Blog 8: Did I Become an Ambassador for Diigo?

Welcome back! Hope everyone had a fantastic Spring Break, I know was eventful. Surprisingly enough, during the break, I thought a lot about Diigo. Unbelievable, right? Well, Diigo happens to be, if not the top, one of the top resources for students to use for their classes. After interacting with Diigo in class, I have noticed many ways that students can benefit from this website. Diigo has allowed me to search for online articles and/or websites with interesting facts that I think my classmates would like to read, save them, share them, and even annotate them! In a classroom, Diigo can be utilized similarly by giving the students an assignment involving looking for online resources to write short essays about the new lesson being taught that week. Students would provide their resources on Diigo, so that other students may utilize them as well.  This can be done by bookmarking the resources and sharing them with the class group. Annotating and leaving comments for the class to see would also be an essential part of the learning through Diigo, since students will be able to see their peers' opinions.

Another tool I am very excited in using is PowerPoint, as well. Recently, the idea that a PowerPoint presentation needs to be linear is pretty much non-existent in my world. I have been more interested in interactive PowerPoints, since they engage the student more than when they are just pressing the "next" arrow, in my opinion. Looking at Bloom's Taxonomy, I think that PowerPoint can be used to enhance all levels of the taxonomy. Interactive PowerPoints may test student knowledge by providing quizzes and/or knowledge-based games. The same idea will help the student's comprehension why they got an answer wrong or why they didn't receive points for one question in the game by providing an explanation as to why that was the result. Other ways of using interactive PowerPoints is, for example, in math classes, the student using the PowerPoint may receive homework questions where they need to use their classroom knowledge to provide the right application to the question, and the presentation does not move on until the question is right. These PowerPoints can also help students with analysis of the lesson at hand, for example, in a Biology class, a student on the PowerPoint may have a task where they need to match different animals to their nomenclature classification. In teamwork, students may use synthesis through an interactive PowerPoint by having specific areas to be in charge of, and then coming together at the end and combining the information into a master presentation for the class (maybe a quiz on the Revolutionary War). Sticking around the same idea of students creating their own interactive PowerPoints, students may team up at their own accord, or for a grade, to study for an exam by using their PowerPoint to test each other and learn from each other's evaluations. Very exciting, I know!

By now, all of you can probably tell I have a slight fascination with the implementation of technology in the classroom. Well, that is because I live by a simple notion: that we have to move along with the world around us. The more we grow as a society, we will see more and more improvements to technology, which means we will need people to know how to use it properly. The next generation of students will need to learn to be technologically savvy, for the most part. But, for this to happen, we need to create an elite force of educators with adequate technological skills fit enough to educate the next generation.  When I say, "elite force", I don't mean like the "Avengers" elite, rather just moving towards a society full of teachers who value and desire to teach in technological environment. For this to happen, educators need to go through professional development. The idea of improving yourself is an ingoing thing, and every teacher, in my opinion, should look forward to self improvement in their career, especially if it involves the use of technology in some type of way. A resource I like to use to keep myself up to date with latest technology trends is TED.com. The videos lectures consist of new technologies, innovative ways to use or improve technology, and methods to help think out side the box. Sometimes, a video consists of all three. Most videos are an amazing watch and can teach many of us, including teachers, a thing or two about how to move along with the world.

Well, till next time, everyone!

-       The Tank

Blog 7: Is Weebly the Truth?

Welcome back, everyone! Hope everyone is doing well. About a month ago, I talked about a couple technology topics pertaining to education, among one of them being Twitter. Now if, you didn't read it and you are wondering: "How can Twitter ever be educational?", well then you must've had the same "devil-may-care" experience I had when I began using Twitter frequently. Until now, I have used it as a way to network with other businesses, however, lately Twitter has aided  me expressing my love for education. Everyday I use Twitter, I learn an extra function a day. Twitter has helped me see that there are many people out there willing to provide information for the sake of people being informed, and your account followings narrows or widens your information subjects. For example, I have two Twitter accounts, one for business, one for education. I follow very different people and organizations on both accounts, which allows me to keep one mindset as I am scrolling my feeds. Twitter can serve teachers, as well, if they would like to implement an long term assignment where the educator and the students interact through the social media app, teaching the students about: 1) online safety, 2) interactions online, and 3) it helps them become more technology savvy. That's a great idea, I don't know where I got it from but someone write it down implement it. It also helps teachers, or people alike who'd like two professional lives separate or even just their work and personal lives. I will keep observing, gather information, and display my data to all of you. Or maybe I'll tweet it, I don't know, yet.

What I do know is my website is finally up and running! I've been keeping it on the low just in case we had to scratch the project, but it's finally here (link and picture below). At first, I was very excited to build a website, since I've been building a separate one for my Web Design class. However, my excitement went out the window once I started using Weebly. So, the website I am building for my class I built from scratch (code wise), but for this website I used Weebly to help me knock it out faster... and I hated it. I felt like I had sixty percent of the control pertaining to the final product. I attempted moving paragraphs, lists, sentences, pictures, sections, and all of them just stayed locked in place where they originally placed. I attempted making new sections to try and enhance my page layout... big mistake. I attempted adding some personal pictures to make the website look more personalized, and all the pictures came with weird scales, so I only kept the ones on the home page. It just felt like a very intuitive application, yet, it's supposed to dumb down the process of creating a website. Well, I could say I am never using Weebly again unless it becomes an absolute necessity. I can't see myself building a website in general, but that's what my Web Design class is for, so I am not worried either. But, this experience did make me realize that teachers could benefit from having their own website for students to visit where they could receive more information and/or resources. So, I will definitely keep this experience in mind.

But, let's talk about something that can actually work, and that is adaptive and assistive technologies in a classroom setting. In a technologic setting, chances are most students won't need accommodations provided for when utilizing the tech. Some students, however, may have a disability that hinders them from accomplishing their tasks. For example, a students with a auditory disability may not be able to listen to the video playing in the class, or even the teacher. And I hope this goes without saying but, as a teacher, you must provide accommodations for your students with disabilities. So, how do we accommodate? Enter adaptive and assistive technologies, which are those types of techs designed to aid students with disabilities in the classroom. To go back to the example with the student with the hearing impairment, an adaptive/assistive technology they could utilize is a hearing aid, and when watching a video, the teacher could turn on the Closed Captioning. That could become a challenge, though, because if my class had a unanimous-minus-one vote to not turn on Closed Captioning, then do you ignore all their preferences? I mean, is not a huge deal, I would turn them on any way, but another challenge may arise from the fact that there are no Closed Captioning, and I want to make sure my disabled student receives the same information that everyone else is acquiring. In that case, assuming the student has a hearing aid on, I can seat them up close to the projector screen and ask them if that is a comfortable method for them to successfully retain the information. For the most part, I don't think it'll be an issue, I remember in high school, one of our peers had a physical disability where he couldn't write readable words. Everyday, the kid would bring a customized typewriter (a keyboard with a tiny screen at the top; basically a large label maker), where he would type his notes, complete in-class assignments, and even take tests. And, don't quote me on this because I might be remembering this wrong, but I think that paper printed out of that thing, too. I, mean I want one of those... But, it worked for him, and I am pretty sure he graduated, so that's a win for adaptive/assistive technologies in my book.

Stay safe everyone, it's tornado season apparently, and till next time!

- The Tank


Storytelling Through Editing