Blog 10

Today in our education technology class, we learned how to use Qualtrics, the survey administration tool, and how to administer different types of questions for the survey. This tool would be useful in my career as a teacher for student and parent feedback about the class and the lessons. This tool is great for promoting improvement among the class so that the students can have a more positive, educational environment. Excel is very useful in gathering statistics so you can see the answers to their feedback in an organized manner. in addition to receiving feedback about your teaching style, you can also use these tools to get feedback from the students on material that they don't understand. This will allow you to focus on specific areas, that students may struggle with but may not want to speak about, for a longer period of time.

The topic that I took away the most from all of our blogs, is assistive and adaptive technology. I find this the most useful because it will allow me to be more mindful and knowledgable about how to teach my students. Every student learns differently and has different needs. Being able to teach to each need is very important. I believe that no student should be left behind, and that it is essential for students to have a good understanding of subject material. Through the different blogs of each of my classmates, I was able to learn about different technologies that I can incorporate into my class in order to make my students more successful.

I don't know if there is any other technology that I would like to learn about that we haven't covered. I am sure there are many that I have no knowledge of, and there will be many more to come through my teaching career that I will be eager to learn about. Currently, I would like to focus on learning about educational websites and resources for my students to help them better understand the material, while also having fun. In order to achieve this goal, I will pursue my degree in education so that I can further my knowledge on how to be the best teacher possible.


 
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Blog 9

Hey everyone! Today in class we learned about the structure of a flipped classroom. There isn't a set model for this approach to educating yet. While this approach is still new, it seems useful in certain circumstances. Basically, this form of education involves students doing informational lessons at home on their own time before they come to class in order to prepare them for the in class lesson. The in class lesson is meant to be more interactive. In theory this is a good approach; however, in reality, students most likely won't do their at home assignments, putting them behind for the in class lesson. I think the work at home should build off of the lesson instead of putting the responsibility solely in the hands of students. Many students don't have this sense of independence until late high school and college years.

Another concept that we discussed today was open educational resources (OER). These are resources that students and teachers can use for educational and research purposes. Specifically the resources are openly licensed giving people the opportunity to legally learn from information and expand their knowledge in a positive way. The most common website for OER is OER Commons. This is a library of a bunch of resources that are openly licensed for educational purposes.

For my educational technology class, we were also assigned a couple of powerpoint assignments. In the first one we were told to make a powerpoint and then make a show version of it in which we voice record ourself over the slides. While this might be useful if teaching online classes, I don't find it very useful for in class presentations. I believe that you should be teaching directly to your students and tailor the lesson to each of them. You can't have a uniform lesson because each student learns differently. In the next assignment, we were told to use buttons with links. I found this very useful in making the powerpoint interactive. I never knew how to do this before and will definitely utilize it in classroom settings.

Here is a picture of my powerpoint title slide with the voice over insert.

Here is the jeopardy game that I created with the hyperlink buttons

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Blog 8

Hey again! In this blog I am going to be talking about some things that we learned about in our class this week. We used Diigo again and I continue to grow my knowledge during each lecture. I learned that you can comment on other people's annotations. I had no idea that we were able to be so interactive through a class website. This would be useful in the classroom to allow students to communicate positively with each other even when not together, such as for homework assignments. We can use this technology amongst team members to pool our resources together. In individual professional efforts, the website allows you to bookmark and annotate a website without printing off the entire thing.

Bloom's taxonomy is a conceptual pyramid that describes the process of learning. Powerpoint can be used at each level of this pyramid. The first level is remembering the information. This is the most basic step of learning. Powerpoint can be used to give visual examples for the concept that is being learned. Powerpoint can also be used to help students understand the material by being interactive. It is hard for students to understand and retain information if they aren't being challenged. They can then apply this information to their own life and experiences. After being able to apply the information to their own life and being able to relate they can then look further into the information and analyze how this concept can affect other people and can look further into the powerpoint to discover more information. After fully evaluating the information, they can create their own powerpoint presentation on the concept that was taught.

• A paragraph about technology and teacher professional development.  Teachers are tasked with being the driving force of technology innovation in education -- which is directly related to professional development, how we stay aware of changes.  Post a screen shot, link, and description of one site you could use to stay informed of technology trends

Technology in education is important because the classroom is the students' main source of information. If we, as teachers, don't implement updating technology into our lessons then we are doing our students a disservice. I found a website that can be used to inform others of technology trends. It talks about emerging technologies such as virtual reality or robots and things as simple as incorporating art into class standards. Attached is the website that I found. 

Tech & Learning

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ILP Design- Prezi

Hey Everyone! In my class, we were assigned to do an Independent Learning Project. In this project we had to learn how to use a new technology that we won't be visiting in class. I chose to do Prezi. Prezi is often used as a formal presentation tool. However, I chose to use this as a digital storybook medium. I made up my own story called The Old Lady and The Little Girl. This technology could be easily implemented into a kindergarten classroom. In addition to my presentation on this assignment. I attached the link directly to the digital storybook that I made
Click HERE to visit the Voice Thread of my assignment.
Click HERE to visit the digital storybook Prezi.
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Blog 7

In class we have been using Twitter for educational purposes. So far, I have mixed feelings about using this app for educational purposes. In theory I think it is a good idea, however, I think it is very easy to miss information. Everyone is seeing different information and posts depending what time they go on the app, and there isn't a common ground. However, I think it is good because it is easy to share ideas about bettering education without actually scheduling a meeting with a number of people to share the same information.

I personally, didn't learn too much from the Weebly page. I did learn how to utilize the C.R.A.P. principles, however, with this assignment, you have to be very creative. There is not a strict template or directions for how to make your website, you just have to experiment with it. I wanted more time ti adjust my website. I am not sure exactly how I would improve it because I did it to the best of my ability. I would implement the site and then get feedback from the parents of my students. I will definitely use this in my future career because it allows me to relay information directly to parents instead of sending announcements home with students and relying on them to get it to the parents. Below is a screenshot of my teacher webpage and a link to it.

Miss Vetrano's Kindergarten Class

These technologies are used to help those with disabilities complete daily tasks such as talking, moving around, and even grasp or lift objects. These are used to help students participate in daily classroom activities that they otherwise might not be able to. There was a student in my English class in high school who used these technologies to participate in class activities like giving presentations, and even writing papers. Like any technology, I predict for this to have complications with its basic functions. Technology usually has problems with the wifi or other basic functioning problems.

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Blog 6

In our next assignment, we were asked to research teacher websites and what they all include. Each website only had a a few tabs with a limited amount of information included that is available to the public. The teacher websites all had a home page, an about me page, a newsletter page, a general information page, and a resources page. The websites that I looked at are from the school FSUS that I completed observations at last semester. I attached a link and picture to the Kindergarten class that I was involved with.

Teacher Webpage

I envision myself using technology to the best of my ability to educate my students. I am looking forward to using tools such as smart boards in class and even 3D printers to create objects for my kinesthetic learners. In addition to me using this technology as a teaching tool, I want my students to be able to know how to use the technology and enjoy their time in class with hands on experiences.

Last week we visited the tech sandbox and discovered technology that could be used in the classroom. I think that the item that stood out the most to me was the 3D printer. I have seen 3D printers being used before for classes such as engineering or art but I never thought that it could be used for kindergarten classes. I could use this printer to make puzzles for the students, and teach them about animals and the alphabet by providing them a tangible object to backup the concept.

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Blog 5

Through my education technology class, we were asked to use Diigo. I don't know if you have ever heard of Diigo, because I haven't before now. It is this handy tool that lets you bookmark websites, annotate websites and PDFs, and allows you to share them with groups. I like that you are able to communicate with your class and share websites that you find. I also like that you are able to highlight annotate websites because it helps to save paper if you are doing research, as well as making it easy to find important information if you were to revisit the website. The only thing that I am not really a fan of about this tool is that it is only available on chrome. it should be available for every browser so that more people can have access to it.

We were also asked to make this blog for my education class. I, personally am not a fan of blogs. I don't like to share every detail of my life and every experience online. It is a great tool for communication but I believe there are others that are better suited for me. This website in particular is very easy to use. I haven't made a blog before, and this site is very easy to maneuver for beginners. I do wish that there is more opportunity to customize the blog though. I want to make it more my own and there isn't an easy way to do that. Through this process I have learned how to blog and respond to others' blogs. Again, this is something I haven't been familiar with and my knowledge about blogging  has grown every step of the way.

The Web 2.0 tool that I picked to review is Linoit. This website is an interactive site for the classroom where students can collaborate as a whole. This virtual experience entails students placing virtual sticky notes all over a virtual bulletin board. I love this idea. It is very similar to what I did as a student except mine wasn't virtual. I love this idea because people can share their thoughts, ideas, and questions but not have it attached to their name. This is very helpful because a lot of times students are too scared to ask a question or share in front of an entire class but this gets rid of the pressure that students might feel. In turn this allows me to provide better lessons because I am better able to gage the students' understanding and answer all of the questions that they might have.

Here is the link to Linoit and I also found an EXAMPLE for this activity
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