Blog Post #10

Using the data collection (surveys) as well as Excel will be very beneficial as a teacher. These tools are a great way to learn about your students as well as keeping up with their wants, needs, and even grades. For example, you can use a survey to see what your students know about the subject matter being discussed. If you are a history teacher for say the 6^thgrade, you can use a survey to ask them simple questions based on the lecture. This allows you to be able to see what is sticking with the kids and what needs more time being discussed. With Excel, it makes it easy to input your students grades as well as the assignments average, median, and mode grade. So, if this history teacher had big test and input all of their students grades in they could easily use the functions of Excel to calculate the average grades. This would allow the teacher to see if the subject was really understood or if their students missed the idea of the discussion.

            A few topics I found particularly interesting while reading my classmates blogs are flipped classroom and digital divide. The reason I found these two subjects noteworthy because both require you to have a large opinion on the matter. For example, for the flipped classroom discussion, a lot of my classmates had conflicting opinions. Some of them believe that a flipped classroom isn’t a successful way to run a classroom. Their reasons being that the classroom can sometimes get out of hand because the teacher is minimally involved. This being because in a flipped classroom the students work more together to understand topics rather than a normal lecture. My classmates on the other side of the argument say that a flipped classroom allows students to learn more creatively as well as allowing them to work on social skills. They describe a flipped classroom as a way for the teacher to teach the independence while still being in the classroom for support and instruction. I found that my classmates were able to become quite passionate about the issue of the digital divide; as we should be. The digital divide causes a very large issue within the lower income neighborhoods. The schools within these neighborhoods are not able to have access to the same educational technology that other schools do. While reading other posts about this subject I found that the digital divide has a big impact on the success of the student. Technology is able to give kids the access to information that they would not have access to inside of the classroom. This inhibits them from learning about information and topics that are being discussed in the real world. The access to this kind of information gives the students a broader view of our world and all of different kinds of people and things that inhabit our planet. Without this information kids can grow up unaware of key places and things that go on around us; thus, making them sheltered and not as prepared as the more advantaged kids for the real world. 

            A couple technological skills I would like to learn and become better at are Excel, PowerPoint, and 3D printing. Excel is a great tool to use in education. I would like to be able to easily put together all of the information given and create more in-depth graphs to share with my students. I also believe that PowerPoint is an amazing tool to use while teaching. Especially because I hope to go into elementary education, PowerPoint is a fun way to get information across to your students. I would like to become more familiar with the effects and the things you can do with the application. I’ve seen teachers create games like Jeopardy to play with their students that are educational as well as something the kids can really interact with and get in to. 3D printing is what really intrigues me. I would love to learn how to work and create things in my classroom. I think that students could really benefit from this tool because it allows them to have a hands-on interaction with the subject. For example, if you’re teaching your kindergarten class about a particular animal you could use a 3D printer to get them interested and excited about said animal. You could also teach a higher-grade class about technology and get them interested in that field. 

Blog Post #9

The flipped classroom is an instructional concept and teaching strategy that “flips” the normal educational environment and delivers instructions online as well as outside of the actual classroom. In a flipped classroom, traditional in classroom activities like homework and lectures, are preformed either outside or online or even in online lectures. In a traditional classroom set up, the teacher would usually be the center of attention and focus in the room. The teacher and students go back in forth in questions directly to the teacher and answers. Most classrooms consist of individual student work or possibly in small groups. In contrast to a traditional classroom, a flipped classroom purposefully moves the focus of instruction to a class time that explores topic to greater meaning and depth.

            Open education consists of freely accessible assets that teachers use for instructional purposes in their classroom. OER means that the materials posted are available to the public for use and/or redistribute. The initial development of open educational resources was the desire and hope to offer an alternate or improved educational standard. A good open educational resource is OER Commons. This site offers lesson plans, resource builders, and even module builders. This site gives teachers access to well thought out lesson plans as well as activities. https://www.oercommons.org

            During these past two PowerPoint assignments, I learned a few different tools that I believe will really help in making future lesson plans more enjoyable for the students. For example, I learned how to create buttons on the page that link to another slide. This tool could be used to create fun and interactive games for the students that will be engaging then just information pasted on a page. Another tool I learned was putting animation to images. This will be a lot more fun for the kids to look at and will keep them interested in the material that is being presented. The assignments were a bit tedious but overall I enjoyed creating a fun and interactive presentation. 

Blog Post #8

Diigo, at first, was a bit confusing to navigate and work. But, once I figured out how to use the tool, it got very easy. I enjoy being able to comment on other classmate’s annotations of the article or webpage. I like the highlighting tool a lot because it makes it very easy to point out main ideas or ideas that are important to the paper. I think that Diigo could be a useful tool in the classroom as a way to really understand what your students are thinking and learning throughout the webpage.

PowerPoint is a great tool that can be used for almost an endless amount of activities. You can use it for simply information, create Jeopardy games and also just interactive ways to get information. With Bloom’s Taxonomy, PowerPoint offers a lot of support. For the create level, teachers as well as students can create games like Jeopardy to help them learn the information in a fun interactive way. For the evaluate level, PowerPoint offers a way to get the whole class involved in the discussion. Jeopardy is a good example of this because it allows the students to get into groups and argue, defend, support, and select a category and then collectively figure out the answer. With the analyze level, PowerPoint makes it easy to compare facts and pictures by being very easy to switch back and forth in between slides. It also offers a side by side feature in the layouts. It is very easy to organize your thoughts onto the slides with the bullet option. The apply level is also easy to support with PowerPoint. PowerPoint is used mostly for demonstrations where people apply their ideas to the information being given. PowerPoint is also great for the understanding level. It makes it really easy to explain ideas as well as concepts. It does a good job making it a visual and interactive experience. Lastly, the remember level. PowerPoint allows you to create lists as well as easily allowing you to flip through the slides. It is easy to create things like flashcards to help to remember the material. 

Teacher professional development is a really great tool for teachers to further their knowledge on their profession. It also gives them training for different lesson plans and activities that they can use during their class. It also helps to create connections within the learning community. 

https://www.participate.com/mktg/teacher-professional-development/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAlIXfBRCpARIsAKvManzF3OklOOHqXK2asNM-T9wb-u1_J3Oo1sy55CA6ofLuy04xozfXjyoaArYOEALw_wcB

This website is a good tool to connect instructors to others and their ideas for their material. They also have ideas for lesson plans that they are free to use for their classes. 

Blog Post #7

           Twitter is a very good tool to use to keep up to date on colleagues as well as news and other information. I have been able to learn a lot about different technologies used in the classroom as well as different tools and ideas that could be incorporated into the student’s academics. Twitter is a great way to acquire new ideas from colleagues as well companies pertaining to education technology. Twitter is very easy to use and navigate; therefore, no problems has arisen.

            I have not had much practice creating a website but Weebly made it relatively easy to figure out. I enjoyed the way it was set up and easy to navigate as well as edit the website. Next time I would like to figure out how to make it more intricate and have more design features. I will definitely consider using this tool for a future career when the time comes. 

            Assistive and adaptive technologies are those that assist individuals with disabilities and create effective learning opportunities for all students. They are necessary to the development of the student with disabilities. They also allow for an increased participation in the classroom setting. Assistive and adaptive technologies also help to promote independence and makes academic and cooperative inclusion possible. I have not used any of this technology but there is a program at my old high school that had a lot of tools to assist those with disabilities. 

http://jordynrudolphclasswebsite.weebly.com

Blog Post #5

    For my experience using VoiceThread I had a bit of trouble navigating the site as well as adding voice recordings to my slides. I ended up figuring it out and realizing that it was not as difficult as I had previously thought it was. I think that VoiceThread could be very beneficial to use for kids who have missed a class so they can read and listen to the lesson that had been taught that day. So instead of just reading the chapter in the textbook they can follow along to the lesson plan.
   My experience blogging started off a bit difficult but I quickly got the hang of things and have very much enjoyed the blogging process. I think it is a great way to get ideas and information out to the public. As a teacher I may decide to continue to blog for the sake of keeping parents and family members involved in the classroom discussions. By continuing to blog for the sake of family members, it also gives them opportunity to share ideas on lessons they would want their children to be aware of and learn about.
   While I was in high school we used the Web 2.0 tool Edmodo. This was a way for teachers to assign homework for us to do. The tool also made it very easy for our teacher to grade our assignments. Edmodo was also used so that if the students had any questions we could easily get in contact with the professor as well as fellow classmates. https://www.edmodo.com

Blog Post #4

VoiceThread

During my early uses of the Twitter account I connected with a lot of my classmates as well as my professor. I also followed accounts that are centered towards education as well as technology in the classroom. Being connected to these accounts as well as my classmates will help me with ideas on how to incorporate technology into my classroom. The verified teaching and technology accounts will bring me up to date on any new technology that would and could be beneficial to my students.

The digital divide is a serious issue in the education department. It allows students with wealthy upbringings to have an unfair advantage in the learning process. The students who live in lower income areas are not able to have access to all of the information as those students in the wealthier areas. The digital divide will cause those in harder situations to not be able to leave those places to better themselves through knowledge. It creates a continuous cycle of the rich always being ahead while those who were born into lower income families will be stuck in the same place because they did not get the same opportunities to achieve a higher education. The digital divide could effect me as a teacher because there will be cases where I won't be able to give my students all of the information that they need, or give them the opportunity to familiarize themselves with technology that is being used in everyday life and in the business world.

Two software tools I would like to implement in my classroom are Smart Board and a projector. The Smart Board is an amazing tool used to get the entire class involved in the problem or in the information that is related to the topic being taught. Smart Board provides a fun and interactive way to teach as well as learn. The projector is also a great technological software being used today. It allows the teacher to show the students how they worked out a problem or to show them the information being discussed.

Blog Post #3

The ELA technology standards I feel most prepared to teach is Smartboard activates, I have been familiar with Smartboard since the 2nd grade and have been using it throughout most if not all of my classes since then. An ELA technology standard that would require more learning on my part would be StoryJumper. I have never been introduced to this program and by the way it has been described to me, it could benefit my classroom activities.
 A resource that is available on the CPALMS Educator Toolkit under Grade 1 and the Social Studies section that I would use is David’s big problem. That lesson helps students work collaboratively in groups to resolve conflicts while demonstrating respect and kindness towards other people and classmates. This lesson not only teaches students how to identify a negative person vs. a positive person but also shows them that being a kind person will benefit them in every aspect.
 From working on the Newsletter Design assignment I learned how to insert images from the internet in a way that I have the ability to move it wherever I wanted to on the page. I also became more familiar with creating and designing a textbox. I enjoyed being creative while developing the assignment. I could have improved it by making my email link functioning as well the hyperlink I had included. Everything about this assignment will be used in my future career. I believe newsletters keeps not only the students up to date on activities being done in the classroom but also their parents. Keeping parents involved is very important in a classroom because parents should know what their children are learning so the children have more practice with the information being discussed in the classroom.