Survey Technologies and Blog Reflections As an educator, I would use a tools like Qualtrics and Excel to better understand the needs of my students and receive better feedback for my teaching. I would likely give out a survey at the end of the year to my students and likely their parents so that I could discern what aspects of my profession I would need to improve on. I would also probably use excel as a way of organizing grades and assignments, in case the institution I work with does not have that kind of technology. I plan on spending lots of time with students and schools of low socio-economic status, so these technologies can absolutely help me perform my best as a teacher. The most interesting topics I have found by reading my peers' blogs is perhaps the integration of technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality in the classroom. I feel that there is near limitless potential for these kinds of technologies to evolve and grow to accommodate the needs of ...
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OER's, Flipped Classrooms and PowerPoint I very much like the concept of the flipped classroom. Basically, instead of the entire learning process taking place within the hour of a class during school, including lectures and preparation, lessons are prepared by the teachers and disseminated to the students online. This allows all of class time to be used for students to advance the concepts they were introduced to. When class ends, they can return to the lesson prep and reflect on the concepts that they have started on. I think that this is a much more effective method of learning, and should be implemented in many classrooms. OER's are resources, such as textbooks, lectures, and software, that are open and free to use by students and educators alike. These kinds of resources make learning of all kinds more accessible to disadvantaged students. OER Commons is an online database dedicated to compiling these resources from different disciplines, all of it free and e...
Diigo, PowerPoint, and Technologies Using Diigo has taught me quite a few skills. I've learned more ways to annotate things that I never would have before. I've also learned how to use Diigo to capture adn save video, which I believe would be incredibly useful if I were analyzing a film or episode of a TV Show. I also like the organization of topics, which I believe would help my future students keep track of lessons and the topics discussed in class. PowerPoint for Bloom's Taxonomy Remember - Creating PowerPoint slides for definitions and facts, like data from case studies. Understand - Using presentations that allow students to explain ideas or concepts, like a game of Jeopardy. Apply - Show students a presentation and then have them use the information that was presented in new situations. For example, a presentation showing some elements of Shakespearean writing and having students pick out those elements in a play. Analyze - Using a PowerPoin...
TWITTER, WEB DESIGN, AND ADAPTIVE TECH Twitter for me has been an interesting experience. I already use Twitter on my own, and I follow lots of content creators, gaming industries, and political accounts. As such, my personal twitter feed is full of interesting interactions, so it's definitely refreshing to see a feed that is almost entirely focused on education and education technologies. I think that using Twitter has lots of benefits, like getting immediate updates on new technologies and direct interaction with educators. So far, I haven't really experienced many issues, despite constant notifications on my phone! The web design assignment was incredibly interesting and definitely a new experience for me. I enjoyed just how easy it was to use a third party service to create a fairly decent website with lots of information. I can see how it would be quite useful to a new educator. I would try to improve a future version of my website perhaps by adding more interes...
Teacher Productivity For this exercise, I visited my old community college's faculty directory to find the instructor page of one of my old professors. I found it quite difficult to find anything quite as detailed as the screenshot below on the high school level. I think that's because of the sheer amount of information that secondary schools have to insert in their websites under the districts rules. Here, there is the professor's contact information, as well as the classes that they are signed up to teach for the next few semesters. At the bottom of the page, there are also different relevant pieces of information, such as certifications, degrees, and so on. Link to the Page! I have a personal passion about technology. Whenever I envision my future classroom, I always see myself trying to use technology to the best of my ability without alienating students. I would use communication software like Edmodo and Remind to keep my students up to date, an...
WEB 2.0 Diigo has been an interesting tool for me. What I very much enjoy about the tool is just how easy it makes it to bookmark and annotate web pages. Before, I had to basically screenshot a webpage and paste it as a PDF file and use other software to annotate the screenshot. With Diigo, all of that is put into one streamlined app. Something that I find a little troublesome about Diigo comes purely from a technical perspective. When loading webpages with the Diigo extenstion, there is a noticeable increase in loading times due to having the Diigo overlay. I feel that this is relatively minor though, and can be remedied with optimization updates. Blogging is also quite new to me, and I have found that there is a lot more good than bad. Personally, I find it very helpful to have a platform to discuss the resources that we go over in class. Having a forum where students can share their learning experience is an integral part of education I feel. My least favorite aspect of...
ILP "Participation" - Taking an Indeed Assessment
Link to my VoiceThread on the experience! For my Independent Learning Project, I chose to dive into my personal Indeed profile and take one of the recommended assessments that were on there. Indeed automatically detects your listed skills based on how you formatted your profile, and provides these assessments free of charge! I thought that was incredibly intriguing, and so I wanted to take a look for myself. Personally, I wanted to see just how tailored these were to my skills, and how effective this assessment would be to both prospective employees and employers alike. I was pleasantly surprised!