Short One Today!

I think Diigo was a fun resource to be introduced to! You can be in groups with other teachers, or you can save things just for yourself. I think it is a great resource to find new articles or comments from other teachers and educators, but it is also something you can use to bookmark certain sites or your classroom. If you want to remember certain articles on the internet and what you wanted to remember you can just save it to Diigo and then highlight and annotate the article right on the computer...and then be able to look back and have it all be saved.

Teacher professional development was always a thing at my school when I was younger. We would have days off or half days so that all of the teachers from the whole school district could gather in the high school and go to different workshops with the people who all teach the same grade as you. It is really important to keep up with the changing world of technology, and having workshops to teach the teachers how to keep up with it and teach their kids is a great idea. I found an online resource that could help teachers stay informed on new technology called Engadget. This website doesn't just give you all of the latest technology and how to use it, the website also has a "buyers guide" where it gives you informed opinions about what technology you should but when you're looking for specific things (which is a really great way to do all your research to make an informed decision about what to buy!). Here is a picture of what the website looks like:

ILP #2: PLN

I checked out Reddit and all of the subreddits you can follow as a teacher that may be helpful! It was really cool to be able to explore this resource, and I made a voice thread that talks about how to create one and how to get connected. Check it out HERE :)

More Technology!!

Twitter is an interesting social media platform. I don't think I want to use it when I'm a teacher, but that doesn't mean it is bad! I have been able to learn about how other teachers use technology in the classroom (one got to use VR with her third graders). When I retweeted one of discovery education's posts, they commented on it - which is so cool! It is so crazy that I am just one person of so crazy many that follow them, and they were able to see it. I also saw that there is a way to see how many people have seen the tweet and how many people have interacted with it (5,569 people have seen it!). It is really cool how many people you can reach, but I feel as though I am too focused on having the best post or the perfect page that I can't concentrate on what I should actually be using twitter for.

I don't know how I feel about making my own website! I think I was hoping for it to be more creative? I am a very creative person, and I have a really aesthetic eye. My mom and I used to scrapbook, so I like to physically be able to place things on pages, and I am not able to do that as much with websites. I learned how to embed a code in my website to link a google calendar into my website, and I learned how to make a creative commons license and embed that in my website, and those are cool skills! I know that I will probably be making one in my future career, so it is good to know all of it. Here is the link to the website, and below is a screenshot of the home page:)

Assistive and adaptive technologies are technology that are beneficial for children with disabilities. It is often difficult for children with certain disabilities to communicate or write or cope with the world around them, and assistive technology enables them to communicate and function on a more normal level. For example: children with autism use iPads and apps to communicate what they're thinking if they are non-verbal and certain people with things like dyslexia can use certain computer programs to help their brain concentrate. I will be a special education teacher, so I know I will be using and supporting technology and children who need to use technology in the classroom. There are going to be the normal challenges like wifi goes out in the school, or iPad battery dies, but there is also going to be the possibility that technology goes out of date so children don't have the best technology or the money to get the best.

Teacher Websites and The Technology Sandbox

I have honestly never heard of teachers creating class pages! My school district never did that, and I can only assume that it it because we are such a large school district that there would be so many pages? But I really don't know why they wouldn't have them. I did some digging on the district website to see if they were there and I just missed them when I was in school, but I really couldn't find any! After that, I just Googled "class pages in school district," and the first place that popped up was a district in Atwater, Ohio - Waterloo School District. I clicked on the different teacher's pages in the Kindergarten section, and they were all so different! I could tell some of them haven't updated their pages in a while, but that's okay because there are many things to keep track of as a teacher. The one that stood out to me most (the one pictured below) had lots of interactive links to click on and a bio about the teacher. It had past newsletter, homework, and the curriculum so any parent could go in and not only check on what was going on in the classroom, but also in the district.
https://sites.google.com/a/viking.portage.k12.oh.us/mrs-shondrick-s-website/

I think that as a teacher I will try and keep up to date with as many things as possible, but I also think that there are so many different resources and platforms that I would have to choose a specific amount of them. I wouldn't want to overwhelm myself, and I wouldn't want to create something and tell all of my students and parents about it to then completely forget about updating the page or something so that people don't feel informed. I also want to be working with elementary/kindergartners, so I don't really feel like I need to be using "the newest social media platform" to be connecting to my students. I would just make sure that my classroom had technology that engages my students, and I would pick a handful of ways to accomplish my professional responsibilities more efficiently and effectively.

The Technology Sandbox at FSU is so cool! I thought it was really fun to learn about some of the cool new technologies that are centered around teaching students. There are some that I thought were really helpful in teaching young kids specifically about robotics and coding. I know that when I was younger, I had no exposure to things like that. My best friend through middle school and high school was on a robotics team in my town in high school, but I had never even heard of robotics before sophomore year in high school (and by that time I felt like it would all go over my head). Starting children early on robotics and coding really helps to push them toward more of the STEM programs they will experience in schools, and it will help them navigate such a tech-savvy world.

Web 2.0 Resources - a review of resources

Diigo is an awesome resource! Diigo is a collaborative space where you can share websites and articles with people who are in your group (and your group can be as big or small as you want). Once people share the website or article, you can look at what they posted and comment on their post - and not only that, but you can annotate the websites and articles so that other people can see what you think is cool or the most important part (and then people can comment on those!). I love this resource more than I thought I would mostly because of the annotating. It is really difficult to read things online, in my opinion, because you can't mark it up. Everything when I was younger was in paper, and I could write as many things as I wanted, and now having everything online doesn't quite have the same affect.

Blogging has been an interesting adventure for me. Sometimes I wish that I had more creativity to add in photos or gifs, but I never think about that stuff. I like being able to write out big paragraphs and sentences (unlike twitter or anything else), so blogging is good for that. But I feel like my personality can't completely shine through just words. It also would help if I had more people looking at it on the daily because then I could get direct feedback on what I am writing and posting about.

Now about the Web 2.0 tools I want to use: I will be using Diigo, for sure. I might initiate it at the school I work at for all the teachers and maybe all the teachers at each grade level (either at the school or in the district so that we can all be on the same page). I don't think I will use Twitter just because I'm so preoccupied with having "the perfect post" to try and add to make my wall look aesthetic and full of just the right information or the funniest/cutest post...I just wouldn't want to be worried about it all the time (or not post because of it). I did find another tool that I think would be interesting to use, and it is called Poll Everywhere. It is kind of like Kahoot (which I will also use), but I think Poll Everywhere is a great way to get individual answers to see what students know without the pressure of competition. Click HERE to go to the website for Poll Everywhere and learn more!

Twitter, the Digital Divide, and Software for the Classroom

Twitter has always been an interesting thing to me. In high school, I made an account because I had seen Cole Sprouse's and Ryan Reynolds' tweets on Instagram and thought they were hilarious. I created my account, and a few people followed me, but I never posted and never caught on to how twitter fully worked, so I just had it on my phone and dismissed notifications. However, now that we are using it in class, I can understand how it could be a helpful resource for teachers to communicate and get ideas and all from other teachers and educational organizations. I found a teacher who is using VR (virtual reality) in her classroom, and I found it because I follow Discovery Education (who liked her post). I think it is really cool to think about how many people you are reaching - even if you don't fully know it when posting online.

The digital divide is a divide between those students with exposure to and use with more technology and those without exposure to and use with technology. Not all students and families own a computer or have access to the internet, and that may mean those students don't get their work done on time or at all - they just don't have the resources to do things like Google terms on the spot if they have questions or want to know the meaning of the word. One student with technology will be better equipt for the "real world" than another student who does not have access to the same technology. I remember when I was in high school and middle school, if my teachers would give us an assignment that required a computer, they would say "anyone who doesn't have internet or a computer at home let me know either after class or another time" because they wanted to make sure the student could get homework done. I would want to do that with my students, and I would also want students to come talk to me in private so that if they are embarrassed by the fact that they don't have a computer at home or the internet, they don't have to share that with the whole class.

Software and hardware were confusing to me when I first heard of them - I couldn't always tell the difference unless I thought really hard about what makes sense for each to mean. Hardware is the outside of the computer - the physical makeup of the computer, and software is the tools that run inside your computer (Microsoft, any app that you install, etc.). I would absolutely install Microsoft to implement in my classroom so that I could put together PowerPoints and Word documents to keep the students engaged. However, I would not want to use PowerPoints to read off of because when teachers do that, I don't feel like I'm learning anything from it. I would also want to download apps like Kahoot and Google Classroom to help students learn because those do a great job of keeping students engaged and showing what skills they have learned. I also remember in elementary school that we used to play learning games on the computer (like funbrain, typing games, etc), and I would use those as well.

ILP Design - Moodle

Hey guys! So I had a Independent Learning Project (ILP) to do in my technology in the classroom class, and I had to put together a voice thread talking about a resource/website that could be helpful in teaching. I chose to talk about Moodle! I put together some screenshots of the website and talked over top of those pictures to show you a little about Moodle. I had lots of challenges in putting together my website, so it might not be as helpful as another video, but it will give you an idea of what you can use Moodle for. Click HERE to go to my voice thread!