#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/