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.

$7

     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.