Blog Post #9

     I experienced distance learning at its peak during COVID-19. At the time, I was finishing up 8th Grade. It was chaotic going from 3 weeks of distance learning to distance learning for the rest of my 8th grade year. The website I navigated how to use the most was Canvas. Canvas was the platform that my entire county converted to for learning. Looking back on it now, I am glad that it was Canvas because we use it almost just as often for submitting assignments in college. Canvas was a very effective technology and still is to this day. Additionally, I have used Florida Virtual School (FLVS) to take Health Opportunities through Physical Education (HOPE) online. This was the only online course I had ever taken before going to college. I liked FLVS because the mentors and teachers were very friendly, helpful, and flexible with turning in assignments. The assessments were through a phone call and were always brief and easy. I would like to maybe utilize FLVS or another distance learning platform in the future to take an online American Sign Language (ASL) course and become fluent in ASL.

    Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning and teaching resources that have free access with no permissions needed. They can also be taken and revised or adapted by anyone. They can come in the form of lesson plans, videos, websites, textbooks, etc. The OER resource I found is called OER Commons, which is a digital public library of open educational resources. In OER Commons, you can search up anything you might be looking for and can filter by subject, education level/age group, and standard. For example, I searched for lower primary English Language Arts (ELA) materials that fit the Florida ELA B.E.S.T. Standards, and 3 results came up, including an interactive activity/lab about acrostic poems. The link to OER Commons is here: https://oercommons.org/

    A new skill I acquired while working on Assignment 4 is how to voice record and convert my PowerPoint with the voice recording into a .ppsx file. I have a good amount of expertise with PowerPoint and yet I had not known how to do those things until this assignment. Something I liked about this assignment is that it allowed me to take a topic that I am familiar with and present it in the form of a PowerPoint. In my case, I took one of my favorite book readings from elementary school and used it to make a presentation with vocabulary words in the book that younger students may not know the definition of. I think something I can improve on for next time is the speed at which I spoke and taught the lesson. While I do believe my explanations and definitions were repeated just enough, I think I could have went into more depth on certain slides. If I were teaching to a real group of students, I would probably ask them questions relating to each word to get their input. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #2

      I have practically used Microsoft Word all my life as a student. I remember knowing how to use MS Word at an early age, probably as early as first grade. In elementary school, we had Technology Lab for a Related Arts course where we practiced typing and using Microsoft tools like Word. Throughout middle and high school, certain teachers allowed us to use MS Word to type out essays instead of write them out manually. At FSU, I have used Word for quite a few assignments.  Recently, assignments have been transitioned to be turned in digitally through programs like Canvas, so MS Word is used more frequently for these assignments. I have used Google Docs and Pages a few times (per assignment requirements), but I prefer Microsoft Word as I have used it since I was very young and have become very comfortable working with it.      The ISTE standard that is most meaningful to me is the Collaborator standard. As an educator, I believe it is extremely ...
Read more

Blog Post #8

     Before this assignment, I had never designed my own website before. I was also oblivious to the fact that teachers could make their own websites, but it makes sense now to have for student and parent navigation. The design principle I used the most when designing my website was CRAP (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity). I used contrast to make my headings and subheadings appealing and stand out, as well as make the text color easy to read against the background. I used repetition to repeat the use of 2-3 font types and colors to make sure my website was not too boring but also not too chaotic. I used alignment to ensure my paragraphs, headings, and images were in an organized alignment and not all over the place. Finally, I used proximity to place my text and visuals appropriately without being too close together or too far apart. As a future educator, website design links can be used to help students or other teachers gain inspiration and insight when creati...
Read more

Blog Post #1

       In this class, I hope to learn about new technology tools and get familiar/comfortable with using each of them. I believe having a widespread knowledge of technological tools would be useful in any setting nowadays, but especially for a future teacher like myself. Integrating technology in the classroom will be beneficial for both myself and my students. For example, if I want to use Canva in the future to make a classroom welcome sign, I know how to do so; or if I want my students to use Canva for a project, I can teach them how to use it too.      Throughout my 4 years in high school, I was a student-teacher for a program called Little Eagles, an on-campus preschool. While the students themselves did not use much technology (because they are in preschool), as a student-teacher I used it quite often. For example, when the children would participate in Singing & Dancing, I played YouTube or GoNoodle videos on the projector for them to follow...
Read more