7 Bloom, Adaptive technology and New skills

     Blooms taxonomy has six different levels: create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, and remember. These concepts and the order they go in can be hard to remember. Using PowerPoint I believe it would be helpful to go in order and gradually build the idea up as a pyramid. So start out with an empty pyramid with just the words blooms taxonomy. As you progress through the slides add in each idea. An example would be to start with remembering because it is at the top of the pyramid. After you add it into the pyramid discuss the important facts like that this step is for recalling facts and basic concepts. The next slide would then show the next layer of the pyramid understanding and like with remembering we would talk about what this level is supposed to be about, explaining ideas and concepts. I would do this until I filled in the entire pyramid and finished with the top of it which is create.

     Adaptive technologies are specifically used for students with disabilities but also can be used for students who do not have disabilities. These technologies include, speech recognition software's and audio books as mentioned in the podcast. These two technologies are helpful to both disabled and non disabled. Students can use speech recognition software if they struggle with dyslexia or have problems with writing. The computer hears what they say then puts it into words. Audio books can be used by everyone. They are incredibly helpful for students because it allows them to look at books that can be above their reading level without having to have an adult there to read it to them. I know many people who use audio books while they drive because they enjoy books but do not necessarily have time to read them on their own. Like anything technology based I would worry that there would be technology malfunctions with the input or out out parts of the adaptive technology and being someone who is just coming around to understanding technology I would worry that it would break on me.

     New skills that I learned from this assignment was basically the whole assignment. I never thought that making a website could be so easy. I enjoyed getting to play around with the different pictures and try to imagine what it would be like for me to actually be creating my classroom website. They only part that I did not like about the website was that I had to publish it. I was uneasy about doing that so for peace of mind just in case someone stumbled across it that was not in our EME class I added that it was a class assignment. This link will take you to my web design assignment. http://bridgeteme2040.weebly.com/

Animation Ninja

How to become a PowerPoint animation expert from a ninja.

This slide show helps give good ideas to how to put the right amount of animation for a PowerPoint

How To Be a PowerPoint Animation Ninja from BrightCarbon

6 Classroom Webpages and resource evaluations

     I decided to look at the school pages from the county that I went to school in. It turns out that many of the schools there either don't require their teachers to have a class page on the school on the school website or they just do not make them keep up with it. I ended up finding some kindergarten teachers at Sorento Elementary school kept their pages pretty much up to date. On their pages they all had links to the the grading system that the school system uses. ESembler is similar to blackboard but it is something you need a password to get to the information regarding your child. many also had online reading like raz-kids, and links to their reading eseries website, but these also needed a password to get to. The only places on the class pages that did not require a password were the tabs for the supply list, high frequency words, announcements and the calendar.
     As mentioned in the podcast I would definitely use Microsoft office tools like word and excel to keep up with plans and make setting charts. Another teacher productivity tool talked about in the podcast that I would utilize is email. I believe that email can sometimes be better than calling. I can get email on my phone and quickly respond rather than playing phone tag with a parent or other teacher trying to answer a simple question. Something I saw in chapter 7 that I found interesting and could see myself using is Office 2 HD and Godocs. These are apps that allow teachers to use Microsoft office and google docs on their mobile devices. I know at this time I do not have a laptop that I would want to carry everywhere with me but I do think it would be helpful to be able to have these documents on my phone or tablet so that I could work on them if I was on a long car ride.
     While working on this web evaluation I was at first skeptical. I have never had good luck with group projects especially ones where the professor or teacher chose the groups, but for the first time it all worked out. I enjoyed working with my group. The other two girls were very helpful and I wasn't stressed about getting the assignment done and turned in. We had some struggles in the beginning with trying to get a layout. At first we clicked on a pre-made template but when we tried to customize it to what we wanted it was a disaster. The text box's went all over the place and we eventually could not even figure out how to delete it. Finally we ended up making a new one and with that one we did not try anything fancy because we did not want to have any problems with it. Here is the link to our website evaluation https://sites.google.com/site/civicsandgoveme2040/  . Though this assignment I learned how to use google sites, which at times was very confusing but it got easier. I could see using this in a high school social studies or science class and having the students make a page explaining a certain period of time or a specific topic in science.

5 Web 2.0 and New skills

     Web 2.0 tools are a great thing for a classroom. In the podcast they talked about how diigo can be used so that multiple students can read and make interactive notes at the same time. This would be great to use during stations time. This would allow students to make notes on the computer and collaborate. Not only Do web 2.0 tools allow students to collaborate but they can also allow teachers to collaborate. There are many blogs, wiki's, and twitter accounts that can help teachers with activities and lesson plans in their classrooms. Computers work on on networks. Some run off of wireless  or WiFi-networks while others run off of servers. A computer needs either WiFi or a server to get onto the internet and since web 2.0 are online. So these are very important parts for a computer to have with using web 2.0 tools.

     A web 2.0 tool that I would want to use in the classroom would be a SMART board. I think a smart board would be incredibly helpful when working with kindergarten students because it would allow them to be involved with the lesson. When students are involved the retain more information.
I have used Smart boards with classes that I volunteered with and it helped the classroom run very smoothly. The students were more engaged and that made transitions between subjects very good. It gave the students very little time to get off task and to get into mischief or any trouble.

     I can't apply the Web 2.0 tool that I want to use in my classroom to my blog because it is more used in a classroom setting while being hooked up to the internet rather than a way to communicate and connect with other students and teachers. Eventually it would be cool to do a tutorial or video on how to use a smart board and then post it to my blog. To find out more about SMART boards you can visit: http://education.smarttech.com/

     Working on the concept map allowed me to use a new website to create almost and outline to help with remembering the details of World War I. I could see myself using this website in my class and because I think it would help students remember the material. Giving students different parts of the war and then having them mix all the maps up and having them put them in chronological order would be a great study tool when it cam time to review for a test. I actually enjoyed this assignment I thought it was fun and definitely could see using it in my class room or just for me to use to study myself.

4 Standards and the internet

• http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewStandard/Preview/5301 
• Standard:  MAFS.K.G.1.1
• The web based resource can be found under resources. I chose the Video/Audio/Animation resource because it would allow the child to learn about describing objects in the environment but in a fun upbeat way as well as tie into chapter 8 and Animation and 3D Programs.
• The Tools that I would use would be Animation and 3D programs as well as educational games. I believe that both of these would offer the students an interesting way to learn since children are now growing up with video games and animation all around them, Why not use it and make them think that they are not learning when they really are. 
• Students could play the educational games together so that they would learn problem solving not only from working by themselves but also through working with a group. I believe that the teaching strategies or presentation and reinforcement are used with educational games. I is presented to the students in a way that is familiar to them and gives reinforcement to skills they are learning through the standards. 

I strongly support the idea of using the internet to support student research. I research on the internet almost on a daily basis whether for articles for classes or for a current event that I wanted to know more about. Though I personally use the internet for my research everyday sometimes I wish i had the skills to know how to do research without it. With the generation I am in coming through school we were getting all the new technology so there was a big demand for us to learn how to use it. I feel like we learned more on how to do it all of our searches through the internet instead of the old fashioned way. I do not believe that there is a right time and a wrong time to use the internet for student research but i do believe that students should be taught and know how to collect research the 'old fashioned way' because I do not and I wish that I did.

In the past I would always just pull up a search engine and type in my question word for word. I never gave it much thought to how the database would use all of the words that I gave it. I honestly did not know any of the short cuts when searching google until the past two weeks. Not only has my Educational Technology class been talking about how to search for stuff and what to type in but also in my English class we went to the library and had a lecture on how to search the library database for our research paper. I never understood this much about searching for topics or doing research. I have taken online classes where the teachers utilized open content and had everything that we needed to download on a website for free.

I learned new skills with the web hunt. It interesting typing in different combinations of words trying to get the search result I wanted or websites that I needed. It was frustrating at times when i would try so many different options and still never really got a website that I really wanted. I knew there were better ones but just couldn't think of the right way to type it in to google to find it.

Web Hunt Challenge:
1. Find a website that would give an audio to a children's book. What Anchor standard does this address?
2. Your class wants to connect with other classes not at their school. Is there a website that would allow them to? What Standard would this be?