Blog Journal 10

After the experiences I went through with the tool of collecting data through surveys, I believe that I will be able to use it as a teacher. The subject matter I would use it for would be English or Language Arts since that’s what I aspire to teach in the future, and the grade level would probably be middle or high school students. I would use this tool to get the feedback of students about what should be done differently or kept the same to make sure they are learning effectively in my class. In regards to reporting by using Excel for example, I would use this tool to keep track of the progress of students as a teacher in order to pay close attention to any changes made in their work.

There are many topics that I found very interesting from reviewing the blogs of my classmates. One of them was about their views on adaptive and assistive technology and the different tools they discovered based off of the research they made. Another one was how interaction can be incorporated by using PowerPoint in a variety of ways to engage students. The independent learning projects we created that had to do with design were also interesting in my opinion because I got the chance to see the different tools my classmates used.

A technology-related skill that I would like to learn next would be how to reach out to the parents or guardians of the students I teach in the future. This is because a lot of technology in the field of education mostly aim towards the relationships between teachers and students, which is why having this new skill would be beneficial as well. I would probably achieve this goal by communicating with teachers that have had more experience than myself to get further insights about how they reach out to parents themselves. Conducting additional research about technology that is related to this skill would help me accomplish this as well.

Blog Journal 9

The concept of a “flipped classroom” is a different strategic way of instructing students in a classroom setting. The traditional style of learning normally incorporated is reversed through this strategy for students to participate more in class. For example, homework assignments that would usually be given for students to complete outside of class would now be included in class. This allows students to prepare for class activities beforehand and practice applying key concepts with feedback in class afterwards. As a result, they will be able to check their understanding once they are no longer in the classroom after the “flipped classroom” strategy is put into place.

Open educational resources are types of resources that are available for others in the public to use. They can be used in five different ways, with some of them being through revision or redistribution. This is really helpful for educators since they can use resources like these as teaching material for their classrooms, or they can even create their own resources that can be put out in the open for others to use as well. An online resource I found that fits into the category of OER is Khan Academy. This resource is an organization that provides tutorials and exercises for teachers and students to use, and the best part about it is that it’s free. Open educational resources are all free of charge anyways, so this is another great advantage of this asset. Attached is a link with more information about the online resource of Khan Academy.

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Khan-Academy

The two PowerPoint assignments that I worked on recently were for Information Dissemination and Interaction. Some new skills that I acquired from them were how to use the action feature to add buttons to my slides, how to make adjustments to the mouse clicking feature, and how to add sound to the slides I created as well. What I liked about the skills I learned was how the buttons allow people who are using PowerPoint to go back and forth through transitions. However, what I disliked was disabling the mouse clicking feature since I’m already used to clicking the mouse for the advancement of each slide. I also disliked how there were limited sounds available, and I couldn’t figure out how to add more sound effects that would be relatable to what I was applying them to. In spite of these dislikes, I can improve my work in regards to using PowerPoint by being more familiar with the usage of buttons instead of clicking. I can also research more on how to download sounds into PowerPoint in order to make it more appealing. Attached are screenshots of the PowerPoint assignments I created.

ILP "Design" - Kahoot!

This is my second Independent Learning Project, and I decided to choose design. The tool that I used for this project was Kahoot! in order to create an educational content. We have not used this tool in this classroom before, but I have used it previously during my high school years. It's very helpful for teachers to create study materials such as quizzes for students to engage in, and I can honestly say that I had a wonderful time creating the content that I made during this project!

Attached is a link to the Voice Thread of this Independent Learning Project.

https://voicethread.com/share/13252869/