Blog Post #8

Happy Thursday! How was your Spring Break? Mine was absolutely incredible. I had the opportunity to lead a Mission Trip of 18 students from FSU to Kingston, Jamaica to serve the poor. I'd love to tell ya all about it! Check out some highlights of my trip below:

Samuel, one of the residents with Downs Syndrome I served at the compound. 

The team from Florida State University after the trip in St. Petersburg, FL. 

Today at "the 727," we will be discussing my experience so far with Diigo, PowerPoint, and technology in reference to professional development. Let's dig in!

Diigo has been very frustrating and challenging for me to use. I find it to be not user-friendly whatsoever and difficult to navigate between options and groups. I do think, with proper settings and available options, it could be used in a positive manner for group projects and professional career reasons. If a group of teachers are working on gathering resources for their classes, Diigo could be a way to share those resources and annotate important information. This might be beneficial for some people, but i'll stick with traditional bookmarking through Safari or Chrome.

I'm quite familiar with PowerPoint and the influence it may have on a student's learning within the classroom. It's important to recognize that having a visually pleasing and well organized and readable PowerPoint can make or break an experience. After reviewing Bloom's Technology, I think that I would do a great job with the majority of the levels in the hierarchy. Those levels are remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The one level in which I feel I would not be sufficient in is analyzing. When in a classroom setting, I struggle with connecting the dots sometimes and relating it back to information learned. In making my own PowerPoints for classroom reasons, this is something that I would probably struggle with. The same goes for evaluating!  On the other hand, remembering, understanding, applying, and creating are more practical and easy for me to comprehend. Incorporating the other levels of the hierarchy will probably be difficult but tangible.

To enhance technological advancements in classrooms, it is necessary that teachers stay up to date on the rising advancements and trends in order to support student learning. In doing so, The office of Educational Technology website provides news articles and resources for teachers. Below are screenshots of the homepage of the website and the teacher resource page. I recommend taking a look at the website (hyperlinked above)!

I'll catch ya next week! Byeeee



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Blog Post #7

Hello! Happy Tuesday! Only 3 more days til Spring Break begins! Will you be in the 727?

Today we will discuss my twitter experience thus far, my experience with the Web Design assignment, and technologies used for assistance in the classroom. Let's begin! 

At the beginning of the semester, I was very excited to use Twitter on a daily basis but honestly it has become quite the frustration for me. It's hard to 1) remember to tweet and 2) find something to tweet about. I really have enjoyed the GIFs sent between classmates and the sharing of blogs/posts within. I think that our communication has been beneficial and I am looking forward to the remainder of the semester building these learning networks. 

Working on my Web Design assignment was my favorite assignment thus far. I was able to bring my passion of photography into my design to create an appealing website for a photography class. I felt that the required criteria hindered my creativity in a sense but overall it was fun and I think Wix is a resource I will  be using in the future. I gained some skills in HTML code and how to insert gadgets through the website. I didn't think that this website design would take me a while, but I was wrong. It took me much longer than expected. That being said, I wish I had started earlier to improve the design. Click here to go to the website! Let me know what you think! Here are a few screenshots of my website below: 

Lastly, assistive and adaptive technologies can be very benefiical in and outside of the classroom for all ages. In my opinion, the most important technology is the text-to-speech keyboards and the speech generating devices. This allows individuals to communicate fully with classmates, parents, and teachers. This can change the life of a person! In a classroom, the only difficulty I perceive of using these technologies is that it may serve as a distraction to the other students. Although they may just be curious, it could get out of hand and serve in a negative way. In my own experience, my best friend Anthony has an older brother with Autism. Andrew is 24 years old and is totally mute. He communicates with his iPad at a minimal degree. There are only a few buttons available such as "yes" and "no." For the most part, Andrew does a good job of communicating with Anthony, his guardian. Anthony is very patient and is always searching to increase his modes of communication. 

See ya after Spring Break! 

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ILP "Design"- Prezi

Wow, what a beautiful day!
For my Independent Learning Project, I chose to create a Prezi. It is similar to a PowerPoint or Google Slides but is so much more unique, interactive, and animated. It's a great learning resource for various professional reasons such as education, marketing, and sales. I have used this for several classes both in my high school and college career. It is a resource that I am definitely willing to use in my future career as it is appealing to the eye and maintains the viewers attention throughout. Check out the hyperlinks below to view my ILP:

Link to VoiceThread
Link to Prezi Animations 



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