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     I think that data collection or surveys using things such qualtrics, can be very useful to a teacher. As a teacher you can learn a lot about your students by asking them some general questions. Such an exercise on elementary school students would help them become knowledgeable on certain traits that they have. I would use it with my english class of second graders to help them write better essays, and become a more connected community as a classroom. Excel would help store the answers to the surveys and make them more accessible in the future.

     Something that I found interesting from viewing my classmates' blog is how involved they got with the course assignments. I am just taking this class for my minor but most of my peers are majoring in education. So the things we did on the blogs like the ILP, Diigo exercises, and the plenty resources we found will help them in their future careers.  I enjoyed reading and discovering the different ways they approached each assignment that would further help them.

     One technology skill I would love to learn next, involves a way better to use excel. I seen a tweet recently, that it was possible to translate on excel into different languages. I think that learning this would expand my mind to the additional benefits not always seen or used with excel. Also, by being able to use excel in different ways I can better do some of my projects for school. I intend to figure this out by researching how to do it online.

ILP “Participation” – FSU's Digitech Exhibition

For my second ILP, i visited the Digitech Exhibition on campus. They had some really cool inventions and I picked the four that I liked the most to discuss. I hope you enjoy it!!
Watch my Voicethread with the link below:
https://voicethread.com/share/12391753/

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     "The Flipped Classroom" is a different type of blended that switches the traditional classroom learning process. It moves instructional content to an online forum, that students do outside of the classroom. Then activities such as homework that reinforce the content are done in the classroom. This might be a better way of the classroom but may create a digital divide for students who do not really have access to the internet.
     Open educational resources are easily accessible resources used my other teachers for teachers. They even the playing field by making it easier for new teachers to get information. Edutopia.org is a type of site that can help educate people on different open educational resources (OER). The site first gives a definition of OER and how they can be beneficial to students. Then the site gives you twelve different types of OER that you can work with.
     The first powerpoint was mainly just a review of the skills i already new on powerpoint. I enjoyed making each slide uniform for a coherent slideshow. I did not like having to record the powerpoint as a movie. Not only do i not like the sound of my voice played back but it takes me forever to perfect it even with a script. The second powerpoint assignment really taught me how to use powerpoint in a different way. I never knew how to add buttons in order to make a slide that did not move in the manual order. I enjoyed adding the buttons as a way to maneuver through the slideshow. What I did not like was how many slides I had and picking the specific pictures for my slideshow.

College Experience Survey

https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b96j7BSlTKvd7M1

Professional Development

Diigo is a very helpful open educational resource. We used it in class numerous times to help each other find various resources. It can be useful in my classroom for me to show my students how to accurately get information from different web pages. It can help me with team members by allowing me to annotate resources i find and showing them what i think about them, without being face to face. I can also use the blog feature on it to help with my individual professional efforts to get feedback from others.
I can use powerpoint to help students gain knowledge by presenting them with information. I can use it to help them with comprehension by asking questions throughout it to make sure they are understanding the lesson. I can teach them about application by using various types of examples in my powerpoint. I can make sure the ideas expressed are clear by restating them in different ways throughout the powerpoint. I can use smart art throughout the powerpoint to synthesize information. At the end of my powerpoint i can have a mini quiz that will evaluate how well they learned the information.
Technology is beginning to infiltrate every section of our lives. It often falls on the shoulders of teachers to educate their students about the constant changes in technology. So it is important that they have resources that constantly update them about these ongoing changes. Such a resource is teacherhub which is displayed in the screenshot below. This will help a teachers professional development by providing them with a network of people who share the same goals.

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     I have used twitter personally for many years but honestly I never thought about how my teachers could use it to stay connected with teachers and other things within their discipline. I have been using twitter for education in two classes. One is english and I tweet ten times a week about things related to that class. The other is for this class and I really like being able to ask questions. Another benefit from using twitter is that I can relate to others more easily because we are all tweeting things about the same class we are taking. I am not expieriecning any issues with twitter.
     This was my first time making a website with weebly so I learned how to work that, and it was a lot easier than the program I used last time. but i do not remember the name if it. The last time I made a website it was a lot simpler, just pictures and words. This time I embedded a creative commons and a google calendar. I actually like making websites because they are a public work of art that everyone can see. I do not like that sometimes there are too many options because I can get stuck on a minor detail. Next time I might be able to find more pictures to make my page more full. I will include a picture of my homepage at the end of this blog. Click this link to visit my website.
     Today in class, we working in Diigo and looking at different assistive and adaptive technologies and how they could be used to support different impaired learners. I found a resource that discussed how assistive technologies could help children with autism. Certain technology could help them better communicate what they want and get used to a routine. The only time I used any type of tools was in the TechSandbox and I played a game that would teach coding on an iPad (picture at the end). In the classroom I can see that if there were too many students it may get hard for me to help everyone. I may be able to avoid this by allowing them to work in groups on the iPads until they were comfortable and then transitioning to individual use.

Technology (#6)

After a long google search i finally found a school's website that would let me access various teachers pages. It is funny that the search was long because the school's website that i ended up on was Leon High School, which is right here in Tallahassee, FL. The visited various teacher websites to pick the best to talk about but also to note the similarities i seen between them. I found Mr. Don Coon's website to be very helpful, he teaches an introductory science class to high school students called, Integrated Science. He like most of the other teachers had a bio page, an important documents page, and a student resources page. The bio page of every teacher gives a detail of who they are, where they got their degree, and what or how they like to teach. The important documents page, had documents that may have been passed out in class such as the syllabus, students could download and print these documents for their own use. The student resource page has links to outside web pages that students may use to help them on assignments or even to get further knowledge, such as Nasa.gov. Mr. Coon also had a calendar on his website filled with day to day assignments so that students could easily find out what they missed due to an absence. Pictures of Mr.Coon's website can be found at the end of the post.

As a teacher, I envision myself using technology to create a better learning environment for students. Technology not only gives us the opportunity to create assignments more efficiently, but grade and give feedback effectively to each student. This additionally helps the students in their own learning process. Today’s technology is so advanced that the time for grading or creating assignments can be cut in half, work harder not smarter they say. Students can also take advantage of using technology to learn at home because they can go at their own pace and use other technological resources to answer any questions or concerns they may have regarding their lessons that I, as the teacher, won’t be there with them to answer.

There was honestly so many different types of technology in the TechSandbox, that it was overwhelming. One of the tools that stuck out to me was the 3D printer because i had never seen one in person. The 3D printer could print real life examples of different things so that students can analyze and describe them more accurately. For example, teachers can print a map of a place their students are studying and use it to show them a physical version of the map. There were also these pens, that were portable 3D printers. Of course the things you can make with them are different, but for elementary school kids it could be very useful in a creative project that would allow the students to express themselves. Examples of what i made with the pen can be found under the website images.