Blog Post #9

I was in the age of student where 3 out of my 4 years in high school were affected by COVID-19. This affected my learning greatly at the time and I never realized how behind distant learning had put me. During COVID I felt that the distance learning conduct was often rushed and not paid attention to enough. Half the students in person and the other half distance learning teachers often ignored online students or forgot they were there. I feel this is a huge problem with distant learning because “out of sight, out of mind.” While in typical in-person learning teachers and students are forced to meet and get work done together to ensure that learning occurs. 

Open educational resources are learning resources that are available to anyone, and not under any type of copyright. Usually, these resources are distributed electrotonically, but they can really be found anywhere that education is being shared openly. This is super helpful for homeschool parents, new teachers and those who want to expand their education by allowing others to build and share their work and methods of teaching. The Concord Consortium is an OER as it provides many STEM-related activities and lessons for a classroom, sharing new ways to teach. You can find the site here.

I really enjoyed the PowerPoint assignments! I have never really explored how to use PowerPoint in the past and learning how to use the animations and sound effects was super fun for me. I felt I could be super creative while still making an educational PowerPoint about the. Information I was covering. I also really enjoyed learning how to do the second PowerPoint assignment and making me choose your adventure activity. Not only was it super creative and fun, but it also gave me a chance to perfect all the tools in PowerPoint and use them in different ways. By the end I found myself playing with more technical parts of animations and transitions to make the PowerPoint more interactive. 

Here is my informational PowerPoint

Here is my interactive PowerPoint

Blog Journal #8

 

    After learning more about assistive technology I feel I’m much more aware of how to adapt and make environments more accessible for students of all disabilities. Many of the things that should be avoided occurred daily in my classes in k-12. I feel especially in public schools the idea of accessibility can be often overlooked as teachers aren’t made aware of how small things such as scanning a document, or not adding alt text can make things much harder for a student. Therefore, I plan to use lots of the ideas we discussed as a future teacher in hopes of ensuring all my students have the same chance for success. 

    I really enjoy using Diigo! I feel that it’s a simple and easy tool to use and be able to share documents and ideas with your classmates. I had never used the application before this class so going into it I was completely unaware of how to use it. Yet it was super simple, and I got the hang of it quickly. I even found that I have started to use it for other classes and general day-to-day searching and saving. I like how it organizes your ideas and shows what you highlighted under the title of your post, so you can instantly see why you thought it was important. 

    As a teacher, we are forced to constantly adapt to society and be able to teach these changes to future generations. By looking for innovative ways to implement and use technology teachers are looking for new ways to teach. This is a tremendous professional development because they are expanding their options for transferring information from their heads to students. This is what I enjoy about Lisa Nielsen’s blog, she describes being a bored student, and how now she hopes to spark students' love for learning through technology.  Updating often she offers ways for teachers to implement new developing technologies into their classrooms. You can find her blog here.

Blog Journal #7

    Teacher pages are really important! When designing my page, I found myself thinking of more important things I thought could be added to the site, and while looking at other teachers’ sites, I just got more ideas. I viewed Our Lady Star of the Sea Elementary School’s class pages. Within these I saw mostly general weekly agendas, having important announcements such’s as events, tests, projects, and homework. Some other teachers simply provide other resources when they don’t have a site, redirecting parents to google classroom and email. You can view these teacher sites here.

     As a teacher, I feel that technology will be a great tool to promote learning in the classroom, especially in the modern world. In general, by expanding and learning new tools I’m breading my portfolio and showing future employers that I’m able to engage with various educational tools. I also feel that programs such as Canva, Weebly, and PowerPoint will be huge helpers in the classroom. These programs allow me as a teacher to promote learning in a creative and engaging way. Game programs such as IXL, FreeRice, and Starfall also provide fun ways for students to engage with lessons and often allow teachers to track this progress. 

    While working with Weebly to design my website I learned tons of new things. While occasionally playing with website making for small projects, I had never fully developed my own site. Therefore, I had lots of fun testing all the features and see how I could use them to make my site more engaging and accessible. This assignment will be incredibly helpful when I try to make a website for my own classroom, giving me ton of experience with design features. Something I really enjoyed learning was how to arrange items with dividers, spacers, and sections. It was definitely a learning curve but an accomplished feeling at the end of the day. I feel that teacher sites are a really easy way for teachers to give parents direct and personal information about their classrooms. You can view my website here.

Blog Journal #6

    While using Diigo I had some learning experiences, to better understand how to use the site. Since I had not used the program before this class, I was pretty clueless about the features of the site. Something I found confusing is that you must switch to a group sticky note before typing because they’re completely separate from the group sticky notes. I enjoy that all my highlights were shown on the site to show other users why I was picking that article. 

    I have always enjoyed blogging; I use to blog for my parent’s business, and I even made my own little blog when I was little. I was never good at keeping up with it thought, but that’s something I enjoy about this class. I like how blogging forces me to reflect on what I learned and how I can use this information in the future. It’s a nice way to reflect on the items of the week and understand why these new tools and features are important to learn. 

    A Web 2.0 tool that I may use as a teacher in IXL. IXL is a website that gives lessons on ELA, math, history, and science topics. Students and teachers create accounts so that they can track progress and see assign lessons to students. This gives a fun way for students to interact with the lessons and allows teachers to track progress and see who is still struggling with topics. Something I really enjoy about IXL is their plethora of games and how they cite what lessons they engage with and how they assist students. It gives teachers tons of fun options to teach their students. Something teachers should keep in mind is that the site is a little busy, and isn't accessible to all students. Some may get distracted by the topics, so you must ensure students always stay on task. You can view IXL here.

Blog Journal #5

 Since I began to use Twitter for this class, I’ve learned a lot about the different communities and resources that are available on the platform. I had never been a big fan of Twitter and never really used it personally so using it in this class was a learning curve. Though most of the accounts I’ve interacted with have been educational-based accounts. They provide tons of good resources about being a teacher and tools to use. I’ve viewed some of the online chats through hashtags and I really enjoy the thought-provoking questions presented to really make teachers and educators think. 

    A digital divide is a divide between those who have access to and don’t have access to technology devices. In the past, this was often an indication of the wealth gaps and divided “rich” from “poor.” Therefore, the digital divide occurs because of these separations of class, and students’ abilities to afford technologies. As a teacher, it’s our job to ensure that students have access to technology inside the classroom, because they may not have this access outside the classroom. When working with students who may not have access to technology outside the classroom and get to interact with it daily, may fall behind other students who are more familiar with technological tools. Therefore we have to adapt and work with students of all different backgrounds to teach them technology even in a “digital native” society. Teachers can make changes by allowing students to do all "technological work" inside the classroom. 

    While using Canvas for assignment 2 I learned a lot about the program and how it really operates. Being on the student side it’s hard to get an understanding of how the site works and how we can use it as an educator. It was interesting to learn how to add hyperlinks, and how to connect all the pages together. While I did enjoy using the program and think it’s pretty simple for all educators to use. I feel that there were some features that made it confusing and hard to access. Such as when pasting a table, you have to ensure you adjust its settings to that it can be viewed properly. I feel this was super helpful to prepare me to make a canvas course for my own students. Understanding how to make pages and connect them so that its accessible to students is super important.

Blog Journal #4

    The Florida Computer Science Standards call for lots of different ways for students to understand how to use computers and navigate digitally in the real world. One of these standards for K-2 calls for students to be able to create digital data visuals, this includes things such as infographics and charts. By learning these skills students can provide evidence for their findings in writing, and also present their information in eye-catching ways. I feel currently I would be fairly prepared to teach this lesson to students since I have knowledge about programs such as Canva, PowerPoint, and MS Word. I feel that I could maybe use a few more lessons to teach more complex skills and tools but could give students a basic rundown of this software. 

    The CPALMS Educator Toolkit is a great resource for teachers! The site is very basic and provides super easy navigation, breaking assignments up by standard. I looked at the resources available for standard ELA.4.C.3.1 which asks students to understand and follow rules of English grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. The site provides lesson plans and a video to help teachers better get the standard across. The lesson plan given asks students to work together, to describe and design a space suit. This provides a fun, and educational project for teachers to implicate in their classrooms. 

    As a teacher, it’s very important to be proficient in internet searching, especially in the digital native society. We are the bases of students’ knowledge and if we are unaware of the tools that will be necessary if their future, then we set them back in their development. A skill that I found super useful was the reverse image search, this was a skill that I knew existed I just never knew how to do it. This will be easier to identify pictures and objects that I’m unaware of and be able to access this information easier for students. I also feel that lots of kids especially elementary-level kids learn visually through the Earth and by teaching them how to research something without having to explain and type it, will open up new methods of research for them.

Blog Journal #3

 Copyright is a legal protection from all intellectual property, this means that the owner has exclusive rights to their work and can then determine how they want it distributed. This is done so that creators have more control over their work and can stop someone from using their work in ways they do not agree with. Fair use is made up of four factors that determine if the material is excerpted from the copyright and made be used by the public. Fair use can only be determined by a judge. In the classroom, I can avoid copyright infringement claims by following the fair use rules and pulling resources from sites that provide copyright-free images and graphics. I can also promote these types of sources to my students to ensure that they also are following copyright rules. 

There are many issues that involve technology, especially in educational settings. An example of this would be something that occurs very often, especially since covid, academic dishonesty. As a student, I knew of many peers who participated in academic dishonesty or cheating. This was especially rapid during COVID when students could have notes behind their zoom cameras or simply click off of testing screens. Since this has occurred there have been many programs invented for teachers to use, one of these being Honorlock. Honorlock is a system that records students' webcam footage and screen. This allows instructors to review what students did during the test and make sure they didn’t leave the test to look up outside information. Another big problem student face due to technology is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying that occurs online often over social media platforms or text. Cyberbullying has become a huge issue among younger generations and can cause many mental health issues in young children. To prevent this from continuing teachers can implicate weekly reminders of what kind words are. By doing this teachers can make small activities and lessons that revolve around positive words and actions that students can take online. 

For designing the newsletter I feel I learned a lot about Microsoft word and how to make designs with MS Word. Before this assignment I had very basic MS word skills, I knew how to write a paper, make cover pages and add images but not much more. Learning how to add columns, word art, and textboxes will be especially useful for making future assignment pages. I also was grateful to play around with some features I had very little knowledge of, such as the trial and error that came with adding images. I knew how to insert them but never knew all the options of how to wrap the text around the pictures. This took lots of testing to see how the photos fit best in the new article. You can check my newsletter out HERE!

"Using The Strength Of Copyright To Share: @creativecommons #taaaccct #open4us" by giulia.forsythe is marked with CC0 1.0.

Blog Journal #2

    Personally, I have always used MS word when it came to school. So, my experience is pretty high, yet I don’t know much about the design features. Often, I used MS Word for very basic purposes such as writing essays and making simple text graphics. My lack of design knowledge was especially apparent when creating the newsletter. Never had I played with columns and adding so many graphics to one MS Word document. Typically, with documents like this is preferring to use other software such as Photoshop or Canva. I feel like this software provides more resources to be creative and that is why I prefer to use them. 

    ISTE Standards for educators help to provide educators with standards to create “empowered learned.” These standards outline different ways teachers can make their classrooms more engaging, moving away from traditional practices and further advancing education. The standard that I saw as most important was 2.2 leader. These standard pushes teachers to focus more on students’ development in leadership positions and creating educational opportunities that promote empowerment. Often in these standards, teachers will want to change and shape education to fit the developing society, provide access to all meeting diverse needs, and be a model and promoter for developing learning tools. I found this to be the most meaningful because this is exactly why I want to be a teacher, as a teacher I want to promote future leaders and help students feel empowered in their world. 

    The label “digital native” refers to the generation of children who grew up surrounded by technology. Those referred to as digital natives often are judged for having shorter attention spans, a dislike for reading, and a preference to learn around technology. While I think some assumptions about digital natives are true such as learning about technology. I would personally identify as a digital native and I know I work better when working in a digital-media-rich environment. Yet I think this also relates back to the ISTE standard 2.2 I talked of before. As teachers, it is our job to adapt and lead new methods of teaching that better fits the generation of students at the time. On the idea of digital natives being judged for having shorter attention spans and a dislike for reading, I feel these are untrue. Some people have these issues in every generation of people, it really depends on the person and how they act around the tools provided to them. If technology is given an educational framework, then students will use it to further develop their knowledge.

Blog Journal #1

 

    Hello, my name is Naya Cortelyou! I am a freshman at Florida State University and I’m hoping to graduate with my master’s in education. I’m originally from Tampa Florida, and the youngest out of three kids. I came from a long line of teachers, so I have always been inspired by them. I feel that being a teacher is the best way to inspire future generations to be better people. I really enjoy reading, going for walks on sunny days, and dogs! Back home I have a two-year-old Pitbull hound mix named Eri. 

    I don’t have much previous experience in educational technology. I have used some of the sites also utilized in this course such as Canva and Microsoft world. They were typically in the setting of me as the student rather than the teacher. Though I did make a few practice lesson plans with Canva for a previous education course. Yet making blogs and the more advanced features in Microsoft word are a complete mystery to me. 

    I would say the personal learning network I fit in best with is the elementary education department at FSU. This is a super open community where I’ve made tons of connections through. FSU alone has 2-3 clubs that revolve around teachers supporting teachers, this is a huge resource for my PLN because it connects more experienced people in the major with people like me who are new and don’t know much about the program. Along with these places such as Strozier, Dodd Hall, and Landis are huge resources in supporting my study needs by providing a peaceful atmosphere to get work done. Lastly, informal help from people like friends, family, and past teachers all support my PLN.