Blog Post #8

The more we work with Diigo the more I am understanding the benefit of its features. Like I said before, I was skeptical about it because I had never heard of anyone else who had used it. Now that we have learned how to take screenshots and how to bookmark whole sites, I do see myself using this in my future classrooms. If my students have to do a group research project, this would be a great way for them to share the resources they find and their thoughts on it.

I believe I will use PowerPoint a lot as a teacher and it can help me target the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. For example, consider a lesson on the solar system in a science class. For the remembering level, I can put information on the slides and repeat fact I want students to remember throughout a presentation. Along with the facts on the board, I can have the notes at the bottom of the presentation in order to elaborate on a topic and help the students understand the information better. I could also use the PowerPoint to show how to apply the information via diagrams to compare sizes with blank spaces the students can fill in. PowerPoint's features allows me to be creative, so I can make a compare and contrast game on a slide so students can analyze the information they received in the lesson. Sometimes science can have ideas people disagree on, so I can include a slide showing these and then allow the students to debate or criticize these thoughts to reach the evaluating level. Finally, with the creating level I can create a visual out of shapes on a slide to represent the solar system, and then allow the students to take what they learned and draw the solar system on their own.

Even as a student in high school and middle school, I heard a lot about teacher professional development. Despite that I assumed this was completed only by teacher meetings during school. After further research I understand it is much bigger than that and teachers can take proactive initiative to make sure they are up to date on technology on their own. I found an interesting website called EdTech, where articles are posted constantly talking everything education. The website includes a lot of information I otherwise would not have known about, and I hope it can help me in my future classroom.

ILP #2: PLN

For my second ILP, I used Pinterest and created my own education board. I was able to search through the application to find ideas and pin them on the board I made. It was actually really fun because I also got to explore other people's pages and their boards. There is a large community of teachers on Pinterest, and it can be really beneficial for other teachers at all stages of their career. If I do become a teacher I fully plan on using it to learn more classroom ideas. Here is a link to my Voicethread where I discuss my experience with Pinterest, feel free to check it out!

Blog Post #7

At the start of class, I was nervous about using Twitter. It is the one social media outlet I do not use personally very much so I had to learn a lot about it. I realize now why it can be beneficial, even in the professional world. I learned that people can connect with strangers in the same field from all over the world, which I think is the neatest feature. In the beginning it was a little hard for me to find other educational accounts and hashtags I liked, but with some time I was able to find some that I can relate to and enjoy interacting with.

This was the first time I had ever created a web page. One thing that did help me was the knowledge and experience I had with creating and designing my class blog. I was able to take some of the skills from that and apply it to the website design, so I was not coming in completely blind. Despite that, I still had to learn about a lot of features. If I were to create another one I think I would be able to make a much better website in terms of the visual aspects. Below is a screenshot of my website as well as a link to it if you wish to check it out!

Website

Personally, I think assistive technologies are the most important technologies we have. They are giving people the ability to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to do. Someone who is paralyzed can drive a car due to technology in vehicles allowing them to only drive with their hands. People without hands are now able to have a prosthetic that can allow them to write. I have family who uses hearing aids to hear. I love seeing how technology is helping people with disabilities, and I hope advances continue to be made and can even be applied in classrooms.

Blog Post #6

My experience with teacher websites had been pretty limited until I got to Florida State. The teachers at my high school and middle school put the bare minimum on their website, so it was not beneficial for me to use. Each teacher was required to have a syllabus on their site, but that was all they would post. For example, I went to my high school's website and clicked on a random teacher's page. The teacher's page has a tab for each class she teaches along with the syllabus for each class. The only other information included on her page is her contact information. I hope to keep a more thorough website when I become a teacher because I think it will help remind students of what work they must have completed while allowing parents the same access to see what their child is learning.

As we have learned, technology has allowed us to connect with others easily. As a teacher I want to take advantage of this by using available softwares to post classroom information for the benefit of both students and parents. Younger children generally need more help from their parents than older students in completing homework on time. Rather than relying on the students to tell their parents of their assignments or sending home papers to be delivered, it can be a lot easier if all the information was available online for those parents. I will do my best to keep my website as updated as possible because I think it will improve students' overall performances.

The Sandbox exposed me to a lot of technology I had only heard about before the visit. I want to be a math teacher, so I think the most relevant technology for the type of math I want to teach were the smart boards. Generally there is more than one way to do a math problem, and other students can benefit from seeing the different ways their peers solve a problem. With a smart board I can have a student come to the front and complete a problem while showing all their steps. This is something my math teachers in high school did and I want to apply the same strategy to my own classroom.

Blog Post #5

I am going to be honest and say I was skeptical about Diigo. I didn't think it was very necessary and I didn't really understand the purpose. It was easy to install the extension, but a little more difficult learning the tools. After exploring the features I began to understand the purpose more and more which made the activities we did in class better. I don't really see myself using this in the future as of right now, but it is good to have this in the back of my head should I need a program like this in the future.

As of right now I have mostly good experiences with blogging. Blogging was completely new to me coming into this class, but the explanations in our lectures early on were really helpful. I enjoyed the ability to personalize and organize my page the way I wanted. I haven't run into many issues, except for when I am trying to add images, links, or other aspects like the twitter feature. I understand it better now, but if I was attempting to create the blog on my own I would have struggled to figure it out. Overall the website is easy to navigate, but steps could be taken to make it easier for new users.

One Web 2.0 website I currently use and could use as a teacher is YouTube. I can find videos to help with my learning even as a college student. There are so many videos on YouTube explaining a topic in different ways that has helped me a lot. In my future lessons I hope to use this tool for the same reason. It can be good for students to hear a lesson from a different voice or point of view, especially more difficult or complex topics.

Blog Post #4

Personally, Twitter has never been a social media I use frequently. I have had a personal account for a few years, but I got it long after everyone else my age did. I would use it in high school to get updates on sports. Our local newspaper would post their articles on twitter, so I enjoyed reading about how my school's teams did the night before in sports. In addition to the article after the fact, the news reporters would attend the game and live-tweet updates throughout the games. If I teach in a high school setting, this would be helpful so I can relate with the students and briefly discuss their events with them before starting class.

I think the digital divide continues to affect students more and more each day. Classrooms have continued to increase the amount of technology use in and outside of classrooms, thus creating it even more difficult for students with limited technology access. Some classes don't even have a physical textbook anymore so students have to own a computer to view it online. A lot of the time this issue is because of money issues within families, and I am sure I will have students in the future with various socioeconomic statuses. I will try my best to be aware of these differences to make sure that all the students have the materials they need despite their access to computers or the internet at home.

I think the main software I want my students to use is Microsoft Word. The software is extremely useful in both educational and professional settings. It can provide them with lifelong skills like writing an email, or skills needed in school to design project reports. Another software I think I would want to implement is the online thesaurus. It is something that helped me a lot through school, and can help improves students' writing immensely. There are so many softwares available for students and I would expect my students to use those resources as needed.

ILP #1 Design - Canva

The website Canva allowed me to create a quick but organized info card that could be used in a classroom. There were templates available for use as well as other design options to create original pieces. There are so many ways this website could be used in a classroom, especially for younger children. Below I attached my Canva piece which is a flyer informing parents about the upcoming classroom Valentine's Day party. This is just one of many uses the website has, and I hope I get to use it in my future classroom.

Canva Piece

Voicethread

Blog Post #3

I am excited to become a teacher, but I do wonder what will be expected of me to know in terms of technology. I have never been a super tech-savy person, so I want to make sure I am capable of teaching my students the skills they are required to have mastered at their grade level. I want to start out teaching middle school children, so I have looked at the 7th grade Standards and technology Matrices for ELA. Overall the standards require students to be able to use diverse media types to create pieces. It also says that students should be able to find credible online resources and implement them in a document with proper citation. I am pretty confident about most skills within the standard, but there are a few media formats that I could learn more about and practice with before trying to teach them to students.

The CPALMS Educator Toolkit provides a lot of resources to learn different skills as a teacher and student. As I said before, I would like to teach 7th grade math. The math at that level revolves a lot around shapes and angles. The toolkit provides a resource that teaches educators how to make geometric shapes on a document. This would be extremely helpful for creating visual lesson plans or worksheets. It is must more visually pleasing and organized than hand-drawing worksheets. I want to be able to make custom my worksheets rather than using only pre-made sheets, and this resource can help me with that.

The newsletter taught me a lot of skills that can be used for a variety of documents I may need as a teacher. I can now create visually pleasing notes, worksheets, and newsletters. When looking at the newsletter (pictured below) that I already created I see that I can learn how to add even more detail so it does not look too simple. Worksheets and notes do not necessarily need as much detail, but newsletters do. Despite that I did learn a lot from this assignment, so I know I can learn even more with extra practice and exploration.

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Blog Post #2

It is honestly a mind-blowing concept to think about how many times and ways I have used Office products throughout school, especially MS Word. Even before I had my own computer at home I was using MS Word in school to create projects or write out assignments. I have used it more than ever as a college student, but it also played a big part in my high school experience. I used MS Word to write essays, to create advertisements, and to design our family Christmas letters. I often underestimate how much easier my educational experience as well as my everyday life has been because of it. I truly enjoy learning new ways MS Word can help me I and hope I continue to learn new things from this class.

While this technology is extremely beneficial, there are issues like copyright and cheating that come along with it. Millions of documents written buy others are available for reference online, and students can take someone else's work and pass it off as their own. Some copyright can even be done on accident because students do not understand the correct process of citing someone else's work. The last thing I would want is for a student to get in academic trouble because of copyright despite if it was deliberate or accidental. To prevent this I would start by implementing lessons during writing that would teach the students what copyright is and how to avoid it. They also must learn the consequences of stealing work from others. One last big prevention tool would be the implement of programs like Turnitin, which compares your work to others online to check originality. I hope and plan to use some of these methods to fight the loopholes technology has yet to completely overcome.

In my personal opinion cyberbullying is the biggest issue of technology. It is a hard battle to fight, and the issue has not gone away. As a future teacher I think the best way to prevent this is to heavily monitor the students' online activity and only gradually allow them more freedom. It is easier to end an issue when it is small rather than when it has been going on for a long period of time and has gotten more severe. The moment I see any sort of cyberbullying I would address the issue and hopefully end it early. Another issue implementation of technology in the classroom can cause is decreased productivity. There are so many fun websites with games that students would rather be on that can distract them from their assignments. There are features that can be used allowing the teacher to see when is on every computer screen. Especially in a computer lab setting where I cannot see every computer at once with my own eyes, this would allow me monitor what websites the students are on as well as how efficient the students are with the allotted time they have. Technology is a tool we are very fortunate to have, but it is important as a teacher to be aware of the issues it brings and to actively work to fight them.

Blog Post #1

Technology in the classroom in my opinion is influenced by our generation's expectation of everything being automatic and instant. Teachers 70 years ago were forced to give all assignments on paper, hand grade them, then redistribute them to their students to give feedback. Students born in the past 15 years have grown up with technology that allowed them to have everything they want or need at their fingertips in seconds. Because of this, students and teachers use technology more than ever in the classroom to ensure feedback on assignments as quick as possible. With this all of their information is connected and accessible everywhere.

The ISTE Standard is a powerful list of characteristics teachers should strive to be in order to help students reach their highest potential. One standard that is the most meaningful to me is learner. Teachers who reach this standard are actively learning from their environment and the developing education system to create the most influential learning experience for their students. I have seen teachers who refused to learn new teaching methods that would have been beneficial, and it really reflected in how the students performed. One of the best features of education is the fact that it is constantly changing to make improvements, so teachers should continue to learn as well for the benefit of their students

I believe the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrants" are very valid and relevant. Being digitally native is a term for those who were born in an era where technology was well advanced and normal. I think that digital immigrants have to work harder to not only catch up but keep up with technology. I have had many teachers who were forced to ask their students to help them with the technology used in the classroom. In my future classroom I expect the students to still be ahead of me in the latest technology, but I don't think I will have as much catching-up considering I am a digital native.

Introduction

My name is Abby Hayse, and I am from a town in South West Florida called Punta Gorda. This is my second year at Florida State, despite the fact that BOTH my parents went to University of Florida. They have been super great, however, and traded out all Gator gear for Seminole attire! Back home I have two dogs that I love and a beach that I spend all my spare time at. Florida State has been great to me as I have joined the club Softball Team and met people from all over. Despite the lack of beaches, I have no complaints and cannot wait to see what the future holds for me here.

In terms of technology within school, I do not have too much experience. I have taken one computer course that taught Word and Excel, and I am currently in another Excel class. Over Christmas break my Macbook broke on me and instead of getting another I changed to a Windows computer. It has been an adjustment, but being a Finance major I think it will be the best for what I will need to do.

Because of the direction the world is going towards in terms of technology, I hope to learn as much as I can in this class. I want the material to help me not only in a potential classroom (should I choose to teach), but in everyday life as well. If I choose to use my degree to start my own business, I want to have at least the basic knowledge of Excel and other programs to help me. I am excited to see what I can learn in this class and expect to carry the lessons with me through my career.