Blog #9 (3-28-23)

    Being a distance learner is a very different task than going to school each day and doing in-person learning and having to do so during the height of Covid-19 was proven a challenge for almost all students and educators. Distance learning, when not in a pandemic, is a very nice option to have for many students that have other responsibilities besides school or simply do not live near their school of choice. However, this usefulness is a result of the several years of trial and error during the peak pandemic era, many students, me included, felt very detached from school and lost a lot of motivation for academia. The programs used by schools to electronically contact their students was no where near developed enough for every student in the school to continue education completely from home.

    Open Educational Resources provide free materials to anyone who would like to access them and utilize them for educational purposes. They are a great way for teachers to freely share their resources with each other, in a tine where they are expected to pick up so much work outside of teaching hours and account for so many student materials. Academic Earth is a Open Educational resource that provides information from a variety of awarded universities to provide free resources to students and educators. Educational resources like this one that provide free assistance and resources for learners for free so that everyone can have equal access to information.

Academic Earth

    During the two PowerPoint assignments, I was able to come to a much more clear understanding of the plethora of uses that Microsoft PowerPoint has to offer. I became much more accustomed to the use of different transitions and animations to enhance the powerpoint, especially in the Dissemination assignment, where they worked in combination with the recorded lecture. Doing such a long powerpoint of this kind of information, using so many animations, it was important to consider how to balance them so it doesn't look overdone. Overall, both helped me to increase my ability to use and excel at powerpoint, so that I can improve its use in my future career.

Blog #8 (3-22-23)

    Assistive technologies are a cornerstone in education, enabling all students to have equal access to educational materials. Teaching has been a critical job in society for as long as human civilization, over the years it has become abundantly clear that a variety  of resources and experiences help to shape students into well-rounded learners. As technology has progressed ten-fold, it has turned into a tool of great use in education so its extremely important to ensure that all students can access these wonderful materials. Re's discussion with us made it even more clear that these resources are needed, but not that developed yet. Its important for me as a future teacher to learn how to make my materials and resources accessible so that all students can use them efficiently to learn.

    Using Diigo helped me to get a better understanding of how to share resources clearly with all necessary information, as well as using the extension tab. Most of the extensions I have added for myself or classes were only needed to be installed on the computer, but I needed to use the Diigo extension after the installation. It was nice to see the resources all together on the class page, where they could be separated into different topics. In my future classes, if we do not already use a resource that has many of these functions, I may consider including Diigo to my curriculum. Diigo could also be great for teachers if the same school sharing resources with each other, it would clearly label and display the information for each other.

    It is clear that technological development in education is up to teachers, many notice that schools have been one of the slowest institutions to improve its technology, this being a result of leaving everything up to minimally paid teachers. Despite this setback, many teachers have found ways to implement new technologies and resources into their lesson plans, so there are also many resources online to use in order to stay up to date. Better lesson has a great program for teachers professional development that can help teachers to improve for their students and stay relevant to new teaching techniques. I believe it is important for the government to increase their support of students and educators but also for teachers to make sure they are relevant on teaching strategies and technologies.

Teachers Better Lesson

Blog #7 (2-28-23)

    Teacher pages are a great way for students and parents to get a introduction to the teacher and their hobbies, life, and career. Many teachers share about the colleges they attended, their spouses, and their pets, these commons themes are apparent across many teacher pages found on school websites. Its a great way to see about a teacher before they enroll in a class and commit to a full year of being taught by that person. The link included below is a example of one the the teacher pages, on a school website that I looked through. This page is a great example of a very complete teacher page, as she includes information about all her classes and herself.

Mrs. W's teacher page at Dale Public School

    As a teacher, there will be a plethora of resources, plans, worksheets, and more to keep organized and in line for myself and for my students. I will probably use calendar organization methods like google calendar. Using the Google suites would make it more accessible to me, I will be able to link the google docs, slides, etc directly into the calendar. Other than this, I will try to use my resources to continue to be technologically literate no matter the changes made to it while I am in my career. There are also systems like TUIO, which I linked in the class Diigo, are phenomenal resources for organizing all aspects of your school or career.

    While working on the website I learned a lot of new, valuable information. I have never set up a website before, using a template like on Weebly or otherwise, so using all the resources on the platform helped me to get exposure to a lot of new technology. I will definitely use this platform again if I need to make a website in school or for work, when I begin teaching it will be a great way to quickly create websites and resources for students to use in class. It was bit tedious to make sure everything looked and lined up properly in the website, but it was an invaluable experience to learn.

Kylee's Weebly

Blog #6 (2-21-23)

      Diigo is a nice accompaniment to the blogs, allowing more direct access to posted resources from many students, including extension links. The website is pretty clear in terms of how to use it, making t perfect for student use. Links and such can be posted to the blogs, paddled, twitter, etc., so it does feel redundant to add Diigo as another platform that does this. However, Diigo does provide more detail boost each resource, making it useful for a class with content and goals like this one has.

   I really enjoy the blowing assignment for the class. It is not only helpful for summarizing and reviewing what I personally learned during the classes from that week, but it also allows for students to access the overview of what each student from the class learned. The Blogs also provide a source for the future, as the website will remain up long after I am done taking the class, allowing me to access it for resources and diary-type reflection .he process of blogging has showed me first hand the benefits of reviewing what was divulged from that weeks assignments, this may alter my note-taking format to be more similar to Cornell notes, that include a summary at the end.

    I believe that Pinterest can be a very useful resource fir modern teachers, allowing more spread of visual aids, games, foods, and ideas to share with students. The Pinterest page linked below is a good example of one that focuses on providing resources to teachers and students for children grades K-12. Pinterest is a great example of a Web 2.0 resource, pages like the one provided create an entirely new way to share information and spread practices of good education. This page includes a wide variety of topics, giving many ideas and resources for each, the organization is great for clearly finding what group of information you want to look at.

K-12 Pinterest Board

Blog #5 (2-14-23)

     Since I have not had a twitter prior to this class I find it extremely interesting and somewhat confusing to navigate. After participating in my first discussion under  a hashtag on the platform, I began to understand its usefulness in conversation. Twitter directly connects its uses with other similar people, whether that similarity is careers, hobbies, personality traits, or experiences, all people can find a community to share ideas with on the Twitter platform. I believe it will be very helpful in advancing my career by creating a large network of people that I can reach out to or advice or assistance, twitter simply provides a clear platform for building this network.

    The digital divide refers to the large gap that separates those who are fluent in technology and this who are not, almost always caused by class disparities and ability to afford technology. This can play some role in students education as school, depending the circumstances, students may be raised by those without an understanding of technology an never learn, whereas others may be impacted by a teacher without technological literacy. Many other issues contribute to this divide, with many older generations regarding technology as something for younger generations and and those younger generations being too frustrated to try to help the older ones in understanding. I believe that as a teacher it should be my prerogative to understand technology that is relevant to teaching in order to provide the most complete understanding of topics to my students.

    Working on Assignment #2 with my group has provided a new perspective to my approach to websites. As someone currently working on my education, my Ian goal has been my personal understanding of a website and its usefulness, but as someone once aims to teach, I may need to redirect some of that focus. As an educator, its important to screen websites for students in a way that the resources they end up using are clear for them, as many students have not let fully learned how to go through this process themselves. I enjoy evaluating websites with a standardized approach because it guarantees that all approved websites will meet the same requirements.

Blog #4 (2-7-23)

     At the second grade level, the computer science standards outline a list of skills that K-2 age students should be able to preform. Many of the benchmark requirements list skills like being able to work in groups, ask questions, solve problems, and provide/accept constructive criticism. The standards also say that students in these grades should be able to identify concepts of simple simulation, solve issues with computational thinking, and be able to read and create a simple algorithm. I believe that there are many routes to implementing lessons that reach students these skills, group stations, introductions, and time for class discussion can all help to foster the goals of cooperation.

    CPALMS is a website used mainly by educators to find resources and classroom benchmarks that students can follow to ensure they are meeting the grades requirements. I chose to take a closer look at the resources the website provides for 4th grades social studies students. There was a heavy importance placed ut on understanding the difference between  primary and secondary sources for students, so as a result many of the provided resources are labeled as one of the other to ensure teachers include both. I believe that many of theses resources can and should be introduced into classroom teaching, they provide a lot of valuable first hand historical accounts thatch help students to develop an understanding of the importance of studying history.

    It is a highly important skill for educators to be proficient at searching for information online. The internet provides a near endless stream of new information, research, and creations, helping us to connect much more totally to the world around us more than ever possible before, so teachers should know how to navigate this vast world. I think that most important thing to know when looking up something is that less is more, way more specified information can be found by excluding unnecessary words from the search. The presentation this week was very complete in describing the many ways to improve internet searching, if I had to add one thing I would go over more the usefulness of Google Scholar and the search filters it allows you to put in to find accredited research papers.

Blog Post #3 (1-31-23

     Copyright is a term used to describe personal ownership of some kind of material, which can be written, drawn, or spoken information. This protects the owner/creator of the material from someone else taking credit for their work or representing it in an incorrect way. This is a very important thing to teach students, as the laws surrounding copyright allows use of other's materials for educational and other purposes if proper recognition is given. To introduce these concepts to students, I would probably have students write a paragraph about themselves, then I would have them switch papers and put their name on the new paper for a grade. When the students realize that they won't be getting credit for the work that they did, I will explain the importance of giving proper credit and ask them what information they would want others to know about them when they share their work.

    There are many obstacles to technology implementation, especially with it making such a sudden appearance to the educational scene. Many teachers struggle to work technology into lesson plans because of these obstacles so it's imperative to search for solutions for them. Academic Dishonesty is a huge issue that relates back to copyright law, many students struggle in school and do not know where to search for help, feeling of lack of resources often cause this issue. One of the best ways to deal with this issue is to provide a variety of resources for students to utilize, as well trying to have deadlines match student understanding, examples of this can be: including free online resources, deadline extensions, extra credit, make-up opportunities, office hours, visual aids, etc. Decreased Lack of productivity can be decreased with many of the same solutions, getting students involved in creating and choosing lesson plans can also help them develop more excitement for class.

    While writing my newsletter, it became clear to me that there are many more ways to use Microsoft Word to create educational tools for teaching. Most of my teachers in the past have not used something like the letter to convey important class information, so I found it very interesting to work on. One of the things I most appreciate is that it can be used for any grade level and can easy be connected to different dates and subjects. In addition, the simple nature of the letter made it easy for me to create and I can imagine myself using this when I begin to teach my own classes.

Link to Newsletter: Newsletter.pdf