ILP #2

Hey everyone! So for my ILP I'm going to talk about when we toured the lab in SSB. This lab is really neat because it provides a lot of accommodations for students with learning disabilities or for anyone who prefers to have learning aids. The keyboard here is really neat because it's easier for people with colorblindness to use. The lab has a lot of cool stuff, really, and a lot of it is really accessible. There are numerous accommodations for blind students, such as handheld audio devices and more. The computers in the lab also have a program that can highlight a word on the screen and pronounce it while it's read, making reading retention a lot easier for the user. You can also change the colors used on the screen. Even though it was painful for some of us, our guide told us that most students prefer those certain settings. Overall, it was a really useful trip. Some of the applications looked like they would be helpful for learning for myself, too. And I plan to let my friends know about it too if they ever feel like an extra aid would help them study better. 

Ahhh it's the last blog post!!! The semester is almost over, everyone!!

Learning the data collection and excel tools last week was really helpful. I've been asked to use Excel functions before and I had no idea what I was doing. Now I can fully say that I know how to use Excel without semi-lying. What a great feeling! It's really great to not have to do all of the math out by hand. Additionally, the surveys are helpful because you can really gauge how students feel about a subject or learning method, if you ask. The statistical data you receive is really helpful for building up the classroom and incorporates students into the learning experience. I think one way I could use the survey tool personally is if I were to ever teach history to younger students. You could administer practice tests through the surveys and see in which areas students need to improve so I could address it in class. I want to teach higher grades as much as possible, preferably the college level, but high school would do for the purposes of this post.

What I liked most about reviewing other student's blogs is their own personal learning experiences. We all had that one teacher or that one thing we did in class that we have not forgotten because it was so critical to our learning experience. Using these personal experiences to relate to the blog journal really makes the experience relatable and enjoyable for everyone else.

As far as what technology-related skill I would like to learn next, I really have no idea. All of the skills that I wanted to learn were in this class. But maybe someday I really want to learn the basics of coding because it's just a really useful skill to have. Back in the old days when I used to use Tumblr, I got really frustrated when I wanted to edit my blog template and had no idea how it worked. I really messed a few things up doing that. Of course this is a really silly reason to want to learn coding, but it's really helpful for whenever you get a job or something and can offer to fix and edit little coding things. Or if you just want to edit your tumblr code again, haha. Either works.

Congrats on the last post, everyone!

The flipped classroom idea is really cool! I kind of had something like this in high school and it was honestly the most helpful way to learn. My math teacher would have us do the homework unit first and then learn the lesson that day. That way, you grapple with the homework and textbook first, and if it was easy to do, then the lesson was easy and fast to learn in class. But if the lesson was hard, our teacher would work out some example problems with us and all the light bulbs would eventually go off on our heads. Somehow trying to understand the information first for yourself is actually really helpful. The initial confusion and trying to figure out how to understand a problem helps you retain the solving process better, I think. Here's a video from Khan Academy about flipping your classroom! It's short so it's worth a little of your time! https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/using-technology-in-the-classroom/four-different-blended-learning-models/v/sscc-blended-flipped

So I searched for open content and I found this really cool website! The home page looks really simple but when you click on the links it literally has everything you could ever want to know about open content. There's a definition, a blog about it, a game, and a lot more! It would definitely be handy to have for your own future classroom.

I definitely learned a lot from both assignments. I love the hyperlink functions because it makes navigating through the slides kind of fun! I did already know how to use transitions and animations and such but this was really helpful in putting everything into a cohesive powerpoint. Also I did not know that you could disable keyboard clicking so that's really neat and makes powerpoints very interactive. Also, my first powerpoint was from the Spanish presentation that I had to do this semester so I gave the presentation in Spanish, haha. Here's my first presentation:

 And here's my interactive quiz for AS6! It took a while to make but I'm really proud of it.

Well that's it for this week! See you all next week!

Hey everyone! So definitely all of the technologies we saw in the lab would be really useful for a lot of people. There are so many resources for blind students, and I found that awesome. I didn't know we had a lot of the accommodations that we have, actually. There are actually quite a few more colorblind folk than you would really think, so I really hope that the lab gets utilized often. The most useful resource, though, is definitely the computer program where it highlights words and will adapt aural reading speeds with it as well. Honestly I can see that being useful for myself too just because sometimes reading comprehension is hard with complicated topics. And it's amazing that such a helpful app is also easily accessible!

So creating a powerpoint using Bloom's taxonomy is pretty straightforward. So for me, I always divert to history (always a given, the obsession never abates). So obviously step (1) would consist of you creating the powerpoint for the class. Then (2) evaluating sources and their arguments and (3) analyzing where they intersect to (4) form a cohesive argument. The last two steps would be teaching students to help them (5) understand the concepts you're trying to teach them and use various media supports to help them (6) remember what they've learned. I used the numbers to go from top to bottom in the period if that makes sense.

So I found a really good website that's by a company that specializes in informing teachers of new innovations of technology in education. Basically, it's the ultimate resource for teachers. You can read more here and here's a screenshot!

Until next week!

I haven't been exposed to too much of accessible technology because I've gone to really small and pretty much under-accommodated schools my whole life (small private school with not many facilities, and a community college with not many students. etc). But I have seen a few technology aids that are really cool. For example, I've seen text-to-speech software before. I worked at Publix up until a few weeks ago, and since I'm from Lakeland (where Publix is from), we do a lot of experimental stuff in our stores back home and a lot of cool programs. For example, for a couple weeks we had a few vision impaired students work in the store for a little while. Also, we hire many disabled people. I'm really proud of Publix for doing that. One really sweet guy who went to school in Flagler and would come home for summers is blind and has a phone he uses for text-to-speech aids. Usually they're baggers. A hindrance in the classroom can simply be getting the funding for getting the aid materials. But thankfully technology is becoming cheaper and more accessible so hopefully that won't be a problem in the future.

So here's my website's picture and here's the link:

Link: http://christinafsueme2040.weebly.com/

You can't see much of the rest of it because the home screen page is so large haha. But I really like the feel of it! I think the only thing that I would change is that just next time I'll add more stuff to it and edit a little bit more. I've used weebly before but it was a couple of years ago, so I mainly just forgot how to do a few things. But then when I started perusing the editing tools it wasn't too hard.

I really do like Diigo. I think I personally like Evernote better because I have more experience with it but we'll see. I have to start a research paper for my history senior seminar soon and I really think I'll be using these tools because they're super helpful. I mainly just learned about how on site annotation and highlighting can be helpful when referring back to a source. On Diigo multiple people can collaborate on annotations, though, whereas Evernote isn't exactly the same. So I think Diigo is better for group work but Evernote is better for more personal stuff.

See you guys next week!

ILP #1, Design: Prezi

Hey everyone! So for my ILP I did a Prezi on Educational technology in history classes and give some useful tips for integrating technology in the history classroom and some reasources a teacher can use. I also provide some tips for assessing the technology usage. I hope anyone can find this helpful, especially for my history-obsessed friends out there! (There are dozens of us--dozens)

https://prezi.com/wyvjs1qudlls/technology-in-history-education/

I'm really curious to see what schools everyone pulls up for these posts! I went with Leon High School, because it's close to home. Their website isn't actually that helpful or kept up-to-date, though. Here's a screenshot of their home page:

Link: http://www.leonschools.net/Page/2645

So I wanted to look at specific classes and their info, so I clicked on the departments tab... But there's nothing there. There's actually a lot missing from their website, which I was not expecting. There's public information about events, notices to parents, and there's an obvious parent portal button at the top of the page. It seems like there's definitely info there for the parents, and I guess that's the only audience that this page is geared towards. If they wanted to reach a wider audience, they would have more about their education and curriculum.

I really see myself using technology efficiently with Evernote and Diigo. I actually use Evernote for my research internship and it's super helpful and my bosses really rely on it. And you can share folders and clip certain things to your folders so you can choose what to share with which people in one click. And if you save a web page, it saves the webpage jut as it was when you saved it. So if administrators change a website, it won't affect what you saved.

I really thought the smartboards were really great for classrooms. They are easily navigable and very accessible. It really seems like a step in the direction of integrating technology into the classroom and the community, and trying to bridge the digital divide. Also, 3d printing has many different uses. Imagine if in a science class you could print 3D models of things? They can really learn the inner workings of cells, for example. I know I would definitely understand them better probably if I could build them as models in class.