8 - Lia's Technology Adventures!

A technology advancement that I believe has the biggest promise for education is the creation of augmented realities. Augemented realities enable students to see the physical word through a computer generation that alters what you see, hear, smell and feel. An example of a really cool tool that enables one to experience this is the Oculus Rift. The Oculus Rift is a piece of technology that is strapped around the head. Once it is strapped onto the users head, the user is seemingly "transported" into a 3D landscape -- but in all reality it has been designed to produce a three-dimensional perspective that evokes that sensation. I believe that the implications for this technology is limitless. One of the educational uses that come to the forefront of my mind is how students can take far-more engaging virutal tours to areas around the word, or perhaps engage in three-dimensional reinactments of historal events. Maybe this is just me being really nerdy, but that sounds incredibly fun and far more interesting than having to listen to a lecture in class.

In my ideal, futuristic landscape, I would love to have holographs of prominent historical figures interact with my students, but I think that it is safe to assume that those types of developments are way farther down the line, A technological advancement that I definitely think would be efficient is the creation of an app that allows students to see what their peers are working on in real-time (assuming all students involved were partaking in educational activities online). I feel that this has great implications. Imagine four students are working on a group project on their ipads (provided to them by the school) and one group mate becomes curious about how far his or her other group mates have progressed with their share of the work. This app, theoretically, should enable the student to view the webpages visited, notes taken, and PowerPoint progress (assuming they had all decided to use powerpoint) in real time. This means that if, and I'm choosing random names, Stephanie became curious and checked the app, and Edguardo was currently searching for primary sources on the Library of Congress website, Stephanie should be able to see him search through the pages as he gathers information. Additionally, this app will be able to include highlighting and note-taking features to better convey thought-processes to fellow group-makes. The issue that I can foresee with this application is that it would only be efficient if it is used on technological devices that are strictly reserved for educational purposes. I highly doubt Stephanie would want to read Edguardo's facebook post about how he's craving chicken nuggets as it would not productive towards the assignment.
Unfortunately, I can not find a website with an application that is similar to this. The closest thing that I can think of is permitting other people to work on a word document with you on google drive.

In the podcast, the digital divide is defined as those who do and do not have access to a computer/the internet. I am definitely on the side of the divide that is fortunate enough to have access to both, given how I have had a computer in my home for as long as I could remember. As the podcast suggests, I anticipate the digital divide to exist within my future classroom as well. As an instructor, it will be my job to ensure that students who do not have access to a laptop or internet will, at the very least, have access to these tools in school. However, in these cases I will make an extended effort to try and provide these students with take-home laptops that can be used throughout the duration of the school year. I intend on teaching English to German students in their early high school years, and during this time frame students begin to recieve more and more assignments that require the use of a laptop (Ex: PowerPoint presentations, Papers, Classroom discussion boards, etc), and I would feel that I have become an inadequate teacher if I leave these students at such an extreme disadvantage. However, if these students simply do not have access to internet at home, the best option would be to alter our class schedule to make as much use of the computer labs as physically possible. I will also encourage the students that do not have internet access to feel free to use the computer lab whenever the feel fit (provided I speak to whomever is in charge of the lab in order to grant these students special permission first).

7- Nathalia's Adventures

Using Bloomer's taxonomy would be extremely efficient for helping students fully understand a concept. This is due that the criteria that Bloomer capitalized on (understanding, remembering, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating) are essential for student learning. By using a Power Point that requires students to meet all of these bases, I will be ensuring that my students fully understand the content. I will explore criteria such as criteria by encouraging students to use animation. Students will be taking the content that they have learned and presenting it in their own way through avid use of imagery. By doing this, they are taking in the information and producing -- creating -- their own content.
In regards to how I will keep an eye out for things such as their evaluation of the content, I will provide my students with overarching questions that will require them to condense and present the information in an efficient manner.

I feel that adaptive technologies play a major role in helping students with both physical and mental disabilities to learn in a classroom students along with their able-bodied peers. One of the adaptive technologies that I thought was pretty neat was the verbal spell checker due to the fact that it reads out the misspelled word to the student to bring attention to the error. Afterwards, an array of words that the student could have been attempting to spell is presented to the students. I feel that this is especially important for students with attention deficit disorders, and this can be essential in helping them learn. I also believe that reading guides would be helpful for these students as well. In regards to students at have issues with auditory process issues, I can use FM listening systems (which I have never heard of until recently), which limits background noises and amplifies the teacher's voice. I have not used any of the adaptive technologies that I have listed, but I have used reading guides (which is an online tool that highlights lines of texts as students read) to help keep me focused due to the fact that I had ADHD. A challenge that I percieve with using adaptive technologies is that neurotypical and able-bodied students will become jealous of students with disabilities for recieving what they would consider "special treatment."

Working on the web page design assignment gave me a general idea of how websites are organized. This is a useful tool for me due to the fact that I will soon be making several professional sites about myself in order to promote myself as a teacher. Even as a teacher, I will constantly be making websites detailing assignments, announcements, and events for my students, so there really is no escaping it for me! So I really did appreciate this assignment because it gave me a chance to get my feet wet, so to speak. The only thing I didn't like is how the website lagged a bit the first day we were all working on it in class, but because so many people were using it at once it couldn't have been avoided.

http://nathaliaedwards2019.weebly.com/

How to be a PowerPoint ninja

This PowerPoint is a prime example of what all PowerPoint should be. Despite how it has 54 slides, it was perfectly paced and very quick/easy to get through. This highlights all the key elements one should consider when incorporating animation into a PowerPoint. Some of the things capitalized are: do not use excessive amounts of text, pace the flow of information with animation, do Not use overlap, make use of smooth end animations, etc.

How To Be a PowerPoint Animation Ninja from BrightCarbon

6 - Lots of analyzation

The format of Mrs. McDavid's website is perfectly suitable for the age range of her students. Given how she is teaching a third grade class, her use of vivid colour, fun animations, and large, easy-to-find links makes the website aesthetically pleasing to younger students while making it easy for them to navigate. As I've stated multiple times before, I feel that it is especially important to keep younger students visually entertained as it will prevent them from being distracted or becoming bored. As you can see below, the website is jampacked with vivid colour and a fun font that will hold the attention of students. The website also links to Mrs. McDavid's professional blog, which can be handy for parents that would like to get in touch with her. The only issue that I have with the site is that some of the links do not work. For example, the "tour of our classroom" link leads to a 404 not found page. However, the links that do work lead to pages with fun designs, such as the "supply list" link.

As an instructor I definitely intend to make use of productivity tools. For example, I plan on taking advantage of resources that will aid me in keeping record of information on my students. I have full intention of using Microsoft Office Suite due to the fact that it's spreadsheets can prove sufficiently useful in organizing my information. I also intend to use Diigo as a bookmarking tool. Diigo will prove especially useful due to the fact that I can bookmark websites with specific notes and make annotations onto the websites themselves.

The web resource evaluation forced me to take a closer look at websites and question their authenticity. Before this assignment, I never really took the time to question whether the information being presented to me came from an established organization, or if all of the links were fully functioning and lead to where they were supposed to. I feel like this assignment was extremely helpful for me because it provided me with an extra sense of caution with websites. This will be a necessary trait for me to have when I am having my future students participate in web hunts. What I didn't enjoy about the wiki was the fact that multiple people couldn't work on it simultaneously. This became tedious after a bit because, every time I wanted to add or edit something, I felt inclined to copy all of the text (so I don't lose my work) and refresh the page to see if anyone else made an addition to the paper.

This is my evaluation, where I evaluated this website.

4 - Online games and horrible math teachers

• SC.4.L.17.4 (The Big idea is interdependence. This focuses on the interaction between plants, animals, and humans interact. This also delves into how we depend on one another and our environment. Human impacts on the environment are included as well as how energy flows from the sun, to producers, to consumers)
• Concept-mapping
• The use of concept-maps are especially useful for the material included within this standard. The transfer of energy throughout all parts of the ecosystem can easily be tranlated into a concept-map with sites such as inspiration.com.
• I also intend to use educational games as well. An example of a game I would use for this standard specifically is http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/games/producersconsumersgame.swf. Similar games can be found here.

I feel that using the internet to support student research is essential. This is especially the case with younger students, who are in need of more visual and interactive material in order to retain information in class. Through online tools such as interactive online games, the process of reinforcing information learned in the classroom can migrate from being a chore to an activity that could potentially be deemed fun. Due to the fact that I intend on teaching fourth grade students, it would be a major concern of mine to ensure that the course material is, at the very least, reinforced through online research tools. Because of the age group of my future students, some methods of online research will not be useful. For example, simply providing my students with a sheet of paper with a list of questions and telling them to look up various text-heavy websites in order to gather information will be highly ineffective. I feel that internet research is most effective with younger students when the webpages are highly interactive or collaborative. Otherwise, in my opinion, it would be a waste of time.

Open education has directly impacted how I have searched for internet-based resources in the past. I distinctly remember having a terrible math teacher my junior year of high school, and more often than not I would find myself being next to clueless the weekend before the tests. If it were not for open education, I would not have been able to search for videos of teachers teaching calculus on youtube. This has been essential to me for a good part of a year, and I'm sure it has benefitted tons of other people too.

During the web hunt I became better-able to narrow my search with specific keywords. The search tools I became most comfortable with are quotation marks, the minus symbol, and the word 'and'.

My webhunt:

Search for an online game that can effectively reinforce a subject (your choosing) for your students in a fun and engaging way.

Search for a software that will enable students to collaborate and form a short movie or animation that teaches a concept.

3 - Essentially me gushing over how Edmodo and other things are cool, and how I intend to use them later.

From a personal standpoint I uphold Edmodo's smooth and efficient interface, so it only feels natural that I chose to critique it. Talking about the aesthetics of the website sounds like a shallow reason to uphold the site, but I honestly believe its friendly appearance carries a level of importance. Edmodo's resemblance to the Facebook website triggers a level of familiarity among students who use it, which can eliminate the learning curve require to submit work documents on the site. It is also important to note that Edmodo is far safer alternative to most educational websites given how the site does not allow the general internet to access data within groups made in Edmodo. Additionally, personal information is not required from students, which will help secure their safety and wash away any anxieties parents may have about their child submitting work on line.

Edmodo also places a sufficient amount of control in the instructors hands. Should a student post inappropriate content, the teacher can easily delete said post. I captured a screenshot of just how simple this is

Edmodo also provides a friendly interface for students to interact with one another, remind each other of assignments, and collaborate on work. This also gives shyer students (who typically would not speak much in a classroom setting) an opportunity to participate in discussions. I have witnessed this with my younger brother, who would actively participate in group chats on Edmodo despite how he was far more quiet in person.

In regards to technology software I'd like to use with my student's, there's definitely the small group chat function on Edmodo I'd like to incorporate into their learning assignments for reasons listed above. Another factor from Edmodo that I would like to incorporate are the site's various Math and ELA based game apps that can help reinforce what they have learned in the classroom. I might consider making use of web portals such as Education World for web hunts, but due to the surplus of ads I would have to extensively preview the portals before exposing them to my students. When encouraging students to compare data, I may also make use of mashups. Upon studying information on geological phenomena, I feel that this would be unavoidable. Chapter nine provided a really good example of this when presenting the scenario of students comparing Google Earth maps to earthquake information from the U.S. Geologic Survey. As a final example of some of the things I want to incorporate into my classroom, I believe making use of podcasts and video are of high importance. Podcasts will provide a level of reinforcement for auditory-learner students who were not able to entirely absorb earlier content presented in text-form. The use of video (which I intend to present through the use of brain-pop) can provide the much-needed visual stimulation for visual learners, who cannot take in content from text-based readings or lectures. I have found that many forms of visually-stimulating reinforcement require some level of interaction from the student (i.e., the quizzes at the end of Brain pop, the manual movement of google earth, the game apps on Edmodo), which can also benefit students that are hands-on learners. Through the use of these modes of reinforcement, I would feel more comfortable knowing that I have provided some form of aid to the varying types of learners in my classroom. Given how I intend on teaching a second-grade classroom, I intend on providing my students with as much interactive material as physically possible while still staying on track with the curriculum. Therefore I foresee myself making great use of brain-pop, game applications on Edmodo, and Google Earth where applicable.

Creating the newsletter forced me (in a way that was much needed) to become more acclimated to the graphical elements that Word has to offer. For a while I was thrown off by the level of complexity that was provided by word, but the creation of the newsletter backed me into a corner where, in a sense, I had no choice but to dive in a bit and figure things out. For instance, I have become more comfortable inserting photos, using word art, creating columns, borders, and so on. What I didn't like was the frustration that came with learning how to do those things, but that was a necessary evil.

#2: A journey through copyright and embarrassment

As a student I have frequently relied on the use of Microsoft Word in order to create informative text documents to represent certain course material assigned by the teacher (who would later request a printed copy). I have also used Microsoft Word to incorporate graphs and visuals into my assignments, despite how Word isn't the conventional method of portraying visuals. This is a habit I picked up from my seventh grade teacher, who would frequently copy and past photos into Microsoft Word and present the word document to the class via a projector (now that I think of it, I'm not entirely sure as to why she didn't just use the PowerPoint function. Huh. Weird.)

Although this idea can't be considered new, the textbook opened me up to the possibility of using podcasts in my future classroom. This will enable my students to hear lectures relevant to the coursework while relaxing on their own time. However, I'm aware that this will not be beneficiary to non-auditory learners, so I intend to make use of the electronic whiteboard and educational games (with kahoot being one example) to give visual learners a leg up as well. Using elements of social media in my future class (such as Edmodo) will encourage my students to collaborate with one another and develop the social skills needed to cooperate with one another.

I only recently discovered the true extent to what materials could be copyrighted. Previously, for school projects I would use an array of images found on google to display on PowerPoint presentations, having no idea of the potential consequences that could have arisen from this. Now that I am aware of the legal issues associated with careless use of someone else's imagery in my presentations, I make sure to only use images that are deliberately labeled for reuse. Now that I am aware of fair use, the importance of only displaying content that is relevant to the course material has been efficiently reinforced. (For example, I now know to only display the few minutes of a movie that is directly related to the course material as opposed to showing the entire movie itself). Additionally, I am now aware of the illegality of photocopying entire textbooks, so that is another practice I will avoid altogether. In order to ensure that my students are aware of the issues of copyright infringement, I will discourage the turning in of work that does not acknowledge the producer with proper citation. Also, I will teach them how to search for images that are labeled for reuse so that they will be aware of this simple, protective practice that I -- somehow, some way -- wasn't taught until I took this course. What if someone sued me when I used a random picture of a whale for my oceanography class in high school, oh my god.

Using twitter has shown me how incorporating social media into a classroom is a great way to gauge an understanding of what your classmates are thinking. While in high school, I have genuinely lost track of the number of times that I became concerned about whether or not my perception of a concept was the same as that of my peers. I believe that seeing the views of your fellow classmates is important in the educational process because it can expand a limited idea of a concept into something greater. In some cases, it may reveal your perception as a whole to be incorrect. The use of social media is definitely something I intend on incorporating into my classroom due to the extent of which it has benefited me personally.