post 7

Blooms Taxonomy is an organized depiction of the many levels of learning including: memory, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Powerpoint can bring all of these levels of learning to one place. On the first level, powerpoint can be used by teacher to create slides with facts that students can memorize, of example, a math teacher writing a formula. On the second level, teachers can integrate video and graphics to help students take concepts written on paper and put them in motion with real life examples the truly foster deeper understanding, like the math teacher showing how the formula appears on multiple graphs. On the applying level, teachers can integrate multiple choice questions and example problems into their powerpoint slides, like the math teacher integrating a practice problem for the students to test out their abilities. On the next level, power point can be used to show examples of solutions for the student to critique and evaluate validity and correctness. On the final level, the teacher can charge students to make their own informative power points dealing with the formal in real life or teaching the class about a new formula.

Adaptive technologies are any device or tool created to alleviate a learning disability. For example, blind or dyslexic students might need an audio text reader to read out assigned texts to them so they don't have to struggle with the written word. Adaptive technologies can even be more simple things, like pencil grips for students who struggles with writing, or keyboards for children who's thoughts race too fast for them to write them all down, predictive keyboards are also a tool that modern computers employ to help learners in need of assistance. Adaptive technology can be really easy to integrate into the classroom or very hard, depending on the tool. A pencil grip would be a really easy thing to supply a student with, but it is nearly impossible to supply a whole class with computers so they can type or use audio players. Adaptive technology is hard because it costs money and it varies from student to student, there is not universal solution or tool that works on everyone.

This week's assignment was my favourite so far. In my years of schooling, of all resources available to me, teacher websites have bee the most useful. All through high school, I checked my teachers sites daily. Some sites were well formatted and easily accessed, others not so much. The formatting of the site makes all the difference, so having the opportunity to create a site I would want to use as a student was a great learning experience. I used the CRAP model to keep my page well organized and better tailored to a learning experience. I used both text and pictures combined to strengthen my messages and I kept the text close to its assigned picture to keep continuity and convenience for the reader. I kept it simple so that it would not distract from the purpose and made it mostly to be functional and easily usable because students really are only there for functional purposes, not just for fun. My website looks a little like this:

post 6

Many teachers are required by their schools to keep class pages for the parents and students of their class. These pages can contain everything to information on grading policy and assignments to updates on upcoming events. I browsed around and found the page for Ms. Placek's 5th grade literacy class from Switlik Elementary school (website here). The page contained information to the parents about the teachers expectations for the students, such as getting their planner signed each night. It also had a section with key calendar dates to be recorded, like clothing drives and the upcoming book fair. She had multiple statements regarding school policy and a whole section with learning website links.
As a teacher, I will have my own website for students to easily access. If i teach english literature, I will include links to practice multiple choice questions regarding texts, videos that give time period and other background information on the books, and i will include an updated calendar of due dates that my students can access at any time. I would most likely chose a site like Edmodo that sends out notifications and can be accessed on mobile devices for the sake of convenience. I would like to use a sight that allows me to connect to the students and allows the students to instantly contact me through comments or messages directly on the sight. I also like thecae of students being able to turn things in electronically on the same page. Electronic submissions would make my job a lot easier because they can automatically be scanned through Grammarly to check spelling, grammar, and any hint of plagiarism, so all I would have left to do was to check content and assign a score. This would benefit me and the students because it would allow for me to grade things more quickly and have a shorter turn over time on assignments, it also hold the students accountable because nothing slips through the cracks.
Our most recent project has dealt with Web Resource evaluation. A web resource evaluation form is basically a rubric by which teachers can "grade" websites. The rubric creates a water mark for teachers to judge websites by so that they can determine what a good site is and what a good site is not. Web resource evaluations help internet users to be better stewards of the web, they can share their evaluations with certain sites to allow the author's opportunities to better their sites and make them more usable. I am sure there are many website authors out there who appreciate the feedback and the constructive criticism. These forms require teachers to do further thinking and put deeper consideration into what they present to their students from the internet. I like the effort these forms require from teachers, I like to think that they hold teachers to a higher standards. I think it would be nice if school administration generated these and required teachers to submit these before assigning sites to their students, but I think that the amount of work that requires of all involved parties makes it an unreasonable requirement. This assignment taught me how to evaluate and determine what makes a website good. The C-R-A-P system of evaluation came in handy when finishing off this project. In the future, I will be a better critic of the web and I will require a higher standard out of the sites I use.

Here is our evaluation form:

Post 5

Web 2.0 is all the non-static educational and interactive tools the internet provides to students and teachers a like to connect them with new content. It is useful because it is easy to work, readily available for use, and breaks communication barriers between student and teachers. For example Diigo, a site mentioned specifically in the Podcast, for collective note taking and discussion boards right on the source makes sharing information with a class so much easier and interactive because they can ask and answer each others questions, or directly address the teacher. Web 2.0 builds community. However, to use these tools well, all students must have access to computers and internet. The internet issue is getting easier as WIFI becomes cheaper and more widely accessible, but the costs of computers are still a high price for schools to have to pay. 

Within Web 2.0 there are many amazing tools that can be utilized. In high school, I had a teacher who would use a website called PollEverywhere.com with the students of our class similarly to how college students use I-clickers. He would throw questions in to power points to keep us alert and monitor participation levels and he would use questions to evaluate on the spot how well we understood the lessons. I could see myself using that in class to make sure my class is understanding me in real time rather than encountering a large group of students who did not understand the content and were too afraid to approach me when I grade a batch of failed quizzes and tests. It would save me time and keep my class on their toes. 

Another Web 2.0 tool that helps integrate polls is photoPeach.com. This tool allows you to create slideshows and easily embed polls or quizzes. I think photo peach encourages more of a personal touch because it is designed so that it is user friendly for incorporating your own media such as audio and video as well. It creates really beautiful slideshows that are aesthetically pleasing, which also helps the class stay alert. Another great thing about it is that is it free. You can create lessons and not bother the school board about funding, which is good for low income schools. The presentations you make are easy to make accessible to the class for studying purposes, which is personally very important to me as instructor powerpoint have always been my main mode of studying.

In our most recent project, working with concept mapping, I loved getting to explore new parts of Microsoft Word that I'd never try out before. I was amazed by the variety of available templates they had to offer and was surprised with how easy to manipulate the shapes were. I got to mess around with different shapes and colors and really consider what type of map would best fit my needs. I ran into some confusion when faced with WWI material that was kinda all over the place in relation to itself, so I attempted to merge two types of maps together to get the most information formatted into its proper organization, so I started with a cause and effect map and then branched off of my effect with a bracket that included the important concepts within the event bubble that represented WWI. I am not sure if that would work in the future, but I felt like it was the best way to merge all of the information together. I think if I teach at a highs cool level, I will create concept maps at the end of powerpoint to link together all the ideas I have just taught on into a bigger picture because so ofter my struggle was figuring out where everything fit. 

Here is my completed concept map: