ILP Design: Glogster

I decided to make a Glogster for my Design ILP. I hope to be a high school English teacher one day and I had never even seen this program before doing this project. It is a helpful resource in creating virtual posters or study guides. I created a book report/study guide for one of my favorite books "The Kite Runner". I included study questions, pictures, themes, characters, setting, and a summary of the book. Glogster can be helpful in any classroom for making lessons more interactive and visually appealing. The only issue I had with Glogster was that I can't use it on my laptop, I am only able to use it on a iPhone or iPad and it is kind of hard to maneuver and edit certain things. But overall I really liked it and I will probably keep the app for future use.

Click here to see my Glogster

ILP Participation: Webinar

I attended a Webinar called ""Making Online Student Safety a Priority”. This was a very interesting webinar and I feel like I learned a lot. There were three speakers, Diana Graber, Luann Hughs, and Kathy Boehle. Diana is the co founder of Cyberwise. Luann is the Director of technology for Temple ISD and Kathy is the manager of Gaggle. They started out the webinar telling us facts about youth these days like that 96% of teens use social media. They also told us that 67% of teens have sent or received sexually suggestive content which is a scary fact. 90% of children the ages 8-16 have seen porn online and 65% of children ages 8-14 have been involved in cyberbullying incidents. 

Experts agree that the digital skills kids need most are social and behavioral skills. Digital citizenship focuses on these skills. This includes plagiarism, sexting, digital drama, and online privacy. Students need help learning how to use technology wisely. A lot of teachers lack easy-to-use tools to meet digital literacy standards. The solution for this is Cyber Civics which is a three year digital media literacy program for middle schoolers that meets an urgent and growing need to prepare students with skill to be ethical, competent, and empowered digital citizens. 

Kathy Boehle then starts talking about Gaggle which is the leading provider of communication collaboration. She gives us scary facts about how 1 student a month responds to ads on Craigslist for sex. Gaggle also detects Facebook groups with violent content. With the use of Gaggle, they began to see an increase in children looking for help from the Gaggle team. 

I learned a lot about internet safety from this Webinar and I also learned a lot of scary facts surrounding children and the internet. A lot of these programs the speakers spoke on could be very beneficial for any school or home. It was interesting to learn about these programs and I am glad I tuned into this Webinar. 

 

10. Technology Jeopardy Edition

This week in our Powerpoint presentation assignment, I learned a lot of new skills. Basically I learned a lot about getting content from the internet and downloading it so that I can use it in my lessons. I had to download a Jeopardy template and I also downloaded free music to put onto my slides. We also worked a bit more on navigating from slide to slide without it being automatic which is pretty cool. I actually really liked this assignment. Next time instead of using a template, I will probably try to make it by myself. This will also come in handy when I do become a teacher because it can make reviewing for tests fun and interesting.

I am a very opinionated person and I loved reading other people's opinions in their blogs. For example, I personally did not think flipping the classroom completely was such a good idea but a lot of people disagreed with me and thought it was. I also liked learning about the different technology other students were provided with when they were growing up. Some students parents were IT people while others didn't even have computers at their houses which I thought was very cool and different. I really enjoyed reading and commenting on everyone's blogs 

Today in class we learned about Excel a little. I had used Excel before but never to that extent where there were formulas and other cool things. I didn't know it could do half the things that we did today. I would love to take time and learn more about Excel and try and use it as much as I can because it really is a handy thing. It makes calculating grades easier and even if I were trying to make a budget or keep track of money. 

I hope to achieve my technology related teaching goals just by keeping my mind open! Learning these things will come with time and through experience. I will probably learn more as I progress in studying to be a teacher at FSU. I will hopefully also learn new skills from other teachers I work with and maybe even students. I really enjoyed this class and I feel like I learned a lot that I can use in my future career. :) 

Survey FRUIT :)

Here is the link to my survery- please take it and let me know what you think about fruit. :)
https://fsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_4VeXg6X9Bjon70x

9. Power(Point)fully Flipping the Classroom

            I personally think the idea of a flipped classroom is a great idea but I am not sure it is realistic. The idea is that instead of students just listening to the teacher during class, they are discussing the subject with other students and the teacher so that they are more actively learning and involving themselves. Although this may sound very proactive and beneficial for the students, this would require that students read and follow recordings before class each day. This would make it hard for some students to keep up and all students would need to have the motivation to actually do the research so that they can contribute to the conversations. Here is a link to educational videos- http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/?gclid=CjwKEAiApYGyBRC-g_jIstuduV8SJABCEzhZXxIrAZPv2d3Rm5Z_suAIh2yJKoa5rS-P_1HwLVCidRoCnpnw_wcB

              I am going to review Edutopia. This site is basically just a website directed towards teachers for their own professional development. Instead of it just being a site for teachers to look at, it is a community. All the teachers can chat and share stories. They can share their mistakes they've made as a teacher and also techniques that have worked well for them. It is a nice way to get new ideas for the classroom.

             This site also includes videos and articles for professional development. It has a lot of videos and articles about how to make the classroom more technologically advanced. It includes certain projects for teachers to give to students, for example, "The Kindness Project". I think this website is great because it gives teachers ideas and ways to make the classroom more beneficial for their students and for themselves. Here is a link to the website- http://www.edutopia.org/teacher-development

          I have not finished my PowerPoint project yet but it is a little challenging. While I have used PowerPoint all my life, it is tough to navigate through it sometimes and figure out all the certain applications that the assignment tells us to use. I am glad that we have this assignment and skill check though because PowerPoint is very important when you are a teacher. It is important to have for lectures and projects in the classroom. Learning all these special effects will help get my PowerPoint more interactive and entertaining for students which will come in handy. Here is a screenshot to the first slide of my PowerPoint. I used Halloween theme because I wish Halloween wasn't over.

8. Technology Divided

Out of all the technologies that we learned about in Chapter 12, I believe that 3D printing shows the most promise. At first, I thought this was useless and I didn't fully understand how it could be helpful in a classroom setting or any setting at all. I thought it was just a fancy thing that made nothing into something. I was wrong though and it actually has a lot of uses that could change education. 3D printing can become useful in almost any subject. In history, it can print out replicas of fossils or artifacts from certain historical events. In geography, it can create a map that shows distances between areas students are learning about. 3D printers also are useful when it comes to kids with disabilities. It can print out brail for kids who are blind and it helps blind kids feel what other students are able to see. 

Biometrics is a technology that is not yet being used in classrooms but I am confident that it will soon become big in classrooms. When first reading about this, I thought it was a little weird and too advanced for classrooms but now I feel like it could really improve student's learning and improve the way teachers teach. It can track student's heart rate, body odor, the way they are feeling. It helps determine how students are learning and if they are understanding the information being taught. This could help teachers individualize the way they teach each student. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/biometrics-and-the-future-of-identification/

The digital divide is basically a divide between people who have access to technology vs. people who don't have access to technology. I was lucky enough to always have access to technology growing up. I never had access to super high tech stuff but I always was able to use a computer if I needed it. Being a teacher, this could be tough. We can't just assume that students know how to use a computer because they may not be able to at home. As a teacher, I would try to make sure that all students were able to use the school computers and were knowledgable in the basics of using it. Technology is so important in society today and I believe all students and teachers should be able to use it and should be taught how to use it. 

7. Blooming Technology

Teaching Bloom's Taxonomy through Powerpoint:
Lesson: Discussing a Book
Evaluation: The process of evaluating something consists of assessing theories and comparing ideas. Bringing up issues on a Powerpoint and having students discuss them and evaluate them together while being able to read the information on the Powerpoint would be very helpful.
Synthesis: Using old concepts to create new ideas. Students could be given a concept from the book and then they would each have to create their own Powerpoint describing a idea they gained from this specific concept.
Analyzing: Powerpoint can be used for teachers to break down big ideas from the book into different slides so students can analyze each idea separately until they understand the larger picture.
Applying: Students can use Powerpoint to apply the information they learned in class into a Powerpoint presentation that they can use for their own benefit or to present to the class.
Understanding: Powerpoint helps students understand the information being taught by having all the information in one place with pictures that contribute to what they are learning.
Remembering: Teachers can post their Powerpoint online so students can study the information and it will help them remember it for tests and quizzes.
            Adaptive Learning Technologies are used to help students with learning disabilities and also physical and mental disabilities. Students who are blind could be provided with brail printers and speech recognition applications instead of typing. They could also use a track ball or a joy stick instead of a mouse. Students who have learning disabilities could use spell checkers and also computer provided organizers. I do know students who have has to use spell checkers and certain other programs online because they have trouble learning. Using these things in the classroom could be difficult because students who do not have disabilities could want to use the technology and not understand why other students are the only ones using it which could cause issues in the classroom.
             This website was interesting and I wish I could have spent more time on it to really make it good. This skill is helpful for any career you choose. I want to be a teacher and this would be helpful to parents and students to have a website. Weebly is also a very good website to help make this and it made it very easy and simple. Here is a link to my website:
http://sophiesstudents.weebly.com