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.