My Digital Blog Post I

Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology

 

 

In approaches to lesson planning, I learned about the use of technology in lesson planning where the internet provides a vast selection of assembled lesson plans on virtually any topic at no cost. Three major websites are National History Education Clearinghouse, Annenberg Learner, and PBS Teachers. These websites offer videos researches, online forums, customizable lesson plans, and foreign languages. Apps are also very helpful when it comes to support lesson planning and quick access to a variety of resources especially in math and history. All of these are a good use of technology to help new teacher who do not have any experience in creating lesson plans and it is also good for the teachers that always want to try new ways to improve their teaching. During my observation hours last semester I had the chance to observe around 10 different teachers and at least 6 of those teachers were using Ipads to show pictures, math formulas, and videos. As a future teacher, I would use all this technology in my lesson planning to make my classes more interesting and to make sure my students are understanding the material. Perhaps by then there would be even better apps and ways to make lesson planning easier.

In using electronic grading software, I learned about grading software and how useful they are. Programs like Gradekeeper or Easy Grade Pro, if they are supported by the school, can help teachers manage grades, keep track of attendance, support lesson planning and other class management functions making teachers save a lot time. Also, there are apps like Grade Pad, Easy Grader, and Android for Academics for the teachers who like using mobile devices in classroom. Even in canvas there is a grading program. I have seen a lot of teachers use it and as a student I like how I can keep track of my grades and test scores. As a teacher, I would definitely use some kind of electronic grading software because it gives teachers a lot of advantages like efficiently calculate and store multiple forms of students performance data from tests, quizzes, homework, participation, and attendance. At the same time, electronic grading systems contribute to concerns about how to best assess what students know and are able to do. The success of electronic grading software depends greatly on how you use the information it provides about student progress from your teaching.

In web resources and apps for students assessment, I learned the new teachers consume more time than experienced teachers when it comes to designing quizzes, maintaining grades, and other student assessment activities. New teachers could use different online tools like quizstar.4teachers.org to consume less time. In this website they will be able to create multiple choice, true or false, and short answer quiz creations. Another helpful tool is Grade Pad, in which teachers can assess student's work on their mobile device as it happens in the classroom. This app will helps save the teacher's time when grading assignments since it can become consuming of their own personal life. As a teacher, I will be using these tools to save some time and keep myself more organized. Teachers have a lot of work to do during school and at home after school and great tools like these can make teachers more confident of the work that they can do.

 

      Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Created by Leandris Rodriguez. 

       Rodriguez, L (2015, March 19). Approaches In lesson Planning, Electronic Grading Software, and Web Resources and Apps for Student Assessments, Created with Wordle, http://www.wordle.net/create

My Digital Blog Post H

From PowerPoint and next generation presentation tools; I learned that PowerPoint is useful for teachers who must continually present information to students in ways that will engage and inspire. Knowing the strength and weaknesses of a power point is essential to give the best of a good presentation. Other presentation software program like Prezi, SlideRocket, Acrobat, and Google Docs produce high quality multimedia as well. As a future teacher I would definitely incorporate PowerPoint presentations to my classes. Since it can load text, images, and videos, PowerPoint presentation will feature colorful graphics and pop up windows helping students stay focused. It will help newbie teacher by borrowing PowerPoint presentation from other teachers. PowerPoint is installed on all computers in schools so that students can access it to create their own project presentation. With Prezi, SlideRocket, Acrobat, and Google Docs students can also do presentations at home if they do not have PowerPoint available at home. PowerPoint's features are useful for teachers at every school and students at every grade level.

Next generation web 2.0 presentation tools use multimedia to expand the ways that information is shared in classrooms. The most used next generation tools are Prezi, Animoto, and Glogster. I have used Prezi before for other classes it can only be done online. With Prezi, slides can be made to zoom in and out, occupy different parts of the screen, show animation and more. It is widely used by teacher and students because it clearly emphasize key points over supporting details. Students can view Prezi outside school letting them review information and make their own contributions to the slides. I have not had any experience with Animoto which is another next generation tool but it allows teachers to use video clips, pictures, sound, and text to expand how information is presented. It allows students to create their own short video presentations in many ways. Glogster lets teachers and students create digital posters that combine the use of images, sound, and text. These digital posters can be sent via email or posted on class website. These are all good tools with different purposes that students can used to complete projects and class assignments. As future teachers we should include these tools available for our students so that they can become more productive and more creative.

YouTube, handcrafted videos, and streaming videos resources are awesome ways to use as a visual support to your teaching when you need students to remember concepts during class. YouTube is a website where people can upload and watch videos made by others. It is one of the most widely known websites in the world. There many educational channels on YouTube which can be safely played during class. Handcrafted videos, on the other hand, are short films about important educational topics and concepts and are made without showing peoples faces. The camera focus on words, numbers and images so that viewers listen to narrator as they watch mathematical operations in actions or scientific events. Streaming videos is the simultaneous transfer of video, voice, and data from one computer to another. A lot of good interesting and informative educational materials are available to schools for free or on a subscription basis. Videos from YouTube and internet television are examples of streaming media. As a student I have experienced videos during classes and it allow us to visualize concepts and experiments that we cannot picture in our head. It really helps students and teachers and I will be like one of those teachers who plays a lot of videos to prove my point.

Blog Written and Mind Map Created by Leandris Rodriguez.

   Rodriguez, L (2015, March 13). Powerpoint and Next Generation Tools,Next Generation Web 2.0 Presentation Tools, and Video Resources, Created with Bubbl.us, via https://bubbl.us/mindmap 

My Digital Blog Post G

       Using technology with linguistically diverse learners helps teachers to communicate with students from a foreign country. There are some applications and programs that will not only help students understanding English, but also helps English speakers learn about another languages. An online language translator is Google Translate. This software is available as a free website and also as a free application on smart phones. This app is a two way translator and works with more than fifty languages. This software has many classroom uses including notes, assignments, and material that can be provided in English, but also in other languages. Google translate could also help parents who do not speak English to be more involved in schools. For example, they can translate a letter from a teacher or write a letter to a teacher, translate it and send it to the teacher. There are also multilingual web resources that provides material in more than one language which I witnessed during my observation hours. All of technological advancements are really helping students, teachers, as well as parents when dealing with students who do not speak the language. This technology is here for education and it is here to stay and be improved.

       From roles of technology I learned that “minimizing the impact of disability and maximizing the opportunity to participate in the world” is crucial for all teacher to adapt teaching strategies and classroom environments to fit the needs of all learners. This is all about creating accommodations for students with special educational needs to have different ways to access the regular education curriculum. Accommodation might include tutoring which I think is a great help. I had a tutor in high school at first when I came to this country. It really helped me to understand the material and my tutor always had a different personal way of explaining things from my teacher which made that experience even better. As a future teacher, I would accommodate my students the way I was accommodated when I did not speak English. During test I would give more time to students whom do not speak English or are kind of slow in math but it will be the same test as the other students. This will help students to have the same education as the other students but with more time to complete it. From technology, I could use interactive math website to help my students learn at the same pace as the regular students.

       Speech recognition software writes down spoken words on a computer screen. A well known speech recognition program is dragon naturally speaking which is widely use world wide by English speakers. The creators of this software also created an app called Dragon Dictation and it available for smart phones and tablets. These types of software are used by students, teachers, and writers when they want to speak their ideas and not lose them while slowly typing them on a keyboard. Speech to text software are not perfect and often have to be corrected and edited by students, teachers, and writers. Despite of some imperfections, writers can get their ideas saved on a word document. As future teachers, we must integrate this kind of programs in our teaching and show our students how to use it. When writing papers, like cause/effect or informative, it will help students write down the ideas quickly. Even though the software will not get all the words right it can be edited afterward. Students with disability that cannot type on a keyword or hand write could use this software for good since it will write for them and allows them to be able to complete assignment like other students.

      Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Created by Leandris Rodriguez. 

       Rodriguez, L (2015, March 1). Using Technology With Linguistically Diverse Learners, Students With Special Educational needs, and Speech Recognition Software, Created with Tagxedo, http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/5f7bfbb5e37c44b0