior to this class.

The Web Design assignment has been my favorite one so far in this class. I really enjoyed getting to be creative while learning a tool that will help me in the future. I now know how to embed a Google Calendar into a webpage which will help me do so in the future on my webpage as a teacher. I think I could improve my site next time by adding more colors and making it more fun for young students to be on. Overall, I am very satisfied with how my site turned out because it was my first time ever making a webpage, and I am very proud of how it turned out. I have included a link to it in this post as well as a screenshot of it for y'all to be able to check out what I did. https://eme2040assignment3.weebly.com

Assistive and adaptive technologies are used in the classroom in order to help facilitate those students who have learning disabilities as well as other disabilities. I actually have a distant cousin who lives in California who has Autism. The school he was at worked with my aunt in order to maximize his learning potential. By using assistive technology, he was able to be successfully transitioned from an individual classroom into mainstream learning and still experience academic success. They utilize apps with puzzles to help hold his attention span since he is very interested in problem solving. After hearing about his experience in the classroom, I think my biggest challenge will be finding the technology that helps my students the most. It is a trial and error process to discover how students learn best, and I do not want my students academic success to suffer or be slowed during the process of finding the best assistive technology. I think it is so amazing how technology can be used to facilitate the learning of those with learning disabilities.

ILP Design

https://voicethread.com/share/12395460/

In this portion of the project, I actually used an online form of technology that we have not used in class to design a class presentation. I used Prezi to make a presentation as if I were a 3rd grade reading teacher. I really enjoyed the tool, and I made a PowerPoint to talk about my experiences and used VoiceThread in order to further explain the things I mentioned in the PowerPoint. I included a link to my Prezi which you can find in my presentation that is linked above, and I have also included a link to my Prezi below in case you want to view it separately.

https://prezi.com/view/IS3Wl08S4P100btrrNWh/

ILP #1 Participation

https://voicethread.com/share/12219198/

For this project, I interviewed a teacher about his technology use in the classroom. I took notes on this interview to reference when making my PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint is a general outline, and I used VoiceThread in order to elaborate further on what I learned.