Blog Post #8

After reading Chapter 12, I definitely think that the advanced technology of virtual classrooms is going to be very prominent in the future of education. It provides expanded instructional opportunities for students because students no longer have to be limited to the classes only offered by the high school in their area. Students can find a spot in a typically low-enrollment class by enrolling in a class with students from all over the country in one single virtual classroom. I've even had a personal experience dealing with this, as my high school now requires all students to take at least one virtual class, using Florida Virtual School, in order to graduate. Taking classes online is becoming more and more popular in today's society, especially because it includes aspects of broadcast audio and video, internet chat, and phone technologies with the virtual teachers. And once the aspect of videoconferencing gets more popular in virtual schooling as well, it will basically seem like you are sitting in a classroom from the safety of your home.

A future technology that is being pioneered recently is called Google Expeditions. It is a new technology that produces virtual field trips for students in the classroom. The program requires students to have an individual smart phone at their desk, while the teacher is able to control the field trip on her own personal tablet. Even though some virtual field trip programs already exist, Expeditions is supposed to be much more advanced, using 360 degree rotation and hi-deff pictures provided by GoPro. It also allows the teacher to control the field trip by pausing it any time she wants in order to make comments, write notes, or answer questions. So far, Google has set up many different destinations that can be used for educational purposes including the Great Wall of China, Yosemite National Park, and Verona, Italy, along with many more to come. They are even working on implementing virtual college tours and job shadowing to assist those older students who may not have the resources to visit campuses or explore different career options. I think this invention is very interesting and will have a huge impact on education as it will provide a new and improved aspect to visual learning methods that may already exist, like still pictures in presentations.
Here is the link to the website: https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/

The digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between those who have easy access to computers, the Internet, and other communication technologies, and those who do not. This can include many different divides, like city and rural areas, socioeconomic groups, educated and non-educated, and even well-developed and undeveloped nations. I definitely land on the side of the divide that has the available access at any time to these technologies, as I can't even remember a time that my family didn't own a telephone, a TV, or a computer. I constantly have access to any information that I need no matter where I go, especially now due to the fact that I own a personal smartphone as well. In my future classroom, I will definitely face problems with the digital divide, depending on the different socioeconomic statuses of my students, as well as the region that I end up teaching in. As a teacher I will need to be aware that my students will have different levels of access to technologies, so when creating my lesson plans I always need to make sure there is an easy alternative to technology, like finding the information in textbooks. In cases where students may need to write papers or create presentations, I will be sure to let them know of local resources that have computers, like the library, and will also make sure to schedule extra visits to the computer lab at school when needed. 

Blog Post #7

Bloom's taxonomy is a method of learning in which students move up to different levels of understanding. The six levels, in order from least difficult to most difficult, are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. As a teacher, we can use PowerPoint to support our student's learning at each level. For example, if I were trying to teach a Language Arts lesson to my elementary students about the difference between a verb and a noun, I would start at the first step of remembering. So, I could use PowerPoint to create "flashcards" out of the different slides, like one slide could present a word, and the next slide would identify the answer as to whether the previous word was a verb or noun. In order to teach the next step of understanding, I could show a video on PowerPoint that explains the difference between  verb and noun by showing different examples of each through pictures and action videos. Then, after showing them the video, in order for them to apply the information, I would let my students create a chart, one column being verbs and the other column being nouns, and allow them to list in each column as many words as they could think of. After that, I would use PowerPoint again to  have the students help me to create a Venn Diagram that compares and contrasts different verbs and nouns that they choose, in order for them to apply their new knowledge. I would then present a quiz to the class. They would see a word on PowerPoint, then individually decide at their seat whether it's a verb or a noun, along with a reason to justify why they think so, in order to practice evaluation. Finally, for the last step of creation, I would assign each of my students to create their own PowerPoint Presentation to which they would choose 5 words and would have to teach the class, through pictures and definitions, as to how they know the word is either a noun or a verb.

I think adaptive technologies are very important in order to support all student's learning. If a student has a learning disability that hinders his or her learning experience, or excels their learning above others, it it imperative that they receive the appropriate assistance in order to learn at their full potential just like all of the other students who may not have any disabilities, or advantages. There are many types of disabilities that can deal with reading, hearing, seeing, communicating, and so on. But, the great thing is that we now have the ability to help these students through new inventions in technology. I never knew how many adaptive technologies existed in the world today until reading this chapter, as I have only ever witnessed a personal amplification system, for hearing problems, in my own classrooms. I have also known that audio books and recorded texts exist, but I never realized that they were used for those who may be sight-impaired or who may have a harder time processing written words than others. I also appreciate the technologies that help linguistically diverse students excel in school, like different websites, MP3 players, and interactive whiteboards. I can't imagine what it would be like to enter a school where nobody speaks your primary language. Overall, these adaptive technologies are defiantly beneficial to the students who need it in order to enhance their learning, but I do see some challenges that could arise with them in a classroom. First of all, I think it is very important for all teachers to be trained in how to teach kids with disabilities or language differences, because right now not all teachers are and they do not know exactly what to do to provide the best learning experience possible for everyone. Secondly, I also get afraid that if a student has to use these special technologies, or receive extra attention from the teacher, the student may become embarrassed of his/her situation. Teachers need to be sure to try their best to treat all students mainly the same so that the ones who may have a little difference do not stand out from everyone else, as that could lead to them being discouraged in learning.

I really enjoyed the Web Page Design assignment for this week. I never realized how easy it is to create your own personal website, and I found designing it to actually be very fun. It was helpful to learn the different aspects that we have to keep in mind while creating a website, like proximity and contrast, in order to make the page as visually appealing as possible. I now realize that websites work best when they are simple, organized, and easy to navigate, and creating our own web page helped us to apply those aspects on our own. The only thing that I had some trouble with was when our group was trying to move things around on the page to where we wanted them to be, and sometimes Weebly would not allow us to do so, so we had to stick with their original layout. But other than that, there were no other problems. As a future teacher, I could definitely see myself creating my own webpage for my future class. It would be an easy and efficient way for parents and students to keep up with what is going on in our classroom and around the whole school. It makes it easier to have the information readily available at all times so that I can avoid tons and tons of emails from parents about questions that have already been answered.
Here is a link to my group's webpage: http://eme2040g1.weebly.com
Here is a screenshot from our website's home page:

Blog Post #6

I went to the website of the Elementary School I attended back in my hometown of Jupiter. The school is called Limestone Creek Elementary and it serves grades K-5. On the school's main page there was a link that provided a list of all of the teachers and their class webpages. I clicked on a few of them, but the one I found the most intriguing was Mrs. Kerper's Fourth Grade Class. Her page is visually appealing as she added in her own unique picture, rather than just having the school logo sit on her page. She also provides a calendar for all of the students and parents to see, which is very important to keep the parents aware of upcoming due dates and events happening around the school. Mrs. Kerper also provides a PowerPoint Presentation that she showed parents on curriculum night which explains the daily schedule, her rules and expectations, and the way her grading style works. This is a great reference for parents to come back to if they have questions. She also provides a ton of links to educational resources that her students probably use for homework assignments, but it's also very useful for students to have these references if they want some extra practice on the material. Here is a screenshot of her page:

Chapter 7 provides many different types of technology and software that can help a teacher work more efficiently and effectively in her classroom. After learning about these different technologies, I think as a future teacher I would really find the Easy Grade Pro software from Orbis very helpful. It allows teachers to record all of their classes' work, create their own grading system, create their own seating charts, record daily attendance, and many other tasks that teachers are required to perform on a daily basis. It will make grading assignments much easier for the teacher and it even provides summaries of the overall class results so that a teacher can sit back and analyze the effectiveness of her lesson as a whole. This would be very helpful in monitoring the progress of your students in order to benefit them the best way possible. I also really like the software called Essential Teaching Tools from Tom Snyder Productions that allows a teacher to easily create an array of worksheets. All the teacher has to do is enter the content once, and then the software can transform it into puzzles, flashcards, worksheets, and even tests. I can definitely see myself using technology like these in my future career.

After doing the Web Evaluation Assignment, I now think that I have it locked in my brain on what to look for when evaluating a website and deciding whether it would be a good reference to use in your classroom or not. I think it was very helpful to have us create our own evaluation forms because it's a good way for us to remember what aspects of a website to look for to ensure that it is reliable. Evaluating the accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and any other website aspects is essential for future teachers, like myself, and students to do before using a website to either create a lesson plan or use it for research. It made me realize how anyone in the world can put basically anything they want on the Internet, especially when it comes to Wikis, like Wikipedia, and other collaborative sites. I think this assignment was very beneficial because now I know exactly what to look for in order to ensure that my resources are not providing me with incorrect information. However, in the future, I would probably make the assignment an individual one rather than a group project. It got a little confusing when collaborating on the Wiki together and it took us a while to completely grasp the idea of the assignment. Here is a picture of the Web Evaluation form my group created that I used to evaluate a website on the history of the Civil War:

Blog Post #5

The four main Web 2.0 tools that the podcast mentioned include blogs, Wikis, Twitter, and Diigo. I think that class blogs and class Twitter accounts are great uses in the classroom. It allows teachers to post announcements and reminders on social media, something that young students look at every day.  It also allows students to contact their teachers and their other classmates easily, which helps to facilitate quick responses to things like homework questions and study help. As far as Wikis and Diigo goes, I've personally never used them, but they sound very interesting and seem to be great study tools for research and group projects. However, in the professional environment of a classroom, I'm not sure how reliable they would be since anyone is able to create and edit any number of interlinked web pages. Also since students are able to respond and comment on other student's work, these programs would need to be heavily monitored by the teacher to make sure the feedback and collaborative conversations are appropriate. In order to use these Web 2.0 tools, there will obviously be some basic computer equipment involved, like the mouse, monitor, and keyboard. But the teacher can also supplement the use of these tools with network tools for monitoring and tracking in order to ensure appropriate student use of the technology. The teachers can also use an LCD projector or an electronic white board to instruct the students on how to navigate around the different programs, like Diigo, as well as to present examples of different students' blogs to discuss as a class. 

One Web 2.0 tool that I found interesting and that can be very helpful in the classroom is Scribd. Scribd is a digital library and ebook, audiobook and comic book subscription service that includes one million titles. It even has 60 million documents on its open publishing platform, which would be a great resource for student research. The use of this tool in the classroom is an essential way to get kids reading. Especially those kids who may not be able to afford to buy every single book assigned by a teacher, or who may not have the resources to get to a library in order to pick up a paper copy of the book. With over one millions copies of different genres of books, it is pretty much guaranteed that the book a student is looking for will be there, while a local library isn't always that reliable with books sometimes being out of stock. In addition, the new audiobook aspect of Scribd allows for those students who may benefit more from audio learning to succeed in reading just as much as the visual learners.  Scribd is even able to recommend future books that you may be interested in as it pays attention to the genre of books you typically read and seem to enjoy. With the thousands of books and so many topics to choose from, like health, children, religion, and so on, Scribd will definitely have a book for any type of reader. Link: https://www.scribd.com

Before the concept mapping assignment, I never knew how to generate a concept map online, but now I realize that Inspiration is a great tool for doing so. It is easy to use and has many tools, like pictures and hyperlinks, that can take your concept map to the next level. For this assignment, I enjoyed using Inspiration and making the concept map how I saw it best flowed. However, I feel like there was almost too much information about World War I to fit into only one concept map. I think if it were a real study guide for students, as a teacher, I would break up the different aspects of the War, like the causes, the timeline, and the alliances, into separate concept maps, just so that it is easier to understand and so the study guide doesn't become too busy and filled with words. In my future teaching career, I would definitely use concept maps as a study tool, as I think it's a great way to visually lay out all of the key concepts from the material. I also enjoyed learning about the different types of concepts maps and what they're typically used for so that in the future I can create one that fits the topic at hand the best. Here is my concept map about WWI: 

Blog Post #4

CPalms Standard: MAFS.3.MD.1.1
Tell and write time to the nearest minute and measure time intervals in minutes. Solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes, e.g., by representing the problem on a number line diagram.
http://www.abcya.com/telling_time.htm
This link uses the tool of Educational Games in order for students to learn the mathematical standard of telling time. I think educational games are very helpful in the teaching profession because they engage the learner while at the same time providing practice of the lesson. If I were a teacher, I would teach this standard by first explaining it in a classroom setting, through notes and examples to the entire class. Then I would answer any questions students may immediately have on the lesson. Next I would hand out a practice worksheet so that the students can individually attempt to solve the problems, and raise their hands for extra one-on-one help. After the worksheets is when I would bring the class to a computer lab and introduce the educational game. This way the students get extra practice, remain engaged in the lesson, and can even have a little fun after the hard classroom work.

I am a huge supporter of using the Internet for student research. I think it is much more efficient than the old-fashioned way of having to find all the facts inside tons of different books. However, it is very important that students know how to use the Internet appropriately for research, that is by getting their information form credible sources. Students need to be able to recognize the difference between websites that have credible information with those that do not. Students need to realize that any person in the world is able to create a website, and they can easily put inaccurate information on their web pages, like for example some pages on Wikipedia. If students are going to use the Internet for research for important papers or presentations, they need to know the credibility of the authors, how current the information is, and the website's objective.

In high school, I had to use a lot of Internet-based resources for research for papers and presentations. In some of my classes my teachers would explain some fundamentals in determining whether a website was credible or not. First of all, my teachers stressed the importance of URL's. They taught us that usually URL's ending in ".gov" or ".org" were more credible than some of those that end in ".com." As the podcast also mentioned, the ending of a URL can bring you to a completely different website than what you were searching for if you're not careful. That is why it is important for teachers, especially those of younger students, to provide links for students to use for research so that they do not end up on an inappropriate website. In addition, I have always looked out for too much advertising on a website as a sign for that website maybe not being credible. If there are a ton of pop-ups on the screen, as the podcast also mentioned, you probably shouldn't use it for research. But overall, I can usually tell if a website is credible based on the overall visual appearance and technical reliability. Using the acronym "ABCDT" that the podcast provides is a good method to remember what to look for when looking for reliable sources on the Internet.

Ever since elementary school, I've been using Google as my primary source for research. So when doing the WebHunt assignment, I already knew how to find a majority of the questions quickly and efficiently on Google. One aspect that I did not know about was that you can exclude certain websites in a search with the "-" key. I thought that was very helpful when wanting to narrow down your search. I also, surprisingly, never knew that Google Scholar even existed. So this will now be very useful to me throughout the rest of my college years when I need to find scholarly articles for research.

WebHunt Challenges:

1. Find a current event, from the past week, that occurred in Spain.
2. Find a hotel in Tallahassee that is not associated with Hilton.