Independent Learning Project #2

For this ILP, I attended the technology convention Digitech at FSU. Digitech was very interesting seeing what amazing technological and educational ideas that my fellow students and peers had. There were so many different aspects of technology being used; I saw biological advancements, wooden sculptures, food apps for your phone, and different types of art work. As I was looking at the 3D printed art I actually saw one of my friends pieces! It made me feel connected to the convention, like I could relate and if I wanted to, precipitate next year!



The convention was very eye opening and I am very glad that I went! I got a few souvenirs such as a small notebook, class ideas, technological ideas, and a cool new app for my phone! My favorite part was the creativity, I couldn't believe the things people were coming up with! I actually saw some of the technology we used in the Tech Sandbox, they were a big educational technology hit!

Blog #10

I believe that as a teacher I will use Data Collection mostly for tests, quizzes, assignments, and anything else that has a mass amount of grades for my class. As a teacher you have a lot of students, especially if you teacher in middle, high, or college level having 6 plus classes, it is easy to lose papers and to get grades messed up if keeping tracking of them manually. Having everything recorded on your computer not only is a back up for lost papers but makes it easy to calculate averages and overall grades for your class(es).

From reviewing my peers blogs I have found the different perspectives of people most interesting. It is crazy how when I look at a subject or comment I have can my point of view and then go and read one of my other classmates and they have a totally opposite or different perspective on the subject. It really interests me to see what everyone else has to say and think about the same thing that I go through or went through!

The technological skill I would like to learn would have to be how to speed up my computer if it starts slowing down. I know as a child, if my computer started slowing down, either my dad or his tech guys at work would take it in for a day or two and it magically became faster! I know this will happen to me in my future for my family and I or for my career, so knowing this magical skill would truly come in handy whether it is at work or at home.

In the future I believe that I will be able to reach my educational-technology goal if the school I will be teaching at has the resources and tools for my students and I to use. Once given these opportunities I know my class and I will have a fun learning with technology and have a more functioning classroom the more opportunities we have! I will be working at Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, this is one of the best schools in the country for the deaf and blind. Therefore, there will be a lot of technological opportunities for me there and my goals will be reached. I hope to use such tools as Smartboards, 3D printing, iPads, laptops, etc. in my classroom.

Blog #1 (make-up)

Technology in the classroom has become a necessity in the 21st century, I guarantee you cannot walk into a classroom in America and cannot find one technological device. 99% of teachers say they have or have the ability to use computers in the classroom everyday. Computers have become so important in the classroom because of the amount of opportunity presented on them. There are endless assignments, educational games, tests, quizzes, endless information, etc. that could be used on a day-to-day basis. I know that I would not be able to have the same education I have today without the help of computers. The only problem with computers is how easy it has become to get side tracked/distracted. In school this is not an issue thanks to blocked websites and restricted internet, but at home assignments could be easily put off, unfinished, or not done at all. Thus, depending on the student.

Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity: This is something that could be very exciting yet terrifying at the same time. Creativity is a major part of teaching and for learning as well. Although I believe I have some creativity in me, students may not have this ability. I know as a child I had a hard time being creative and coming up with ideas for projects or making my projects look "pretty" so I had my mom help me, for she was the most creative person I knew! I think because of her I have become the creative individual I am today. What makes me excited about this is that I can try to pass on this creativity to my students! I can only hope.

To me a Digital Native is someone who has used technology their whole life, been surrounded by it their whole life, and never not had technology in their life. I am a digital native, I can't remember a time in my life that I didn't have a phone, computer, pager, etc in my household. The difference between how I, a digital native, and my teachers and parents, digital immigrants, use technology is what we use it for. We natives usually use it for social media, homework, research, and mostly school related topics. Whereas immigrants use theirs for emailing, work, work, and occasionally some social media. The immigrants, my parents, taught me the basics of technology but I taught myself the tricks of the trade and has become very tech savvy over the years. I don't think there will be a big difference between me and my future students, for I will keep up with the technological times through work and school, being able to help and teach my students on how to become tech savvy themselves.

Blog #9

A flipped classroom can be very efficient or it could have the opposite effect in my opinion. In a flipped classroom students watch the lectures outside of the classroom online then use in class time to work on activities and work with their peers on the focused subject. A flipped classroom really depends on the students and how the students work, I can tell you from experience that there are a lot of lazy students, especially in high school and college who are focused on other things and will not take the time to sit down at home and watch these online lectures. Supporters believe that using this type of classroom learning will be more beneficial to the students, but I believe it depends on the student. Here is an example of a flipped classroom and what it should look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_p63W_2F_4

Professional development in an education environment happens with time and experience just like most other jobs. New teachers have trouble managing time, lessons, and other small details that go into being an efficient teacher. Though as time goes on and the years pass with new students and new parents you develop professionally by figuring out how you will manage your classroom and how it runs. Here is a link to an informational website/blog that talks about professional development and also has other teachers talking about it as well: http://www.edutopia.org/teacher-development

New skills I learned during the interactive powerpoint was how to manipulate different compents of the slides, hyperlinks, and order of the slides and where they go as you click on them. I liked how creative you can be with the buttons and options you have to choose from as you create the game. I also like how you can manipulate the games to age, grade, gender, subject etc, creativity is endless. I did not like how much time it took to create this game, I would create more for my classes if it took less time. I will probably use these games for test and quiz reviews, it is also very good for vocabulary practice!

Blog #8

The future of education with technology is very essential to my future as an educator and my students futures, eventually the future of this country. What seems to be becoming more popular in newer and more advanced, "green" schools is online textbooks and/or ebooks. Saving paper and natural resources by not having to print out hundreds of thousands or even millions of textbooks and classroom books could save millions or billions of trees around the country and the world. Our future is focused on becoming environmentally friendly and therefore why these online textbooks have become so important to new and upcoming schools. Although I personally would rather have a paper book in my hands over one online because of how I was raised, the students starting with these books in elementary school won't know the difference. I believe these new textbooks ARE our future, and if it helps our depleting planet, I am more than happy to oblige.

The digital divide is the difference between students or people who do have internet access and technological devices and those who do not. I am on the side who does have technology, I personally have a laptop, an iPhone, a kindle fire, and other smaller devices between my parents and I. In the podcast it talks about the difference between the two students, most people forget about the difference between the two students because most students are like Student A. Even educators like me forget about Student B, this will effect my classroom and my assignments greatly depending on the area I teach in and how many Student A's and B's I have in the current class. If I have more students on the less fortunate side of the divide I will assign all online assignments in class and only paper assignments for home.

The new skills I learned during the powerpoint assignment was how to record my voice on each slide. Before this assignment I had no idea you could actually record your own voice and put it on the slides, I did know audio options were available. What I did not like about the assignment was hearing my own voice on the slides, it was weird hearing myself teach! But what I did like was the opportunity to be creative, choosing whatever I wanted to go on each slide and whatever information I'd like as well. Next time I will improve by providing more information and maybe practicing what I wanted to say more before I recorded myself!

Blog #7

 Bloom’s Taxonomy is a concept commonly used among educators in lessons such as Science, Chemistry to be specific. For balancing equations, this concept can be kind of difficult to explain to students and even harder for them to grasp. Through a powerpoint presentation you can show them how to go about solving these issues. 
1. Create- create a new equation that the students have not seen before so they all have a fresh start to this new concept on the first slide
2. Evaluate- make a decision with your class how you will go about this problem and how it needs to be solved on the second slide
3. Analyze- on the third slide decide what connections should be made, what chemicals need to be combined or what chemicals will be lost
4. Apply- use what information you found out on the second and third slide to decide what is left to be done in the equation on the next slide, discuss with the class
5. Understand- Make sure that once the problem has been solved on the powerpoint and you have gone through all the steps that the class understands what happened in the equation
6. Remember- Use the last slide to recall what you went through and to retrace the steps, laying them out for the class to see, then you have your lesson

Adaptive technology is probably the best thing that has ever happened to education in my opinion. It has given a huge opportunity to children who have disabilities to learn and interact more easily with their peers and educators. Without such technologies, these children would not be where they are today and still be struggling with their disabilities rather than living with what they have and be able to move on. I personally do not know anyone who has used such tools but I hope to be able to help students who need them. My future career in deaf education will use educational adaptive technologies for both deaf and hard of hearing students so these products will be used everyday for me, as to why I am so appreciative of them. Challenges I expect to come across in the classroom is if the students cannot hear something correctly, either one student can hear something when another student cannot or vice versa. It is hard to determine how much a child can hear especially at young ages, not knowing how much they're truly struggling. 

The web page design was very interesting to me, the advancement of technology is coming very fast and one way to stay up to date with that as a teacher is not create a website. Students are on the internet a good majority of the time so having such website will keep them connected to you, your class, your lessons, and their assignments. I like how the teachers can be as creative or as simple as they want to be, as long as they get the information out to the students it is very helpful. How I would improve my website would be to add more information about me, my class, the assignments, and upcoming events. I'd also decorate more to spice it up!

http://fsusgreen.weebly.com/

COE Tech Sandbox

I have decided to do my Independent Learning Project on the COE Tech Sandbox that we attended back in February. The Tech Sandbox had a plethora of different technologies that can be used in the everyday technically advanced classroom. The product that stood out most to me was the 3D printer, although this is not a product that could be used everyday in the classroom, I believe it could open up children's minds to the future and what it holds for them. What I would probably use most in my classroom would be the Smartboard. This product has a variety of different uses not only for me as a teacher through teaching lessons and presentations, but also for students to get involved in the classroom and actually wanting to precipitate in lessons. Although Google Glass is not used everyday and was actually taken off the selves, this technology could be used to show children the different technologies available to them. There was also technology like a digital keyboard and Oculus that were presented that opened my eyes as well to the different options for me personally in my educatio and for my future students. I am very excited to see what technology will be available to me in my time as an educator.

This is the 3D printer that was presented during our tour

Blog #6

I choose Mrs. Nixon's 5th grade class at Stonegate Elementary in California. The information presented on the main page has a tool bar on the side has many options for her students and parents such as calendars, grades and links to projects and instructions. There is also links to personal information about the teacher her self, 5th grade in general, and different teams/clubs the students can join. Her website is very informative and easy to use for both students and parents.

I envision myself using technology in the classroom very often and involving it in both my students work and my lessons on a day to day basis. Like shown in the Sandbox presentation, I believe Smartboard every day. It is very helpful when presenting lessons, involving the students by letting them write on the board to solve problems or fill in the blank questions. I will also have homework assignments online that will be submitted to me electronically and graded electronically as well for the students and parents to see, as well as in-class assignments.

On the Wiki assignment, I learned how to have a group of my fellow students all post and edit on one website. I also learned how easy it was for all of us to collaborate and post our work to this wiki website at one time. What I liked about it was how simple it was for all of us to use the website just by accepting everyone to edit the page and become administrators. What I didn't like was the set up of the Wiki page, it was very plain and kind of out dated looking. Next time I would like to spicy up the page and make it look nicer and more organized. In my future career I could use this site for my students to collaborate on a project just as we did.

Blog #5

 a Web 2.0 is very useful in the classroom in so many ways, it is easy to integrate video into shared projects and presentations, podcasts, online quizzes, blogging, etc. There is so many way this technology could teach children in a modern way that will keep them interested. For example: like what we used in class; Wiki. Wiki is easy for sharing and collaborating in groups not only with students but between the class and the teachers. If everyone has a computer handy, either at school and/or at home, they will have the tools they need to use Web 2.0 tools and Wiki.

The website I chose was Diigo, Diigo is a website that allows you to bookmark, tags, personal library, highlights, sticky notes, outliner, groups, and archive webpages. This would be a great tool to use on a high school level for research and research projects, college to obviously, but definitely higher level students because of all the different tools available. I believe to get the full use of the website you need to be able to comprehend the accessories.

The website itself is very well put together and easy to maneuver. The main idea of the website is to collect, annotate, organize, and share data with yourself and your peers. This is very helpful in the business world as well if a lot of data is on your hands. I would personally use this for research papers or large projects. This would be so useful in the classroom for teachers to see what the students are doing on their projects and to keep their information all in one place.

From the concept mapping project I learned how to organize information in a professional and well-kept way, presenting it in a way thats easy on the eyes. I like how the information is put into smaller categories so you can get the information across easily and functionally. What I don't like is how time consuming it is. It would be a lot easier to put on a power point or a word document, but not as pretty!

Blog #4

SP.PK12.DH.2.4a: Produce written communication, including identifying parts of sentences, combining words to make sentences, and combining sentences to make paragraphs with the support of sign and/or voice.

Content Complexity Rating: N/A  |  Date Adopted or Revised: 02/14

http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewResourceStudentTutorial/Preview/126646

In this basketball-themed interactive tutorial, you'll learn what separates clauses from sentences, and you'll learn about four different sentence types: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. 

My tool I am using is an Educational Game, I will use this tool to interact with the students and get them involved and interested in sentences. This is also a good tool for deaf students because it is a hands-on activity that you do not need to use hearing for, that hearing kids just like them can use.

In my educational career, I have used the internet and search engines such as Google to do research and other school related projects. Online I've used Prezi and Google Slides to do projects with large groups so we could all work on such projects. For pleasure I use a lot of Google and Siri, most of the time to do with random questions or music. Referring to the podcast, I have seen a lot of Tedtalks in psychology and some of my education classes last semester, they are a good way to show real life examples to students and give them a good grasp on the topic.

From my assignment I learned how many tools I can use to complete lessons and get the children involved in learning, through websites and activities it should be fairly easy. The ELA standards are more than I thought they would be, it surprised me all the little details teachers must pay attention to while teaching so they complete these standards. CPALMS really helped to guide teachers to different ways accomplishing the standards is possible.

Blog #3

           Because of my specific future career in Deaf Education, the ELA standards could be a little bit more difficult than for other teachers teaching my grade level. I am planning on teach elementary around 5th grade so I believe that teaching most of the core subjects such as math, science, and social studies should not be difficult for me to reach those technological standards. What I might have trouble with is the Standard 10 and Text Structure because of the difference in language between English and ASL.
           Since my students will be visual and hands-on learners I'd like to incorporate a Smartboard and class computers to give them a good hands on experience with technology and use the Smartboard to make lessons more vivid and fun. Students could also use the Smartboard to help me with problems and such up on the screen. On the computers we would use educational online websites assigned by the school and teach them about internet safety, around 5th grade is the age students start receiving their own personal laptops and should learn these safety parameters.
           From the Newsletter, I learned many things; I learned how to do page boarders, text boxes, how to manage columns, and how to use the mail merging tool in WS. I liked how easy it was to create mass letters with the mail merging tool and I know I will definitely use that in my future career sending notes and such home to parents informing them about class activities and schedules. I did not like how temperamental the columns themselves were on the page, effecting everything around it. Next time I will be more familiar with where everything is located and I can easily access those tools during my assignments.

                                                                           Blog #2

         As a student I have used MS word in many ways. In the past, I began using MS word as a child for homework assignments and projects, now I mainly use this program for papers and assignments. I have become very familiar with the different programs for my work. My teachers have used it for notes, instructions, assignments, packets, etc. Teachers definitely seem to use MS word way more than I do.

      Copyrighted material is used every single day in the classroom through textbooks, websites, classroom books, etc. Copyrighted material is very helpful in education, we would not be able to learn as much as we do or we have in the past without these tools. Textbooks are key components in elementary, middle, high school, and college. Besides books I have read at home, the only environment I've used them is in an educational environment. If I am using copyrighted material in school for a project or something of such I always create a work cited page so I do not plagiarize.
        A new component of Twitter that I learned was how to do a DM just from creating a tweet instead of going to the DM tab. I can use Twitter to communicate with parents and students, I can also use it for projects and updates in class. Social media is a great way to get your messages out there for everyone to see whether it is for personal or professional use.

Blog #0

Ever since I can remember I have been using technology. Whether it was my parents phones, computers for video games, Super Nintendos, or hand held video games, it seems like my entire life has been filled with technology. As time continued my technology became more advanced of course but I still use around the same amount of devices. I've always been attached to the hip with either my Gameboy, DS, iPod, now finally cellphone, your life is surrounded by the next new technological advancement. Today I use my iPhone, Macbook Pro, and Kindle.

I hope to become more savvy with my computer and use what the internet has to offer, improving my education and my future for myself and my students. I hope that this class will help me through the rest of my college career, making my online tasks easier for myself and my teachers. I know I will be using this technology for the rest of my life so I happy to be given this opportunity to learn.

What I learned from the learning styles results was how I personally learn things better and how I work with others. I am 100% a VIS and ACT learner whereas I am more towards the middle as a SEN and a SEQ learner. I realized that I like to work in groups and talk about what we are working on rather than doing things individually. I also like to have a visual representation of what we are working on in class and working hands on, seeing and doing works a lot better for me than just thinking or reading. I have been this way for as long as I can remember.