Eleventh Post

Excel has always been a very complicated software and I never really liked it. It does however comes in handy when you need to average out grades and other stuff. I guess if I keep practicing it'll get better for me maybe. It really takes time to get the hang of it. It just amazes me how till this day this is my least favorite Microsoft software and I took computer classes in both high school and at TCC. It's also nice to know that I'm not the only person who thinks it can be quite annoying.

One of the topics that just caught my eye was the different uses of technology in a classroom settings. This helped me visualize how my future classroom will be set up. I really liked the idea of how technology plays a role in classrooms mainly because majority of students are exposed to technology outside of school so therefore they can keep up with technology use in school. It's an even better idea because for the kids who aren't exposed to a lot of technology outside of school they can still keep up because they have it available at school.

As a future educator I think that I will always include technology tools such as wikis, blogs, digital content and visualization tools to keep my students engaged and individualized. I also make sure that I connect my students online learning communities that will help them become effective. I want to make my students good digital citizens and how to transfer knowledge of technology from known skills to unknown skills. 

Check out my comments for Kim and Kirby!

Tenth Post

As instructional designers we are constantly being bombarded with new technologies and new trends. It's difficult to distinguish which are fads, and which are worthy of our time and resources.There also seems to be be the perception that you can teach any content using any technology which is hardly the case. A blended instructional delivery method that I might use when teaching is flipping the classroom. Flipping the classroom is where the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects,, or discussions. The pros of a flipped classroom is that students have more control over their own learning, it promotes student-centered learning and collaboration, lessons are content and more accessible, easier for parents to see what's going on and it can be more efficient. The disadvantages is that it can create a digital divide, there is significant work on the front end, not really a test-prep form of learning and time in front screens instead of people and places is increased.

Microsoft Excel offers a lot of benefits with its functions, formulas, graphs or charts and tables. Teachers can extract several benefits from Excel worksheets in the classroom. Since I want to be a Reading or Language Arts teacher for middle school students, I can make use of the worksheet columns. The spreadsheets can be used for creating sample sentences and linking with other sheets pertaining to the lesson plans.

I didn't really learn that much from the PowerPoint assignments because PowerPoint has been a very big part of my technology life. However, I was very fascinated with adding buttons and linking them all to the slides was the only thing I learned which was really cool because I always wondered how did my teachers from middle school and high school used to do that when we played Jeopardy in class.

Check out my comments for Kim and Kirby!

Ninth Post

When we think about bringing the 4 C's into our classroom we don't need to "add" a thing. The best way to help students master these skills is to change how we teach and learn in our classrooms. It is the process of learning not the content of learning. Technology is a perfect vehicle for facilitating this. We can help students build creativity and critical thinking by the types of questions we ask them to respond to. Students should be building communication skills that reflect the media rich world they are surrounded by. Rather than writing an essay or a report about a subject they are learning, ask students to help solve a problem and let them share their solutions using formats like digital stories, eBooks, virtual museums etc. We often think about collaboration in terms of connecting with experts or emailing experts, technology tools like GoogleDocs are allowing for collaboration on documents. Truly collaborative project work enhances student learning and help students achieve the large scale goals.

Digital Divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communication technology and those that don't or have restricted access. These technologies can include the telephone, television, personal computers and the internet. I'm definitely on the side where technology is used so much because I pretty much grew up around it. I honestly don't think that the digital divide will have a huge affect on my future classroom because I feel like by then majority of my students will have some type of exposure to technology.

Check out my comments for Kim and Kirby!

Eighth Post

Universal Design for Learning use a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers to learning and give all students equal opportunities to succeed. I learned that this design doesn't specifically target kids with learning and attention issues but focus more on building flexibility for every student's strengths and needs. In my classroom to support the three guidelines representation, actions and expression, and engagement I would use PowerPoint with added audio to slides as well as videos to show the kids our focus in the class. To put things into a more interaction state, I will assess the students with quizzes, test and even oral presentations to show what they had learned. To fulfill the engagement guideline, I would play group games with the kids to help with skill-building and to motivate them.

Adaptive technology is any object or system that is specifically designed for the purpose of increasing or maintaining the capabilities of people with disabilities seldom be used by non-disabled people. in everyday use, adaptive technology often refers to electronic and IT-related systems- like systems that help blind or deaf individuals use a computer. examples of adaptive technology are screen magnifiers, adapted keyboards, telephone typewriters, handheld amplifiers, screen reader software, digital talking book players and closed captioning programming. I don't know anyone who has used those type of technologies. I really don't think that there is a lot of challenge to using adaptive technologies.

From last week's assignment I learned the many complications of creating your own website. It wasn't an easy task but it was a very interesting assignment!

Check out my comments for Kim and Mary!

Seventh Post

An interesting software tool that I might use for teacher tasks is a time management tool. These tools are basically a calendar software. They can be used to schedule your appointments or you may want to take advantage of more complex features. Some tools can be viewed online making it an easier access for students. I can make a note of due dates for assignments so all my students can see. Most of these tools allow the option to put some information in private mode and in public mode so as the administrator I can choose which calendars can be seen by everyone. Most of these also include a feature allowing teachers to arrange meetings and groups. an example of a time manager software is Time Management-Mind Tools. I would also use a software grade book which will provide valuable statistical information regarding grades, tests and performance. When I was in high school we used this grade book called Engrade which made it easier for us as students to know what we needed to improve in, if we were missing any assignments and our parents were also able to check on our progress.

From our last assignment I learned the importance of evaluating websites before I use them. I really enjoyed creating my own evaluation form because it gave me practice on understanding how useful and important it is to teach students how worthwhile it is to know how good of a website really is. I wish I would have focused more on the currency section just so students can know how current their resources are.

Check out my comments for Kirby's and Daniel's blogs!

Website URL:                                                                                    

Name:

Currency: How current is the information? Write an “X” in the appropriate box.	Yes	No
Is the copyright date within the last 3 years?
Was it updated within the last year?
Accuracy: Does the information seem true? Write an “X” in the appropriate box.	Yes	No
Are there any other relatable websites?
Does the website site their facts?
Is the information free of bias?
Position: Where was the information founded? Write an X in the appropriate box.	Yes	No
Are sources for text and/or graphics cited or credited?
Are some of the sites links "dead" or inactive?
Who: Are you able to identify the author? Write an X in the appropriate box.	Yes	No
Is the author or publisher name provided?
Is the author or publisher background provided?
Is there a way to contact the author or publisher?
Is this a personal page hosted on a larger site?

Sixth Post

I envision myself to use Twitter in my future teacher career as a way to be a part of teacher circles and to follow education sites. Being a part of teacher circles on Twitter will be a way to help me be exposed to the many ways that teachers run their classrooms differently. Following education sites will keep me in the loop of the do's and don'ts of such things like classroom management or improving my students skills where they need improvement in. As far as a blog, I feel like this is a good way for teachers to share something new that they are trying in their classrooms for example new skill that the students are learning or even activities that are being used for students to attain the new skill. Blogs are another way for teachers to express themselves and connect with other teachers considering that they all have one thing in common and that's being an educator. Technology not only help us educate our students in the best way possible. It helps us connect with other teachers where we can learn from each other and pretty much keep improving the education system.

I'm always searching up things school work related on Google. As far as evaluating Internet-based resources I often check to see who or what created the resource and why it was created in the first place. I also often check for citations and what author(s) put their input into the resource that I'm using or just reading on. Teachers and parents can help children identify good resources from the Internet by teaching them how to look at how related is the resource to what they were searching for. I think that it's also important for students to learn how to know who was behind the resources that they were using or in simplest terms who wrote the resource(s) that is being used by then.

I really didn't acquire any new skills from the last assignment considering that searching on the Internet is pretty much something I do everyday. I really like how simple and short the Web Hunt assignment was there wasn't anything to not like about it because we were just required to search up answers which is like I said earlier something that I pretty much do everyday.

Check out my comments on Christian's and Claire's blogs!

Fifth Post

Textbooks will always be a great source of information and activities but the content could make the students not as engaged compared to using web resources. I will use web based resources to increase my students engagement, expose them to more authentic content and activities that encourage collaborative work and trigger their critical thinking skills as well as their creativity. Some fantastic sources of information that I found were PBS Teachers, U.S. Department of Education and National Geographic. Of course there are plenty iif more wonderful websites to visit that can be used as resources in your classroom.

My views about using the Internet to support student research as well as my own is that it helps us to stya connected to the current curriculum that we are focused on. The Internet helps introduce or review content directly related to the learning objectives of the topic we're focused on, My only issue with Internet use is that the students can sometimes get distracted with online games or other things that's not related to the topic of discussion.

The Inspiration assignment was pretty interesting. It was actually quite fun learning how to create my own concept map. I never used that website let alone head about it so I learned a lot of new things like how to connect the bubbles together or how to transfer the document into a word document. I just always knew how useful concept maps were when I was in elementary school for brainstorming ideas for a specific topic especially when we were writing. Definitely something I will use in my future class because it helps students find their creative side!

Check out my comment on Kim's blog!