Blog Post 6

When I was in middle and high school, it was very easy to click on my schools page and find a specific teachers website and see the required homework and assignments without any issues. Even though I graded from high school 2 years ago, the world has changed drastically. My old high school and middle school changed to having their teachers websites on Canvas, similar to what we have here at FSU. Last semester I had the opportunity to observe an eighth grade science class at FSUS. When looking on the FSUS website, I realized that the teacher websites are open to the public. These websites include a brief description of the teacher, including their phone number and email, as well as  assignments for all the classes that teacher might teach.
https://www.fsus.school/site/Default.aspx?PageType=1&SiteID=4&ChannelID=8&DirectoryType=6

Teachers in good schools are fortunate enough to use technologies to help them in teaching but also helping them plan lessons, grading, and time management. Most schools today are equipped with either smart boards or promethean boards. Both of these make teaching much easier especially when trying to show 3D models or even videos. These boards allow for more students to be hands on when using the special pen. Technology softwares allow for teachers to also take time to effectively plan out their lessons and make grading much easier. Many teachers come in early and leave late because they have a lot of grading or they didn't have time to plan a lesson. Because of this teachers are using their personal time to focus on their work which could be nearly eliminated depending on the uses of certain technologies.

The FSU Tech Sandbox offers a variety of technologies and softwares that can help make tasks and assignments a lot more easier within the classroom. For example, in the Tech Sandbox there was an Ipad with a software on it that allowed students to have a friendly competition on a certain subject. One of the competitions was who could complete the word faster on the screen. Another task was who could identify countries on a map the fastest. These friendly competitions would be a great way for middle or high schoolers to learn through social interaction and have fun while learning.

ILP 1

This Prezi includes information about the Disney princess Snow White. It includes the history of the storyline, introduction to main characters, books and spin-offs of books, movies and spin-offs of the movie as well as pictures of merchandise.

https://prezi.com/view/887SxVYQh2bAxpq6wvT3/

Blog Post 5

The FSU Tech Sandbox offers an abundance of technologies that can be used in the classroom. These items included software programs on an Ipad, a touch screen computer, a virtual reality system, a 3D printer as well as 3D printing pens, and a promethean/smart board. Within the classroom, I think having access to a promethean board or a smart board is very crucial in students learning. These boards are able for teachers to use tools to help teach their lessons and help students understand and visualize the material. Using these boards allows students to directly interact with technology in the classroom. For example, when teaching math, it is very easy for teachers to quickly create and edit shapes in their lessons. These shapes can help students visualize what a "cylinder" looks like.

Web 2.0 tools are very helpful within classrooms. A web 2.0 tool that can be used for educational purposes is Skype. Skype is a tool where students are able to video chat through a computer, Ipad, or smart phone. Although Skype is normally seen as something used between people during their free time, it is also a tool for students to connect and discover things/people around the world. For example, back in elementary school I had a pen pal in a foreign country. With Skype, instead of having to write and wait for a response, students can Skype with their buddies and get to know the other cultural differences and similarities.
https://www.skype.com/en/

Something seen at the Tech Sandbox was a 3D printer and 3D printing pens. I believe as these inventions are further researched and developed they can become key aspects to classrooms. For visual learners the 3D pen is a great way for students to be able to draw and bring to life their math problems. Currently, it takes hours if not days for the 3D printer to print things. If this process were faster, I believe it would be very helpful for teachers to print things and show the class. For example, instead of showing pictures of a heart during an anatomy class, a teacher could 3D print a heart so the students can easily identify the valves and arteries. Technology is advancing everyday and I'm very excited to see what the future holds for technology inside classrooms.

Assignment 3: Website Evaluation

High School History

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

Although this is a .com website, the content of the material is factual. All of the links in the website are definitions of key terms the reader might not know or understand while reading. All of their history has been checked and updated as of 2018. They also include an area to contact them if you believe there is something wrong so they can review the information. I believe History.com is a credible source to use when finding information for school projects. It is also very easy to read with no grammatical issues. Some of the vocabulary is a little advanced so I recommend high school students use this website. This website was created by A+E Television Networks, which is the company that air's the History channel on TV. After comparing this website to many others, the dates and information are factual, even though it does not reference to other articles or where they found their information. The intention of this website is clear. When discussing history, everyone has their own story of how they lived that experience. Things get lost in translation along the way making this a secondary but reliable source.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/africa-physical-geography/

This website was also recently reviewed and updated, last being checked in the beginning of 2018. Highlighted and underlined within the article are key terms that when clicked on, define words that students might not know the definition for. It also gives the correct way to pronounce the word which I find to be really useful. The text is nicely written and makes sense with no major grammatical issues. All topics are clearly broken up and labeled into different sections making it easy to follow along and grasp all the information. Since all the "big words" are defined already, I believe this would be useful to middle and high schoolers. This webpage was created by National Geographic, which is known for its accuracy in information. Although it is a .org, the information does get reviewed so the content is trustworthy. After keeping analyzing the information, all the facts are relevant and true statements. The purpose for this website is to inform all people about facts on different topics. All the topics relate to geography but there is information about countries and landmarks from across the world.

Blog Post 4

For this course, EME2040, I was a little uneasy about the Twitter assignment. I was afraid I would have a hard time remembering to tweet on two different days every week for the rest of the semester. I was also worried about not knowing what to tweet about. But, once we actually started doing this assignment, I was very surprised about how simple it actually was. I am an active Twitter user on a different account and I love the whole aspect of the app. Having an app used for a class is almost relieving because it's an ongoing assignment about something that I enjoy doing and using. So far, I have a few tweets that are made up of quotes found online, retweets from other people, replies to other students, and quote tweets from other accounts I follow. In the future, I believe searching up hashtags will help adults who are maybe out of the loop understand what is going on in their children or students generations.

Digital divide is a term that is used to describe the gap between people who have access and don’t have access to technology. A big issue that we have seen all across the world is that some people are very experienced and skilled in using technology such as computers but there are also people who have never used a computer for anything in their lives and have absolutely no experience. Within the school systems, some students do have computers at home and others need to go to a public facility in order to use a computer. As a teacher, it is very important to go over skills and techniques in the classroom so all students are learning the same information. If there is an assignment that needs the use of a computer, the teacher needs to make sure everyone has enough time to work on the assignment since some students might be going to the public library compared to other students who can use their home computer.

Within the school system I believe apps are very common to have on computers or iPads or whichever the technology the school offers. Apps are very easy to install and use within classrooms. They also provide an abundance of activities within one app. Although the most popular apps are social media apps, these educational apps will help students learn materials as well as play games to better understand the material. Presentation software is what I will most likely use most often to display the information to my students. A software program that I am least likely to use is electronic spreadsheet software. I am not one to normally make charts and graphs to organize my information so this software would not be beneficial. Another aspect in choosing software is the price. If a software costs money then most teachers will not purchase the software. Instead, they will find a different but similar software to use.

Blog Post 3

The ELA Standards consist of many different uses and ways to use technology. As far as these standards go, I am pretty confident in using most of these standards within a classroom. I do not have a problem using multimedia which can consist of digital text, visual presentations, and audio or video medias. One issue that I may run into is not being able to fully analyze and interpret a text and use context clues to figure out other meanings as well as write to explain or inform others.

The Newsletter Design Assignment was very helpful when figuring out new tools to use for something that could potentially be used almost every week in younger grades. Although I knew how to add all the things required of us to do, I hadn't used some of the tools in a few years. For other classes, when doing assignments or writing essays, a page border is not necessary. It was really fun for me to look up all the different boarders and how they can relate to the theme of my Newsletter. My biggest issue on this assignment was formatting everything on the page. The font I chose was hard to read if the size was too small, but if I made it too big then not everything would align or fit nicely on the page. Overall, I really liked this assignment because it allowed me to be creative and use an abundance of bright colors and pictures I wouldn't normally use on word.