7 PowerPoint/Adaptive Technologies/Weebly

I have always loved making PowerPoint presentations. I was always very interested in the design and logic that went into it and now, from more research, I have a really good understanding on how to make my presentations as useful as possible. For example, I’ve learned that using a picture as the entire background of a slide, especially one that is relevant or can be related to the subject, enhances my audience’s interest and level of understanding as opposed to just a colored background and bulleted list of items. I have always hated when a teacher or fellow student wrote way too many words on one slide, especially since I am nearsighted and have trouble distinguishing small words from far away. I would use PowerPoint in a productive and stimulating manner in order to allow my children to hit every level of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Adaptive technologies don’t only exist as a result from the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, they are here to make learning materials easier for all students to use. Students with physical disabilities may require a different input or output device. Input devices would include say voice recognition for students who may not be able to type, or a trackball for students who may not be able to sue a standard mouse. I actually used a trackball as a child on my computer at home because it is much easier to use as young kid. Output devices would include a text reader for blind students or a magnified screen for kids with sight issues. I still magnify many webpages or pdfs all the time because I have trouble seeing without my glasses, especially on a smaller device such as my phone. Children with learning disabilities can greatly benefit from these technologies as well. For example, kids with dyslexia can take advantage of spell check, although I think it’s safe to say that we all would have some trouble if we didn’t have spell check. We must be conscious of the design of these technologies and where you may need to accommodate for something, for example adding a description of a picture.

I had a great time designing a website this week. I found Weebly to be fairly easy to navigate and I took advantage of the many design options. I liked how it was very simple for the most part; there was not too many options for anything (except maybe the graphics, man those were hard to pick. They were all so beautiful!). I have confidence I could easily create a class website that is appropriate and aesthetically pleasing along with it being easily accessible. I specifically enjoyed making the icon pictures of the website the hyperlink instead of posting the website link.

http://emseme.weebly.com

Presentation Skills For Teachers

This presentation has really neat tips on creating PowerPoints for teaching purposes. It teaches a lot about graphics that keep the kids engaged! It's a bit long, but it has a lot of example slides.

Presentation Skills for Teachers version 3.0 from Simon Jones

6 Class Websites/Productivity/Web Evaluation

http://teacherweb.com/FL/PineViewSchoolfortheGifted/Bradly/index.aspx

I explored Mrs. Bradly's Third Grade class website at Pine View School for the Gifted. I tried to use my old elementary school, but I was disappointed to find that they still do not have class websites. Mrs. Bradly's class website is very age-appropriate for her third graders. Her site has many colors and cute animations, I was especially distracted by <-- this dancing skeleton for quite some time. It appears at the top and bottom of each of her sections of her page if you click on them. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, her website is incredibly informative with a class schedule, calendar, homework assignments, helpful links, teacher information, a wish list, and even pictures of her class. Although, I am a bit worried that these kids' faces are available to anyone on the Internet. I would prefer that a parent or student be required to log in to see these pictures.

I envision myself using several different kinds of technology to accomplish my professional responsibilities more efficiently and effectively. I want to utilize many skills having to do with presentation software in teaching and learning, because I'm a fan of visual learning aids and sequential presentations. I like how you can add digital materials into presentations such as graphics, multimedia, hyperlinks, and more. In addition, I plan on using many kinds of productivity tools in order to accomplish everyday tasks even better. The podcast mentioned Microsoft office, and feel like that is a given at this point of time. There doesn't go one day where I don't use a Microsoft office application, whether it's Word for writing a paper, Powerpoint for creating/viewing presentations, or Excel for updating various records I keep for work. It's interesting the podcast mentioned Evernote because that is the main note-taking software I use everyday. I like how I can access it on my computer, iPad, and phone. This will be useful for documenting lesson plans from year to year and for easy sharing purposes. 

I acquired many new skills having to do with website evaluation during the Web Resource Evaluation assignment. I had always noticed when a website bothered me in some way, but now I can pinpoint exactly what is unhelpful or incorrect on a website and how it could be improved. I now know the important things to look for when deciding if a website is useful for my teaching or resource purposes. However, I really disliked using wiki for this assignment. I understand the point was to prove we can work in groups, and I will not even get into my general aversion to working in groups, but I struggled with the format of wiki a lot. It has definitely been the most confusing google application I have worked with. It was difficult for all of us to work on the wiki at the same time because we could not all update it simultaneously like you can in a google doc. If I practice with the application a bit more I would then be comfortable assigning my students a project on wiki.  

5 Educational Tools 2.0

There are many Web 2.0 tool that can benefit the classroom and curriculum, but I believe there are still numerous resources that are not useful in the classroom. For the most part, there are aspects of all Web 2.0 tools that are helpful and other aspects that are not. For example, social networks such as Twitter can be an excellent tool for allowing students to communicate with the outside world especially when in line with what that are learning in school. But at the same time, if used incorrectly, Twitter and other social media can be extremely distracting and even harmful in terms of cyberbullying. When using social media in instruction, it is very important to give clear instructions and expectations to ensure students stay on task. I also like blogs and wikis for building the students’ voices on a collaborative knowledge basis. Up-to-date computers and mobile devices are necessary to effectively use these tools. When using mobile devices such as iPads or other tablets, it would be smart to install the applications and programs beforehand and then distribute to the students.

http://docs.google.com

I am a hard-core fan of google docs and other applications google offers such as google sheets and google slides. I really like how you can save all of your papers and projects on to your google account, so if your computer dies in a horrific drowning accident, you still have all of your stuff! The collaboration tools google offers are also great for teaching students how to work together and simultaneously. In addition to using google on the internet, you can also use it in the form of apps on any mobile device or tablet. Google docs are especially helpful when trying to collect information from a lot of people, such as an entire class, without wasting time. Just simply give your students the link to the document and each student can have the responsibility to input information. This 2.0 tool can greatly enhance teacher professional development.

I would use google docs when allowing my students to peer-review their papers or other projects. Similar to Word, google docs also has a great and easy to use reviewing tool that can be automatically seen by the original author. On the other hand, it is rather easy to destroy fellow students’ (or even teachers’) writing on a shared google doc. I for one find it hilarious to delete something another person is writing at that very moment, but of course this is not acceptable behavior. Be sure to warn students that there will be consequences for this kind of disrespect.

I enjoyed the concept mapping assignment because, as an extreme visual learner, I like creating and formatting colorful graphics. I found the experience to be helpful in creating concepts maps the correct way and with an online program. However, I am hesitant to assign my students to create a concept map with this particular program because I found the detailing to be a bit intense. I also got very distracting by all of the graphics and pictures they provided you. My inner-perfectionist felt that every arrow on every speech bubble had to be the same color, which turned out to be very tedious work that distracted from the main concept. Especially with teaching younger elementary school children, I would rather them create their concept maps on a piece of paper with markers, not on the computer.

4 Internet: Google and more

• MAFS.3.NF.1: Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.
• http://interactivesites.weebly.com/fractions.html
• educational game; educational arcade game
• Fractions are difficult to "see" at first by merely looking at numbers. I would have my students explore this website with several educational games that teach simple fractions in order for them to better understand fractions and to be able to picture the parts in their head. This is very beneficial for visual learners.  

I agree that the Internet is an important research tool students must know how to use efficiently and safely. Any information you could possibly need is available, for many people, right at their finger tips via a smartphone. I have always used the Internet for research on projects, papers, current events, even day-to-day useful information. I do, however, believe that students nowadays are straying away from using books as research options. I believe it started at my generation too, since we were one of the youngest to be introduced to the Internet and all that it can offer. Most of my K-12 teachers had required us to have at least one or two references from books and then allowed us to have a few from the Internet. I plan on using the same kind of outline for my class, because it is important to keep kids interested and excited a books, and to see them as a great research aid.

Before I attended college, I hardly evaluated the credibility of websites before using them as resources. I was not taught how to correctly assess a website for different things such as Author, Bias, Content, Design, and Technical elements. I was taught to never click on any ads on a website and to never trust anything that advertises I have won something or something is free, because like the podcast says, there's hardly anything in life that is free. That being said, I will be extra diligent in educating my students on how to assess the credibility of a website and I will be sure to check out any educational website I plan on my kids using for any sketchy links or unwanted graphics. 

While working on the WebHunt assignment, I learned how to improve my google search techniques to optimize my search results. I especially like the "-xx" tool to eliminate any website I know for a fact I do not need such as Wikipedia. I also like the date tool "xx...xx" to narrow down my search to a specific time period. From experimenting with different word choices and combinations, I figured out that sometimes the best way to find a specific educational website is to search the topic in the context of a "top 10" list. This way it'll bring you to several articles from many writers who are teachers themselves that have rated websites in a list from good to bad. 

WebHunt Challenges:

1. Your students are learning about the geography of Europe. Find a website that accurately depicts historical maps of Europe.

2. Find a weekly calendar that can be updated electronically by the teacher and available to students and parents.