ILP#2: Design

Here's a link to the Prezi I did on Alexander Hamilton! http://prezi.com/c8sihxno-yzp/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Blog #10

I think that using data collection through surveys will be a great tool as a teacher, especially because of the anonymity. I would interested in teaching either 8th grade or high school level students and I would likely teach English. I feel like using the surveys would be a great way to gauge the students' interest in future materials (books we could study, ranking the books we did study for future knowledge, etc.). It would also be a great way to just generally have more class participation. It could also give the opportunity for new creative projects as students create their own surveys for other students to take and then explain their thoughts on the results (such as why they think things are interpreted in a certain way by most people for instance). It would also be a great way to get feedback from students and teachers alike so that I can always be improving and keeping my students in mind. Topics I found most interesting on my classmates' posts would be the assignments that we did. I liked reading about other people's experiences with the assignments and comparing them to my own, seeing both the similarities and differences. By doing this, and by seeing other people's final products through screenshots, I was able to look at assignments in ways I may not have originally and gain new ideas. For instance, with the website designing, everyone took vastly different approaches to the exact same assignment and the creativity was really cool to me. It also is something that gives me new ideas for future projects I may work on. A technology-related skill I would love to learn next would be Photoshop. I've always been fascinated by it and all of the possibilities it provides, both personally and professionally. I would be able to edit pictures with friends and family to improve their quality, and in the professional world, I would be able to find fun and exciting ways to engage students through original graphics of my own (or even colleagues). I think it just has so many opportunities. I will achieve this goal by looking into Photoshop classes and also talking to friends whom I know are well-versed in it, and I will make sure to prioritize it to the best of my ability since I understand that without dedication, it would probably be a waste of time.

Blog #9

The first thing I'm going to talk about is the Flipped Classroom. The Flipped Classroom is essentially a model in which the teacher uploads videos of themselves teaching online (this can be done through sites like YouTube or on their own class website). The concept of it started with uploading videos of lectures to be accessible to students later. The Flipped Classroom model expects kids to go home and watch these videos so that they can learn and take notes on things necessary for class the next day. The first example of educational videos I thought of is Crash Course which is something I've been following for a while (partially because of my love for John Green and partially because it's excellent) which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse Another thing I want to talk about is "open" education. This refers to large amounts of information being accessible to large amounts of people. The four main components are "re" words that are easy to remember: reuse (meant for one person), revise (refers to content editing), remix (refers to content editing and updating to combine it with other information), and redistribute (distributing the resources in a new way). A site that I think is a good example of this, which I found when searching open education, would be this source: https://www.openeducationweek.org. This of course is not the only one and I would encourage you to explore your options through research! Lastly, the skills I acquired from the previous two assignments are surrounding details. I'm pretty decent with PowerPoint already, but I definitely got refreshers and some new information about the more detailed aspects of PowerPoint. For example, I relearned how to hyperlink things to other slides and I learned how to make a file of my recording presenting the PowerPoint (something I found really cool) and I learned how to better control interactive PowerPoints by disabling the mouse click to the next slide. Here are pictures of the cover slides of the two PowerPoints assignments I completed this week!

Blog #8

The field trip to the Assistive Technology Lab provided incredible insight into the learning of students with disabilities. We were able to witness several different technologies that could help these students, whether they be blind, color blind, etc. There were braille typewriters, speak-to-text computer programs, special colored keyboards and more. It was really interesting to see all of the tools these students could use, my personal favorite being the special pen that helps record notes. Bloom's Taxonomy aims to classify learning objectives. These objectives are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This can be supported by PowerPoint to an organized and detailed level. Knowledge can be supported, obviously, by putting details, definitions, information, etc. on each slides. This can support comprehension by explaining this information with examples, pictures, graphs, etc. This can then go into application by having slides on possible scenarios the information could be applied to, and analysis can be supported with discussion questions or quiz layouts int he slides. Synthesis can be supported by having slides that compare and contrast things which can be done nicely by having two separate text/picture boxes and other techniques. Lastly, evaluation can be supported in the concluding slide in the form of class feedback. When I think of trends in really anything, the firs thing I think of is https://twitter.com/ because it is the main source for anything trending, including technology trends. I've also been learning a lot more about Twitter because of this class, so it's something I'm now comfortable navigating. Whatever trends you are interested in, there are people to follow for it. This gives the opportunity to receive updates in really any subject, including technology. See a picture of the Twitter site below:

Blog #7

Adaptive Technologies refer to technologies that help children with disabilities within the classroom. They are immensely useful and help to keep children all on the same playing field regardless of any disabilities they may have. An example would be talking word processing programs to help children who would not be able to read due to visual impairments. I have not met anyone who has used any of them nor have I used them myself. The challenge I could see would be learning how they all work so that I can implement their use as well as keeping all children on the same page with assignments with this new difference in approach. I gained skills with working on the Web Page Assignment in the sense that I now feel like I am able to make a website when before I honestly had no idea. There are a lot of cool tools I can use on Weebly and I really like the flexibility. The only thing I don't really like is that it feels a little generic and like my website just looks like one variation of the pattern Weebly uses since it's all coming from the same format rather than really making my own original page (which would take a lot of other skills as well as investment). I think I can improve it by simply working with it more and figuring out what I may have missed. I can definitely use this in my career to make a simple little website that anyone can access so I can share any information. Here is a link to my website and a screen shot can be found below: http://torisenglishclassroom.weebly.com Lastly, I've gained skills by working with Diigo as well. I've found new ways to have a community approach to learning and have found a lot of great uses through Diigo that I can apply to my future as both a student and a teacher. It can be helpful in my classroom as students use it to work with each other and I can use it to communicate with them. It can be useful with my own team members because we can multitask and divide tasks to get work done in an efficient manner more successfully. In my own, individual professional efforts, I can more easily highlight and take notes on the computer which is one of the advantages to printing things (except now I don't need to print it).

ILP Participation - Technology Sandbox Tour

The field trip to the tech sandbox was an awesome and unique experience. There were many interesting technologies such as a Smart Board, a 3D printer, virtual reality, and more. I think my favorite piece of technology for educational purposes would be the Smart Board. It's great for videos, writing/drawing activities, 3D diagrams, and so much more. I feel like it takes a white board and combines it with a projector in an advanced way that allows for a great deal of student and teacher interaction and keeps the students engaged. I had these when I was in school and they honestly helped a lot with my understanding as well as my presentation skills. I also loved the 3D printer, but I don't feel that as a teacher I would find much use out of it in the classroom. Overall, though, I got to learn a lot about some really cool technologies. Pictured is the Smart Board since I found it most useful for the classroom.

Blog #6

Since I'm interested in Middle/High School level teaching and I wasn't sure where else to start looking, I went to Leon County High School's website. There is a link for "Teacher's Websites" which I followed and browsed through for a little bit. The teachers would each have pages with titles such as "Meet the Teacher," "Announcements," "Assignments," etc. Some teachers had specific pages that were unique to their subject, but for the most part there were a lot of similarities. I envision myself using Microsoft Office a lot because it's something I already have a general understanding of and I feel like it covers a lot of the bases for what I'd need as a teacher. I could use it for everything from presentations, to newsletters, to tests, etc. I also think it would be very beneficial to my teaching to look into setting up a website. This is something that could help me keep in touch with both parents and students and would make it easy to keep everything organized. Lastly, I would use online tools like Diigo to help my students improve communication with each other and keep organized and informed. One technology that I definitely think could be used in the classroom would be the Smart Boards. I've seen these used in classrooms and they make it a lot easier to implement creative instruction and encourage student participation. Smart Boards were used when I was still in grade school and they definitely had a significant impact in comparison to regular black boards/white boards or any other less advanced technology.

Blog #5

Based on the podcast about Web 2.0 in classrooms, and my experience in this class so far, I think that blogs and Twitter would be the most useful tools. This opens up entirely new and creative opportunities for expression and communication. Blogs are a fun and modern way for students to express their thoughts colloquially and Twitter is a great way for students to communicate about class in a way that almost doesn't even feel like school to them because of the social aspects of it. It also encourages personal development and growth for the students in terms of their individual voices and expression. These resources would also be a great way for the teacher to communicate to the students officially. That being said, I think wikis would be the least useful simply because I don't think they're as fast, simply, and user-friendly of an option as things like Twitter and blogs. As a teacher, I would definitely utilize Prezi (http://www.prezi.com). This is something I was a little resistant to at first when I encountered it in high school, but the more I've played around with it the more I realize its potential for fun and innovative presentations. It's a great way to organize material and to have it presented in a way that maintains attention. Since it is so visually appealing, I feel that students would be more engaged and would be less likely to get distracted by other things. The alternative, PowerPoint, is something I am obviously more well versed in, but I feel that it comparatively has so many limitations and that using Prezi would be a switch that would benefit my classroom overall by making it easy to incorporate media, organize my information in an aesthetically pleasing way, and more. I feel that gamification would be the most interesting and successful advancement. This is because I feel like it would be the most engaging with students and it would make school something more entertaining for them. I know that personally, I was more motivated with things like the Oregon Trail game or typing games in school than workbooks (and I definitely remember the things I learned in the former as well). I think because of this it would be the most successful advancement.

Blog #4

At first, I was nervous about the Twitter page because I've been avoiding using Twitter for years. I used it in 2009 and that's about it. However, it has been a pretty positive experience so far. It has been fun and I have been learning a lot about how Twitter works in general. I have been communicating with other people in our class about things that are happening in our class, what we're learning, and various jokes throughout the week. Twitter may be beneficial in my career because it is a great way to communicate with people as well as keep people updated on what I'm doing. It's another social media platform that I can use to help display myself in a good light. The digital divide affects students' success in school for multiple reasons. Firstly, not all students have equal access to technology. Technology can get expensive, especially the more advanced it gets and for many families that is a luxury they cannot afford. Additionally, many students may just not be well equipped in terms of understanding technology and may just not be great with it. Some of the causes of this would be a simple lack of income for students' families as well as a weaker history of technological education (since I want to teach middle or high school, it is possible that some of my students' elementary educations may have technological gaps). I may experience a wide range of technical abilities in my classes due to this and I can combat this by providing as many resources as possible to help fill in these gaps (instructional resources to get students up to speed and access to my help whenever they may need it). The software I expect to use the most simulations and presentation tools because they will be most relevant to older students' learning (middle and high school aged students will do a lot of presenting and simulations may help them in general). Since my students will be older, I expect less usage of educational games, but they may still be of use in some aspects. The software I would use the least would be Drill-And-Practice software simply because I am very against this style of learning and find it extremely ineffective in most if not all subjects of learning. I think that this would be dull and monotonous, especially for my age group, and that students would simply hate what they're learning.

Blog #3

Of the ELA Tech Standards, I feel that I would be most comfortable incorporating the Multimedia informational text standard. This is because I'm a fairly visual learner and feel that the aids mentioned in this section are ones that I would benefit most from personally and therefore I would most easily connect to and be able to carry out for my students. The one that I think would require the most learning would the the Multimedia Science/Technical Subjects one. This is because I am not too skilled in this field and have noticed gaps in knowledge on my part through my studies in the past. That makes me feel that I would need to put work into this area in order to properly use it as a teacher. I have always needed help incorporating data into these graphs and tables before so I need to fine tune that. I feel that I would most use blogs and wikis for my class as a teacher. I am an English major, so I would most likely teach in this field. I also prefer middle or high school aged students, so I think that blogs and wikis would be effective in aiding the material we would be covering. I think the middle/high school age group is also one that would best fit the digital citizenship guideline stating that "Student participation in the community is meaningful, appropriate, and on topic and advances the community as a whole." The students are old enough at this point to be held accountable for this and I think it is relevant to blog and wiki usage. Honestly, a lot of the newsletter assignment was a refresher for me because I remember learning a lot of it when I was little in Computer Class and we were learning about Microsoft Office Programs. It was good to review it all, though, because I realized that I really forgot a lot of things like borders and formatting. I really liked the opportunity to learn how to format a newsletter like this and feel it can be improved next time through more effort on the shading of boxes and using nicer pictures. I definitely learned useful things for my career here in that I will be able to make newsletters like this in any field.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Blog Post #2

I've used MS Word almost constantly as a student. I've used it for essays, drafts, notes, viewing/editing documents, and many other things. Office in general has been used a lot throughout my career as a student, but I'd argue that Word has been used most often. I've seen my teachers use it to create documents with instructions, creating a syllabus, editing our work, or making handouts to aid in a lesson.

In an educational environment, I have only regularly encountered copyright and fair use in terms of avoiding plagiarism through proper citations. Of course, I have also taken classes in the music business field that have educated me on copyright and fair use in terms of the music industry, but that isn't something I'd consider deeply part of my educational experience. Since middle school, I have learned how to properly cite pictures and information in my essays or projects. Even before then, I at least had a bibliography with links at the end of anything I turned in. As I teacher, I would regularly stress the importance of proper citations as my teachers have for me at the beginning of class and before things are turned in, especially for middle and high school students who are still getting the hang of things to an extent. I would also never use someone else's work in my materials without proper citations and would do my best to make sure most of my materials are my own in the first place to avoid complications.

The implementation issues addressed are all valid issues that need to be discussed. Some may be hard or impossible to avoid, but I feel like preparation can help students to avoid them to the best of their ability. An example of a legal issue would be software piracy. In this day and age, piracy is a widespread issue because it is incredibly easy to do. I think the important thing to do with students is to explain the legal repercussions of pirating so that they are aware of the risk. As a teacher, I cannot control what my students do in their spare time, but I can educate them. A social issue that is addressed is Cyberbullying, and I feel that this cannot be discussed enough. At this point, everyone part of the technological age has probably experienced or witnessed Cyberbullying at some point to some degree. This is so much harder to prevent and control as a teacher, so I think it would be best to simply have a no-tolerance policy and to make it easy to report it anonymously to me if someone witnesses it so no one feels to afraid to "rat" people out. Lastly, an ethical issue would be academic dishonesty. It is absolutely unacceptable for a student to copy work from another student or from the internet. This inhibits their learning and presents work from someone else as their own. To avoid this, I would explain to my students how to properly cite and also put parameters in place in terms of what amount of direct quotes is acceptable in an assignment.

Blog Post #1

Considering the era we live in, technology can be viewed as crucial in the classroom for both teachers and students for a variety of reasons. Starting with teachers, technology can make teaching both easier and more impactful overall. This is because a lot of the more menial tasks a teacher may have to take care of (recording/calculating grades, taking attendance, etc.) can be done much more easily with technology which saves both time and energy. Additionally, the teacher can use technology to provide visual aid such as pictures and video that otherwise may have been harder for them to provide. This makes explanation easier and helps the teacher get through the curriculum more effectively. In terms of the student, the benefits are somewhat connected because they are the ones who will truly gain from the teacher's ability to do their job more effectively. Additionally, they will be able to research things more efficiently and will also be able to use programs and visual aids themselves to aid their own education. Even seemingly simple things like Microsoft Office eliminate issues such as sloppy presentations, illegible handwriting, or unnecessary hours being spent on putting projects together (whether it be an essay or a presentation or really anything else). The synthesis can be seen in how these benefits help both the teacher and student, even if a certain aspect clearly affects one more directly.

Overall, I find the ISTE standards fair and encouraging because it sets a bar for both teachers and students. One that particularly gladdens my heart would be the standard for teachers that emphasizes inspiring student creativity because that is something so crucial to a child that can often be overlooked, especially in terms of self-expression. Not all students are the same, so they should have their creativity and differences encouraged rather than stifled. One that seems out of my skillset would be designing and developing digital age experiences and assessments due to my own personal lack of technological knowledge (for now). As an individual, I tend to use pen and paper whenever possible, so I feel that it would be difficult to center a curriculum around technology successfully, despite how beneficial it would be.

I would agree with the label "digital native" to an extent. In other words, I find the term "today's youth" to be rather broad when thinking about digital literacy. This is because I was born before Google and when Dial-Up was still a thing, but someone merely a few years younger than me cannot relate. So much change has happened in the past decade that it is hard to compare me to someone seemingly in the same generation (this also applies to the differences between myself and people only a few years older than me). To be a digital native means to have grown up familiar with the Internet and modern technology, which is something I do feel applies to youths. I feel that we are more likely to understand it quickly because we don't know life without it like digital immigrants do. The differences between natives and immigrants tend to lie most heavily in efficiency rather than competency. In other words, immigrants are more than able to learn how to use digital tools, but they tend to be more awkward or clumsy, or they use methods that take longer than necessary (right-click and copy-paste rather than control+C, just to give an example). I don't see that as terribly impactful on my learning experience except when a teacher is particularly resistant to technology which has hindered my ability to gain experience. I anticipate a similar proportional difference between myself and my students because so much more will probably have been developed that I will be an immigrant to, and they will also have a much harder time grasping a time without this technology.

Blog Post #0

My prior experiences using technology are fairly limited mainly due to the fact that I tend to avoid using technology if at all possible. In other words, if I can take my notes by hand, I do. If I can accomplish something with minimal use of technology successfully, I do. If I can read a physical paper or book rather than a screen, I do. This is because I've never been a fan of screens for the most part and I also do not have the best technological ability overall. I understand basic things in terms of social media, my phone, and my computer, but any troubleshooting or more complex aspects are fairly lost to me and I hate asking for help so they are often avoided. I do however have to use technology for many of my classes, so I do have inevitable experience with most Microsoft Office programs, social media, and basic computer/phone functions.

In this class, I hope to expand my knowledge with technology so that I can be more comfortable with it. I know that in the professional world, it is fairly difficult to advance and move forward without experience and knowledge in this field, so I would hate to hinder myself based on this stubbornness. I hope to make myself comfortable with the overview of technology and to apply these skills to many different programs or technological elements in the future.

Something that I learned about my own learning style from the questionnaire results is that I am both an active and reflective learner (I landed pretty close to the middle) so I work well with both types of learning and often benefit from using both methods in the same subject. This makes sense to me because I love visual aids, but I'm also a writer and love to think things through on my own with written instructions as well. I also learned that I am more intuitive and verbal, both of which also make sense to me. As a writer, I can see that verbal communication would definitely make a great deal of sense to me because that is my main source of communication personally. Words make sense to me. I also consider myself creative and imaginative, so I'm not surprised to see that I am more intuitive as well. Lastly, I learned that I am in the middle for sequential and global learning as well. This is probably not because I have a great deal of strength or weakness in both, but rather that I don't particularly have a noticeable affinity for either. I'll use this information to better aid my study habits and help myself achieve my potential.