ILP: Orientation to Library of Congress website (loc.gov)

Today (November 18, 2015) I attended a webinar that showed me how to properly use the Library of Congress's website and all of the amazing features that it has. The Library has many formats of primary sources ranging from photographs and videos to newspapers and maps. The part I found most interesting about the website is the education tab. Under this tab there are resources for students and teachers. I really liked the Teacher's Resources category. It shows teachers how to incorporate primary resources like those found in the Library of Congress in lessons for their students and even has some lesson plans posted. Due to technical difficulties, the webinar started about twenty minutes late but once it started it went pretty smoothly. I found the display screen to be a bit confusing. At first I could not hear what was being said in the webinar. There was a button that said "audio" but whenever I clicked it I was put under the impression that it would cause me to call into the webinar like you would call into a radio show and I definitely did not want to do that. After 3 or 4 minutes of having no idea what was being said in the webinar, I clicked the audio button again and followed the steps this time while finally allowed me to hear the webinar. Despite a few minor difficulties, I enjoyed the webinar and found it to be very helpful in navigating the website and taking advantage of all of the features offered.

• the Library of Congress has over 7,900 audio related sources digitized.
• view all digital collections under the discover tab
• a collection is all of the materials related to a subject such as Women's History
• featured items in a collection are shown at the top of the site
• the education tab offers many different resources for teachers and students
• Read.gov links you to the literacy website and America's Library has reading materials that are appropriate for younger children.
• The Everyday Mysteries feature located within the education tab answers fun and common science questions such as "Why do turkeys have light and dark meat?"
• the connect tab allows you to subscribe to their social media pages and blogs to learn about the most recent and significant materials added to the site
• search for information by audience (students, teachers, publishers, researchers)

ILP- Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship Webinar

I attended a webinar on October 7, 2015 regarding internet safety. The first presenter was Diana Graber who spoke about Cyberwise. Cyberwise provides resources and information to students, teachers, and parents regarding ways to stay safe in the internet and how to create safe profiles.

• don't share too much personal information, be discreet
• cyber civics needs to be supported at home because
• parents are often clueless about what their kids are doing online

The next presenter was Kathy Boehle who introduced the program known as Gaggle which provides student safety solutions for school districts that use Google Apps for Education or Office 365.

When Gaggle sees inappropriate (sexual) images they send it to the National Institute for Missing and Exploited Children, not the school. Gaggle Also gives warnings to students who use inappropriate language. Students have started chatting through Google Docs on school district-owned technology and gaggle has monitored students using these programs to:

• bully
• set up drug deals
• discuss drug use
• speak of self-harm
• sext
• get wrapped up in sex trafficking
• express violence

The final presenter was Luann Hughes who is the director of technology at Temple Independent School District in Texas. She explained how her school district uses tools like Gaggle and other monitoring services to track the online behavior of students. This district has applied monitoring systems on all compatible district devices. They use Gaggle to screen Google Drive to help limit file sharing of assignments. They use Go Guardian to monitor the Chromebooks their high school students have possession of. Gaggle noticed a 5th grader threatening to cut herself so her guardian was called and it turned out to be a false alarm but they were able to educate the young girl on the severity of the situation.

I really enjoyed this webinar. I thought it was well executed and I liked that there were a variety of speakers that gave some insight into what trouble students are likely to get into online and how we as educators can help prevent that. By providing real-life situations that have been monitored, it kept me engaged with what was being spoke about, rather than just being thrown a bunch of statistics.

10 Yay! Final Blog Post

I am completely amazed at how much I learned from this week's interactive PowerPoint assignment. I created a Jeopardy game using a template I found online and what seemed like an assignment that was going to be a bit annoying and completely daunting turned out to be really enjoyable! I am so proud of how my game turned out. One of the skills that I learned was how to use the kiosk mode in PowerPoint. I never even knew this was an option! I also learned how to use and add navigation tools to the slides. I used the home button and the question button a lot in my PowerPoint. I used the home button to return to the Jeopardy slide that lists the categories and the points they are worth. Because the answers on Jeopardy are given in a question format, I used the question mark button to link to the response that the student would give in a question form such as "Who is...". Hopefully in the future I can use my skills to create a fun learning activity like this for my students. One thing I could do in the future to improve my skills is create a game completely from scratch without a template. That sounds a little scary but I think with some patience I could do it. Check out my awesome Jeopardy game! Didn't it turn out amazing?!

I think it would be great to use data collection tools like online surveys to get a feel for what students are and are not understanding. If I was a 5th grade teacher I could create a survey asking students questions regarding American History and the results of the survey would give me specific data of what questions students were answering incorrectly/correctly and how many students chose each answer choice. This could help me better tailor review sessions to their needs before tests and maybe I could even create another Jeopardy game to review the topics they are having trouble grasping!

One of the topics that I thought was interesting when viewing my classmates' blogs was how large of a variety there was between our individual skill sets. Some of us have had formal training from high school technology classes while others have been self-taught or are just unfamiliar with most technology programs outside of using Microsoft Word to type an essay. Another thing that always interested me was when we would all post screenshots of the finished product of our assignments. I loved looking at everything that was created and gathering ideas from those to use in the future. It was always inspiring to see how amazingly well some people had designed their assignments and made me want to strive to reach that standard myself.

The technology-related skill that I would most like to learn next is Photoshop. I took a digital design class about 4 years ago in high school and I always enjoyed how the final product of our creations turned out. I would really like to brush up on my past skills as I would not even remember where to start in Photoshop anymore and then expand upon those skills to design things for my classroom. I could design class decorations, posters of class rules, and creative flyers of weekly announcements to send home with my students.

My future educational technology goals are to implement the great strategies I have learned in EME2040 in my own class room in the next few years. I have learned so many valuable skills in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel that could greatly enhance the impact of the information I will be conveying to my students. It will also improve my performance as a teacher because I now know little tips and tricks to aid in my professional development so I can live up to my fullest potential as a teacher. I can't wait to teach my students how to blog and create their own projects using ever-changing technology. I will also be creating a website and twitter for my class to keep the parents up to date with announcements and be able to share fun pictures of their children enjoying their learning experience. Thank you Professor Cates for being so patient and understanding with us and giving us such valuable tools to help us become amazing future teachers!

Survey- Holiday Season

https://fsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5tZtjSUuUMwmjIx

9 Flipped Classroom and Professional Development

Page 238 of Chapter 10 conveys the concept of a flipped classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch prerecorded lectures at home and complete assignments in class that would usually be considered homework. Some of my professors even do this now in a handful of my courses. The professors will assign either a podcast, PowerPoint, or video for us to review at home so we can use class time for more in depth discussions and quizzes. What I like about this concept is that most of the assignments are completed in class. I like this because I always find that I have questions on homework assignments once I get home and by then it is usually too late to have my questions answered by the professor until the next class meeting. This can be problematic if the assignment is due that evening. A negative side of flipped classrooms is that it seems to be giving students more homework. Children in modern times are extremely busy with many extracurricular activities ranging from sports to musical interests. With all of these extracurricular activities, many students barely have time to complete two hours of homework, much less listen to an hour-long lecture from each of their many different course subjects. Neo K12 has a multitude of educational videos and other resources on different topics such as math, science, social studies, english, and history. http://www.neok12.com/

According to BusinessDictionary.com, professional development is defined as "Process of improving and increasing capabilities of staff through access to education and training opportunities in the workplace, through outside organization, or through watching others perform the job." As teachers, it is our duty to be as knowledgeable about the subjects that we are teaching as possible. If we have not mastered the information, it is impossible for us to convey it to students in a way that they can understand. This is why throughout the year teachers go to district-planned workshops. Professional development also helps teachers improve the way they teach, not just what they teach. Oftentimes, all that is needed to get through to a child is a new method of teaching the information or responding to a situation. We cannot be perfect but we can strive to improve ourselves and our ways every day.

One site that I think would be good to support professional development is Edutopia. Edutopia provides an array of videos and topics to help teachers ranging from social and emotional learning to technology integration techniques. There are also discussion boards where other educators can share their experiences and other articles that they have found to help each other. Edutopia's goal is to improve K-12 education by empowering educators and providing newly researched learning techniques. http://www.edutopia.org/

I already have a lot of experience with PowerPoint but this assignment helped me brush up on some old skills that I had forgotten. Also, I had never before recorded a PowerPoint so that was a new experience. The PowerPoint assignment took a lot longer than I expected. It took me about three hours to complete because it was very tedious and I am a bit of a perfectionist. I also had a lot of issues with Jing. The first few time I tried to use Jing it would not let me click through my PowerPoint and it was not showing my animations. I re-downloaded Jing and it FINALLY worked! In the future I would probably use a screen recording tool that allows me to record for longer that 5 minutes. It also took me a while to figure out how to create a master slide when I began the assignment. Prerecorded lectures would be very helpful for my future classroom. I could assign students who were absent to listen to the prerecorded lecture so that they would not fall behind. In the end, I was very happy with how my PowerPoint turned out. Check it out!

8 Classroom Technologies and the Digital Divide

Chapter 12 of the textbook mentions technologies that are new and becoming prevalent in the world of education. Page 285 explains augmented reality and devices associated with creating a virtual environment. Augmented reality is defined as "a view of the physical world that has computer generated augmentation to what you see, hear, feel, and smell". I think this technology holds the biggest promise for education. In the tech sandbox we were able to use an augmented reality device called Oculus Rift which simulated us riding a roller coaster. The device we used was primarily visual. We wore a headset that showed a visual through the eye piece. At times, it felt so real that you felt your stomach drop or acquired a bit of anxiety during sharp turns. The man who gave us the tour of the tech sandbox mentioned how this technology could be used to take students on virtual field trips. I had never heard of virtual field trips until taking EME2040. I think augmented reality technology would be a great accompaniment to these, As school districts have made budget cuts, one of the things that have taken a hit are field trips. Field trips are also less common because of the strict testing standards now in place, administrators want students to be out of the classroom as less as possible. In my opinion, this negatively impacts the students. I learned concepts best when I could go out into the world and either apply them or personally experience them. Virtual field trips could help solve this issue. Students would still be in the classroom and most of these field trips can be downloaded for free onto the school computers. Like with the Oculus Rift device, augmented reality technologies would make the students feel like they are actually on site of the field trip.

Another future technology that could impact education is Sphero. Sphero was demonstrated in the tech sandbox as well. It works by someone coding its movements through online programs. Sphero then acts out the movements that were coded. I think since students are becoming more and more reliant on technology, they will soon be expected to use it for higher level functioning like programming at a younger age. Devices like Sphero could help facilitate this and make coding fun for students of all ages, http://www.sphero.com/sphero

The digital divide is defined in the podcast as "the gap between those who do and do not have access to technology". I am on the side of the divide where I have had access to technology where I have had access to technology my entire life whether it was at home or at school. I am on the side of student A. This is because I have grown up in the middle class and my school district and parents have been able to afford to give me these opportunities. The digital divide will affect my future classroom because there will be some students in my class who may not have access to a computer or other technology, and when they do, they may not be proficient in using it like the other students might be. I would facilitate the students without much access to technology by allowing them more time in class to complete technology-based assignments and I will try to limit the amount of online homework as much as possible. I will try to make all online assignments something that will be completed in class.

7 Bloom's Taxonomy and Assistive Technology

Bloom's Taxonomy (pictured above) is, according to the textbook, "a method for categorizing differences in thinking skills; it involves six levels of cognition ranging from recall of knowledge to evaluation of knowledge." Using Bloom's Taxonomy could help me better organize my PowerPoint lessons for my future students in a way that gradually increases their knowledge to help it "stick" in the students' memories so it can be easily recalled later. For example, if my students were learning about humans harming the environment through deforestation and pollution I could set my PowerPoint up like this:

• Remember: define the topics and express the basic concepts
• Understand: students can identify from a group of images on the PowerPoint which types of actions are harmful to the environment
• Apply: break students into groups and have them brainstorm ways to solve problems that humans have created within the environment
• Analyze: have each group present their ideas to the class and then the rest of the classmates analyze the situations and decide how helpful they would be to solving environmental problems
• Evaluate: students can vouch for their ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each problem solving idea
• Create: students can use online technology or physical objects to create ways to help the environment such as building models of a sea wall to help prevent beach erosion

In the podcast, it defines assistive technologies as "technologies that help people with disabilities more effectively use computing technologies". Students who are visually impaired may use voice recognition technologies in order to have physical, typed documents because they are unable to see the keyboard to type like someone normally would. Conversely, they may also use text to speech software to read documents and literature aloud. Daily organizers are also noted as an assistive technology. They can be helpful to everyone, not just students struggling with dyslexia. I have used a daily organizer since elementary school and I would most likely forget to complete the majority of my assignments without one. I am so busy that assignments often slip my mind. I find it very helpful to have my organizer as a reminder of what I have and have not completed. Concept mapping software is an assistive technology mentioned in chapter 4 of the textbook. It helps students better view and manipulate ideas that they have brainstormed. We used this type of software recently in class to create out concept maps and I found it to be very helpful. Recorded books are another assitive technology mentioned in the textbook. These are used by dyslexic individuals, those with reading or visual impairments, and by average people. I had a friend who listened to recorded books in his car because he preferred it to listening to music. He was an avid bookworm and wanted a way to continue the books he was reading while driving, whether it was fifteen minutes to school or on a road trip. I used recorded books in high school when reading classic novels as part of my required summer reading. A lot of the topics were difficult to understand and relate to but I found it helpful to hear the story being read aloud by someone and sometimes the recording even included short explanations of what was happening in the story in more understandable phrases.

I found the web page design assignment to be extremely frustrating in the beginning. None of my changes to my site were loading in the classroom and it was not allowing me to manipulate the site well. Once I got home and started working on it I had a better time. I found Weebly to be a very easy tool to use. When I designed a web page in high school we had to do it through coding and it was a nightmare. This program made everything so much easier. I learned that class websites are a great way to interact with parents and help them feel involved. I am happy to have the knowledge of Weebly in my "teacher toolbox" for my future classroom. I loved how everyone used the same program but our websites all had such diverse design elements.

Check out my website:
http://myerssecondgrade.weebly.com/

Using Photography to improve PowerPoints

This presentation that I found on Slide Share conveys the idea that using photos in a PowerPoint not only improves the design and catches the reader's attention, but it also helps the audience retain the information.

6 Classroom Websites, Productivity Technology, and Web Evaluations

In my search for a classroom website I stumbled upon this amazing site created by a teacher named Brandy Carter. Mrs. Carter is a fifth grade teacher at Youngsville Middle School. I am in complete awe of the aesthetics of the web page and how detailed it is. It has resources to help students improve in each subject area, links to educational games, and even internet safely rules. She has posted an online memory book of pictures for each year that she has been teaching and of the activities that the students participated in that year. I know the students’ parents have signed a release form to allow pictures of the students to be posted but I think if I was a parent I would rather have pictures and information such as a daily schedule to be password protected. Every day on the news there is a story to be told about an online predator targeting children and I would rather not have strangers be able to publicly view where my child is at every moment while they are at school.

According to the podcast, productivity is defined as things that help you complete everyday tasks more effectively and efficiently. The podcast mentions using Diigo, which I wrote about in my last blog post, as a productivity tool. Diigo lets users annotate websites and online documents and keeps them organized for future reference. Teachers often use classroom management software which is defined in chapter 7 of the textbook as "off-the-shelf or customized software written for educators to help them manage school and classroom tasks". As I mentioned in class today, a productivity tool I would like to use in my future classroom is the Focus Time app. We all know just how short a student's attention span can be. This app breaks up the day into increments of 25 minutes of focus time and 5 minutes of break time. During that break time teachers can keep students engaged through discussions about the lesson or they can participate in a fun GoNoodle activity, it doesn't have to be just idle time of the students sitting there. By giving students a break it redirects their attention from the tedious nature that can come out of reading and focusing on one topic for a long period of time.

From the Web Resource Evaluation I learned a lot about the availability of resources within Google. I was completely unaware that I could use my Gmail account to so easily craft a website. I loved how easy it made collaborating with classmates. It took the frustration of one person completing the majority of the assignment out of the group project which was wonderful. That is what I hate about group projects, there is always an uneven amount of effort among the group but everyone reaps the benefits of the grade and the wiki eliminated that. I enjoyed the group of girls that I worked with and I think we all contributed well to the assignment. When we first began the assignment, honestly, I was dreading it. It seemed like it was going to be so in-depth because we had to create the website before we even began working but it turned out to be a breeze. There really is not anything that I disliked about it. I would love to use this resource in the future to better facilitate collaboration and tech skills between my students.

5 Web 2.0 and Concept Mapping

Web 2.0 is a wonderful addition because students can collaborate with each other and share ideas. Web 2.0 includes social media, youtube, wikis, google docs, and more. Web 2.0 can be a blessing and a curse in a classroom. Although it gives students a broader range of technological dynamics to work with, it also gives room for students to have negative interactions with each other and outsiders. Facebook and other social media sites are a great way to interact and reconnect with people but I do not believe that they should be heavily relied on in a classroom. Students often use sites like this as their main way to cyberbully other students. Adult predators could also prey on students through these sites by pretending to be someone they are not. A social media site like Edmodo that could be better monitored by a teacher would be a more viable alternative. Wikis and Google Docs are Web 2.0 products that I strongly believe in. With this technology, students can collaborate and work on group project more efficiently and on their own time. I personally prefer Google Docs over Wikis because the educator can tell which student entered what information. This helps reduce the likelihood that one student will complete the work on their own while the rest of the group's members slack off.

Another Web 2.0 tool used in class to enhance teaching and student productivity is Diigo. Diigo is an online tool that allows users to save and organize online resources, annotate web pages and other documents while browsing, organize links and references, and share this work with other group members. This site would be very helpful while drafting a research paper. I always find it to be a bit stressful to have numerous sites saved in the favorites tab of my browser for reference while I am researching and then when I go back to that site a week or two later, while I am writing my paper, I have completely forgotten what information or quote I was going to pull from that source. Diigo could help eliminate that struggle because I could highlight and annotate each web page so I know what it was that I found interesting about that source.

Diigo could also be used to help student complete a group project. Long gone are the days where a group of five students have to hover around a single computer for hours to complete a group project. We all know how extremely difficult it is to align all of our hectic schedules so that we can meet up to work on a group project. Most likely, only half of the group will actually show up at the designated time. With Diigo students can easily share the links and annotated sources that they have discovered in order to collaborate more freely. Diigo would also be helpful with e-books and other online text resources. The child development course that I am taking requires an e-text as opposed to a physical textbook and I strongly dislike the fact that I am unable to easily make small notes in it or highlight important topic. Diigo could help minimize the level of stress I feel of not having a physical copy of the text book

Last week we used Webspiration classrooms to create concept maps based on world war 1. Before beginning the assignment I was a bit stressed out just thinking about it. It seemed like it was going to be a tedious and time consuming assignment. I have only ever created something similar to a concept map online used the SmartArt feature of PowerPoint and it was not fun. To my surprise, Webspiration was extremely easy to use. It does most of the work for you, you just have to enter the text. I found it difficult to put all of the information on the war into one map without it looking cluttered so I created two concept maps and a map that resembled a timeline. I am pretty impressed with how they turned out and will definitely use this source in the future. I would love to create study guides and graphics for my future students who are visual learners using this tool. The only thing I would do next time to improve my concept map is take more free reign creatively with it.

4 Standards, Internet Research, and Web Hunts

•           SS.5.A.1.2:  Utilize timelines to identify and discuss American History time periods.
•            http://www.capzles.com/
•           Concept-Mapping tools could be used to create timeline graphics
•           I would use a concept-mapping tool such as Capzles. Teachers and students can use this site to create timelines and personalize them by adding photos, videos, audio, and text. If students were discussing the Civil War they could add photos of the war’s progression and of key documents in the war. They could use the audio feature to create voice recordings of them telling an anecdote from one of the timeline events.

In my opinion, the Internet is an amazing tool to use for student research. It allows for quicker results and the Internet is full of seemingly limitless. Internet research is useful because it saves students from spending hours in the library searching for a specific quote and it also does not limit them to the library’s content on the subject. It is not useful when students use unreliable sources such as Wikipedia, which can be altered by anyone and contain false information.

In the past, I have not paid much attention to whether something is open source or open content. After learning more about both of these in EME2040 and by listening to the related podcast I now am aware of what I should and should not use. Instead of taking advantage of the content I find on a source I should evaluate whether it is reliable and the stipulations that go along with using those ideas. When I first got my laptop in high school, I was not willing to pay over a hundred dollars just to obtain Microsoft Office. Instead, I downloaded Open Office, which is an open source that is mentioned in the podcast. Open Office is very similar to Microsoft Office and has word processing, spreadsheet, and powerpoint options. The only problem with Open Office is that it the format of created documents is often altered or unable to be downloaded by those who are using Microsoft Word.

Through completing the web hunt, I have acquired skills such as using Google Scholar to find academic articles. Also, I was previously unaware of the fact that I can use quotations to better filter search results and find more specific sources. Typing “define:” in front of a term gives you an instant definition which can be helpful when you are reading a textbook or another type of document with terms that you do not know.

Web Hunt Challenges:

1. Find a primary source video of the Columbia space shuttle disaster.
2.  Find an educational game that tests students’ multiplication skills.
3.  Find a free audiobook that students can use for Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.

3 Educational Facebook, Digital Citizenship, and Creating Newsletters

Good Evening Readers!

Last week my ed tech class learned about a social media site known as Edmodo and we created our own profiles. I really enjoyed Edmodo and found it to be a very useful website. I would refer to it as an educational Facebook because of its design that appears and funtions much like Facebook, the popular social media site. Edmodo is a great tool for not only educators but also parents and students. Teachers can send out classroom news and updates, post links and activities for students, and have students complete quizzes and surveys. The majority of people have had a Facebook profile at some point in time so Edmodo and its concept should be fairly easy to grasp. Edmodo also appears to be a safer site for students than Facebook because its content is monitored by the teacher and there seems to be less spam and click bait links.

One type of technology I would like to use in my classroom are wikis. In chapter 9 of the textbook, a wiki is defined as "a website that presents collaboratively written content". Last semester I used wikis in my biology lab. We were placed in a group of four students to complete  project and our assignment was to enter the information we had gathered into a wiki document. We could all view the same document and enter information into it, and the wiki kept track of which student entered what information. That is helpful because oftentimes, in group projects the majority of the project is completed by one hardworking student and the rest of the group members slack off. That is not fair to the person doing all of the work so by keeping track of who is entering the information, the educator knows who actually contributed to the assignment. Teachers in a fourth grade classroom could use wikis to promote collaborative creative writing. The teacher would easily be able to identify which thoughts belong to which student. If the students were attaching images to the wikis they could be educated in a quick lesson beforehand about which images fall under fair use and which images have a copyright and should be avoided. I would teach my students how to adjust the search options on google images to find pictures they could put in their wikis.

I found the newsletter assignment to be a bit challenging because I lack creativity. I was blown away by some of the newsletters today when we looked at each other's in class. I instantly felt like my newsletter needed drastic improvement but I seem to lack a lot of the skills that others used to create their newsletter. I did learn how to create columns in only a certain section of the page which was quite helpful. I liked how people were able to express themselves in the designs of their assignments. I wish we would have spent a bit more time in class learning how to improve the visual aspects of the newsletter because mine looks pretty boring. I would love to learn how to section off my newsletter better and how to create a cute border like the nautical rope border I saw on one student's newsletter in class.

2 Microsoft, Copyrights, and Twitter

Throughout my entire educational career, I have used Microsoft Word in a variety of different ways. In elementary school I leaned how to type using the program by creating small works such as poems, sentences using weekly spelling words, and completing short book reports. In middle school, as the level of difficulty of the school work increased, so did the projects I was creating in Word. I began to type lengthy essays and research papers which had to include headers, footnotes, and specified margin sized. I also used Microsoft Word to help beautify science fair display boards and make them appear more professional. In high school I took a digital design class where I learned many different ways to use Word such as creating magazine pages and promotional flyers. In college, I mostly use Microsoft Word to type up notes for class and academic papers. In the past, my former teachers have used Microsoft Word to create study guides, exams, and newsletters regarding classroom news and information. As noted in the textbook, I would like to use Microsoft Word as a way for my future students to journal about their summer vacation and the wonders they experienced. They could also present a few of these fun journals in class to enhance public speaking skills. Word could also be used by the kids to create "All About Me" pages that can be helpful for the teacher and for a new group of students to find similarities among each other and encourage interaction.

In all honesty, I do not have much experience with copyright or fair use. Teachers of mine have always stressed the idea for students to not plagiarize but not much has been taught about copyright and all that it entails. The only way I was even taught to avoid infringing on copyrights was to create a works cited page at the end of a powerpoint or essay to credit the author you borrowed ideas from. By reading Best Practices for Fair Use and listening to Copyright and Fair Use podcast, I learned that tiny bit of information I had been previously taught about copyright was incorrect and that citing sources is not how to properly use works that have copyrights. Before I become a teacher I want to become aware of all of the copyright laws that apply to works I may be using and I also want to educate my students on these, especially because I never was. I could create a powerpoint to give an overview of what a copyright is and how to go about properly using things that have copyright laws attached to them. I could even create an activity to help the students understand the concept. Also, before my students begin an assignment that may infringe on copyright laws, I will educate them on how to correctly and lawfully complete these assignments.

I really have not learned anything new since we began using our twitter accounts but that is probably because I have been a member of the twitter community for about six years. During high school I was very active with my twitter and was obsessed with always reading the newest tweets that my friends and celebrities had posted. I was on the site all the time until it started to feel like a chore. I have not used twitter much in the past year or two until we began using it in tech class. Although it became a bit much for me, twitter can be a very important tool for communicating and sharing ideas with other educators and brainstorming new classroom techniques and activities with them. I fully supports using social media to expand one's "toolbox" as a teacher.

1 Technology and Life as a Digital Native

Over the last twenty years, the world's reliance on computers has exploded. What used to take hours of searching through a library and encyclopedias is now information that is almost instantaneous, all it takes is a few strokes of a keyboard. My entire educational career I have used computers for assignments, projects, learning games, and presentations. One thing that is for sure, computers do not seem to be going away any time soon. Students and teachers alike must adapt to the ever-changing skills of technology and figure out how to utilize them as tools to further improve educational possibilities. With computers, information is easier to obtain which makes students with short attention spans more likely to complete their work, rather than struggling through hours of book research. Chapters 1 and 2 stress how important it is for students and their teachers to become competent in computer skills in order to achieve higher success in life and to avoid being left behind by more qualified competitors. Computer skills can make the difference between a student being accepted to college, getting a job, or receiving a much-needed promotion. I agree with the book's view points on this issue. In class it is always easy to point out during student-created powerpoint presentations which students are skilled with the program and which students are struggling. The skilled students have more elaborate and well-designed presentations which usually earn them higher grades than those unskilled students who had a white powerpoint with bland black font.

The thought of having my own classroom one day soon is extremely exciting. I want to make the greatest impact that I possibly can on my students and that is going to require that I use creative, technological resources to make learning fun and memorable for them. I plan on having my students create blogs to reflect on topics we have just learned or to further their creative writing and journaling skills. I have always enjoyed online review games teachers have created, like Jeopardy. These online games make students forget for a moment that they are working and learning, but at the same time they are expanding their knowledge through the use of fun activities. Through this course I hope to learn the skills to make my dreams of being an amazing teacher become a reality.

I agree with the title of "digital natives" that is being given to today's generations of children, at least in first world nations such as America. A digital native is someone who does not know a life without computers and such technology. I am a digital native. When I was a little kid the technology may not have been as advanced as it is today, I had dial-up internet, but I was very familiar with the technology and how to use it. My five year-old neighbor can navigate himself to youtube, select a dinosaur video that he wants to watch, and even skip the ads without even knowing how to read. Kids these days (digital natives) now have the steps memorized of how to get where they want on many iphones, ipads, and computers without having any literacy skills which is much more than I can say for many literate middle-aged adults (digital immigrants). It is always difficult when teachers are completely incompetent with computers. I think it hinders my performance as a student. One of my professors does not use a powerpoint or any type of teaching supplement besides lecturing. He does not have a single thing on the projector. As a visual learner, I struggle to understand a lot of the material in that course. I'm sure there will be many differences between how I use technology and how it is used by my future students. That is because technology is changing every day and as an adult I will probably have more to worry about than how to use the latest app. However, I do want to maintain proficiency in as many programs as I can to help my students as much as possible.

0 Get To Know My Technology Background!

I have a basic understanding of technology. As a freshman in high school I took a course titled Introduction to Information Technology where I learned how to properly use Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Illustrator. I also completed certification exams in these programs. Sophomore year of high school I completed a Digital Design course where we mainly worked with Photoshop. Sophomore year of high school through senior year I completed an accounting program where I became certified in the Quickbooks program. Besides formal classes that I have taken, my knowledge of technology does not extend past that of basic school assignments and social media.

Through this course, I hope to broaden my knowledge of technology and brush up on skills that I have forgotten. I also hope to learn vital skills to become the best teacher I can possibly be in the future. I would like to learn techniques to use technology in my future classroom and with my students to help their academic success.

Today, I learned that some of my computer skills are a bit rusty, but through the survey I found that I am a fairly visual learner. I am quite balanced when it comes to being an active and reflective learner. I have a moderate preference for being a sensing learner as opposed to being an intuitive learner. I have a distinct preference for visual learning rather than verbal learning. I would rather see charts than hear the results being read aloud. I also have a moderate preference for sequential learning instead of global learning.