#9 The one before the final blog...

A "flipped classroom" is when the lecture and homework aspects are essentially switched. In the flipped classroom, lecture videos are assigned for the students to watch when they are at home and then the classroom time is spent on working on assignments and the teacher answering questions. This flipped classroom allows for in class time that the students can ask questions and more hands on activities that can help the students better understand what they are learning. Coming from a former student, most of the time I just completed my homework for the sake of completing it, not to further my understanding. But with this concept of the flipped classroom, students can spend their in class time gaining a better understanding and being able to ask questions and do more to actually learn and understand concepts. When in high school one source of education videos that I found very helpful was https://www.khanacademy.org/ , especially when it came to upper level science, khan academy allowed me to learn at my own pace and pause when I needed to wait for my brain to catch up.

After listening to the podcast, it was mentioned that blogs were a good web resource for teacher professional development so I simply googled teacher blogs. After googling this I saw so many blogs from different teachers all around the world. These blogs can help new teachers get ideas for their classrooms, experienced teachers learn something they never knew before and much more! One website that I found interesting was http://busyteacher.org/ This website is a compilation of thousands of worksheets, articles, and simply teachers sharing ideas with other teachers. This website is full of so much knowledge that you could not find without the internet. It is such a cool concept to me that teachers from all over have the ability to share all of this cool information.

I had never downloaded a powerpoint template from the internet before (heck I didn't even know it was an option) and I certainly never knew you could make games with powerpoint. After downloading a template which I thought was really cool, I played the game and couldn't help but imagining calling students up to the smart board to play this fun learning game. I did not know or even consider before this project that powerpoint had the capacity to be such a fun resource. Now knowing the capabilities of powerpoint, next time I would love to create my own game and be able to implement it into my future classroom.

#8 So much neat information

I think the tecnhology advancement that shows the biggest promise for education is gamification with games suchc as ATOMS. I think this allows for much more interaction in the classroom and it is a good way to make learning fun for students. There is so many fun and new technologies coming out that support kids learning. Gamification can also help the different kinds of learners. In ATOMS students can make and build things with electronic blocks. These interactive and fun activities encourage learning.

As the podcast mentioned 2 very different students, I think I most closely am similar to student A. I have always grown up with the technology I needed and would consider myself fairly proficient in my computer and technology skills. I attended a private school for the majority of my life and my school always kept up to date with technology such as numerous mac labs, smart boards, etc. I have not personally seen this "digital divide" due to my constant immersion with technology but I can now see how this may affect my job as a future teacher. Just as the podcast mentioned, I will make sure to remain sensitive and not assume that all of my students have technology access. But with society going the way that it is now, in a very technological route, I will make sure that during school hours, I do my best to assist children with technology and teach them skills that may be useful to them in their future.

When I was in middle school, I had to take a computer class and one of our main focuses was PowerPoint. Since this computer class, I have always considered myself a master at PowerPoint but this assignment has made me second guess this. I had a difficult time with downloading the template from the internet and also some recording issues. But nevertheless I did learn how to properly record a PowerPoint and I was not aware of the PowerPoint show option, that is very cool! I have always made my PowerPoints with an overload of information on them but in my future careers I am going to start actually writing notes in the notes section and use that to present my slides instead of just reading the information off the slides.

#7 Bloom, Powerpoints, Web Design, and much more

Blooms taxonomy includes six levels, create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, and remember. These things are important to keep in mind when teaching a lesson and can be implemented in a lesson. For example say a teacher was teaching a lesson in 1st grade history on Martin Luther King Jr. and created a powerpoint for her students. First she would have to present the information to help the students create a basis for knowledge in their mind by showing pictures of Dr. King, the march on Washington, and a video of his speeches to make the powerpoint interactive. The powerpoint should then go deeper into the information to help her students evaluate the history by giving facts about his life and his works. After she should add a thought provoking question that allows the kids to analyze the information. The next question she asks should force the kids to apply the information to their own lives (ex: how does Martin Luther King Jr. affect our lives today?). To check the students understanding she could include a short quiz at the end of the powerpoint to see if the students remember the information that was given to them. If you keep Bloom's Taxonomy in mind while making a powerpoint, it will help the students learn and grow as learners.

Adaptive technologies are very important when it comes to supporting learners. Not everyone can just go to a computer and have all of the capabilities to operate it. There is many options for people who need accessibilities such as joysticks instead of mouses, brail printers, recorded books, and word programs that allow students to complete assignments without writing or typing. These are just a few of the awesome adaptive technologies out there. In my high school there was a girl a few years younger than me that was blind. All of her papers and tests had to be printed by a brail printer so she could read them. Some possible challenges that could come from using adaptive technologies is having the resources to even obtain them and also making sure that I implement them for students who need them.

I have never really made a website before so doing that was a cool experience in itself. But I really enjoyed how flexible Weebly was and the many things you could do from this site. Getting the format exactly how I wanted posed a little bit of a problem but I worked it out in the end. I also forgot to put a button to one of my pages on the home page so I would like to fix that and improve in that way, This will be a very useful tool to have one day when I am a teacher and need to make a website for my class.

Check it out: msgaineysclass.weebly.com

ILP "Design" Edmodo

I created an Edmodo page for a 1st grade class. I based my design off of the idea of having a class website. Edmodo really consolidates everything and is super easy and very user friendly. I was able to create a poll, write updates, assign worksheets, upload worksheets, and much more. It was really fun and easy to create and would definitely be helpful for a classroom!

Join my class:
Group Code: 9dyhi7

https://edmodo.com/public/ms-gainey-s-class/group_id/19701259

Differences Between Amateur and Pro Slides

This slideshare teaches you the "do's and don'ts" of effective slideshow making! It teaches you 15 tips to make your slideshow interesting, engaging, and fun! I really like the way they present the important information . I think slide 8 is interesting because it says that bullets poison your slide, which I never thought of before, bullet points are usually always my go to!

15 Differences Between Amateur & Pro Slides! from Sadman Sadik

#6 and still learning!

I visited a website for the "Lyme School" in Lyme New Hampshire. On this schools website there was many links to classes from Kindergarten to 8th grade with library pages, resources, and many links. Each of these pages contained all sorts of information. On most of the elementary class pages there was things such as the weekly homework, a blog with the lesson plans for the week, and newsletters for the parents. On the older grades websites there was things such as links to educational games, links to educational resources, and also calendars for different classes. All of these things are able to be viewed by anyone and do not require any sort of log in or anything!

There is so many great resources out there that can help make teaching easier and more children learn more efficiently and effectively. One productivity tool that I think would really help in my future teaching career is to first off all take full advantage of evernote for taking notes and creating lesson plans just because of all its great uses and its flexibility. I would also like to use evernote like mentioned in the podcast to keep a journal of my teaching reflections in the application. This way I could easily go back to what I would like to change about certain lessons and reflect on how to make it better. I already use my google calendar to insert important dates and times in so I think that would also help accomplish my professional responsibilities. 

This wiki assignment came as a challenge to me. I had never heard of pbworks and it was interesting to be able to learn about its different capabilities. One tool I found very useful was the copy page tool, this allowed my group to keep all the pages similar and with the same formatting. I enjoyed being able to work in a group and collaborate but it was very difficult to be able to get four involved college students together at one point to do the project. There was always a scheduling conflict or difficulty which added more stress to this assignment. I can see now how this wiki could be beneficial in creating a class website to keep students and parents up to date on the happenings in the classroom and it is definitely a good tool to keep in my repertoire! 

http://lindseyearp.pbworks.com/w/page/105242667/Second%20Grade%20Science

#5 This is a long one: beware!

A web 2.0 tool that is useful in the classroom is a class blog. I think that having a class blog can be a very useful in especially the K-5 classrooms because it is a way for teachers to be able to share and communicate what is going on in the classroom to the parents of the students. By using a class blog, parents can see homework assignments, important dates, and even their students work. From the teachers aspect, this can help in their professional development because it allows them to stay in close contact with their students parents without having to reach out to ever single parent individually, it can save time and make things easier and more interactive! I think that having a twitter is not useful in a classroom setting because there is a lot on twitter that is very inappropriate in a school setting and may cause controversy with in the classroom. In order to use a class blog all you need is a computer, with a motherboard and a monitor, and internet connection. It is not necessary to have other peripherals plugged in and the network needed is just the internet.

      In another one of my classes, a group was giving a presentation and instead of using a regular power point, they used Prezi. I personally have never actually made a Prezi but it looked very interesting to i decided to give it a whirl. In order to properly write this blog post I decided I must first dive into this web 2.0 tool Prezi and make a silly one myself just to see how it works. First of all, when you are making your account, with every answer you fill in, they give you a nice little remark such as "Nice name!" and "Sounds interesting!", these comments already sparked an interest for me, I want to know more!
      They started my (free) membership by first giving me a quick and not too in-depth tutorial about what Prezi does. It basically makes a huge concept map that zooms into detail so you can see relationships and keep your audience engaged, COOL. What I discovered while making a non-informational Prezi presentation is that the layout and they way you make it is very similar to creating a Powerpoint but there is already slide transitions built in. You can do everything you can do in a powerpoint on Prezi, just much cooler and more efficient. Also a cool feature I discovered in Prezi is that you can search and insert images onto your presentation within the website , without having to go to google to search and insert. There is so many more features in Prezi that would take me days to explain so here is the domain so you can try it yourself! https://prezi.com/

So last but certainly not least, I also had the opportunity to explore the fun and useful application Webspiration this week. I have always hated making concept maps. I found it difficult to draw everything and make it look pretty while still showing the relationships, but webspiration does just that. I learned how to make a neat, informative, and useful concept map at the click of a button. Also if you really aren't feeling the whole map thing, you can convert the information into an outline in a matter of seconds. I was just trying to figure out how to use the website for this assignment but for future reference I would like to color code it better and add more images into my concept map to make it prettier and more visual. I am  a very visual learner and this is definitely an awesome way to study for me and I can't wait to use it in the future.