ILP "Design"

For this Independent Learning Project I chose to do a Prezi. At first I didn't know what topic to choose for this project, so I looked to the templates for some inspiration. That was when I found the perfect template to teach my students about the Titanic. Finding information about the Titanic was easy, but this was my first time navigating Prezi. I really liked being able to move the circles of information around, but figuring out how to resize them was a challenge. The other thing I got to learn how to do was adding in pictures to my slides. I really liked how Prezi is connected to Google. It made getting the pictures I wanted very easy. The other thing I got to utilize was inserting a YouTube video. I thought using a video of a Titanic survivor in my lesson would be perfect addition to this topic.

Prezi below:
http://prezi.com/7eg72an3cjac/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

ILP "Participation"

Participation Activity Log

Beginning-

•         Go to Lynda.com
•         Click start free trial
•         Enter your credit card info
•     You can cancel the trial when completed so you do not get charged
• 
  

Middle-

•        After you are done signing up, you can choose what topics interest you
•         I chose options in design and the mobile web
•         Lynda.com will then give you video options
•         I chose Before and After: Things Every Designer Should Know with John McWade

End-

•         Watch the video
•         As you watch the video, each segment will get a eyeball next to it to show that you watch it.

Watching this video really gave me some good ideas on how to make an effective website. As a teacher, I will most likely have a personal website or blog so that I can communicate with my students and their parents about what is coming up on the calendar and give general announcements. John McWade talked about a few key things to think about in this tutorial. He talked about keeping the design of the website simple and giving each page a focal point, as opposed to just a bunch of words on a page. He also talked about showcasing your work to grab the audience’s attention. I tried to think of ways to incorporate this as a teacher and I thought it would be neat if you showed pictures of your classroom so that parents can see the environment that their children are learning in. Also, since I want to teach such young children, I thought it would be great to have a gallery page of all the children’s artworks and crafts. John McWade talked about many other ideas too but these were a couple that really stood out to me in his discussion.

This is the certificate I got for completing the tutorial. It says my dad's name because I used his credit card to register for the free trial.

Blog Post #10

            This week’s assignment took a lot of time, but overall was a lot of fun to do! The one thing I wasn’t a big fan of was going through and connecting everything with action buttons and hyperlinks. It was very tedious. On the bright side, though, it was a lot of fun picking out what topic to make the trivia out of and then what questions to put for each category. This is something I would definitely use when I become a teacher. I think this is a great way to make class fun and a great way to conduct a review at the end of a unit. Next time I think I could improve on it but making it less cluttered and give the questions more variety.

           

            I think I will data collection tools in either a geography class or science class, both in middle school. I could use it for surveys in geography and in science as a way of gathering data for different experiments. I could also have my students make their own surveys to develop an experiment as a final project.

            The topics I found most interesting from reviewing my classmates’ blogs were all of the topics that went over the assignments we had done earlier that week. I really enjoyed reading what everyone liked and disliked about the assignments and being able to relate to some of the struggles they had with them. They other thing I really liked was looking at the pictures of their assignments. It was cool to see how everyone put their own spin on the assignments. Looking at the pictures also got my wheels turning on how I can use those programs better next time.

            The next technology-related skill I want to learn is Excel. We started it a little bit last week, but there’s so much more that I want to learn. I want to know how to effectively work the software because I know it will be a program that I will have to use a lot as a teacher. It is very similar to a grade book, or is even used as a grade book and I know there are easier ways to input things and I want to learn how.

            I will achieve my future educational technology-related goals by constantly using and practicing with new technology. I plan to be up to date with any new technology because it is constantly changing. By being updated, I will be able to use the technology effectively so that my students will benefit greatly.

Blog Post #9

            According to chapter 10 in the book, a flipped classroom is when a teacher posts prerecorded lectures and assigns the students to listen to them for homework. The students then come to class the next day where the teacher has planned discussions and activities to help deepen the understanding of the content discussed in the homework. The way the students listen to these lectures is through technological recordings, so they can easily find them on their course website at the end of the day. Here is a website where you can learn more about it:  http://flippedclassroom.org

            An interesting web-based resource I would like to use in my classroom is definitely wikis. I love that it gives the students a chance to add their own thoughts and feel as though they are apart of the page too. Wikis also ensure that the students are looking at each other’s work since it is all on one page. Blogs don’t have the same insurance when it comes to looking at other posts. While the students know that the teachers are looking at what they are writing, they can almost guarantee that the other students aren’t.

            I think it would be great to have a wikis for an English class so that we can openly talk about the books read in class even when we aren’t in class. I would make that homework. It would be like a Socratic Seminar, but on the Internet instead of in person. I think it would also be a great place to post questions about homework for me and to the other students. It would be efficient for me as the teacher because I’m sure it can be tedious answering the same question over and over again through email. Wikis would display the question to the whole class and hopefully that will stop the students from asking the same one. http://wikisineducation.wikifoundry.com

            Something new I learned from the PowerPoint for Information Dissemination assignment was how to add transitions between slides. I never learned how to do this, or even realized it was possible because I was sick the day we learned in in this class and my high school teachers never incorporated it into their presentations. I liked making up my own lesson for a class. It got me looking forward to one day having my own class, but at the same time I didn’t like how tedious it was. It takes a lot of time to add all the transitions and effects into the slides and that doesn’t even include adding the actual information and pictures. This assignment did teach me how to make things interesting for my students, especially during a lecture. I remember being so bored after seeing the same slide over and over again.

Blog Post #8

            Someday I hope to be a teacher for young students, such as Kindergarten and First Grade. Now that technology is so prominent in society, it is safe to say that it will most likely be in these younger grades when I become a teacher. A technology that I think will hold the biggest promise in education is the digital badges. This is the first year I had ever heard of digital badges and EME2080 was the first class I had ever heard of that used them. With that being said, when I received my first one, it was much more exciting than I expected. This is why I think it will be pivotal in learning. Children love being rewarded and having digital badges awarded will give them the motivation to reach the milestones needed to advance to the next grade. The badges remind me of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. So many children stick with that organization to achieve the badges for their sash. It’s the same with learning. If students get rewarded for the basics, they will enjoy school more at a younger age and hopefully build a strong foundation for years to come.

            Another technology that I think will impact education is the Kindle. I think that these devices will replace most books and then the student just carries around the tablet that holds any textbook possible within it. I believe that this will become a big part of education because it is more efficient than carrying around a textbook per class. This will also be helpful for younger grades too because you can add reading games and math applications to the Kindle so they can practice anywhere.

https://kindle.amazon.com

            The digital divide is the gap of people who do and do not have technology in their homes. I, personally, have technology at home so I am on the technological side of the divide. I have technology in both my apartment in Tallahassee and in my home in Tampa. This will most likely affect my future classroom, because, as the podcast said, not every student will have access to the Internet or even a computer. Students who have computers and Internet at home are thought to be at an advantage over the students who do not and this will become a challenge because I will have to come up with assignments that are technologically neutral or that can be done during class when the student has access to the school computers. I remember in high school, to make sure students had the chance to do the research for a project; teachers would take us as a class to library to use the computers. This way the students who didn’t have a computer at home could do all their research then and there then would just have to do the written portion.