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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Blog 4

My early experiences using Twitter have been positive. I have been mostly interacting with my peers in the class. I have also branched out to different educational accounts to diversify my feed. By exploring educational posts, I am learning different policies and techniques that can be used to better my future classroom. Twitter might be useful for my future career as a teacher because it will allow me to stay up to date on educational policies, as well as comparing teaching techniques with other teachers. I would try to incorporate Twitter into my classroom, however, given that I will be an elementary school teacher, it may be too much for the students.

The digital divide will have a major impact on the school systems, and does even today. The digital divide affects students accessibility to technology. Lots of students don't have access to technology and might never get the chance to work with it before they are thrown out into the real world. This will lead to the students being less prepared than others who have been using technology from a very young age. As a teacher, this affects how I will educate my class. I may not have access to projectors, smart boards, computers, or even white boards in some schools. This may just mean I have to print out activities that I want to do in class so I can provide for the students. Something as small as this will not greatly impact the education of my students. As someone who didn't have technology in their school, only blackboards, and was baffled by the fact that there are white boards in more than one classroom in schools, I am very well equip and mentally prepared to educate these students, in a way that is going to be effective and impactful for their situation.

I would like to implement storybook and poptropica. I picked storybook because it is an easy interactive way to implement technology, while allowing the students to begin reading. I also picked poptropica because it implements education in a way that allows the students to entertain themselves. Young students have trouble keeping themselves focused on one task. By making learning fun and interactive, it allows the student to engage in learning, and they will be more likely to retain the information because they are having fun while learning.
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