ILP “Design” - Prezi

I decided to do my second ILP on the design tool Prezi. I designed a Prezi about the 1990's and the key event that took place during this time period. My experience with this tool was very pleasant and entertaining. It was a fun new way to present information and I hope you enjoy it. http://prezi.com/ryz1jrmv_yw3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Blog Post #10

I think for the field I intend to teach in, High School History, I think that data collection and reporting will be a valuable tool for lessons and classroom. I would utilize surveys for planning lessons and finding out a class stance on certain lessons. For example, I would construct surveys to see which style of lesson the students would like to learn that week. By doing this, I'd not only be giving the students a say but giving them an opportunity to choose the way they learn the material for the week. I'd also construct surveys that would let me know what information the students have the most and least knowledge on and which material they feel the most comfortable talking about. By doing this, I'd make the classroom a more comfortable place to learn and express one's opinion. I would utilize reporting by incorporating it into lessons. For example, I could have a paper with the stats of certain economical events like the great depression or the industrial revolution. I would have the students put the stats through excel, have them find the median, mean, and average, and have them pull the graph so that they can themselves see the dramatic changes happening during these time periods.

Looking through other's blogs, one topic that I saw expressed was a disagreement of the Flipped Classroom. I found that I was not the only one who felt the Flipped Classroom was a flawed method. Other's also felt that the use of the method was more harmful to students then helpful. When looking at the other blogs, it was clear that we all shared a common reasoning for our displeasure for this method. We all feel that this method actually discourages student participation, especially with the use of videos that the students would have to watch at home. We all seemed to think that a student would be lazy and unlikely to watch the video especially if it's for school. Another topic I've found interesting is the other's praise of Diigo. Most of us, including me, have found Diigo to be a blessing in disguise. There was obviously a type of skepticism when first using it at first but when we got used to it, it became a part of our college life. I think the best part about it is that whenever I see other's blog posts or tweets, there's always one or two people shouting out the app. I think that this is one app that is gonna be used by all of us throughout the rest of college and into our careers.

The next technology-related skill I would like to learn next is probably the use of another Microsoft office tool like Publisher or OneNote. I would like to know this for future reference. I feel that having a full understanding of the Microsoft Office tools could help me not only job opportunity wise but also teaching wise. For example, I could get hired for a specific education job because of my understanding of the educational technology being utilized by that class material. I could also be a key influence in a students use of education tech if I showed a full understanding of the tech and help them use it appropriately and beneficially. I will achieve this goal most likely by trying to find instructions or videos on the internet explaining the use of these material, but if those do not work I would most likely go to the campus library and maybe look for opportunities, instructors, or material that would help gain a greater understanding of the material.

This concludes my final blog post. Thank you Taehyeong for the helping gain a greater understanding of technology and making class enjoyable. And thank you to the rest of guys for being great classmates and great people. Hopefully I see you all outside of class and become friends with you all. I hope you guys enjoyed my blogs and I hope we all finish the class with A's.

Blog Post 9

The flipped classroom is blended delivery model that is currently gaining a following in K-12 & postsecondary education. This model is an outgrowth of educational vodcasting, aka education video cast, of content. It was first promoted by teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergman of Woodlands Park High School in Woodland Park, Colorado. This method began by making lectures available online to students. From there it expanded to "flipping" the way students and teachers spend their time in the classroom. In this model, students listened to prerecorded video lectures for homework before coming into class the next day, changing it up from the usual lecture style lessons. This method caused students to work on group or individual activities in effort to gain a better understanding of the material. This method lead to the creation of various different methods that utilize educational technology in today's modern classroom. I think the best example of the kind of videos utilized for these classrooms are crash course. When ever I had a class that utilized this kind of method, these are the type of videos we used. https://www.youtube.com/crashcourse

Open Source is a term that basically refers to software, more specifically the programming or coding of the software is being referring by the word open. Open Source Software is software whose source code is made available for anyone to access, allowing software developers to modify programs for particular use or to add new features. The community of developers and users has grown around a lot of open source programs. People may turn to open source software when they are working with a limited budget because most Open Source Software is free. Open Source Software really gain grown with the rise of the internet, which lead to a massive retooling of computing source codes. The Open Source Software movement arose to clarify the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created. When looking up this term, I found a lot of useful websites that might come into use in future teaching situation such as Azure and OpenOffice. Both website provided details of the open source material and the uses it has. http://download.openoffice.fm/get/openoffice.php?aid=controlinline&source=bing

I feel that the second power point assignment was a lot more helpful in developing my PowerPoint skills then the first one was. When I was doing the second assignment I was learning a lot more interesting skills to creating a PowerPoint like skipping out of order on slides, disabling the clicking/pressing the space bar, and the one I found to be the most interesting which was the mouse over feature. This feature basically makes it able to go to the next slide by moving the mouse over an object on the current slide. On the first assignment, I didn't really find anything to be new except for the recording the lecture feature. In fact, that's probably what I liked most about the first assignment, recording the PowerPoint. It really help me realize where I am public speaking wise. What I liked most about the second assignment was being able to make a create-your-own-adventure story through PowerPoint. I really liked this because it let me utilize the action feature that would allow me to skip to any slide I wanted. What I didn't like about both assignments was trying to involve 4 or more slide layouts. I found this to be very difficult since I had a strong idea of what I wanted to do for both assignment. What I would improve upon in the first assignment is vocal presentation. I felt like I stuttered and messed up a lot with my pronunciation. What I would improve up in the second assignment is the presentation. I wish I could used better imagery when creating my slides.

  

Blog Post 8

When we visited the A.T. lab before the break, I discovered that the amount assistive technology that could be used for education is much broader than I initially thought. One piece of tech that I think can be utilized in the classroom is the zoom-in tool. I think this tool can be useful for the students with poor eyesight because it can enlarge their desktop and help them better navigate their desktop. Another tool I saw as very useful was the type and speak tool. I feel this tool can be very useful because I feel it gives a equal learning opportunity to both visual and auditory learners. The last tool I feel will could be useful is the smart pen and book. I think the smart pen and book is most useful because of it's many uses. It can record the teacher lecture which can help students who want remember specific detail about the lecture, It has a camera that can help with students who forget lose track in class. The most useful part of the tool, in my eyes, is the fact the all the info saved to it can be stored to the cloud which can be really effective for students when it comes to assignment storage and note taking.

PowerPoint as a tool can be very beneficial and can strongly support student learning at each level of Bloom;s Taxonomy. Through PowerPoint, students can create by customizing the own slides with different patterns, fonts, and images. Like if a student was doing a PowerPoint about birds, they could insert images of birds to indicate a theme. From there they can evaluate by using tools to help understand there argument. Students can evaluate by using bulletin points on a slide to figure what supports their idea. Next, students can analyze by using tools that help them list and compare stats. For example, they can uses the tables feature to categorize their info that help support their argument. Students can also apply by using tools in PowerPoint to help find out if there argument is valid. An example of this is if a student had an idea for a solution to a math question. If they wanted to check, there is a equation tool that list the equation, so they can apply their thinking to the equation. Student can then understand by reviewing their material, and looking at both sides of their argument through their slides. PowerPoint gives students a easy, fast, and entertaining way to discuss these ideas by providing them with tools like tables, charts, and shapes, all in an effort to make sure they can make their material understandable. Students will find PowerPoint to be most helpful when they need to remember. PowerPoint is most useful for this because of the many methods that can be used for remembering, such as making a game of jeopardy out of notes.

In effort to keep up with technological advances, I feel the most helpful website for this would be the tech page on mashable.com. Mashable is a website that focus mostly on technology while also focus world news that can correlate with tech. I feel this site is great for keeping up with technological advances because it's always on top for the latest updates in tech and provides all the most important info. The tech page is helpful because with the news on the latest update in tech, it will help not only in educational tech but tech in general. This means that through this website, a teacher will be able to understand and interact with students through the tech they use most and a teacher will be able to utilize this in educational ways. http://mashable.com/tech/?utm_cid=mash-prod-nav-ch

Blog Post 7

Adaptive Technologies are pieces of technology made in effort to help learners with disabilities that could not use certain pieces of computing equipment when it came to class room activities and assignments done on computers. This was all made possible by the American's with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990, which made it illegal to discriminate against anyone with any disabilities and made it so any disabilities would be accommodated for. These adaptive technologies support learners by accommodating to the learners disability, making it easier for them to learner. For example, if a learns disability hinders their eye sight, the learner is provided with output technology that help them gain the information through magnified screens, text-to-talk devices, or braille printers. Same can be done for in disabilities that hinder mouse control or typing, they can use input technologies such as track balls or joy sticks instead of mouses or voice recognition technology. The only time I've ever really seen any use of this technology in or out of the classroom is my father using it when texting because of his poor eyesight. The Biggest challenge I see coming from this tech is I fear that any students might have an disadvantage. I fear that a student using input tech like voice recognition might not get the all the right material as a teacher could mumble or trip over there words. The same goes for a student using output technology like text-to-talk.

Making a website for this class was one of the most interesting things I've ever done for a class. It was very easy and very difficult when it came to making, posting and editing my website. The most helpful skill I received from the entire assignment was probably creating a link on my website. That's gonna be most help for me in the future when it comes to updating my teacher website and adding links for certain assignment. This skill will let me make it easier for students to find helpful links without having to memorize or copy and paste them. What I liked most about this assignment has to be coming up with grade level and subject part of it. I'm an aspiring history teacher, so being able to set up a rough image of my actual future website was really enjoyable. What I dislike the most was searching for links to put on my pages. While I find teaching history to be fun, I also found out that it was extremely difficult finding useful link that could pertain to such a broad subject like World History. What I would improve on next time is adding more color and interaction to my website. I feel like my website is more simple but stuff on the website is easy to find. Next time I want to make my website stand out. This activity will be very helpful in the future because it will give me more experience and a better idea when it comes to the construction of my future class website. http://riicharddiick.weebly.com/

The new skills I learned from Diigo have became a major game changer in means of sharing. The fact that it's another education sharing application is helpful enough, but the fact that you can bookmark a page and highlight key pieces of info for a SPECIFIC GROUP is what makes it a real clutch tech tool. This tool will be most help full in computer lab days and take-home online reading assignments in a high school history class. Before Diigo, teachers would give link for student which would lead to giant article reading and the students would have to figure out and read the parts that contributed to the class. With Diigo, not only can the teacher highlight the most important parts but now the students can also highlight parts and other articles that they feel will also be useful. Diigo will also be useful when using it with team member, as it can be used to share articles, tech tools, and websites that could contribute to future lessons. Diigo personal use will really help me because with the use of the tool I can keep track of what websites, tools, and online games I intend to use when planing out my lessons each week.

ILP “Participation” – Google Glass

I had no experience with the Google Glass before my use of it in the tech sandbox. When I first put them I thought they were a really cool device that had a large number of benefits to the class room. As I tried to use it, however, I realized that it was a lot more difficult then I initially thought. The hardest part in using it for me is between the voice command and the side touch-pad. The google glass has awesome voice command features, but the problem is that other people voices affected my use of the google glass at times. The google glass voice command feature should be more focused to the users voice. I also found the side touch-pad on the side was hard to control and use at times because it was so soft to the touch. I feel like there were still more positives then negatives. I feel like the features for star-gazzing, taking pictures, and taking video could be really useful in the classroom. In the end, I feel that if certain improvements are made the google glass can be a vital classroom tool but for right now it is still a work in progress.

Blog Post #6

The class provided basically had the same display formula with little pieces of customization in each. I observed the pages for Social Studies teachers at Raa Middle School. The 2 pages I focused on most were Mrs. Inglett, who teaches Culture and Geography, and Mr. King, who teaches U.S. History. Both public page include a creative page layouts displaying different color schemes. Both either had links on the side leading to classroom materials, papers, and assignments or simply listed the assignments and questions right on the page. Each page also had pictures and descriptions pertaining to there own life and other extra-curricular school activities they might be involved. What stood out to me was the each pages approach to when it comes to they way they were organized. Mrs. Inglett's page was a more direct page as it has the latest assignments and notes posted at the top. Mr. King's page has a creative spin to it as the home page describes some of the schools extra-curricular's, the latest video pertaining to the subject, and a student of the week section.

I envision using word processing, presentation software, and online tools in order to successfully accomplish my job as a high school history teacher. My use of word processing would be most beneficial to me when writing up classroom worksheet as it would benefit in my efforts of creating worksheets that appeal to my students but also inform them and their parents on any information. I would utilize presentation software in efforts to make my lessons in the classroom entertaining while also teaching the main curriculum. I believe that online tools would be the most effective for completing my responsibilities in effective and efficient time. I would utilize online tools in and out the classroom, providing online activities and assignments that stimulate the you students minds while also using the tools to interact with other teachers through Diigo and posting assignments, note, and worksheets on a class page accessible to both students and parents.

I think that the tech sandbox was an awesome experience. It showed me alot of useful classroom tools that I feel all classes will utilize at one point. The ones I feel would be the most useful in the classroom environment I intend to teach are smart boards, virtual reality headset and sphero. I feel that all can be effective in teaching high school history in different way. VR headset could put students in the middle of historical sights around the world and maybe even recreate some of the events that happened at those site. Smart boards can let students have a whole new experience when it come to class room participation and can maybe cause more kids to be excited about learning with its touch screen abilities. Sphero's use in a history classroom is underestimated in my eyes. I feel that with the use of giant floor maps, sphero can help display the movements of whole of colonies and actions taken by countries in history.