Blog Post 10

   When I become an elementary school teacher, I can see myself using data collection in many ways as a helpful tool to manage my classroom and my grades. Excel is a helpful resource to collect and present date from students' grades, especially major test grades. Being able to see students' grades all next to each other will help me as I decide what material to cover less or more throughout the years. Data collection, such as a survey, will help me get feedback from students and parents on ways to improve my teaching and management strategies in the classroom. Being able to conduct anonymous surveys may help my students feel more comfortable in presenting their feedback, so that I can better tailor my classroom and teaching to fit the needs of my students.
     In reviewing my classmates' blogs, I found it interesting how my classmates were able to gain different skills from the different assignments done in class. I was also interested in the amount of different resources my classmates accessed that will be useful when we become educators in the future.
    In terms of technology-related skills, I would most like to learn how to use new technologies to present to a classroom. For example, I would be interested in learning how to develop a supplemental activity to share with a class using a Smart or Promethean board. I could potentially accomplish this goal by attending webinars and viewing tutorials online of teachers using these technologies, and I could visit the Tech Sandbox again to get a more in-depth look at how these technologies are used.

Blog Post 9

   The Flipped Classroom is a new way for teachers to present material to students. The Flipped Classroom allows students to better grasp the material, allowing the different needs of each student to be better addressed. In a flipped classroom, students watch videos of the lesson on their own time at home, allowing some students to pause and rewind to review material as needed, while other students who have a better understanding of the material can go through a lesson quickly. Then, during the school day, students are able to receive feedback and help students wherever they need it.
    "Open Education" allows learners from all areas of the world and all socioeconomic statuses to be able to attend courses and learn from an educational institution at their own pace and on their own time. There are a number of open courses available from websites like OER Commons. "Open Content" allows teachers to make changes to certain pieces of available material in their classroom. A popular example of open content is Teachers Pay Teachers, a website where teachers can share their classroom ideas and materials with other teachers, who can then purchase and modify these materials to best suit their classroom.  "Open Source" is software that is available for anyone to access, so that a software can be improved by a community of users seeking the function that a specific software serves. An example of an open source software includes the educational platform Moodle.
     I enjoyed the two PowerPoint assignments. I learned how to link to different slides within a presentation, to make the PowerPoint more engaging and flexible for every student to use. I especially liked PowerPoint assignment 2, because I enjoyed being able to create a presentation that felt more like a fun game than a traditional PowerPoint slideshow. I will definitely be using the skills learned from these assignments throughout college and in my own classrooms when I am a teacher.

PowerPoint 1: Information Dissemination (The Water Cycle)

PowerPoint 2: Interaction (Jeopardy Game)

ILP #2 Design: Prezi

    For Independent Learning Project 2, I chose to design a presentation on World War I using Prezi. The presentation is available here.
     I found Prezi to be very helpful at creating presentations that need just quick facts presented to a class. This is a good tool that I can definitely envision myself using in my future classes and in my own classroom when I become a teacher.

Blog Post 8

  Of all the technologies seen in the lab tour, I think that the text-to-speech software would be some of the most useful in a school. There are many students who have learning or physical disabilities that prevent them from being able to read and comprehend words on a computer screen, so this type of software would be very helpful in a wide variety of circumstances.
   PowerPoint can be used to help students throughout the entirety of Bloom's Taxonomy. Students can create PowerPoint presentations to create a project and evaluate what materials to include in their project. Students can then analyze the information to deem what is most appropriate to include in their presentation, and they can apply this knowledge by thinking of practical, real-life applications for the information that they are reading and presenting. Finally, understanding and remembering the information will be a key component of using PowerPoint because students who present a lesson will need to understand and remember the information in order to effectively help their peers understand and remember the information.
   

 Using sources such as scholarly journals that research trends in technology would be useful for teachers to stay up-to-date on technologies. These journals do comprehensive research of what technologies will be trending in the future, so teachers and schools know where to best invest their time and resources on the most effective, long-lasting technologies.

Blog Post 7

        Although I am not aware that I know anyone who has used adaptive technologies, I understand that they are a key part of helping students achieve in the classroom. Adaptive technologies such as speech-to-text software and screen reader software are helpful for students with physical and learning disabilities. Although these and other technologies are extremely advantageous for the student using them, they may pose a distraction to other students in the class, they may experience technical difficulties and not work properly, or the teacher may not be familiar with how they work and can't help the student use the technology.
      Working on the web page assignment has helped me learn how to critically view websites, to ensure that I am finding high-quality material to present to my students in the future. Through this assignment, I have learned that there are certain things that I need to look for in websites, such as the institution that published it, the relevancy of the content, and the currency of the content. This assignment was fairly easy to complete, but certain questions within the evaluation form seemed redundant.

                                                              Screenshot from our website  
      Working with Diigo has helped me learn how to critically view different web resources, to determine whether or not they will be an effective research tool. I also like the collaborative aspect of Diigo, and can see myself using this source in future research projects in school, especially in research-heavy graduate programs. In my own future classrooms, I would like to see my students use this resource to complete better research and to collaborate with one another on different projects.

Blog Post 6

       I visited a website for Ms. Molly Britton's high school English classes, from Mountain Ridge High School in Arizona. On her website, and the webpages of several other teachers from the school, there were links to a district calendar, the class syllabus, a brief teacher biography, and class times and descriptions.

      When I am teaching classes of my own, I plan on using many different technology tools to improve my productivity. I envision myself using Microsoft Excel as a way to track progress and grades of my students, and I will definitely use Microsoft PowerPoint and Word to present lessons and create activities for my students to complete. Bookmarking tools such as Diigo will allow me to find many different websites and sources that I can tag and take notes on, so I can make sure that I have the right web resources easily accessible to present in class, such as specific videos or websites that I think might be useful for my students. I also can definitely see myself using a calendar application such as Google Calendar. Using this application will allow me to combine my professional and personal calendars to avoid overbooking myself, and I can easily plan out an entire quarter or year's-worth of assignments and lesson plans so I can stay on track with the topics that I cover in class.
       In the tech sandbox, I thought that the use of the Smart Board was especially interesting, and I can see these as being some of the more practical technologies I could use when I teach an elementary class in the future. I liked that the Smart Board was interactive and could be accessible to students of different ability levels. I remember using the Smart Board when I was a student, and I always appreciated being able to learn using both the visual and kinesthetic styles using this technology, because it is so interactive. For example, I remember using the Smart Board technology to play Jeopardy-style games to review concepts and facts before a test or quiz. This helped me and my fellow students both enjoy learning and also get a very thorough review of the topic, and I can see myself implementing this method with my own students in the future.
     

Blog Post 5

      Of all the different Web 2.0 Tools available, I think that the community tools such as Google Docs and Edmodo, would be the most useful. I have already used these tools in previous classes, and have found them to be very useful. Google Docs and other similar collaboration tools make it easy for students to do group projects and work together to learn; these tools have been especially helpful in the ever-growing field of online courses and distance learning. I don't know how useful many of the presentation tools available through Web 2.0 would be, because even when presented with these new options for presentations, I have found that students still tend to gravitate to the familiarity of PowerPoint. I have only ever used Web 2.0 presentation tools when I was required to by my teacher, and I was never very excited about having to learn how to use these new programs instead of just using PowerPoint as usual.
       When I am a teacher, Web 2.0 tools such as PollEverywhere would be fun, easy to use, and very helpful. Mobile polling programs seem to be extremely helpful in allowing teachers to receive quick feedback on how much students are understanding about a particular lesson or concept, while eliminating the possibility of a student being embarrassed by answering a question incorrectly in front of all of his or her peers.
       In the future, the implementation of Virtual Reality programs into more classrooms would be a very interesting new use of the technology. Through VR applications, students are able to be virtually transported to different eras in history, can view various parts of the Earth up close, and can see new things that students would otherwise not have access to. This allows students to have a better understanding of different concepts and facts presented to them in the classroom; instead of just reading out of a textbook, students can be a part of whatever they are learning about, making learning a much more personalized, engaging experience.

ILP #1 Participation - Webinar

       I viewed a webinar from the website EdTechTeacher that discussed new research tools that teachers can use in the classroom. The hosts, Beth Holland and Sabba Quidwal, discussed their previous usage of applications like Diigo, EverNote, and Google Hangout to collaborate and share notes and information with their groups in higher education. They went on to discuss the new program called Papers, which allows teachers to share their PDF and Word files with their entire class. It also has an e-reserve of past files that students can download, creating a sort of digital library for the class.

       The Papers program can be accessed through a mobile app as well as a website. The company offers a 40% discount to students using the program, as well as a monthly subscription option to students who would only need to use the program for a few months during school. I found the discussion about Papers very interesting, because it appears to be a very user-friendly application that allows students to easily organize all their readings from different courses by using tags, color-coding, star ratings, and collections of different authors, titles, and courses. The webinar primarily discussed using Papers in higher education, especially in a doctoral program, which increased my interest in the program. I can see myself using the Papers application throughout college and my future Master's and Doctoral programs, to make all my research and readings easy to access and re-read when necessary.

Blog Post 4

   So far, I have been using Twitter primarily to read articles related to education and technology for education. I have retweeted several articles pertaining to this topic, and have used Twitter to find new researchers, bloggers, authors, and speakers that publish content related to the field of educational technology. I have mostly interacted with other students from this class so far, but plan on trying to reach out to more experts in the field using Twitter. In the future, using Twitter can be helpful to quickly get announcements out to my students after school, and it is a great way to contact educational and technology experts with any questions or comments I may have about a certain product, study, article, or other piece of information.
     The digital divide can very clearly affect how well students are able to do in school. If teachers and schools don't take into account the fact that many students still don't have reliable access to the Internet and other technologies, these students will fall behind and continually be behind his or her peers in terms of academic growth and ability to learn outside of the classroom. A main cause of the digital divide is poverty, so ensuring that all of my students know of the community resources available to them, such as the computers available at school and in public libraries, is key to stopping the digital divide before it becomes too great an issue for my students to overcome. If I know I am teaching at a school where the digital divide might be a frequent issue, I would make sure that my students have ample time to work on technology-based projects while in class, to greatly reduce or eliminate the need for my students to have access to advanced technologies outside of the classroom.
     When I have my own classroom of elementary students, I plan on primarily using technology to help my students with seemingly "basic" tasks, such as learning to type and using word processing software. I also plan on using student software to help my students learn how to read, answer questions, and look for different things in reading passages, such as the main idea, context clues, and how to draw conclusions and make inferences based on reading a passage on the computer.
 

Blog Post 3

      With my existing knowledge, I feel most prepared to teach the ELA standards that cover reading and text analysis. I would need more learning on the standards that have to do with speaking and working in groups because I am not very familiar with the specifics that go into these standards.
      I would like to utilize software and technology that could help my students solve math problems and visualize them using graphing tools, illustrated problems, and other visual breakdowns of math problems. I plan on teaching second or third grade, so having a software that would help my students grasp some of the more vital sections on math would be important. I would need to teach my students the basics of how to use the software because it would not be an everyday, commonplace software, but because my students are going to be part of the digital native era they should be able to operate the software with minimal problems.
      In the Newsletter Design assignment, I learned how to use a new template in Word that I had never seen before, and I learned how to create hyperlinks that go directly to an email address. I will definitely be using the newsletter formatting in documents in the future, and will probably distribute it to my students' families as an e-newsletter, so the hyperlink function will be valuable to me in the future.

Blog Post 2

       As a student, I've used MS Word to create basic documents such as essays and basic posters and flyers. I've had some experience using the many features in Word through a computer apps course I took in high school, but never had to use these tools in assignments for other classes. I have seen teachers use MS Word to create lists of instructions, example papers and works cited pages, and to quickly list ideas and terms for classes.
       In the past, I have seen teachers photocopy pages of text and workbooks to make class sets and worksheet packets. As a teacher, I would need to make sure that whatever I am copying is only being used in my classroom and that my students have access to their own books that have been purchased. As a teacher, I would also be able to download multimedia tools as long as I delete them or obtain permission from the creator after keeping and using the media for more than two years. When my students are creating their own work, they need to make sure they appropriately cite their sources.
      Schools lack the ability to properly and consistently train teachers on how to use technology that is available to them, which makes it difficult for teachers to use the technology that may be available in their school. To combat this, teachers may need to do research on their own and help train other teachers and work together to develop programs that teachers and students can use the new technology for. In addition, technology often lacks the ability to adequately assess students' performance in the classroom. In order to change this, teachers may need to change what kind of skills students are assessed on, so their computer competency that they are taught during the school year is properly tested on during testing periods. Another implementation issue of technology is the resistance of certain people to change. To make the transition to technology-centered classrooms smoother, teachers may need to slowly but consistently introduce students to technology as a tool for learning in the classroom.
     
     

Twitter

My Twitter for this class is @SarahEduTech
https://twitter.com/sarahedutech

Blog Post 1

       Teachers are influenced to use technology in the classroom by the various administrative and instructional needs that they need to fulfill. In addition, teachers use technology in the classroom because it helps teachers reach students with a variety of learning styles to master different concepts. Students are motivated to use technology in the classroom because it aids them in understanding different concepts that they have trouble understanding through traditional instructional methods. Through teachers using technology to present, reinforce concepts, foster critical thinking, and address issues such as diversity, students are able to understand a variety of topics and concepts in a new way.
       The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards exist to promote use of technology in a way that improves the performance of both teachers and students. Of all the ISTE standards for educators, I can appreciate the standard that refers to modeling digital age work and learning, because I am fairly competent at creating a variety of documents and digital tools to display work and teach others. I would need more experience in the standard regarding professional leadership and growth, because I have not yet had real-world experience in using digital tools to enhance my profession, communicate with coworkers and administration, and I have not yet had the need to create and evaluate research involving students.
       A Digital Native is a person who has grown up in an era of digital technology and has been well-versed in how to use digital technology, such as computers, from an early age. I do tend to agree with this term. From my own observations, I have noticed that although many older adults are willing to adapt to the changes that new digital technologies bring, the Digital Natives of the world today seem to have a natural understanding of technology, as well as a natural desire to constantly use it, explore it, and advance both the technology itself and the way it is used in our daily lives. In the future, I anticipate that my students will naturally have a better time with adapting to the newest technologies in the time period, whereas I may need extra training and time to learn how to use all of the new technologies available to me.
     

Blog Post 0: Expectations and Learning Styles

     In this class, I expect to learn how to better use new technology to reach my students in an effective way. As an Elementary Ed major, I hope to use the skills learned in this class to teach my younger students how to use different types of technology in a way that my students can easily understand and enjoy, so they will be engaged in my classroom and willing to learn and complete their work. I also hope to learn more specifics about technology that I already use in my day-to-day life, so I can sharpen my skills to become a more effective professional in the future.

     I typically learn best through visuals. Seeing someone do something and then having the chance to repeat their actions is most effective for me, rather than just listening to a lecture or reading instructions on my own. I also learn well when I have the chance to talk through a process with a group, and when I receive immediate feedback from an instructor to understand how I can fix any errors and correct my work. I can be flexible in my learning styles and can adapt fairly easily to any classroom setting, but typically do best when I am able to see something being done before I have to do it myself.