Diigo Activity: Teacher Productivity Tools

I learned that teachers have a number of resources to chose from when it comes to effectively and efficiently completing their professional work. (https://slack.com/is) Slack is a great resource for communicating with other professionals and https://www.zipgrade.com/ is another resource that is grade for grading and gaining data in a timely manner for teachers.

Post #6 Professional Development, Tech Sandbox & ILP "Design" - Prezi

I looked through a number of school websites and was unable to find any teacher class pages. I found a number of other resources like, Booster Association, Athletics, AP Courses, Bus Schedules and Newsletters but nothing from one specific teacher about their classroom content. I was able to read news about the school and all the upcoming events. I also read about AP Courses and lunch meals and how to sign up for sports. Here is a screen shot of Sante Fe High School and some of the resources I found.

http://www.santafecatholic.org/forms/

I envision myself using a wide variety of technology to help me accomplish my professional responsibility more effectively and efficiently. One example is word processing because they are much more capable of creating and editing a document these days. I am able to publish, create and edit graphics, review and reference work with tools and develop web pages. I find this very important because I need to be able to review my students work and place reviews and I also would love to create a newsletter for my classroom.

Another example would be electronic spreadsheets because I am able to organize, edit, input, and produce reports for any admin task that deals with numbers. This could help me create budgets, track grades and collect class information. As the podcast stated, tech has enabled more options and resources for teacher to take advantage of. Blogs are another recourse that I would find beneficial because I am able to share and learn ideas of other teachers and the methods of teachings they use. I could also use this to track my progress of my students like a journal.


Last week, I went to the Tech Sandbox and was able to see the all of the amazing technology that they had to provide. I was able to see the 3-D printer in action and that was so interesting to see a machine create almost anything you program it to do. I also saw the 3-D pen and saw this piece of tech create 3 denominational objects in real time. This was by far my favorite piece of technology in the Tech Sandbox and unfortunately did not get a chance to try it out.

I also had the opportunity to see the Virtual World head set that transports to anywhere you would like to go. I thought this was amazing because I am studying French currently and it would be interesting to take a Virtual trip to the Louvre in Paris. Overall, I thought all of the tech was so innovative and I am excited to hopefully start to see some of this tech become integrated into classrooms.


For my ILP, I chose to try my hand at Prezi and created a presentaion on World War I. My Prezi shows how World War I started, who fought and how WWI ended.
CPALMS:
7th Grade
Social Sciences
SS.6.W.1.1: Use timelines to identify chronological order of historical events.

https://prezi.com/-mhvg0bwoq8s/copy-of-world-war-i/?webgl=0#

Diigo #2 Web 2.0

After doing the Diigo activity, I learned about the interaction that can be done through this site with my peers. I was able to see someone else views and ideas because they choose to read over my comments and put in their voice and I was able to read those and learn even more. This allowed me to interact and communicate efficiently with my peers and to get their perspective on what I was learning about.

Post #5 Web 2.0, LibraryThing and MOOCS

The Web 2.0 technologies that I think would be useful in a classroom are YouTube and blogs, at least for a classroom that I would be teaching. I would like to teach younger kids so I do not think that Wiki or Diigo would be too beneficial for them because I think they are just too young to comprehend those sites. But I do think a class blog would help me stay organized with all the information that I would like to send out to parents.

I think YouTube would be a great site for me and my students because I think being able to show my students a visual representation of what I am teaching would be very beneficial for their learning development. As the podcast stats, YouTube is a great tool for these students to learn because of the various amounts of information and videos.

An interesting tool that I could use in my classroom would be LibraryThing. Growing up, I loved to read books and would be transported to another world when I dove into a great book. I think the power of a good book can really help teach a student, so I think LibraryThing would be a great site for them.

This site allows for someone to create an online catalog of books with books that they own, have read, books they'd like to own and books they've rented out. They can also place tags, ratings and reviews on each book and contribute to online forums through the site.
https://www.librarything.com/

I believe that the technology advancement in chapter 12 that holds the biggest promise for education would be MOOCS. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses and they are large-scale, open-access, online learning opportunities that are free. These courses are designed to teach students who want to learn around a subject area and want to do so online.

These communities enroll thousands of students and some of the institutes that facilitate these include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. I think this technology is incredibly beneficial for students who may not have the opportunity to enroll in an institution or pay tuition. I think this gives those students an opportunity that they did not have before these courses were formed.

Diigo #1

Through learning how to use Diigo, I learned how to bookmark websites and save them on to a site and also how to organize those sites using tags. I was also able to comment and interact with my peers by viewing the sites they bookmarked and commenting on what I thought would be helpful for students. I was able to learn about an array of new websites that I had never heard of.

Post #4 Twitter, Digital Divide, Programs & E-Course

Twitter has been a fun and intriguing way of communicating with my classmates and interacting with my peers. I read my classmates tweets every weeks and am able to see everything that they re-tweet as well. This has been beneficial because I am able to interact with others in my class and see how they are doing in this class and what they have to say. Also, being able to read the articles that some of my classmates are re-tweeting gives me the opportunity to learn and be engaged within the education world and to be updated with current news. It is also beneficial to participate discussions through Twitter and communicate that way.

Twitter could be helpful in my career for a number of ways, one including growth of my company through social media and marketing. Another could be interacting with my co-workers on this platform and reading articles that they share as well.

The digital divide is the gap between people who do and do not have access to technology because even in today's world, some still don't a computer or internet access. This divide can sometimes effect a student's advantage at educational success when they do not have access to internet. For example, if a student lives in rural area and does not have internet access at home opposed to someone who may be surrounded by technology at home; these two will differ greatly.

As a teacher, I have to be sensitive to the issues of the digital divide and notice whether my students have tech access at home. I also should strive to facilitate tech. based learning experiences during school hours to help grow my students confidence for technology, as the podcast said.

The types of student software that I expect to use the most would be word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and desktop publishing software. These are a few software programs that I am already familiar with and will incorporate these into my teaching as a tool.

Some programs that I am less likely to use would be graphic software, illustration and drawing programs, animation and 3D programs because I am not yet familiar with these programs. But after learning a little bit about them from reading this chapter they seem to be great tools that could help students learn in a creative way For example, I could see how when teaching a middle school science class how 3D software would be incredibly beneficial for the students to see. A software like Draw Plus, could create three dimensional images, like the Earth, and show the students the different layers that are inside of the Earth.

After finishing the e-Course, I feel that I have learned a great amount in such a short time period. A lot of the material was new to me but some I had a little bit of experience with already. I found this e-Course incredibly beneficial and I think the knowledge that I learned will greatly benefit me in a work place setting as I transition from college to career. I learned about a number of new programs and software's that I did not know were available to me and how they could help me succeed.

Post #3 ELA Standards, Open Terms & New Skills

Post #3: ELA Standards, Open Terms & New Skills

After reading through the ELA technology standards, I feel most prepared to teach number 7, under the "Literature" section that reads: "Compare written story/drama/poem to audio, filmed stage, or multi-media version, analyzing techniques such as lighting, sound color, camera focus/angle." This would entitle comparing a book to a movie for example and I think that would be a great project for my students. They would love to watch a movie and I would hope that they would enjoy reading the book as well then comparing the two. A standard that would require more learning on my part would be number 6, under the "Using Multiple Sources" section that reads: "Add: Assess the credibility of sources; quote or paraphrase data and conclusion avoiding plagiarism; basic bibliographic information ." I still have trouble citing sources and with all the different formats that comes with citing and would need to refine those skills before informs my students on them.

One technology software/application that I would like to use with my students would be discussion boards, if I was teaching college students. We use discussion boards and I think they are a great way to interact and communicate with others in my classes. We are able to comment and give each other constructive and positive feedback as well and I think it is a great way to use my peers as a network of help. When it comes to digital citizenship, I will need to be able to teach my students how to "effectively use tech to develop and maintain a positive online presence through which individuals can productively interact and participate with virtual communities". One of those concepts includes, "Protect their personal identities and those of others" and I feel that this is an important concept as more and more of the world moves to technology and the internet. Now a days, everything is online and that means more fraud and the internet can be a scary place. I would teach my students the importance of staying safe on the internet and to know who they are talking to.

Open education is all about making educational experiences available to a wide audiences. For example, MIT made online courses available to anyone and also made these online lectures and videos free. This is obviously different than going and sitting in a lecture hall but gives an opportunity to motivated individuals who are willing and wanting to learn. Open content specifies what people can and can not do with the materials that they find online. OER is a great start for looking for open content and the site specifies the uses of the content. Open source software is source code that is made avaliable for anyone to access. Some examples include Open Office and Moodle and are avaliable for anyone to download and use.
Here is the MIT site discussed in the podcast: https://www.edx.org/school/mitx

I gained a number of new skills through the Newsletter Design project and I am still learning as I continue to complete the project. One new skill that I learned is how to place columns on a page for the script of the newsletter and another is how to form a table to put dates or bullets within that table. I loved this design project and was happy to get the chance to be creative and use this project to practice for when I am in a classroom. I think this is perfect practice for when I am placed in a classroom and need to effectively communicate with the parents of my students to keep them informed and updated on their child and what is going on in our class.