Blog 10: Technology and Me

Data Collection and Me

I think that data collection would be a good way to get to know students in the beginning of the class, as well as getting parents numbers and other important information. If I were to send out a Google Survey I would be able to compile an excel sheet with all my students information and their preferences early in the year. I would also always have access to it which would be helpful. I could see Excel being an important part of keeping grades in a orderly fashion. The excel tricks we have learned would be extremely helpful in creating and coding a grade book that would make calculating grades easier if the school does not already have one.

My Classmates and Me

 This year I have just learned about new ways to do things I have done before. I have used Prezi, PowerPoint, Canva, and other applications that my classmates have talked about but there have been a lot of new and creative things that I had never thought of. It was also interesting to learn about my classmates passions through their blogs and projects. I got ideas for classes and subjects that I wasn’t even interested in but can still find useful in the future.

The Future and ME

 At the moment I am trying to learn more about graphic design and picture editing. I will be a teacher next year but in my free time I do enjoy creating new Social media content for myself and others. I want to learn how to do more with Photoshop and illustrator so that I can create my own content . I think that these skills would be helpful in allowing me to have multiple incomes and do multiple things that I love at once. I usually use Youtube or Lynda to teach me the specific skills that I want but I have been thinking about enrolling in a class. I also ask friends for help which makes for fun and easy to learn lessons. Overall I would like to continue to learn more about technology and its different applications in my life.

ILP 2

For my second ILP, I watched a Lynda.com video on Visual Strategies. I found the video to be a breath of fresh air compared to the tutorials that take up most of Lynda.com. I learned a lot about how to embed visual learning strategies into everyday teaching techniques. The video allowed me to understand a topic I hadn't even thought of before and master it within 20 minutes. I will definitely be using Lynda.com again to learn more about subjects that are important to me.

Blog 8

Diigo

In using Diggo I have been forced to learn more about how to analyze writing more. While using it in class we usually have to make comments and think harder about the information that we are actually reading and processing. I think this would be helpful for young students learning how to cite as they can make comments and save the bookmarks they are using depending on things. I do think the overall idea of Diggo is a little outdated and not as necessary. Considering students can annotate in other ways but I think as a bookmarking extension it would be convenient for people writing a paper.

PowerPoint

Growing up I remember being mostly taught by PowerPoint so I think it does a great job at teaching students what they need to know. I also think that I understand PowerPoint and am pretty good at it. In looking at Bloom's Levels I think that Comprehension and knowledge would be best shown on PowerPoint. You can have recap slides of lessons before the actual new content. Synthesis and Analysis would also be easy to do with critical thinking questions that allow students to take time and think about the material they may have just learned or are about to learn. Evaluation and Application may be hard to do. I think for the application you may think about creating a quiz or jeopardy game but that may still be hard to really check students application skills. Overall I think PowerPoint will always be something that is used in the classroom.

Professional Development

I think it is super important for teachers to be in touch with what’s happening in the world of technology. They need to be in touch with what their students are doing and the best way to do that is by keeping up to date with what is new and happening. This will, in turn, help them learn about new professional development opportunities in the realm of education. They can find out about new opportunities to learn about how to develop themselves professionally. The website that I found here: https://elearningindustry.com/educational-technology-trends-top-right-now has a lot of tips and I think it can be a website that a teacher looks at regularly to make sure they are up to date with the trends.

Blog 9

Open Education Resources are free resources open to educators to help them with learning. I think they are important for educators because their jobs are hard and tend to pay little so having readily available information with supplemental information in lesson plans.  I found this website called OER Commons which has resources for educators to learn more information. You can also build lesson plans and modules on the site. Along with that, you can find material that matches your specific needs and look through the criteria for your specific lesson plans that you may need.

Most of the new skills I learned from Powerpoint where related to the second powerpoint assignment. I always knew you could do more with powerpoint but I never knew it could be so easy. It was cool to learn about the fun applications that non-linear powerpoints can create. Powerpoint is usually used for simple information dissemination and the second project showed us what it can do past that. I think that as a teacher I would attempt to include more nonlinear presentation styles into my lessons so that I can keep them engaged. I think that my particular project came out good but I would have liked to have made it longer or more elaborate if I had the time. My first project was simple enough that I feel like it could be a cool lesson for my class but I don't think it would keep them as engaged as a nonlinear project.

Assignment 4

Assignment 5