Technology and Teacher Professional Development

Through my individual efforts, I got to discover a couple websites to assist with teacher professional development. Among those sites was LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media made for professionals to share their accomplishments, the latest news, and simply just stay connected with other professionals and companies! It's very helpful for teachers because it allows them to easily see what other teachers are up to.

From viewing the annotations and bookmarks of others, I got to see what other websites, blogs, and services my classmates have discovered. Among them was a website to find nearby teacher conventions. This can be helpful in keeping track of where and what the nearby conventions are about.

Blog 8

Adaptive technologies are so helpful in making those students with disabilities be able to feel like they are just like every other student and entirely part of the classroom. One of these types of softwares are different word prediction technologies. This can help students with disabilities type what they need to quicker. Some students with disabilities have real difficulties with typing so this can be very helpful. Another technology could be a special keyboard to help those students who can't see as well be able to type! Some printers can even print braille for these students too. I actually don't know anyone who has used these technologies but they seem so interesting! Some challenges I see right off the bat are things like cost and training for teachers and the students.

Powerpoint is a very effective tool to help make learning happen in the classroom! That can really be represented through the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy-
Remembering- Many students are visual learners. Being able to show students diagrams on the board when showing a powerpoint can really help to make sure students are able to SEE what they are learning and make sure they don't forget!
Comprehending- On powerpoint, you can have information pop up on command when you are presenting the powerpoint. A way you can integrate comprehension into the powerpoint would be by writing questions on the powerpoint and then listing the answers after but make them appear only when you choose to. Then you quiz students and see what they actually know.
Applying-In powerpoints, you can have a starter question for whatever topic you are about to teach. It will help students start thinking about the topic and then you can show a video or something directly integrated into the powerpoint to really help them apply their prior knowledge into the new topic.
Analyzing- Powerpoints are perfect for analyzing topics! All you have to do is make slides for every part of one topic. You can really go in depth and analyze details on the different slides.
Synthesizing- A complete powerpoint is just tons of little parts put together to form an entire presentation. To synthesize in a powerpoint literally just breakdown a topic and explain in on the powerpoint.
Evaluating- During the powerpoint you can have discussion questions to help make students critically think about topics. Throughout the powerpoint you can list questions to make the students describe different topics and why they feel how they do on them.

Technological education is constantly evolving. Companies are always creating new tools for educators to help with simplicity and ease in teaching. It also can make learning so much more fun for students. It can be hard to stay on top of all the new technologies. That's why websites like EdSurge exist! This website features different articles that focus on topics revolving around technology in education. Theres even a specific subsection in the news tab titled "S'Cool Tools" which only features articles on different technology tools in education!

Adaptive Technology for Diverse Learners

Throughout my individual efforts, I got to understand the kinds of technologies that are out there for those living with disabilities and those who help those living with disabilities. I honestly didn't realize just how many services and products were out there. I can imagine that being affected by disabilities living in today's times as opposed to even 30 years ago must be so different. The technologies today make it easier for those with disabilities to be in classrooms with unaffected students and still be able to benefit from the class. Years ago, that simply wouldn't have been possible because it would have been too difficult to integrate children with disabilities into the lessons made for the other students.

The group presentations made it easy to learn concepts in the textbook. It is easier for me to learn and understand concepts when they are told and explained to me as opposed to just reading things on my own. And in preparation for my personal group's presentation, I had to make sure I knew my material in and out. I did a lot of reading and reading of my section. I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to explain my section and have my classmates actually get something out of the powerpoint!

From viewing the bookmarks and annotations of others, I got to see what kinds of technologies are out there for those with special needs. Being able to go through my classmates bookmarks as opposed to searching tools out on my own made it so much easier for me. I got to not only save time from searching technologies all on my own, but I also got to see technologies that I may not have come across on my own.

Blog 7

From using twitter these past weeks, I have come to discover just how helpful it is for educators. I followed various educators and education companies so my feed is always full! I am constantly becoming exposed to different tips, tricks, and facts regarding the education world. The benefits I've come across so far involve the simplicity of twitter. Its so easy to get information. Its also not that much of a time commitment. Its easy to just hop on twitter whenever you have some down time and become connected to whats going on online. The one struggle I have come across myself is that if you're always on twitter, theres not as much new stuff going on all the time. Therefore you aren't learning as much if you're obsessively using twitter.

From the webpage assignment, I got to learn all about Weebly! Before this assignment, I had never used this website before. I think its really good that I now know how to make my own Google calendar and display it on my website. Its so cool that whenever I update  the calendar, the calendar shown on my website is updated instantly! Overall I like Weebly for how easy the platform is to figure out. But going along with that simplicity, its hard to personalize the site as much as I would want to just because of the pretty strict layout they allow your websites to follow. Honestly, with my personal website, I'm satisfied and wouldn't change a lot if I were to do this project again. I think every part of this assignment is helpful for my future career because I need to be able to know how to make a website for nearly any teaching position!  Here's a direct link to my website. http://msbriannamaphis.weebly.com

With Diigo, I'm able to use webpages and share information in ways that I honestly didn't even know was possible. I think being able to not only bookmark specific pages but actually highlight and write notes directly on the page is such a helpful feature. This tool is so helpful for my relations with my peers simply because its such a simple way to get to share information. Its also so cool to be able to see bookmarked sites of others as well and get to see the kinds of tools your fellow teachers are using. Diigo is just a representation of collaboration at its finest.

ILP "Design" - Prezi

Throughout my time as a student, I have often heard about the online tool "Prezi" for making visually pleasing and informative presentations. I recall seeing my classmates make these back in high school. But I have never taken it upon myself to actually try out this website for myself. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out this tool and also show off my design skills a little bit!

Prezi has a very simple user interface. But although it is so simple, the finished product ends up still looking so professional and well put together. The presentation is split up into the title, topics, and subtopics. This simple set up helps keep things organized and helps the Prezi creator think of the main points they need to go over in their presentation and make sure they stay on topic. The ability to add pictures and videos in the presentation itself is another feature that lets the presentation creator get in every bit of information they could possibly want to put in a presentation. And the best part of Prezi? You can make an account for free! There's also a paid version with various premium features but all the basic tools you need to create and share a presentation are available with the free version.

Here's my own Prezi I made while trying out all the features. It's on how to be green!

https://prezi.com/view/EOuKUXaRsaeZChVzb50K/

Overall, I have simply just discovered a new online service I am going to find to be so helpful when I have my own classroom and students to teach!

Group Activity C.R.A.P.

GROUP ACTIVITY C.R.A.P.

Mrs. Beckham's science class

Contrast- It's pretty easy to read due to the white background and dark words. She put words over pictures but you were still able to read what she's saying. All of the titles are bold making it darker and more visible . 

Repetition- The fonts are repeated. On the homepage there wasn't that much repetition. There was a lot of random placement. Not really organized. 

Alignment- The three subtitles are aligned perfectly. As well as the pictures. The titles and subtitles are centered neatly. 

Proximity- Some of the media are far apart. There's a lot of extra space throughout the webpage. The three subtitles are grouped together. 

Via: http://mrsbeckhamscience.weebly.com/

Teacher Productivity Tools

Today, throughout my individual efforts, I looked up different teacher productivity tools. Even just from Googling, I found different posts that ranked different productivity tools. This made it easy to see what other people think of different tools, without having to try them all for myself! I found out that there are so many different programs our there for educators. Some things I never would have even thought would exist to help teachers, do in fact exist!

From viewing annotations and bookmarks of others, I got to find even more services that I hadn't discovered on my own. That is the beauty of collaboration on websites like Diigo. It was nice to be  able to go onto websites that my classmates posted and go directly to their annotations and highlights to be able to see what was found to be most important. I got to discover sites like Freshgrade.com, a website to help teachers grade and keep track of grades.

Blog 6

From looking around the public pages of school websites, I learned a bit about the kind of information available. Specifically, I searched Lake Whitney Elementary School's website. This K-5 school is located in Winter Garden, Florida. Some upcoming events are listed to keep parents in the know. The different teachers and staff for the different grades are listed. Their emails and such can be found here! You can also find information on becoming a school volunteer here. Links to be able to find the lunch menus can be found too!

https://lakewhitneyes.ocps.net

I can see myself using technology to be more efficient and effective in all my responsibilities as a future teacher. I would want to use a classroom blog or something to help keep my student's parents in the know, without wasting paper! Online grade recording services and programs would help me share my student's grades with their parents and the school easily. As the podcast brought up, Microsoft Office applications are good for making documents, presentations and more that are going to be shared with many different students/parents. Being able to save whatever you make for use different years is super helpful and saves lots of time as well. Another way to save lots of time is using a web application like Diigo to bookmark sites for easy finding later. Diigo also lets you share sites with your fellow teachers as well!

At the technology sandbox, I discovered so many technologies that I didn't know were even in existence for classroom use! My personal favorite technology I discovered was the SmartBoard that could be written on with dry erase markers and whatever the teacher writes would show up in live time on students smart phones. Students were also able to take screenshots whenever of what the teacher was writing! This is useful for students with teachers that write too fast for them to keep up with and also lets to students focus on learning rather than frantically writing down notes. I also think the giant touch screen tv's that can be turned flat would be very useful in a classroom too. Multiple students can use one at a time offering lots of potential for collaboration and friendly competition among students!

Education and Web 2.0

This week, I learned about how useful tools like Diigo can be for both educators and students alike. The amount of collaboration and interactivity of Diigo is so handy. Web 2.0 sites are truly what makes educational technology what they are. Being able to share useful resources and websites with different groups is so helpful! Web 2.0 opens up a whole new world for everyone and the education community specifically!

Just tweeting!

Have you been keeping up to date on my twitter posts? See what I think about my classmates blog posts here! https://twitter.com/briannafsued/status/917454969221079045

Journal 5

Web 2.0 technologies are very necessary in today's classrooms due to ELA standards. It is important to be able to use interactive websites so students can communicate with teachers and also be able to access media sharing websites like YouTube. I think sites like YouTube are specifically very important in teaching for classrooms. There are videos on literally anything in the educational world available on YouTube for free. Another helpful tool are blogs! I mean, think about what I'm doing right now! Blogs make it easy to communicate my thoughts to my colleagues and educators.

I have discovered a very interesting Web 2.0 site that is both useful to classrooms and saves trees. LiveBinders.com is a website that educators use can create online binders for their students to turn their work in electronically. Gone are the days where you turn in stuff in paper in person! This is super useful because teachers won't misplace papers, students won't have to worry about leaving their printed work at home, or even have to worry about finding a working printer at all.

In chapter 12, I think that the technology I see being the most useful in classrooms are ATOMS. This is a product uses gamification to be an educational toy that uses technology to aid students in learning. ATOMS are electronic building blocks that connect with Bluetooth technologies. They help students learn about technology and engineering. This is very important for children because it can open their eyes to the world of engineering and creating. This technology could be utilized by allowing students to use the blocks to create things relating to the current subjects being learned in science classes.

Journal 4

Even though I haven't been active on the educational twitter for long, I'm already seeing how this can be beneficial for educators. Personally, I have been interacting with a lot of my peers in the class. I also follow random education twitters who I favorite and retweet their tweets. I can see twitter being really helpful in my future career because of how connected it makes you. Being able to follow your personal school district and also fellow teachers of the same grade/subject as you keeps you in the know. Interacting with your peers is a perfect way to make sure you know the best way to teach ideas to your students and make sure you're on the same page as other teachers teaching the same things as you.

The digital divide has the potential to really affect student success in schools because not being able to use technology as well because you don't have access to it can make if very difficult for some students. For example, if a student from an area with little access to technology transfers to an area with a lot of technology, it would be very hard for them. They probably wouldn't be able to use the different necessary technologies. Its also easier for students with access to the internet to pretty much do everything they might have to do. Lack of money in certain school systems and districts are a big cause of the digital divide. A school that can afford to give every student a netbook versus a school that only has a few old computers in the library can make the digital divide a lot more prevalent. As a teacher, you have to be very aware of the divide to make sure every student has equal opportunities to  get work completed. You also have to make sure every student knows how to use all the required online websites and services.

I think, as a future educator, there are certainly specific educational softwares that I think I will use more than others. I think Microsoft Word seems so helpful in being able to create and share tests, documents, and ideas to students! Also, its helpful for students to be able to send and create documents to turn in and assess their knowledge. In like 5th grade, I can see this being so helpful. In that same grade, there are other softwares and services out for me to use that I do not think would be as helpful. I think that like big online informational databases might not be as useful. Fifth graders wouldn't know how to use them nor would they find information useful to them that they would even be able to understand! As an educator of 5th grade, I don't think databases would be as helpful either since the ideas you are going to need to be teaching are more simple and wouldn't need intensive research for a teacher to be able to understand and teach.