SRS Showdown

          In our Technology of Educ. 209 class, we did student response systems where we used a jigsaw method in the beginning and a week later, we presented our favorite or most effective online resource tool that could be implemented into a classroom. While watching our groups show their online tool, I realized the variety of ways students could be assessed. Not only will it assess the students, but the teacher could create assessments any form they want from simple quiz to a creative one like drawing, watching videos, or simple short answers and multiple choice. With these formative assessments, they are very beneficial for the students and teachers. By assessing students, the teacher will figure out where the student lies in knowing the content of a subject. Teachers will see what the student understand and doesn't understand then help the student from there on what is needed to be worked. Out of all the various tools I have seen in the SRS showdown, there are a few that stood out to me while watching my classmates engage us in their tools.

          The first tool I enjoyed was the one my group worked on which is called Formative, https://goformative.com/. Something I enjoyed about Formative was that you could connect your Google Classroom to it or make a classroom on it and give the students a code to log in. When creating an assessment, Formative allows you to choose what the assessment is whether it is a quiz, benchmark, essay, and even just extra practice. When making the questions, this tool gives options on what type of question to ask. These options are multiple choice, show your work which is drawing, essay, true and false, and short answer. One aspect that I appreciate about this tool would be being able to see the students take the assessments live. Since Formative gives this option, it allows a teacher to comment on what the student is working on while taking the assessment and show which question they got right or wrong. A final aspect about Formative is it allows a teacher to track students work as a whole or individually. This is an important aspects with assessing students. Being able to track a students work is crucial to further guide and help the student's needs. Yet, the only weakness Formative has is that a teacher with a free account can track a student's progress on assignments up to two weeks which can be an issue when trying to see the students' progress throughout the year.

          The other two tools I thought were wonderful are called Verso, https://versolearning.com/, and Quizizz, https://quizizz.com/. Verso is an online tool to also assess students but something interesting about this tools is that with a teacher's account, it is possible to swap to a student account and vice versa. Being able to swap allows a teacher to be in someone else's class and interact in it. Verso also only assesses students with written answers. This is great since it allows the students to think about what they are writing and engage rather than multiple choice. Also, this tool allows the teacher to group students who may have similar answers to the given question and have them comment and talk with one another. The only downside to Verso is that a teacher is only able to have one class with the free account and may be time consuming to create an assessment since it give options to have a video, picture, or link with the assessment. Now Quizizz is a formative assessment that allows students to take short quizzes online that are in a way creative. Quizizz allows a teacher to import their created quizzes to Google Classroom, Edmodo, and Remind or students can put in the code to take the quiz. Quizizz give quizzes a different view to giving students a random avatar before taking the quiz. It adds an effect to how the students may view taking a quiz allowing it to be engaging. The last couple of these about this tool is that it allows the teacher to change the language of the quiz which is beneficial for the students who's first language may not be English and the second is that the teacher can send the scores to the students' parents. The only downside to this tool is that students are scored on how fast they can answer a question. This will not be the best way to see how well the student understands the material since some may take longer to answer a question than others.

          Over all, this was one of the best activities my class had been able to experience. I have gained a lot of knowledge of the variety of formative assessment tools that are out there. I can see myself using some of these tools to assess my future students and be able to engage them in other forms rather than multiple choice. Lastly, I have learned how to make creative assessments and know how to view my student's development and knowledge of concepts.

Twitter Post 2

After a few more weeks using twitter, I have been able to remind myself to use it as often as possible. Still, I have difficulties engaging with twitter due to the lack of my use with social media. As I continued to be involved with twitter, I have become familiar with how to use twitter rather than the occasional re-tweet of an article I read from EdTech and edutopia. With the occasional re-tweets, I was able to be involved in a twitter chat.

When my professor told my educ 209 class that we had to participate in a twitter chat, I was concerned since I never experienced an online chat with people whom I do not know answering and replying to questions. I was involved in the first ISTEMLN chat of the year. Going into this chat I was not sure of what would be happening nor what questions would be asked. Before the chat started, I thought of a variety of things that could have been asked. Not only this, but I thought it would mostly be the people who were participating asking the questions and not just one person. Once the chat started, everyone who wanted to join the chat introduced ourselves. As the chat began, I noticed that many of students who attend Trinity Christian College participated in this chat. This chat was very different from what I originally thought it was going to be. The questions that were asked in the chat involved asking my own experiences with different technology tools that could be used in a classroom. When the questions were asked, I had to think about what to say because I was never asked these kinds of questions before. One questions asked about what technology tool transformed my teaching and the students learning in math and science. Since I am currently still a student and not teaching, I had to think about what I technology I used in high school. As I thought back, I remembered my math teacher having us use Desmos to graph functions, lines, parabolas, etc. in trigonometry. 

In the end of the twitter chat, I was pleased of seeing a variety of answers the teachers gave in which technology tools they used in their classroom. By reading these answers, I am able to become a bit more familiar with what tools are out there to use in any classroom setting. I still am on the edge of not using twitter in the near future only because I would rather not use social media as often. In the mean time, I can now see why many have twitter for educational purposes. Twitter allows one person to share their ideas, classroom projects, and a variety of technology tools, including some video games like Minecraft, for others to then gather information and ideas to then create their own lessons involving these tools for their classroom. From what I have seen so far, there are some things I might take from twitter to use in my future classroom when introducing technology to my elementary students.

Module 5 Flip Project

       For my education in technology class, we had to do a project where each student had to create a flipped classroom video by ourselves or with a partner. The flipped classroom is where students will receive a video to watch the night before class of the material that would have been taught during school hours. Since students watched the lesson the night before, it will then allow the entire class to work on activities, ask more questions and do examples, and allows for more engagement with their peers. When the class was given this assignment, I was not worried as much since I had this type of classroom in high school for physics. Along with creating a flipped classroom video, we had to make a multiple choice quiz that went along with Bloom's Taxonomy.

       With this project, I collaborated with a classmate to create a lesson for a third-grade math class. We created a lesson teaching the students what quadrilaterals are and different characteristics of a couple of them like a square and rhombus. To create this lesson, we used the tools we have already been introduced to throughout this class which are WeVideo, Notebook 17, and Screencast-O-Matic. As we put together what we were going to teach, we had to make sure the students could understand and follow along to what they could see and hear. In our video, we drew on the Notebook 17 while recording to help the students understand what we were talking about in that specific moment. When it came to creating the quiz, we had difficulties.

       Creating the quiz for our lesson was the challenging portion of the project for us. From learning in class, there are ways in which a multiple choice quiz should be presented for the students understanding but also had to challenge them. This is where Bloom's Taxonomy helped and challenged us while making the quadrilateral quiz. Bloom's Taxonomy challenged us to have the students apply and analyze the different shapes and characteristics of a quadrilateral on the quiz. Since our video covered most of what we wanted to put on this quiz, it was difficult to figure out a way to challenge the students. In the end, we were able to make a quiz that worked well.

       In the end, I can see the flipped classroom working well in a variety of grades since many children know how to watch videos online. It will be beneficial for each of them since they can watch a lesson at their own pace and can pause and rewind as many times needed. Since my experience with a flipped classroom during high school went well, I would be willing to use this technique to teach my future students. It will allow me to then give them more one-on-one time to help them understand portions of the lesson they might have struggled with.

Interactive Lesson

          For the past couple of weeks, my technology in education class has been learning how to use the SMARTBoard through the Notebook software. We explored many effects and advantages this tool can offer to teach a lesson. I can say I was trilled when I found out we will be learning how to use the SMARTBoard for I have always wanted to use it. As the class investigated the variety of tools Notebook has, on our own, we were given the task to make a five minute interactive lesson and teach it to the class.

          To begin creating a lesson, we had to choose a grade level and subject to teach. We then had to find the standard that would go with the lesson we wanted to prepare for the class. As I began contemplating what I wanted to teach, I realized that I needed to know what the students in the grade would already know and do not know. I eventually decided to teach a lesson about weather and temperature to a Kindergarten class. While I was making the lesson, each student had to use a lesson plan template to lay out everything we were going to teach. On the lesson plan template, there were many things involved and had to put to make sure what I was going to teach is correct to what I would write. Creating an objective was a bit difficult because I had to make sure I had all the requirements which were the condition, verb, and criteria in the correct order. It was easy to write down what my students should get out of the lesson but I had to make sure I put how well they needed to preform to fully show most of the class understood what I taught.

          After finishing the layout of my lesson plan, I created a Notebook file to make my lesson come to life. At first, I found it difficult to figure out what I could possibly do in five minutes with the activities I planned out. I already knew some aspects of what Notebook could do before actually using it on my own which helped with the process of making slides which my " Kindergarten students" could engage in. Once everything was completed, I had to practice many times teaching the lesson and using the slides to make sure everything worked and was smooth. I found out that it was difficult to actually time my lesson due to the fact that I was not sure how long each activity would actually take since it depended on how fast the students would understand and do the activities I planned out.

          In the end, I thought my interactive lesson went well. I learned even more about the SMARTBoard by actually engaging with it rather than watch a teacher use it during class. Through this experience, I now have more confidence to use the Notebook software and create a lesson for my future class to engage in rather than sit and listen to a lecture. I now know how to write a proper objective and know how to engage, connect, and launch my lesson. This has been a wonderful experience and I would be looking forward to use SMARTBoard in my future classroom.

Experiencing Twitter

When I was first told to use twitter in my technology in education class, I thought to myself, how am I going to use twitter when I barely even use social media. The only social media I have, and rarely ever use, are Facebook and Snapchat. I became skeptical of the idea that twitter could be used for educational purposes. In the beginning I had difficulties understanding how to use twitter and was not thrilled to the idea that everyone could see what I tweet, who I follow, and who follows me.

As I created the account, I was still a bit unsure for the reasons to use twitter as a future teachers and kept forgetting to look at my twitter on a daily basis. Once I started to understand more of what this social media was and how it could be used, it started to grab my attention. Twitter allows people and organizations post about infinite ideas, ways to incorporate technology into education, etc. While using twitter, there have been many articles I found interesting and helpful from how teachers use a variety of websites in their class to ways of engaging students in a classroom to make learning fun. I have been following a few organizations and people who have expanded my knowledge of what I could implement in a classroom that I would have not thought about before.

I found twitter helpful in a way of trying to figure out how technology could be used in a classroom without distractions. I now know of different website that could be used for multiple purposes and not just for a presentation or lesson. Some website can allow a collaborative project which every student and even the teacher can be involved in. Not only this, but by using twitter, I have found that even parents can be involved during class from home with a touch of a button. Parents can see pictures and type to their children to see what they are working on when the teacher gives the students a chance to use technology.

In the end, I have found twitter to be useful for teachers to gather ideas and even communicate with other teachers, organizations, and other people. Twitter allows people to see and engage in chats with people they do not know but have a similar goal. I personally may not use twitter as often in the future, due to not using social media constantly, but if I ever need ideas or need to find ways to use a certain website, I may search on twitter to see what I can find. Using twitter has been a nice experience and I will be looking forward to finding more ways to connect with others and gather creative ideas for my future classroom.

Module 2: Digital Story

          When the assignment, to create a digital story, was first told, I had no idea what I would be doing nor how I would connect a learning standard to my life. I felt like I hit a brick wall at first because of being unsure how I could possibly take a standard put it into a lesson that in some way is a part of my life. I then realized that it could be possible if I opened up to this idea and allow my creativity to show.

          The first day we looked at a few examples of digital stories others have created to show students how they could make their own story. From there, the class had to pick an Illinois State Learning Standard that could be used in our personal lives. I realized that choosing a standard was not as hard but creating some type of lesson had a few bumps in the road. Before starting the digital video, each student had to create a concept map using popplet or bubbl.us to plan out their story. After finishing the concept map, the digital story could then be made. In making the digital story, we used the website wevideo.com. On this website, there are a variety of options to create our stories. With the free subscription, we were allowed to use some soundtracks, backgrounds, frames, et cetera, that were provided by the website. Each student was allowed to put multiple audios, videos, and even sound effects to make their unique videos. Many students searched for pictures and music in the public domain but each had to make sure they understood what could be used with respect to copyrights.

          As I was making my own digital story about Spanish, I learned a great amount. First, I learned even more about copyrighting. The previous knowledge I had about copyrighting was that any information found on the web, newspaper, book, and so on, must be cited to give the person credit for what they have wrote. While working on this assignment, I learned that when teaching, we are not allowed to show videos or movies unless it is for educational purposes. I also learned about what the Ken Burns effect is for I was not aware of it before working on my digital story. The Ken Burns effect involve moving on a picture by zooming in, out, or toward the side to give the photo more meaning and interest.

          In the end, working on my digital story was an adventure in which I had to learn more of technology in creating a video which I never really did much before this assignment. Making this digital story on wevideo.com allowed me to be more comfortable in experimenting new ways of using technology that I never thought of before. I could use this in my future vocation as an elementary teacher by allowing the students to create their own story to share to the class. It would be a great exercise to allow students to share something important to them that other may not know. Not only this but, using digital stories will be a great way to make lessons for the students in a creative way.

Module 1

In a classroom, there are a variety of ways students could be taught from lecturing to activities. A teacher must understand that each student has their own learning method that we must take account to. It is easy for a teacher to fall in the ways of teaching through lectures and Power Points since it may be the simple way to teach. Instead of teaching with lectures to the class each day, teachers must be creative and take risks so each child may have an advantage to learn and allows the class to be engaging.

One method that can be used to encourage engagement would be the jigsaw activity. The jigsaw activity is a way for students to take part actively in a lesson. Each student is essential for the lesson in which they have to teach their peers about a topic they have. Students each given a topic they must research and take notes on. In the following class, they meet with other peers who have the same topic and get together to see what they all found in common and facts they might have missed. Once this is done, the students are then put into other groups with different topics and each one will take their turn in teaching their classmates about what they have learned. In the end, students needed to work together, be attentive, and engaged to understand the new information they were given by their groups.

In Educ 209, we used this activity to learn about at least three different websites to make online videos which we could for our introductory videos. We each were put into groups to then share what we have learned about the website we were given. This was a great way to learn in the class because it was hands on rather than sitting, listening, and writing information down. With the experience I had, this activity allowed me to teach my classmates about the website and allowed me to be comfortable and confident with what I have learned and taught. As well as teaching, I was able to speak with others I may not normally speak to on a daily basis.

I have seen and done this jigsaw activity before when I was younger but not with the exact same steps. In a few of my English classes, we would do small groups and interact with one another on what we have learned and ask questions to each other on what we might have not completely understand and then receive feedback. In the future, I will implement this activity into my lessons to allow my class to learn from each other and enjoy learning.

This is my blog.