Technology and Teacher Professional Development

Today, through my individual efforts, I learned about a website called "Professional Development Resources for Teachers." This website allows educators to view lessons plans and articles to help them improve their teaching skills. The website provides many resources such as helping teachers find new strategies to effectively teach diverse students and help those teachers who have made the same mistakes as you give you feedback and help.

Viewing the bookmarks and annotations of others, I learned more about a website called LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows you to professionally share work profiles and  information for you to send to employers and even friends. I also learned about education forums where teachers with like-minded interests discuss certain topics and help each other out. 

Blog Journal 8

Adaptive technologies can be used to support those trying to learn because they make learning more fun and understanding for students of all grade levels. I believe that smart boards are a great resource to get students, especially with disabilities engaged. They can also keep the gifted students busy instead of just working with pen and paper. One type of software are word prediction technologies. They can help those with disabilities predict what they are going to "say" after just entering one word. Many students who are disabled have difficulties typing so this software is a great one. Some challenges that would arise using a technology like this one is the cost to the school for the classrooms and the training for the teachers to implement them in the classrooms. 

Powerpoint is great to engage students learning in the classroom. Powerpoints can be represented through the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. For remembering, the ability to show students charts and diagrams on smartboards, using Powerpoint is a great resource, especially for visual learners. It allows students to see what they are trying to comprehend instead of just hearing it. For comprehension, an educator could create little mini "quizzes" about the lesson. For example, a teacher could create a few questions about the lesson and have the questions appear with a "command" button whenever you choose. For applying, teachers could show a video related to the lesson and ask how what they are applying relates to the lesson. This allows students to "dig deeper" and really try to engage in the subjects they are being taught. Analyzing is probably the best taxonomy for learning. Powerpoints are great for analyzing lessons. An educator just simply has to make slides about the topics and go in depth and detail in all the slides about the lesson. Synthesizing in a powerpoint is simply just putting the pieces together. To synthesize throughout a powerpoint presentation, one would just have to breakdown a topic and explain it in full detail. Lastly, evaluating in a powerpoint would be to have students critically think about the lesson/topics discussed. During the presentation of material, teachers can create questions in the slides to keep students focused, engaged, and interested. 

Technology, especially in education is always developing. New technologies and tools are constantly being "bettered" and created. Many companies are always seeking and creating new tools to facilitate teaching for educators. Creating lesson plans, and especially teaching them, is not easy. These tools are created to help educators and even students in learning. These technologies can also be very fun for students. They are learning while at the same time working with technological devices that are interactive. To be able to keep up with advancing technology and see what is out there, there is website called "The Techy Teacher," which gives a list of different technologies and softwares for classrooms. They even mention they keep the website up-to-date as more things are created. 

Adaptive Technology for Diverse Learners

Through my individual efforts, I learned the different ways that annotating can allow me to share with others why a particular website could have useful information for them. I also learned the importance of adaptive technology for students in different grade levels, specifically for students who are disabled. In viewing and listening to the group presentations, I learned about the different ways adaptive technologies can benefit international students, especially those trying to learn a certain language, more specifically, English. Viewing the annotations and bookmarks of others I realized how different we all are. We all annotate and highlight different points and sentences. This goes to show me that annotating, especially via Diigo is super helpful in the fact that it allows each person to share their ideas and then see what everybody else has to comment and what others think about the same information. 

Blog Journal 7

So far, from using twitter I have learned how beneficial it is to interact with others. Twitter is so versatile in the ways you can share information, read information, and post information. Benefits from using twitter have been interacting with my peers and learning new education advances posted by "popular" education profiles. I am able to see tweets and retweets from my classmates about articles I am interested in reading, facts they post, etc. No, I have not experienced any issues with Twitter. 

From working on my web design, I have acquired skills such a uploading background images, adding texts to these images, and linking links to "buttons" I add on my page. I like how I can create absolutely anything I want. I have the ability to make this page my own by uploading pictures that stand out to me, playing around with colors and seeing what looks best, and writing about information I would like my future students to know about. I can improve this website next time maybe by completing it a little quicker. Since it was my first time ever doing an assignment like this, it took me some time to play around with the features. Completing this website could help me in my future career because as a future educator, I plan to create a website like this one for my class. I think it is very useful for students and parents to find and read information like the ones I uploaded for this assignment. (class calendar, class announcements, and school supply list).

http://brennacarrigan.weebly.com

The new skills I learned from working with Diigo is learning how to annotate and publically comment on my classmates annotations. I think it is so cool how Diigo allows you to do this. It makes it easy to share information and personal thoughts on subjects you want to share with others. This application can be useful in my classroom if I ever want my students to annotate on lessons we are learning in class and sharing this information with their peers. In my individual professional efforts I could use Diigo for assigned readings in my classes. For example, if I am reading an article I could bookmark it, then go through it and annotate by marking and commenting points and paragraphs that stand out to me. If I need to study from this article, I could later go back and read the points I made to facilitate my studying. 

ILP "Design" - Prezi

Bullying can be verbal, physical, sexual, and even done cyberlly. It is a huge epidemic that should be stopped and taken more seriously. I believe this can be done right in the heart of schools. I also believe children have the power to put an end to it. I decided to do this project on a few simple and easy ways to prevent bullying. Most of these prvention tips are for students. I explain what they can do to try to put an end to bullying.

https://prezi.com/view/rjZx06Iri3IQCXY6FXTK/

Teacher Productivity Tools

Through my individual efforts on today's activity, I learned about a program called Schoology and what it has to offer for teachers and students. Schoology is a learning management system for K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and corporations that allows users to create, manage, and share content and resources. Technological tools have so much to offer and as a future educator, I cannot wait to experiment with them! 

Viewing the bookmarking and annotations of my classmates, I learned about many education technology tools teachers could use that I had never even heard about. It is amazing how much is out there for our benefit. For example, many people used the example of using spreadsheets for not only taking attendance and keeping track of students grades, but it is a great tool for keeping students and parents contact information. 

Group Activity C.R.A.P.

In this group activity, my partners were Jade Grassi and Gavin Clark.

Contrast:
-Yes, the contrast on Mrs. Savage's webpage is good. Most information is either black or white or garnet and white. I am clearly able to differentiate titles, headers, and actual information links.

Repetition:
-Yes, similar visual elements are repeated throughout the webpage. She has subjects such as "daily schedule, field trip dates, and homework help" with the same size, font, etc. Also, all her different newsletter tabs look the same, which make it easy to read.

Alignment:
-Yes, similar elements are aligned to represent a visual connection. She has two columns, separating all the tabs from the actual information depending on which tab you click. There is also a defined space that is always present between the tabs and the information.

Proximity:
-Yes, visual elements are grouped together depending on what they are. For example, the tabs that she has on the side are grouped together because all the information relates to those topics. After you click on your desired tab, all the information is grouped together since they are similar.

Blog Journal 6

I looked at Mrs.Pyne's fourth grade class at Cedar Creek Elementary. On her class page, she has external links to math games. I assume that she assigns homework through these websites or just encourages her students to interact with these games for practice. She has tabs such as "assignments, class info, tests, and weekly assignments." The only tab she has information in, is the "weekly assignments" tab. Here, she has kindergarten, first and second grade homework. Lastly, she has a calendar available and a news tab that has student success information as well as snack time information. 

 http://www.edline.net/pages/Cedar_Creek_ES/Classes/211-24/News

I envision myself using technology in many different ways, especially once I become an educator. Planning and documenting lessons is a great way to make teacher preparation more efficient. When lessons and materials are word processed, they are much easier to update. For example, using a software like Evernote allows you to take notes and save webpages. Never again do you have to search for an old book full of notes or a website you wanted to share with the class. Evernote allows you to do all this and more. Another tool I would use in my classroom is google calendar. Google calendar can help for anticipating workflow or mapping out an entire semester or year of lessons and tasks to complete. I would also use Excel spreadsheets for grading and record keeping. Excel is pretty easy to navigate once you get used to it and it allows for almost no human error. Excel calculates grades on it's own once you put the weight percentages in your spreadsheet. This is useful for students projecting their final grades, depending on performance from future assignments. Lastly and probably most importantly, I would use my e-mail to connect and communicate with parents and students. E-mail would probably be the quickest way for a student/parent to reach out to me or ask me something. Also, I would use e-mail if I had to communicate with a parent for any reason and to send out weekly class newsletters.

The technology tool at the SandBox that I would probably have available to me in my classroom and I would use most is the Smartboard. I have always had smartboards in my classrooms since Elementary school. They were always a great way to have the entire class engaged at once. Teachers can put interactive lessons on the board and have students take turns going up and answering the questions or marking with the markers the correct answer. Smartboards are fun and there is so much you can do with them. Another technology we used at the SandBox that was really cool was Virtual Reality. Although we all agreed this is a technology that is very independentaly based, it could maybe be used in small groups, that way all students get a turn at using it. Virtual reality can be used in a science classroom to explore the depths of the ocean, or in a history class, to go back in time and see what living in pre-historic times was like. There are many lessons one can come up with to teach using virtual reality and I find it pretty interesting. 

Education and Web 2.0

Through this weeks activities on Diigo, I learned about how much Diigo has to offer. The annotation option is something I definitely would use in the future. It was so cool how as a class, we could all comment on each others annotations and see what each other had to highlight about the same articles and even different ones. This site related to the weekly topic because we learned about Web 2.0. Web 2.0 are basically websites or software's educators can use to connect with their students. Such as, social media platforms. In the articles I read, I learned about how educators can inspire students through blogging. One particular teacher decided to use blogging in her classroom for assignments. Later, she realized that many of her students started to really show who they were and express themselves through these blogs. She challenges all educators to try blogging in their classrooms and see the amazing effect it could bring to your classrooms, just as it did to hers. Another article I read was about social media in the classrooms. This article talks about the benefits of social media in the classroom and how it allows students to engage and become "tech savvy." I think that social media, blogging and all forms of technology in the classroom are important. They help not only for knowledge on the rapidly growing technological world, but it also makes everything so much simpler.

Blog Journal 5

        I believe that Web 2.0 technologies are very useful in today's classrooms. I think that Youtube and Blogs are the more useful. I have prior experiences with not only me using them, but my educators as well. Youtube is a website where you can find videos on almost absolutely anything a teacher could possibly teach. Adding a video clip to a lesson you're teaching definitely keeps students engaged and more interested in the lesson. I feel that visual learning, such as watching a video to learn is a lot more effective than just sitting through a lecture or reading a powerpoint. Blogs can also be useful in the classroom. Just as we use them in this class, they are accessible to almost every subject. Blogs make it easy for teacher-student contact, uploading assignments, giving feedback and engaging with other classmates and seeing that work they share. One technology I feel is not much help or useful in the classroom is Twitter. Although many educators use Twitter as a way to communicate to students, and assign students assignments, Twitter only allows you to do so much. For example, when sending a tweet the max character limit is 140. There is only so much one can say in 140 characters, and I feel that to get an opinion out there or a proper assignment done, that is not enough. Sure, Twitter is helpful for fast communication and sharing, but as far as actually teaching or learning, I do not think this tool is useful. 

          A Web 2.0 tool that I would definitely use, especially in elementary education, is Myths and Legends. This website is designed for storytelling in a safe environment with a lot of options for different characters, themes, and objects to choose from. This is a great tool for allowing the younger ones to stay engaged and interested about the topics they're learning. This would also be a good idea to assign a project through to see all the students different "takes" on the lesson. Website link: http://myths.e2bn.org/index.php

          I believe that gesture-based displays are a technological advancement that hold a big promise for education. This technology allows pictures to basically be "brought to life." This would be great to use in science classrooms for many different reasons. For example, it could be used in an experiment about cells. Although one could argue that there are microscopes to observe cells, this technology would allow for a clear 3D image and students could move the cell around, look at it from different sides and angles, etc. If I would have had  technology like this growing up, it definitely would have been extremely helpful. Visual learning is the most effective I have found, not only for me, but many other peers I have talked to. I believe visual learning is also most effective for younger students to keep them engaged because they tend to lose focus and get bored very quickly. 

Embedded Tweet

I reviewed @JadeDGrassi blog post about the Penguin lesson she could use for her 2nd grade science class! https://t.co/TY66fvDXRh #FSUedtech

— Brenna Carrigan (@brennacarrigan1) October 3, 2017

Blog Journal 4

          Using Twitter in this course has definitely been beneficial to me. I have been interacting with Twitter profiles like Education Nation, Education Week, and U.S. News Education. These accounts post information daily about new tools for teachers, technological advances and how teachers can use them, education news globally and locally, and information on helping students apply and even excel in college. I have found that interacting with these profiles has been beneficial to me because I have read a lot of articles on how to succeed as a teacher, how to be a role model for your students, and how you can make your classroom environment a learning and fun one. Twitter might be helpful in my future career because I could use it to:

-tweet homework and assignments

-use it for student collaboration (projects, class discussions, etc.)

-network through hashtag chats

-share interesting topics

The list goes on and on, but these are a few ways a future educator could use a handy application like Twitter.

          Podcasts affect student success in schools because for example, podcasts are not a good resrouce in attempting to teach a subject like mathmematics. Podcasts are also usually only effective for short topics because if not, students will lose focus and not stay on track. Podcasts take a lot of storage on computers and having multiple ones could take up almost all space available in a teachers computer. Lastly, podcasts do not allow for multiple representations of the material you are teaching. Usually when educators are teaching about a certain topic, they use more than one resource or way to present and teach the information. In a podcast, you are only learning through audit. 

          Types of student softwares I expect to use the most are graphics, educational games, and stimulations. As a future educator, I will use graphics because these softwares enable teachers and students to support teaching and learning through the creation and enhancement of visuals that through this, can be used into a lesson or posted to an online learning environment. Educational games are also beneficial to the students learning, especially in elementary education, because games present material in a way that engages students while also providing practice. Lastly, I would use stimulations. They provide students an opportunity to interact with model environments and experiences to promote discovery learning. Two softwares I read about that I probably would not use in my classroom are tutorials and drill-and-practice and desktop publishing. Tutorials and drill-and-practice gives students one-on-one learning. I would not like to teach this way. As a student myself, I feel learning through graphics, presentations and in groups is the most effective way, especially as an elementary student to learn the given material. Desktop publishing enables teachers to create professional-looking study materials, worksheets, flyers, etc. Teaching elementary students, I do not believe that showing "professional-looking material" will help them learn. Young students like to see pops of colors, they like to learn through groups and games, therefore, I believe my students would not benfit with this type of learning software.