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.

Hey everyone!

So to jump right in, you're going to have to use some Web 2.0 resources. The world is becoming way too technology-based way too fast for you to not use one of these methods in your future classroom. I've mentioned this before, but I think one tool that's really helpful is Wikis. Explaining something to others is the best way to practice your knowledge of a subject, and everyone benefits from crowdsourced projects like Wikis, so it's a win-win for everyone!

I found this really cool tool for teachers to use that's a really good way to use Web 2.0 in the classroom. If you're anything like me, you forget everything all of the time. So I found a tool where teachers can send messages directly to phones to remind students and parents of various activities. You can remind students of assignments and in class activities. I personally need this haha. Whenever Taehyeong posts on blackboard his link to the blog post for the digest of the week and what to do for next week, it's super helpful. Since this helps me so much, I can see that it would help my future students really well too.

I think a very interesting and promise for education is Massive Open Online Courses. A lot of very prestigious universities actually put these courses out on the internet. If you go on Yale's website, for instance, they have some lectures and courses posted online and I know some people who have done them. I love how this makes higher learning--from one of the top schools in the nation--available to everyone. The only thing is that they need to be more publicized, and people would have to want to do the courses in their free time. So maybe a teacher can substitute a lecture with one of the MOOCs for their students using a projector in the classroom or something. This helps bridge the digital divide as well by giving everyone in the classroom an opportunity to learn, as opposed to making them use it at home.

Have a good weekend and rest of your week, everyone!

Hey everyone! Time for Blog Post #4!

So early twitter is going okay... It's kind of a chore to keep up with to be honest. I never use twitter in a professional way, personally. I either tweet memes or articles I find interesting, but nothing really education related. So it's hard to be professional on something that you're used to using for anything that's as unprofessional as possible (like dank memes).

The digital divide affects schools because students who don't have the same technological skills as others have fewer skills, a harder time adapting to changing technological environments, and have less confidence in their skills. Causes simply lay in class divides. A student from a working class family in a lower class neighborhood does not have the same capabilities as a wealthier student from a more prosperous community. Even though students without computers can go to libraries for school, accessibility is still a problem here, and more underprivileged communities are not as up to date as wealthier communities. This would be very difficult to address as a teacher. Perhaps group work would help with this, so students can work together if not everyone has a computer, with established meeting times in a computer lab or library.

Lastly, I feel like all of the software mentioned in the chapter can be really helpful for learning. I would probably more emphasize Reference, tutorial, database, and problem solving softwares more, though. Reference software goes hand in hand with the Copyrights chapter we just had, too! And tutorials are important because especially if there's a digital divide, not everyone in the classroom may know how to do certain things, so it's good to have everyone go through tutorials. Also, navigating databases is tricky, but with tutorials and in class use, they should be really helpful! And lastly, problem solving is a critical part of learning, so that's definitely a must for the classroom.

And that's it! Until next

I think we can all agree it wasn't so bad that chapter 9 was so short, haha.

But first, let's talk a little about the ELA standards. I think the ABCDT acronym is really helpful! I think that the authority, bias, content, design, and technical elements are pretty easy to teach, because whenever we do research for any reason, we have to determine whether a website is credible enough to use for the research. There are many things that the podcast mentioned, though, that I had not thought of before. For example, I wouldn't think to check the website stability and the links. I probably would have assigned a website or something for students to look at without checking the links, but the podcast explains pretty well the dangers of inappropriate links on a website. Also, I didn't think it mattered whether you outsourced links or typed them in. So I definitely need to look more into how to look deeper into a website's credentials and associations.

I would primarily like to use wikis, web blogs, and other web-based media for my students. Last semester, one of my assignments for my Middle East history class was to edit Wikipedia. It could be anything we wanted--just as long as it was related to what we learned over the whole course. I definitely learned a lot from this assignment and it helped me with my writing. It was hard and time consuming, but a good move on the professor's part, I think. And then, videos, podcasts, and graphics are always helpful for learning too. And posting on blogs like this is a good way to debrief from reading and retain what you've read and learned.

I mainly learned about functions that I didn't know existed with the newsletter assignment. It was pretty easy to figure out, but it was discovering where everything was that took forever. Here is my newsletter! Excuse the fact that Microsoft underlined part of it.

Hey everyone!

So to just jump right into things, let's talk about our pal MS Word... We're all pretty familiar with it by now. Usually we use it to write papers or submit short assignments. Professor will often use it to distribute handouts and syllabi, etc. I haven't really used it for much else. Every once in a while I'll use the table function for a few things but otherwise it's just for writing papers.

As college students, copyright can be a touchy subject. Every once in a while you'll find a student who somehow got all their books online..... for free. And a lot of times we will misuse others' content and photos, not because we're intentionally violating their copyright status, but because we aren't really educated enough to discern between what is and isn't copyright. I think the best way as a teacher to promote practices following the Fair Use guidelines is to first set an example. If you implement them well, students will have a guide to go by. Then, if they do something wrong, it will be easier to identify. I also think it's very important for students to be extremely proficient in citation guidelines. Because we use copyright materials for so many things, it's important to teach them in its many uses. A lot of teachers only teach citation guidelines for research papers and aren't as strict in presentations or other media, which contributes to wide copyright misuse.

The first issue I would want to address in the classroom is cyberbullying, especially among younger students in middle school and high school. If students use social media for educational purposes, I think it's very important for the teacher to be just as active on social media. If their presence is made known, students are less likely cyberbully. This is not to say this will eliminate the problem, but perhaps alleviate it. Another strategy I would use to promote acceptable seems simple, but I think it would be really important. Having a good Adblock program on all educational technology would prevent the student from falling prey to potentially harmful clickbait. Lastly, I would teach students about the importance of internet content and maintaining a proper standing and reputation in the internet that accurately reflects who they are, so that they may protect their privacy.

Have a great rest of your weekend, and I'll see everyone in class!

There are many reasons why a teacher would integrate technology into the classroom. Technology helps the teacher with outside of the classroom tasks, such as administration, lesson planning, and communication, as well as inside the class with teaching. Have you ever had a professor who still uses a composition notebook for grading as opposed to an online program? The difference is pretty apparent. It makes their lives easier and helps them more efficiently plan for the class. Additionally, they can adapt to the students' different learning styles. Not everyone can learn through lecture, so technology provides the visual and interactive aspects to keep students engaged. Teachers may also be influenced to use technology because state standards are requiring that students be responsible citizens in technology. These two chapters actually coincide well with the ISTE standards. A good point the second chapter makes is that the information age requires students to be adaptable and innovative. A student can foster these skills through communication and practice, and track their progress through assessments. Lastly, technology gives equal access and opportunity to students with disabilities and students in underprivileged communities who may not have access to technology.

I really appreciate the ISTE standard for teachers that encourages their students to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity--especially the creativity part. Channeling learned information into innovative processes demonstrates proper achievement and advancement in the subject taught. But then it's funny because this is the one standard for students that I can't really identify with. I learned about certain media from a young age, but I feel like I learned about blogging, MS Excel, etc., too late, and in these areas, I feel like a digital immigrant. So I really do value teaching this to children, because it's a critical skill to have for later in life, especially when you're taking classes on education in technology.

The term "Digital Native" seems pretty accurate to describe youth in technology today. In short, this term is used for people who grew up in the modern world of technology; for example, most of us probably don't remember living without computers or phones, or at least we began using them very early on in life. In contrast, a Digital Immigrant is someone who first began using technology in their teens or early adult years. Though both types of people can become technologically proficient (or equally technologically impaired), the way in which they use technology differs. The podcast states that digital immigrants will often begin using different medias and devices by instruction, whereas digital natives would explore the same media and navigate it naturally. A lot of times, some of my teachers that I've become friends with on social media (primarily Facebook and Instagram) will use it to browse other people's feeds, but hardly post on their own. I did have one instructor Fall 2015 that encouraged us to use different medias for her class such as Tumblr and Twitter. In the end, it did help us communicate more with each other, and I liked that aspect. I'm scared for my future students because all of them are going to understand technology much better than I do. As time goes on, perhaps students will become more naturally adventurous with technology and more easily adaptable, which challenges instructors.

Blog Post #0

I mentioned in class that my technology proficiency ranges between a 0 and a 1. I also said hyperbolic as one of my descriptors, but my rating really isn't an exaggeration. I have enough technology skills to have gotten here, so I haven't really done so badly. Probably the most I ever used technology was in an internship Spring 2016 where I had to update records on various Excel sheets. These sheets were already made, though, and editing them was easing. It's the creation part that's rough. As I continue my college career, it seems like everyone is finding new reasons to create excel sheets. They seem useful, but I just don't know how to work them.

I hope in this class to learn basic skills necessary to communicate efficiently and effectively in the modern world. Since information and learning are becoming increasingly integrated with technology, it's necessary to learn this skills to further one's own understanding at the same pace.

Here are my results from the in-class survey that we took. These results are spot on in accurately show my learning methods and practices.

For the first part of the results, I have just a 1 preference towards reflective learning as opposed to active learning. This basically means that I do tend to prefer working along and thinking through a problem prior to acting it out, but I also learn best by walking through the steps. Which is true, because a lot of times I try to read a problem, have a pretty fuzzy understanding of it, but then understand it once I've finished working through it one time.

The second part drastically favors sensible learning as opposed to Intuitive learning. For me, cold hard facts are easier to understand that abstract concepts.

The third part demonstrates that I have a small preference towards verbal learning instead of visual learning--essentially, tell me, don't show me.

Lastly, I have a strong preference towards sequential learning. I see things as a process where events build off of each other (this shows the history major in me) and I personally understand better when things are put into their proper sequential order.

What an informative survey! I guess I know now how I manage to retain all the class information.