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