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.