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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