Blog #6

Most schools require teachers to maintain a set of class pages on the school website. I visited my high school, Stoneman Douglas High's website page, douglashigh.browardschools.com. Stoneman Douglas High is a high school that teaches grades ninth through twelfth. The school website has a section that lists all of the teacher's websites categorical according to the subject that they teach. Most of the teacher's websites only included information that pertained to their specific class and students since the school's homepage contains all of the announcements and information about what is occurring at the school. I went through some of the teacher's websites and some were more extravagant than others. All of the teachers websites were similar in context; they all uploaded notes and other printable work for their class, calendars about upcoming assignments and links to other resourceful websites for their students. This specific teacher also separates her website into the different types of classes she teaches but makes the website welcoming to all of them. She keeps it simple but inspirational with quotes and fun clip art as well as giving a supplies list at the bottom in case any of her students feel like donating to her classroom.





I can see myself using technology to accomplish my professional responsibilities more efficiently and more effectively. I will use products such as the Microsoft Office suite, which are applications used on computers in order to create spreadsheets and other useful organizational tools to keep me up-to-date with everything going on in my classroom. I will also make a website that is organized and inviting to parents of my students who I assume will be on the younger side of the spectrum. I want to teach elementary school so I have to make my website simple and full of graphics. With these two types of technological tools I will be using in my classroom I will be implementing the skills of creativity and alignment into my work.

By working on the Web Evaluation Wiki I was able to better judge a website on how credible they are and where they got their information from. I am now able to not trust everything that I read from a website and spend more time checking out a website before I trust what I read from it. I liked that I was able to work on this assignment in a group for once, I was able to socialize with my peers in the class and help one another. The only aspect of this assignment that I didn't like was the fact that it was hard to navigate around the website and that it was hard to work on the same assignment with my peers at the same time. I can improve for next time when I am looking at a website to check who the website got their information from. Something I learned from the website evaluation assignment that I can use in my future career to to make sure I evaluate a website before presenting it to my class. I do not want to show them something that is unprofessional or inaccurate. I want to take the time and find the best websites for my students to look at and learn from.

Blog #5

Web 2.0 tools are no longer an optional classroom element due to the ELA standards. Some Web 2.0 technologies that I think are useful in the classroom and help support teacher professional development are blogs, they allow students to think twice before posting their homework and written work because they are out there on the Internet for everyone to see. Even if the blog is private and only for classmates and the teacher to view it still stands the same, any one of them could read each others work at any given time. Also, podcasts are another useful technology because they allow students to hear someone else talk about a subject matter which they can access multiple times if they ever need to refresh their memory on a subject.A Web 2.0 technology that may not be as useful in the classroom is social media platforms, while they are nice to allow students to explore news and media and share it with each other it can also expose students to unwanted content. Social media is a Web 2.0 tool that should be monitored and used for only age appropriate students. One concern with using these tools in the classroom that the podcast talked about is using tools like YouTube and blogs which can be a passive approach in the way that students learn. There are other tools out there that allow students to interact with each other and make a more positive and direct approach to learning. To use these Web 2.0 tools effectively there must be a strong computer system made up of a strong hardware and random-access memory (RAM). The network storage should have storage space for each user that contains a cloud storage where each individual can login to a personal profile. This will all help students who use laptops and computers to have access to Web 2.0 tools.

A interesting Web 2.0 tool that I might use when teaching is https://kahoot.it/. Kahoot is a game-based learning website that allows teaching to create a "game" by typing in questions and multiple choice answers. Each question is timed as students pick an answer, the top five students are posted after the right answer is shown. The object of the game is to answer the question correctly and the fastest in order to get the most points.

While Kahoot is another great lesson reinforcer like iClicker, it does have a downside. Kahoot needs its users to have a mobile device or tablet which brings me back to the point that the Web 2.0 technologies are based on age appropriateness. Younger students may not have either one of these devices which means the teacher cannot use program. Also, you must make sure if your students are old enough that each of them has a device. But, it may cause problems because parents may take their children's devices away for punishment which will conflict with how the student performs in their classes who uses Kahoot.

While working on the last assignment, the Concept Mapping, I figured out that planning is very important. If your map starts to look chaotic then it will defeat the purpose of being an organized source of information for people to read easily. Also, if you want to change the layout of your map then you have to drag each piece of the map separately which takes time. I can improve next time by planning out which type of concept map would work better with the information I am trying to provide for students. But I did learn that study guides that are organized and well thought out can be of very good use for students which I will keep in mind for my future teaching career.

Blog #4

The standard I have chosen is SC.K.E.5 which states is about Earth in Space and Time. This standard is directed towards Kindergarten students when they are learning about science. The standard states, "Humans continue to explore Earth's place in space. Gravity and energy influence the formation of galaxies, including our own Milky Way Galaxy, stars, the Solar System, and Earth. Humankind's need to explore continues to lead to the development of knowledge and understanding of our Solar System," (Cpalms, http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewIdea/Preview/486). One web-based resource my students could use to learn and comprehend this standard is http://www.glencoe.com/sites/common_assets/science/virtual_labs/E28/E28.swf. This virtual lab will allow students to grasp how big the universe is as well as to travel to the different planets. This lab would be a visual tool for when I'm teaching them that space is big and that planets are not that close together. The virtual lab would fall under the classification tools category of simulations because it allows students to experience space through a virtual interaction.

In my school work in the past I would always use Google as a search engine when searching for and evaluating Internet-based resources. While Google is not necessarily a scholar approved way to do research I still used similar methods that were explained in the podcast. While I have now learned about credible ways to do research through the FSU library with databases such as JSTOR, I still would try to use key words and phrases to narrow down my search. My methods from high school and now in college are similar to open sources that were mentioned in the podcast. Open sources is software that is freely available to the public, sites like Google are available to anyone with Internet access and has features such as Google Scholar to help people find resources that are appropriate. Databases like JSTOR that are provided to students who attend and pay tuition to universities will have access and are able to search for articles and resources that can back up a point a student is trying to write about.

A new skill I acquired while working on the Web Hunt assignment is that using quotation marks and other symbols I can narrow down my search which will help me cut down the time it takes me to find a website, video or image that I am looking for. What surprised me was that one word can really make a difference in your search results.

Web Hunt challenge:

1. Find a website that gives a virtual tour of the layers of the Earth.

2. You are teaching your students about the planets and the order in which they follow the sun. Find a website that allows you to make a diagram with pictures.

3. Find a website that allows you to make a class page to keep your students' parents updated. 

Blog #3

The ELA technology standard I definitely feel the most prepared to teach with my prior existing knowledge is the "producing" tech standards SL.5 of using digital media. With the help of my EME 2040 class I have began to learn different ways in which I can use digital media and incorporate it into a learning environment. My professor has made me personally use digital media such as Twitter and my blog site to help us learn in class and grow as future educators. The ELA technology standard I wish to be more prepared for is the "consuming" tech standards L.5 of vocabulary and the use of context clues. I believe that this standard is especially important for the younger grades, the ones in which I hope to teach. I do not really know how to help students find the meaning of words through the use of context clues in the sentences that are around the word. I hope that in one of my future education classes I will learn to teach students how to use dictionaries as well as thesauruses.

Based on chapter 9 from my textbook, some of the technology software and applications I would like to use with my future students are blogs where students are able to type their thoughts out on a personal account where their work can be viewed by peers and they can leave each other encouraging and thoughtful comments. My blog right here is for my EME 2040 class and I think it is an excellent way to educate others as well as allowing me to form coherent ideas about the topics I learn in class. Another technology application I would like to use with my future students is a site like Edmodo, it replicates social media formatting but it is safe for educational use because students are not exposed to others' posts that are not monitored and may be inappropriate for their age group. The digital citizenship concepts I will need to address would be that my students should be able to demonstrate "netiquette" actions in their web interactions with each other. Whether they are commenting on each others' blog posts or commenting under a post I make to a website such as Edmodo my students should be polite and never disrespect one another. My students would be at a younger age where they may not be aware that the Internet is a big space where others can see your information and I would also have to teach them the skill of keeping their participate on the web private.

A new skill I acquired from working on the Newsletter Design assignment is how to organize a page that would be appealing for parents to read instead of throwing it in the garbage. Organization is key in a newsletter because if it is a big mess with a lot of words people will not be interested in reading it. What I liked about designing a newsletter is that I was able to be creative and make it appealing for others to read. I did not like this newspaper design assignment that much because I am not a teacher yet and it was difficult to come up with idea on what information teachers find useful and want their students' parents to know.  I know that it will be easier for me to improve next time because I now know the gist on the layout of a newspaper and will know what types of information I could put into a newsletter for parents. Something useful has come out of this assignment that I can use in my future career, how to greet and draw people into my newsletter in a formal yet playful manner.

My Newsletter Design:

Blog #2

As a student Microsoft Word has been useful when writing essays in my English classes. English classes are heavily research based and analyzing pieces of literature, Microsoft Word is an easy tool to use in order to get our thoughts across in essay form. I have seen teachers use Microsoft Word to help them create study guides, tests and quizzes, worksheets and assignment guidelines to help their students succeed in class.

My experiences with copyright has been mostly with citing author's work when using their words to advance my arguments in my papers. I use the words of another and quote them in order to attribute their work as not my own. Another experience I have with fair use of materials in an educational environment is when teachers show use videos during their lectures to help show a different light on the same subject. While the teacher may have not made the video it is for educational purposes and it is used for the purpose of teaching others and nothing is being used from the video for money. As a teacher who has to deal with these concepts in my own classroom and when creating my own instructional materials I will make sure that when I make PowerPoints and use videos or images that I do not own I will cite the place where I got them from and the author's name. Also, if I have students who use sources to create their own work I will make sure I teach them the correct way to cite sources as well as use programs such as Turnitin.com to catch students who are not creating their own work.

A new skill I acquired through the use of personal learning networks and specifically Twitter is that we can have access to a variety of credible news and learning companies and organizations right at our fingertips. Twitter is a microblogging website that allows users to post short posts of up to 140 characters, this allows users to have access to news and information quickly as some people "live tweet" at events. What I have learned about personal learning networks that can benefit myself as well as my students in my future teaching career is to be more creative with assigning work for my students and allow them to publish their work that allows their peers to review and give positive feedback on.