EME2040 Blog

I think excel would be most useful in tracking grades. It is a great tool to visual data and see trends in students' grades throughout the course. The topic I have found most interesting in my class mate's blogs is seeing how similar our public school educations have been. Despite the fact that I'm not from florida it seems like we all learned similar things and used similar techniques. I would like to learn more about excel and get more comfortable using it. I think this skill would be most useful moving forward because excel is a widely used software. I can achieve this goal through watching lynda videos and other online tutorials.

I think the flipped classroom can be a good idea in a few circumstances but it usually does not work. It is very difficult to engage students outside of the classroom. I think teachers often use the flipped classroom to save time but if a flipped classroom is done correctly, the lesson planning should take longer than the average lesson. https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education this ted talk gives a good perspective on flipped classroom I really liked the powerpoint assignments. I did not realize how easy it was to add audio into a powerpoint. I really liked this feature because it made my powerpoint more effective because I could explain myself more.

Adaptive technologies can support many diverse learners. The main point of adaptive technologies are to translate information into a medium that makes it accessible to someone. This could mean a voice to text machine for a student who has a hearing impairment. Another example of an adaptive technology would be descriptions of photos/graphics for students with visual impairments. One of the main challenges of using adaptive technologies is funding. As a teacher you might have a student who needs a certain piece of technology but you do not have the funding to provide that technology to them. http://edtechteacher.org/tools/  is a great site for staying up to date on technology used in the classroom. They provide some free tools to teachers, create professional development, and organize conferences for educators.

Facebook: there are tons of facebook groups for educators. They could be based geographically, by grade level, but subject matter, etc. These groups are a great way for teachers to connect and share information. Pinterest: Pinterest can be a great PLN tool for teachers as well because it has so many how to guides. There are guides for classroom setup, microsoft office tools, organization skills, lesson planning, etc. Teachers can see what other people have posted and post their own tools.

I have learned a lot using twitter. I have learned about networking with peers on certain topics. One of the benefits of using twitter is that it is an easy way to access information from essentially unlimited resources. I haven't had any issues with twitter but I have been using twitter for a long time. I learned how to use visual elements in an effective way. I really liked being able to take something that was in my head and see it come together on the screen in front of me. That part was very rewarding. However I didn't like having to rearrange stuff on each individual page. After a while this got tedious. http://alexmcleod223.weebly.com/ one skill I learned using diigo was to be able to give someone the main idea very quickly. This is going to be very beneficial in my career when I am sending files and articles to coworkers.

https://www.brookwoodhighschool.net/index2.jsp This website is for a very large high school outside of Atlanta. Conveniently, I went that high school. The main website shows overview information on the school and information on public events in the community. You can see the school newsletter, some important links for parents/students, and the accolades of the school. On the senior class page there is more specific and relevant information to that specific grade. I would use a similar website in my classroom. This is the main website for the school which is a great place to start. As a teacher I would take it a step further and make a website that looked similar for my specific classroom. This way students and parents have a place where they can see specific assignments that are relevant to their day to day education. In the tech sandbox last week I learned more about smart boards and how they can be used in a classroom. I would use the smart board to teach math and then I c...