Blog #7

Assistive technology is one of the core strategies schools use to help with learning and attention issues. There are some technology that are more fancier than others like for instance like hearing aids or captions on TV that support students who has a hearing loss or are deaf.  On the other hand, students with dyslexia that have a hard time spelling can use spell check to help them with grammatical issues. I remember when I didn't realize that I needed glasses, would sit really close to the computer screen until I learned how to use the magnify option. It gave me a chance to be able to see clearly and not fall behind in class. The only challenge that I can think of that might occur to in a classroom is trying to keep that student at the same pace as the other students so he/she won't get left behind. 

I used Weebly back in my computer class when I was in high school but I never thought that I would actually use it again until his class. I loved using this website back then but now it seems to be a bit more difficult then what I remember. I couldn't even get the apps to pop up in order to put my calendar up (let's hope I get this fixed before class). Overall, I enjoyed creating and designing my class webpage because I got to add my own "flavor" to the whole outline of what we had to do. I loved the different themes that they had for the website and the many layouts. The only problem was that the app part was difficult for me to figure out. I don't know if it was just my laptop but it wouldn't pop up after I installed the calendar app. In my future career, I will definitely utilize this web design page by making a space where my students or coworkers can come together and find out about the different things going on around us. 

Ms. Widline Navilus 2nd Grade Math Class

I never heard of Diigo until this class but I learned so many things just by utilizing it in the class. I can now share things instantly with the people in my classroom and I can annotate any website that I need to share. This application can be very useful in many classrooms like for instance our classroom. We use it all the time and we have learned to share information that someone else could find interesting or useful. This is an educational tool that anyone can learn to use and can make it easier to learn things with students that need hep with finding things on their own. 

EXTRA EXTRA!!!

Just A Funny Video of A HILARIOUS Little Girl

ILP “Design” – Prezi

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This Prezi presentation is about the use of technology in the classroom. I chose this because after the Technology Sandbox tour I realized that getting technology involved in classroom at an earlier stage can help students be more advanced and involved in the learning process. They will be more excited and ready to get to work in the classroom because I know i was excited and intrigued by the Sandbox tour.

Technology in Education Prezi

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Blog #6

When I was in school, none of my teachers had a personal website in which I could have went on and looked up information regarding my class but they do this now. I went onto John G. Riley Elementary School website and they had a tab which lead to the personalized website of each teacher and some information that they had for their students and parents. I randomly selected Mrs. Hannah Nalls webpage, a first grade reading and math teacher. On this page she has tabs for assignments, student resources, announcements, important documents, and the class calendar. Each tab displays content that will inform students and their parents of everything that they will need to know throughout the school year. My favorite part of this web page is the Student Resources tab. It has a list of sites that the students could use at home and continue to learn. The coolest thing about these resources is that I use to use these sites when I was younger, especially Starfall.com

After the visit to the Technology Sandbox, I saw so many interesting and exciting pieces of technology that I have never seen or even heard of before. The fact that there is a place to go that I can go learn to use all of these items before I even step foot in a classroom is great. This tour allowed me to envision how I will be using technology within my career. I want to make sure that all my students have about an hour and a half of what I call "tech time" in order for them to use different types of technology within the educational setting. I really want to have a Smart Board in my classroom because it seems to be one of the most interactive thing that I experienced while on the tour and it seems like it wouldn't be hard for students to work with. I also think that the Smart Board table and Osmo, which is a game system that will change the way students interacts with the iPad by opening it up to hands-on activities, will be a great addition to all classrooms across the word. Even though I saw a lot of incredible pieces of technology on the Sandbox tour... i think these would be the best in a classroom setting. These items allow multiple students to participate at one time and makes it easier for students to rotate and try to use and learn the technology in the class.

Blog #5

Web 2.0 tools are meant to be groundbreaking new ways to share, edit, create, and collaborate content online. It’s also about how easy it is to use when you finally learn. Students and teachers both can easily master the way they use these tools within minutes of learning. Technology has become more accessible and easy to everyone. I think there are a bunch of Web 2.0 tools that will be useful I the classrooms but there are also those that are not. A few Web 2.0 tools that I think are the most useful in the classroom environment are mobile tools and presentation tools. Mobile tools are a great way for turning cell phones that students constantly use into something that they can educationally benefit from. They’re perfect for quizzes or surveys created on apps using our phones. Presentations tools let you break out of that boring everyday PowerPoint slide and allows you to create creative and unique presentations that you can instantly share with everyone. The tool I think that isn’t as useful is the video tool because of child consent laws. As a teacher, you need to get permission in order to get students in a picture let alone a video. It’s more complicated than just recording.

A Web 2.0 tool that I would use is Pinterest. Pinterest can be used by teachers to organize and share anything from lesson plans, ideas, and crafts using a virtual bulletin board. Teachers can also use this tool to network with other educators. This tool is great for a huge amount of information and brainstorming ideas. The visual nature of Pinterest makes it easy to rediscover resources that we have previously saved and to store them under the topic we are researching.

https://www.pinterest.com/

Blog #4

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it would be like every other social media but it was different than the others. I could post my opinion about things and share things with people with the 140 character limit. I could re tweet something that I agreed with or even favor it. Before this class, I haven't used Twitter in about a year. This class has brought Twitter back into my life a little bit more and i forgot how much fun it was to be on this website. While using Twitter, I have been interacting with old high school friends, different people about education, and some family members. This have been very beneficial because some of these people are individuals that I haven't spoken too in months... maybe years. It has allowed me to interact more with different people that I usually wouldn't and learn to be more social even if it is through social media. I also learn about a lot of things within the educational world that I didn't know was going on. Many people have used Twitter in their careers like politicians use it to post where they're going to be and their opinions on certain topics. I believe that Twitter can be a platform that can help spread awareness in my future career and I could post things that people should know is going on in my career field. When I am on a website, the first thing that I check for is stories about celebrities or gossip. Most websites are just gossip pages filled with things that you can never tell if it is true or false. There are a couple of things that i look for within a site to find out if it is credible or not. The first thing I try to look for is where the article is located. I have to make sure that the article isn't located under the tab entertainment or gossip. If I want something to be true and state facts then it has to be located within a credible place like news or politics. The second thing to look for is the author or publishers, they will be the people that you will quote and use as a source so if they're background isn't very clean and credible then you shouldn't use them. The amount of bias used in an article is also something that I look for because they could be pushing their views onto you and you won't realize it. If there is bias they aren't giving you a equal opportunity to view both sides of the article... just there views. There are many more reasons as but I'll just list the rest. 1. The source's neighborhood on the web 2. Author and/or publisher's background 3. The degree of bias 4. Recognition from others 5. Thoroughness of the content These are important because they will help weed out the websites that aren't reliable or credible if you need to state facts.