Week 7

As a teacher I would definitely maintain a course website. I think they are completely worth the trouble/effort. They are a great way to keep students connected. Websites can also be a catch all for resources you would like to share with students. Websites can allow teachers to also go nearly paperless in their classroom's. I remember constantly being handed huge packets in class to read and discuss and I think it'd be great to be able to upload those to a class website instead and save a lot of paper.

I will use technology is various ways to accomplish my professional responsibilities more efficiently and effectively. I would use technology to help with my teacher professional development with blogs, webinars, and twitter. Similarly to how we use technology in class. It would be really useful to be able to share and learn tips and practices that other teachers use. Especially early into my profession it would be very beneficial to be able to be able to gauge where I'm at with other teachers.

Through the web evaluation assignment I learned some skills about how to create blank forms for students to fill out. I also learned about some important website qualities that I didn't think much of before. Overall I pretty much liked everything about the assignment. I liked how simple it was once you made your blank sheet. I could use this in my future career to help students recognize what good sources look like.

I commented on Alexis and Morgan's posts!

Week 6
Out of curiosity, I looked up a Tallahassee local high school and took a look at their website. I chose  Leon High School. When I first clicked on the page I saw this:


https://www.leonschools.net/leon

When looking at the class websites I was amazed at how many were on there. The directory was huge. It seems as if every teacher in the school has a website. While looking through some of the individual sites I was also impressed how in depth they were. It is almost like canvas in a way. There are syllabi, announcements, assignments posted, and ways to contact the teacher. While there were a lot of great sites that offered a lot of information I also noticed a ton of not used sites.

The digital divide is something I saw my teachers cater to when I was younger. Probably until middle school teachers did not assign homework that required a computer or internet and they would give us time in the computer lab to do assignments that required a computer. The digital divide can allow some students to exceed with technology much faster than others. Different levels of wealth of students in schools is the main factor that can allow some families to have technology while others do not. As a teacher you may not be able to assign homework that requires technology if many in your class don't have access. To help work around this you can work with a lot of technology at school. My high school even loaned us all chrome books to help this.

I think the idea of using Twitter in class is great and original. I have interacted with classmates and the professor many times. I think it is a great way to make announcements. The main issue I have been having with it is that I only have spare time on the weekends, and that is when I do the majority of my homework, and I feel like Twitter makes me anxious because I am getting constant reminders of things I can't do until the weekend. It also does add quite a bit to the weekly workload. I think Twitter could be great for my future career to get out important information to my classes and share resources.

I commented on Brittney and Erika's posts.

Week 5

This week I was doing some research on what grade I would like to teach, and as much as I would love to teach elementary I realized that I can actually teach high school directly after my 4 year degree. I am a political science major and I hadn't realized I could teach with that degree directly after I graduate. I thought I had to have more schooling on top of it. So now I am intrigued to see what high school/middle school teaching would look like.

With this I decided to look at grades 11-12 because that would be the grade levels of teaching high school government! The ELA technology standard I chose to discuss is the standard to integrate multiple sources of information in diverse formats and media, such as: online chart creators such as Create A Graph, reference websites such as Ask A Librarian, and graphics software such as pixlr, to make informed decisions. I honestly don't think my current skill set would allow me to meet this standard. I think I still have a lot to learn about technology and resources before I would have the skillset to implement this standard.

On the CPALMS site, the tool I would use would be the teacher's lesson ideas. I read through a bunch of them on there and they're great. They are all so creative, and I think it would be really fun to build off of the ideas and lessons they have created and make them my own and implement them in my classroom. I really appreciate that these lessons even tell you how many standards they cover. I never knew a site like this existed!

The web 2.0 tool that I could use in my classroom that I first thought of is Tik Tok. It is an app that can allow students to become very creative and create a minute long video over what we are discussing in class. I think students could have a lot of fun with this and follow each other and interact! This would be similar to twitter and the blogs but have a slight twist in being videos and very creative. They would also be very simple so that they could stay enjoyable to the students.
https://www.tiktok.com/en/

I commented on Jacob and Mallory's posts!

Week 4

Through high school and college I have used online learning frequently. In high school we used blackboard in our early college program and in college I have always used canvas. All of my courses have been about the same. They are synchronous in that we must complete what is due that week but they are asynchronous because we have any time throughout the week to do them. I think online learning is a great alternative to classroom learning for those who can't make it to a classroom but I don't think it is nearly as effective.

Before this week I had never heard of OER's. OER's are open resources that are available to all to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. Since I had never heard of OER's I was curious to see some examples. I found a site that showed a lot of open textbook projects. This site even allows readers to add project links and descriptions to give even more examples.
https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/oersourcebook/chapter/oer-models/

I enjoyed the news letter design assignment a lot. It is always so fun to take a break from the reading and writing, and create something. I love being able to have the freedom to take it whichever way we saw fit. I had a lot of fun creating it. I think if I decide to pursue a career in teaching, especially elementary, I will make a lot of newsletters. They're a very fun way to stay organized.

I commented on Mallory and Morgan's blogs!