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.