Learning Project 2: Option (2): "Design": Piktochart: "Judy Garland Biography"

For my second learning project, I made an infographic using Piktochart. I did my infographic on Judy Garland's life in honor of International Women's Day because she is my favorite actress!! I would love to use Picktochart as a teacher to make infographics on topics, like the one I chose, for my students to learn information easily and in sequential order.
Link to my infographic:
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/12722772-judy-garland-copy

Music Preference Survey

https://fsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6EWAVWdpSyCpifP

#10: Data Collection, Most Interesting Blog Topics, Tech Related Skills, and Ways to Achieve My Future Technology Goals!!

As a Kindergarten teacher, I would most likely want to use data collection to get information and feedback from parents. To do this, I would probably use a tool like SurveyMonkey and give the parents a link to the surveys I conduct. I would ask them questions like, "How much do you read to your child at home?" or "How well does your child know the alphabet?" and then have them choose from answers that range from really well to really poor. I could also use surveys to get parents' opinions on what we do in the classroom and where there kids would like to go on field trips. I think using SurveyMonkey in this manner would be really beneficial to my students.

I found many things interesting when reviewing my classmates' blogs. What I loved most about reading them was getting different perspectives on each topic presented which opened my eyes to others' opinions and I got to see different uses of creativity in my classmates' web layouts and design techniques. A lot of people had really cool backgrounds and fonts on their blogs which made it easy to read!! I loved looking at screenshots and PowerPoints from the different assignments too.

I would really love to learn more about how to use ClassDojo because I think that is a tool I might consider using in my classroom for classroom management. I have seen many teachers at FSUS Elementary use it as a tool and it looks easy to use but I want to learn how to set it up, how it works, and if students can check their progress from home or only at school and how all of that works. When I observed teachers who use it, their students respond really well to it. One more thing I want to be more efficient in is PowerPoint making. I want to learn more about the design options and I want to get faster at using it.

I want to go about achieving my technology goals with a hands on approach, where I'm learning the technology by physically using it. I want to get more efficient at using a Smartboard better, so I want to go play around with it and learn its features in the Tech Sandbox. I also think the more you work at something, the better you get at it, so I want to use PowerPoint more frequently for future projects, and just for fun, to get better at it. I also want to blog more in the future to stay connected with the world of education by means of social media and to become a better writer, which is a key skill to have as any type of teacher.

#9: "The Flipped Classroom," Web Resource, and PowerPoint Interaction!!

A flipped classroom is an instructional teaching design that differs from a traditional one in a variety of ways. A flipped classroom delivers learning material by utilizing technology in an engaging and productive way for students. Students will typically engage in watching online lectures, collaborate in online chat rooms, or research material at home and engage with a mentor in the classroom. It provides students with a more learner based in depth learning style. Typically, teachers will create or play third party videos from the web instead of lecturing. Here are some links teachers might use for their flipped classroom:

• A video for a lecture on Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzxgYKyHQY8

• A video for a lecture on the human heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxUNxvsG7lc

• A video for a lecture on President Barack Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J0k9M0pCKE

I found a really cool web based resource for teachers to use with their students to learn about women's suffrage for Women's History Month!! I found it under teacher resources on Scholastic's site. I love that when a teacher clicks on the activity it gives them the learning objectives with an outline of what is in the activity!! The activity is an interactive website that gives students credible information on the history of women's suffrage and the story of an amazing woman from that time.

Here are the links:

Teacher Lesson Plans

Women's Suffrage Objectives

Women's Suffrage Activity

For the PowerPoint Interaction project I found an online template for the popular game "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" I absolutely love the template I found!! The creator made it really easy to use and fun and interactive for kids who would be playing the game. It was really simple to go add in any information for the type of questions I wanted to put in and it was easy to make changes to the layout. The only thing was I would have liked was for some of the transitions to have been smoother and for there to have been more audio and music already in the presentation template.

#8: Gamification, Digital Divide, and PowerPoint for Information Dissemination Project!!

For elementary education, I believe gamification is the technological advancement that holds the biggest promise for education. With gamification, game elements can be added to instructional material to "increase motivation and interactivity, encourage creativity, and deepen understanding of content" (Teaching and Learning with Technology 288). I think those three things are key to getting an enriching education and gamification is the best way to go about that, especially with elementary students. Kids love games and to tie that to education makes learning fun and more interactive for them. My favorite game the book mentioned that I may want to use in my classroom is called the World Peace Game. "This multilevel board game creates an environment in which students representing different countries must achieve world peace despite conflicting views with minimum military intervention" (Teaching and Learning with Technology 288). The book further states this allows students to gain "critical thinking skills" along with "a global political perspective" which are key elements for anyone living in the modern world today.

I stand with being really sensitive to the digital divide. Especially as a teacher, I want to treat all my students fairly and give them all equal opportunity and access to a high quality education. Even if only a few of my students are on the less fortunate side of the divide, where they have poorer access to computers, internet access, etc. I want to implement most of the technology we use together in class, that way students can learn how to properly and effectively use it. As far as homework goes, I would rather assign hard copies of assignments, unless I know all of my students have equal access to the technology they need for it.

I honestly had a lot of fun making my PowerPoint for the PowerPoint for Information Dissemination Assignment. I did my PowerPoint on Marine Life and I loved adding in all the cool pictures of animals and editing them with animations. Before this assignment, I had no clue all of the features PowerPoint has to offer!! I loved learning how to crop out the background of pictures; I learned how to keep the pieces I wanted in it and crop the pieces I didn't want out of the picture completely. I want to use PowerPoint as a photo editor from now on!!

#7: PowerPoint to Support Learning, Adaptive Technology, and My Weebly Page!!

As a teacher, I would use PowerPoint to support my students' learning at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy in specific lessons. Let's imagine I'm creating a PowerPoint on a lesson in music theory. For "Remembering", I would create a slide that presents a diagram or picture of notes on a scale, then I would ask my students to recall the note names as they previously learned them. I could also present this in the form of multiple choice questions on a slide and have the students submit their answers on iClickers. For "Understanding," I would need my students to make connections to "real world" situations, so to do this I would attach and play a YouTube video of a popular song, one that my students would be familiar with, and have them identify the key signature and time signature the song is in. For "Applying," students should be able to apply what they learned, so I would have an interactive slide, with a picture of a treble staff, where students could come up to the SmartBoard, and when I ask them to write a short melody in a certain key signature, they should be able to do it correctly. For "Analyzing," students should be able to analyze a work and connect it to what they learned, so for my music theory lesson, I would have a slide with multiple songs attached on one side, labeled with numbers, and multiple choice answers of key signatures, labeled with letters. I would then have my students anazlyze each song and then have them match the song to the correct key signature. For "Evaluating," I would have a slide for students to use their iClickers to vote on which song, out of the ones they listened to, was their favorite, and then have a class discussion on why they think their favorite was their favorite based on music theory terms. Lastly, for "Creating," I would make a slide with clear instructions for the students, together in groups, to write their own song. Then I would have them play it for the class and record them on my computer.

Adaptive technology is pretty literally what it sounds like. It is technology modified to meet and assist the needs of those with special needs. Some prime examples include word processing (to assist those with trouble holding a pencil or writing on paper), concept mapping (to assist those who need a visual presentation of how concepts connect to each other), word prediction (to assist those physically impaired who may have difficulty with typing keystrokes), recorded books (to help auditory learners or possibly people who are blind), high interest low level books (to assist those with lower than average reading levels), and many more!! Teaching and Learning with Technology also mentions Apple's iBook app, which I love because it has so many amazing features like the speak selection feature, the define option, multitouch textbooks,  and iBook Author for teachers. I think all adaptive technology is amazing and completely necessary in today's education system. The only two challenges with it for us as teachers is learning how to use it correctly ourselves to better benefit our students and having multiple forms of technology in our classrooms at once, which could get a little hectic at times.

In the Web Design Assignment I learned a lot about how to better design a classroom webpage! I learned how to create a page format, how to insert pictures as page backgrounds, how to insert calendars, and much more! I think I want to create more websites using Weebly in my future career.

Link to my Weebly site: http://kaitsclassroom.weebly.com/

Learning Project 1: Option (2): "Design": Prezi: "Charlotte's Web"

For my learning project, I created a Prezi based on the 2nd grade CPALMS standard: 

LAFS.2.RL.1.3

"Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges."