EduTech

Creating this eFolio for teaching with technology has been quite an experience! It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, but now that I have completed it I feel proud of all of my accomplishments from this semester. It is nice to have one spot to look back on all of my assignments, especially a spot so organized and well put-together! Overall, I have enjoyed putting this portfolio together and I hope that one day a future employer can look at this and say with confidence "This is who I want to teach our kids".

This philosophy self-assessment was quite interesting. My results (screenshot posted below) determined that I tend to be more flexible in my approach to teaching and my assessments correlate and reflect that same flexibility. I scored highest in the "Personal Source" (29 points) and tied in the "Social Interaction" and "Behavioral Modification" categories (26 points). Based on the answer key from the self assessment, for someone like myself who scores highest in these categories, I am someone who  acknowledges the uniqueness of individuals and the importance of structuring meaning and direction in a democratic setting, and I am someone who aims at building learning communities and purports to develop productive ways of interacting in a democratic setting. I think both of these hit the nail on the head when it comes to my educational philosophy perspective!

Over the course of the semester, I have learned a lot of valuable information on a variety of topics on teaching with technology. This project gave me the chance the review and reflect on what I had learned, and basically sum up the most important (in my mind) aspects of this book into a 15 minute clip that I will be able to look back on over the course of my career to refer to when I decide to integrate technology. Some of the most meaningful topics that I had the pleasure to learn about were flipped classrooms, instructional software such as drill-and-practice, the use of apps in education, and so many more. Between the numerous resources that the book provided to the in-depth descriptions of tools and software, I am in good shape for knowing how to best integrate technology into my classroom.

I had the pleasure of using Prodigy as the multimedia tool for my project. I chose Prodigy because it was something that I had heard of from the kids that I babysit for who have their homework assignments on it, however I had never really watched them do it (These kids are super smart and never ask for my help!) so I figured I would try it out since it's a math tool and that is my content area. I learned a lot about Prodigy from their  website  and also by creating a teacher account as well as a student account. I created the student account so that I know exactly what my students would be doing and a teacher account so that I could see how it evaluates each student. Some things that I learned about Prodigy are that is is designed for grades 1-8 and it is all game-based learning, meaning students can have FUN while doing math! Prodigy is great because not only does it send all the data on each student to the teacher, but it also allows for parents to track and view t...

I viewed the presentation about Emerging Technologies and thought it was very good. It mentioned a few different tools that I am familiar with, but it also introduced me to some new ones as well, such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence technology, and it gave examples of each. Some emerging technologies that I could see being beneficial to my content area of mathematics and special education are Kahoot, Microsoft excel, Bloomz, and Quizizz. Kahoot is a fun way for students to answer questions as a class or in groups when playing games or just to test what students do and don’t know. I have used this one before and found it fun and helpful! For math, I could use this during review activities for tests and quizzes. Microsoft excel could be useful for my content area for projects that involve spreadsheets such as when we do business math or other fun topics. The app Bloomz is one that I had never heard of before today. It allows for more and easier t...

I learned a lot this week about cyberbullying and web safety. I feel that both of these are very serious and important topics and I know that when I was in high school there wasn't as much emphasis on them as there should be. Some ways in which I can incorporate what I now know would be to put in my class syllabus the definition of both cyberbullying and web safety, what to do if you or someone else is being bullied, ways to stay safe on the web, etc. I can incorporate activities related to these topics into the curriculum such as like the one in my last post. Also, I can try to get the school district to hold assemblies on the topics as well as participating in Cyberbullying Awareness month in October.

Digital ethics is a huge part of web safety. In this activity from NetSmartz's student project kit, students will first be asked these questions:  What are some reasons that people cheat in school? Has technology made this easier or harder for people to do? What are some of the ways that people cheat? What are some of the consequences of cheating? Students will then be split into groups and each group will get a computer. They will be told to go onto   NSTeens.org/Comics/ChoicesAndCheaters  and  go  through  an interactive comic strip. The first  round  they will chose  answers  that are choices that they would make and for the second round they pick the opposite choices. To finish off the lesson, students will write/type and submit a reflection what they have learned and they will create their own skit with choices and consequences. I chose this activity  because  I feel like it is  very easy to cheat in math w...

I love NetSmartz! This website is honestly amazing, it has so many great resources for teachers, parents, children, teens, and law enforcement on a variety of topics related to online safety such as cyberbullying, online enticement, sexting, the list goes on. For each topic, not only do they list the resources already mentioned but they also provide many statistics and ways to talk about these difficult subjects. The site's mission is to try to put an end to child exploitation which is SO important nowadays with technology being such a big part of everyone's lives. They also have two separate websites, one for kids and one for teens, where they can safely access videos, play games, take quizzes, and read comics. Lastly, they have a interesting video tab that contains real-life stories of kids who were victims of exploitation. I believe that they stories, as difficult as they may be to hear, can have a tremendous impact on the students who watch them and will make them think ...

After viewing both the videos, I saw some things that I thought were really cool in the first video and got a really good, in-depth review of concepts that we learned about from our textbook earlier this semester. When I was watching the Edutopia video, I was very surprised by the things the students were able do with their technology. They were able to use technology to record data on themselves while cheering, playing softball, etc. and then analyzed that data in Algebra 2 by graphing the functions of speed and velocity. I am surprised that we don't see more of this in high schools today, I think it is such a fabulous idea to give meaning to the numbers and equations that they calculating! As for the second video, it provided a great in-depth review of the SAMR model, Bloom's taxonomy, and T-PCK, and honestly, I think it went into greater detail about each one than our textbook did. I liked the comparison that was made about the aspects of T-PCK all being equally importa...

There are many different types of cyberbullying that are recognized by NYS such as: Sending mean messages - This type of cyberbullying could be a variety of things such as sending or posting messages that are mean, vulgar, hostile, etc. This can occur on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ask.fm, etc. Trying to intentionally damage someone's reputation or friendship - If someone begins to spread rumors or gossip about you to try to intentionally ruin someones reputation, that is cyberbullying. Examples of this could be someone saying that they were talking about someone behind their back when they weren't or saying a student kissed another student's girlfriend. Publishing information about you that you don't want in the public's eye - If someone posts a picture of you that is embarrassing or confidential, that is not okay. These could be photos such as naked photos meant for a single person that were spread around to a bunch of people. Photos/videos of attacks ...

When I looked at this photo, the first thing that popped into my head was how to be safe on the internet so that you don't get hacked. The big lock symbolizes strong passwords that don't have your username or birthday in, the stars (*) for the credit card and password show that the numbers/letters are hidden so that one one can steal them, and everyone standing together shows that it is up to us to teach all of these things about web safety so that we can all stay safe!

Below is a collection, thanks to Dr. Smirnova, of some great articles/websites/slideshows that focus on Copyright and Fair Use! The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use  - This article is a collection of five different articles that all talk about various topics about copyright such as what copyright is and isn't, copyright basics and facts, what it does and doesn't protect, copyright and fair use laws, distinguishing between what is and isn't fair use, fair use guidelines for educators, and information on district liability and teacher responsibility when it comes to both copyright and fair use. Copyright for Educators -This website provides some videos explaining what teachers and educators can and cannot do under the copyright law. They also have links to a copyright checklist and fair use guidelines which I will post below! Creative Commons - This website allows for free and easy-to-use copyright licenses to allow work to be publicly shared and used ba...

After taking the two quizzes, I was surprised at how little I knew about copyright and fair use! I had a lot of confidence in most of my answers and yet for the first quiz I received a 70% and the second quiz I received a 50%! Some of the topics that I got wrong and should focus on when I complete the assignments are copyright and fair use when used in an educational setting and copyright on the internet in general. I have a lot to learn so I'm going to get to it!

I really enjoyed Dr. Smirnova's PowerPoint presentations, however I especially favored the "Emerging Technologies for Learning and Teaching" presentation. Not only did I like the look of the whole presentation, but the content was very informative and important. I really liked the slides that talked about the skills that are important for the future, such as novel and adaptive thinking, computational thinking, news media literacy, virtual collaboration, and many more. There was one slide in the presentation that came as a surprise to me, and that was the one in which it stated that mobile educational applications are the second most popular types of downloads on the iTunes store. I think that just goes to show how much of a priority we make education in the United States, as we should! We are very fortunate to have access to all this wonderful technology! 

I had a lot of fun creating my Educreation videos for the chapter 7 TAA. Educreation videos are something that I have seen in the past but I have never gotten the opportunity to make one of my own. Educreation is a tool for iPads that allows you to write things out while audio recording at the same time. My professor last semester used this to go over review sheets before tests so that we could see and hear the steps to solving each problem. I think that this is a fabulous tool for math teachers and I'm sure teachers in other content areas find it useful as well. In my classroom, I would like to do what my professor at the Mount did with review sheets, but I would also use this as a way to review specific topics for students who are struggling to use as an additional resource for homework help. Here are my Educreations:

 I have always been a big fan of Google's applications ever since I was in middle school and my assignments started to be based around them. Now, almost all of my assignments involve at least one of Google's awesome applications. As a future math teacher, I think that all of the application's in Google Suite can be very useful for my students learning experience. For example, since my content area is math, I will be able to use spreadsheets a lot in my classroom when it comes to many topics such as business math, interest growth, etc. and use them for  group and individual projects. With Google slides and presentations, I can have my students make a doc or presentation on many different things thing as the steps to solve something or have them present projects as well using these formats.  Growing up in the digital has been very different from what my mother talks about in her "back in my day" stories, but I wouldn't change a thing. The future is bright with G...

Bookmarking is a great tool that allows you to keep track of and organize the hundreds of sites that you visit frequently. Two of the sites that I liked the most are Pinterest and Scoop.it. I have my own personal Pinterest and I like it, however I rarely use it unless I need some wedding or nail ideas! After exploring the educational aspect of Pinterest, I can see it being a big help to me as a teacher. Just by typing the word "math" into the search bar, it got me a ton of results such as math lesson plans, classroom activities, different teaching strategies, and so many other great resources that can help me ensure that I can give my student's the best education possible. As for Scoop.it, it was a little bit more challenging for me to use since it is new to me. It's set up is similar to Pinterest, however the types of posts on the site are much different, more rich in educational content. It's focus is mainly links to articles in which people can comment on ...

When I read this article, I was very surprised people felt this way about a tool that I have been using since I was in elementary school! I have always found PowerPoint to be a fun, easy way to present to my class for all of my school subjects leading up to now, and my classmates this semester agreed! After compiling a list of pros and cons, we concluded that the pros most definitely outweighed the cons of our beloved tool. We even researched a bunch of ways that PowerPoint is beneficial in the classroom such as students have the subject material right in front of them, it improves student focus because there is less note taking and more paying attention, videos can be inserted into the presentation to create a deeper real world connection to content, it can be of great use for study guide material later on (I do this all the time!), and it is a confirmation of information portrayed to students. Check out our collaborative PowerPoint presentation here !

As technology progresses, so does education. For example, the primary role of the teacher is no longer to just be a source of knowledge, but to be a guide as well. And when the time comes for Education 3.0, teachers will be the orchestrators of the creation of collaborative knowledge. Rather than students being passive learners, they will be active learners who take a strong sense of ownership in their education. Schools and teachers will be ditching the traditional methods of teaching and will instead have open and flexible learning activities that focus on creating room for student creativity. These are just a few of the great innovative changes to our educational system that have resulted from evolving and emerging technologies in the past fifteen years.

Click on the post to see the full image! :) Here is my Pi Day poster assignment, and here is my link to my Magic Square !

The video "Learning to Change Changing to Learn" talked about a lot of very good points, but the one that was most interesting to me was when the woman said that school is only one of the places that students learn and that there are so many more such as at home, in their communities, at libraries, at museums, and online! It's very true that students learn everywhere they go and it is important to allow them to have these other outlets for learning. Another person from the video talked about how phones and laptops are banned from schools, however with these tools allow students to be content-developers and communicators and is big part of education that teachers can no longer try to turn a blind eye to. Link to Video

After exploring the Edmodo website, I have realized from a teacher's point of view that creating an online learning environment difficult, however, with the help of sites like this one, it doesn't have to be so hard. Edmodo is very straight forward with tabs for assignments, quizzes, and polls for the students right on the front of each class page, and it allows for submission deadlines to be set for each one. Teachers can easily manage multiple classes at once as well as manage the gradebooks for each class all in one spot! It has another great feature on it where teachers can keep their collection of assignments/quizzes/PowerPoints/etc. in a library where they can add it to the respective class. Lastly, students are able to send their teachers messages from the site which is great for if they need help or have a question.

When I read "The Poor Scholar's Soliloquy", I felt very sorry for this young man who has not been given the chance succeed by his teachers. After reading it and discussing it with my group, we came up with a problems with the instructional strategies used by the teachers and figured out some solutions to them. One of the problems we discussed was that the teachers weren't working with this boys strengths to help his succeed. The constructivist strategy that we concluded would be best be used to approach his inability to memorize the names of the Presidents would be to help him build mental models and increase knowledge transfer to help him understand complex/abstract ideas and concepts. Another example is when the teacher in the story had a complete disregard for her students attempt at making a real world connection to her material, and we thought a solution to this would be to build upon the students prior knowledge, using things they already know to teach them s...

After viewing the video from chapter 6 of the principal explaining the problems with internet use, I realized that he makes a very good point. He mentioned that students come to school and avoid bad behavior while using the school's technology for the seven hours that they are there each day, and then they go home and use their own devices to bully other student's because they think that they can no longer get in trouble for it. The principal said that we need to find a way to break that mindset for students so that the internet can be a safe space for all, and I completely agree. The idea of digital citizenship is something that needs to be taught not only at school but also at home so that technology is used in safe, responsible, and legal ways. Some ways that we can teach this is by teaching students about internet safety, explaining what a digital footprint is and how it can have serious consequences for their futures, teaching netiquette, making posts that are friendly...

Web 2.0 is the web that we use today that revolves around social networking such as blogging, podcasts, and social bookmarking. Web 2.0 is the next generation from the original first generation, Web 1.0, which was mainly a one-way process. Formerly known as access technology, Web 2.0 is now referred to as a participation technology since collaboration is starting to become a huge part of education. To go along with Web 2.0 is Education 2.0, which is basically the ways in which the web influence our educational system today. Some aspects of Education 2.0 are that students are beginning to take ownership of their education and the process, what used to be traditional assignments are now strongly incorporated with technology, and teachers are seen as guides and sources of knowledge rather than just primarily the latter of the two. While Web 2.0 and Education 2.0 are great, we could see the emergence of Web 3.0 and Education 3.0 in the future which could have huge implications for our so...

Chapter 5 gave many great tools for future teachers to use such as myself. The one that I decided to try out was a certificate maker from  http://www.certificatemaker.com/ . I found this website to be extremely easy to use. First, you select the category of certificates that you want to use. Some examples of the categories are attendance, best-in, honors, and improvement. Then, you choose the template that you want to use for the given category. Lastly, you just fill in the name of the person receiving the award, the date, and the person giving the award and you're all set!

After watching the video on the effect of technology on children, I am torn between siding with the mother who encourages technology use and with the father who is keeping his kids away from it. In my own personal experience, I have babysat for two young boys for the past three years who both have heavily used iPads. This past January, their parents realized just how addicted these boys were to their iPads. It was impossible to get them off the get in the shower, come eat dinner, etc. so the parents told them they could only have their iPad's on the weekends. The first week of them being iPad free was both hilarious and scary. They seemed very lost, as if they didn't know what to do with themselves when they came home from school. One of the boys cried a few times that week because he bored, and even had a full-on temper tantrum about it. A few months later, they have adjusted pretty well and it is so great to see that instead of flying to their bedroom's after school and...

Link to Vizia After viewing the video for Vizia, I think that it is something that could definitely be useful in a classroom setting. Vizia allows you to put questions into the middle of a video, which could be a great way to check student comprehension and it also can help to keep students watching rather than them doodling, texting, or putting their heads down. This could be an incentive or a form of motivation for them to pay attention to the video to earn points or an easy grade-raiser if a teacher decides to count it towards something. Overall, I think Vizia would be a great addition to any classroom!

This rubric is used for schools and teachers to make sure that they are integrating technology into their classrooms and lessons in an effective way. Some important things for teachers to keep in mind when planning to integrate technology into their lessons is: Make sure that the instruction plan of integrating technology lines up with the curriculum goals. If it doesn't, it makes introducing this technology useless. Make sure that the technology being used will support instructional strategies. Make sure that the technology is can appropriately help teach the topic at hand. Make sure that all the aspects fit well together when including technology. If not all of these are met, this could lead to teachers wasting valuable time if the technology they are integrating doesn't fit into what they are trying to teach.

Link to Video I enjoyed Robinson's video on changing education paradigms. One thing that he spoke significantly about was the ADHD "epidemic" and how it is fictitious. Growing up, my mother always said the same thing and frowned when she heard that my friends were on Ritalin, the medication for ADHD. On the contrary, my fiance and his four brothers were all on Ritalin for most of their childhoods. While their mother swears that it helped them, my fiance always told me how much he hated being on that medication. He has told me that he felt like he was a different person, he never really had an appetite and it made him very skinny, at one time to the point where he looked sick. I strongly agree with Robinson that this is a fictitious epidemic and that the answer is not to pump with drugs but rather to seek other alternatives so that we don't have kids walking around like zombies.