8 Technology in the Classroom

Technology is constantly improving and surprising us. Gamification is brought up in the text and I believe it would have a big impact on the class. Kids are using technology at a younger and younger age. When I used to babysit a 4 year old he used to always ask for my phone so he could play games. Since kids are always wanting to play games anyways, it makes sense that we make them educational.

One future technology not discussed in the book that sounds really interesting to me is eye tracking. With this kind of technology teachers will be able to see how students absorb and understand the learning content. Also where the eye is directed throughout the documents. Another aspect of eye tracking is that disabled students can use it to control keys, generate speech and more. With this kind of technology, the education students receive will enhance.

Digital divide is a term used to discuss the gap between people with and without access to technology. I am on the digital side. I have my own laptop which I use for all my work. I also have access to two libraries and a computer room in the college of education which I am in at least once a week. In my classroom I do expect there to be a digital divide. Even though technology is becoming more and more available, I can not expect every student to have access. Students who do have technology and internet access at home have a greater advantage of educational success. To address this, I will send out an email to all the parents so i can see exactly who is divided from technology access. I will also incorporate lab days in my course were I take the class to a computer room so everyone can see how to correctly use the internet, and how to work it on their own when necessary.

7 Adaptive technologies

I recently learned what Bloom's taxonomy is. Bloom's taxonomy helps distinguish fundamental questions in the education system. The levels are create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, and remember. An awesome strategy to show students this information could be in a power point. With each slide I could demonstrate each level while teaching my students. 

Adaptive technologies can be used to enhance learning of students with physical and learning disabilities. Students may not be able to type, or read. So to assist them, they could use a voice recognition software instead of typing. Students who have trouble reading a computer screen may have special magnified screen. Students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia can use a spell checker to help them learn. These are just a couple of examples adaptive technologies provide to help students. Personally I use spell check, and when I took French in high school, I had an app that would read words to me so I could pronounce them correctly. The only challenges I see about using these adaptive technologies in the classroom is, finding the right tools to fit each students need, not having the resources to provide for everyone, and the students getting to used to the tools and relying on them instead of learning and growing from them. Overall with the proper help, they can be a great asset to the classroom.

I have made a website on wix before, but working on weebly was completely new to me.  I learned how to create a calendar and actually post it on my website! It is really neat because the viewer of my website can see the calendar in three different formats. I can also add, edit, and delete any events if I need to. I thought it was a bit harder to work on weebly than wix, and it was difficult to add color other than pictures.On the other hand, I did think the tools offered made it a lot better. Next time I can try to add more tabs of information and I can use it for actual classes that I teach to keep my students and their parents involved. Here is one of the pages of my website!

Photography in presentations

Photography is a great way to attract more viewers to your presentation!

How to Use Photography for Great Presentations from lynda.com

6 Technology in Education

I visited The walker School website. I found a webpage for Mrs. Wood's classroom at https://sites.google.com/a/thewalkerschool.org/first-grade/home/what-s-new-in-mrs-wood-s-classroom. She teaches a 1st grade social studies class. I see lots of pictures of her students. I see what they have been learning in class, and it is even asking the parents to ask students about specific things they learned to keep their brains fresh with information.

I envision myself using technology like web 2.0 with my students. I hope to give projects where they can make a power point presentation. I would make it a requirement to add clip art or pictures. They would have to add hyperlinks, and even audio or video. With these tools from chapter 7, the use of technology in the classroom would be done efficiently and effectively.

After working on the web resource evaluation I feel more comfortable when choosing sources to site. I know have a complete checklist to help me cut out all bad websites. I liked working in groups for this project because we each got to use the evaluation form on our own site, but we could see how the process worked for each of us. I could definitely use an evaluation sheet like the one we made in class to review sites to show my students, or even for my students to review sites of their own.

5 Advancements in the web

Web 2.0 tools are definitely making there way through classrooms. It is important to teach your students how to use them and provide examples in the class to encourage the students to use them. I believe any class could incorporate blogs, and YouTube videos, even a twitter. It is difficult if students do not have a cell phone that allows them to join a classroom twitter page, but if there is a library with computers in the school, it is possible for everyone to be involved! As stated in the podcast, their are always concerns about letting student use the internet, but there are sites like common classroom that allow the teacher to control what the students can see so there is nothing inappropriate.

One web 2.0 tool I find useful is Diigo which can be found at https://www.diigo.com/. Diigo is a tool used for personal management. With it you are able to organize and share your information, mark up text with digital highlighters and sticky notes, and build your library by saving webpages to go back and look at later.

I would definitely use Diigo in the classroom. I would show my students the website so they could use it for studying and learning on their own time, as well as using it myself. I am constantly keeping tons of tabs open in my browser. I am always scared my computer will update or shut off and I'll lose my websites but with Diigo I can make a bookmark to easily find it whenever needed. It would also be useful when students turned in assignments through the internet. I could highlight and add comments to help them improve their work. Diigo is an awesome web 2.0 tool that can help teachers and students work together.

The concept map activity was interesting. I really liked how there were templates you could choose from to make it easier. They were very organized as well, stating subjects that were more oriented for certain concept maps. I learned how to organize the map so it was easy to read, and also how to divide the slides. I had never done a concept map online before, only with pen and paper. I would definitely incorporate this in the classroom. I think it is a great approach for students and can also be used as a study guide. 

4 Internet Credibility

http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewStandard/Preview/5293

• Standard: MAFS.K.OA.1.2 "Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
• Educational games: http://www.fun4thebrain.com/addition.html
• This website would offer a fun way for my students to learn addition and subtraction. I would show my students how to use the website in class so they could use the tool at home fore extra practice. Playing educational games is a great way to pick up the material because it attracts the kids attention and they will be more excited to learn!
• This would be an example of the academic software for educational games as stated in chapter 8. The mathematical games are formatted to engage the students.

The internet is a great resource for students. Most of the time when I am assigned homework, I have to research a bit. The first place I go is google. It is very convenient for most people and way easier than searching through an encyclopedia. Using the internet is the most efficient way to find facts fast. Sometimes the internet isn't always the answer. If you want to hear your students opinions, research on the internet probably is not going to help. Using the internet in this situation can lead to plagiarism or a biased opinion. 

In the past I have used a tool called easybib to make sure a cite is credible. There are also a couple other tips that can be used to tell if you can trust a site. One tip is to look at the URL. If it ends in .edu, .org, or .gov, the source can be trusted. Another tip would be to look for citation. If the author of the cite you are looking at has cited more places that the information was found at, it can usually be trusted. Websites like Wiki are less reliable because people can go in and change facts. After listening to the podcast I realized even ads can be unreliable. It is important to check the credibility of something as simple as an ad if you want to use it as a resource.

The web hunt assignment started out a little slow, but once I got in the groove it was pretty interesting! I used skills like (...) to search for an article between a certain time period. For some of the questions I actually already knew a website to go to, but I still had to type in a description in google to complete the document. 

Here are a couple other web hunt challenges you should try!

1. Find a website that provides spelling games for elementary students.
2. Find a website that shows the live film of a country abroad.