Journal 6

Class Page

For the Assignment, I decided to take a look at one of my old teachers Class page. Mrs. Cucurullo was my eighth-grade history teacher, and one of the most eccentric teachers I have ever had so when I went to her page I expected that to be reflected. The class pages on my alma maters website are all a little old school and not very elaborate. They all have the same layout with a few different additions to them. Mrs. Cucurullo particularly has a lot of information that I assume parents would want to know like Test Dates, Class Rules, and an About Me section. I think those are all essential parts for class pages because more than likely that will be the place where parents try to understand what is actually happening in the class. There is also a place where she puts homework and upcoming assignments that would benefit both parents and students. Currently, she is teaching 11th grade US History, so she has older students who probably have more control over there academics, which could be a reason why she doesn’t have as much information as some teachers might have.

Technology in My Future Career

I envision technology being a big part of my career and future. I am not sure what I want to do professionally but I know that I will need to do something that allows me to use the social media skills that I have picked up and love. I see myself using social media as a way to make a partial part of my income or using my podcast as a way for people to hear my voice and opinions. My short term professional goals are to work with Teach For America where I will be a Middle School Teacher. I think I will implement a class page where students have access to seeing what is coming up, and Parents have the opportunity to see what is actually happening in class. I think it would be a cool idea to have students create a weekly blog that goes out so that they can reflect on what they have learned that week.

The Tech Sandbox

The Tech Sandbox was a really cool learning experience in general. While I don’t think many of those technological tools would actually be feasible in most classrooms, the overall ideas are really cool and could probably enhance the everyday learning experience. As someone who loves traveling and will probably be teaching either English or Social Studies, I think I would have to get creative in how I used some of those tools. For example, I would love to use the VR as a way for my students to look at new places that we are learning about that week. I would take them on trips to Africa and show them the pyramids when it was time to talk about that place and then have them write about what they saw. This would be an interesting way for them to learn and see about different countries and they could also say they traveled there which I’m sure young students would enjoy.

Journal 5

Diigo

I think that Diigo is an interesting application to use. It can be helpful to annotate on the web in certain aspects but I do feel like mostly it would not be necessary. I think this would be a great tool for Graduate students and researchers who are always trying to remember what website they used, and what points they wanted to make about something. It could actually just be used for anyone doing a research assignment. I do not like how the bookmarks show up on the page, I think it could be a little more clustered and categorized. However, I do like that you can put things into groups that you share with other people because that would be very helpful for collaboration. I think overall I would introduce Diigo in the classroom as an idea, but not make it a mandatory part of my student's projects and papers.

Blogging

I have blogged, mainly for other classes before and I usually enjoy it. I love putting together websites and having fun with my designs so that my website shows my personality and my messages. In this class, Blogging has not been as fun as it usually is in other classes. I think It has to do with Blogger and how hard it is for me to get my website to look the way I want it too. Overall I think the actual Blogging is going well. I enjoy writing about education and the different intersections it takes with technology. I have learned about how important reflection is as a way of making sure you learn and understand information.

Web 2.0.: Kidblog

 I found the website kidblog.org, which provides an atmosphere for young students to create and work on blogs. I wasn’t able to look at the site as much as I wanted to because you do have to pay to use it but from what I could see the site seemed extremely efficient. They have free lesson plans to help teachers, and support staff available to live chat if you need it. Kidblog also has ways for administrators to monitor students use, but also give them a safe place to publish their work. I think for middle and elementary students this would be ideal because they may not have the best technological capabilities yet, and also their parents may be worried about them being on the internet. Kidblog seems to be an appropriate and safe alternative to have students create their own blog on a site like Wix or blogger.

Blog Journal 4 : Voice Thread

Blog Journal 3

I chose to look at the 7th grade standards, as I think I will be teaching middle school in the future. In looking at them the one that I think I am most prepared for is using multimedia components and visual displays to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points. I think this is always the fun part of putting together presentations so it would be cool to teach my students how to do this and make aesthetically pleasing yet informative presentations. I think I still need help on learning how to cite sources, when to do it, and then how to teach it. Citing is important but there are so many intricate rules that I forget about.

I found a Lesson Plan for 7th Grade English and Language Arts that centers on persuasive writing, which I thought would be extremely helpful. This particular lesson required me to sign in, to get the full lesson plan so I was not able to see it, but from what I could tell it would be a really interesting thing for students to learn. I think they would really like to have the opportunity to debate with one another about controversial topics. From what I understand the lesson plan also comes with an assessment, which is important because students need assessment in order to understand if they have learned anything. I think overall the CPALMS toolkit has some innovative ways to help teachers with lesson plans and activities.

I think the new skill I learned was the overall use of Microsoft Word. I don’t usually use Word for MultiMedia projects as it can be very finicky. Using MS Word for the design was not ideal but I do think I still did a good job of keeping to a World theme. I think my project could have had more visuals but I did struggle with keeping my columns in the order that I wanted them to be in. I think using Word had some benefits and I am happy I now have the skills to create multimedia projects in a word processor like Word, but I do not know if I would use it in the future. I do think it would be cool to experiment with using Word and other programs at the same time to create an even better project.

I attached my project below.