Nicole's Tech Blog

     Since I want to be a Kindergarten teacher, I probably won't use data collection (surveys) with my students. However, I will probably have the parents of my students fill out a teacher evaluation survey every quarter so that I can see how I am doing. This will give parents a chance to let me know how satisfied they are with my instruction and give me feedback as to how I can improve myself as a teacher. I think this will be especially helpful during my first few years as a teacher. After having the surveys completed, I could put the data into a recording tool such as Excel. This would allow me to organize the responses in a way that would be easy to read and understand. I could then interpret the data and improve myself as a teacher.      For EME 2040, we were required to write blogs on specific topics each week. Since all students had the blog prompt each week, it was interesting to read other students' blogs and see their perspective. For instance...

   The term "The Flipped Classroom" refers to an innovative blended delivery model that is currently very popular in education. It uses online videos in order for students to learn. Originally, these began as a way to allow absent students to gain access to lectures. However, they now have evolved the way that students and teachers spend time in the classroom. In this model, students listen to the lectures prior to attending class in order to be able to use class time more efficiently. I think this a very smart idea. While doing this assignment, I realized that we currently have this system in place in EME 2040. Each week, we are expected to listen to a podcast prior to attending class. Although the podcasts aren't lectures, they deliver information on the concepts that we are learning weekly. I really like that we do this as it prepares us for class. This prepares us to dive right into discussion on these topics as soon as class begins. An awesome example of a source of ...

     Through my individual efforts, I learned about Lynda.com. This resource provides video courses in software, creative, and business skills which are taught by indistry experts. I thought this was a nice resource that I could see myself use one day. By viewing the bookmarks and annotations of others, I learned about many more teacher development tools. Specifically, I learned about TeacherVision which allows educators to improve their teaching skills. I enjoyed discussing these tools with my classmates. It helped me learn about the interesting features of each website. I look forward to continuing using Diigo in this class!

     Generally, adaptive technologies allow diverse students to be able to fully participate in the classroom. These technologies maximize the learning experience. As mentioned in the textbook, word prediction technologies are extremely helpful for students with dissabilities. These allow for students to type quicker and keep up with the classroom. Another example of adaptive technologies for students with dissabilities that is extremely helpful is SmartBoards. For my Introduction to Education class, I have been observing elementary school classroom. Therefore, I have witnessed the use of this technology in classrooms with students with special needs. This technology allows them to participate in interactive lessons ands keeps them engaged. Growing up, also witnessed this when watching some of my peers in the classroom. Therefore, I see them as having a lot of success. A challenge that I expect to face when using adaptive technologies is that these technologies may be dif...

Through my individual efforts, I was able to research and learn about different adaptive technologies. Prior to class, I did not know much about these technologies. I was extremely impressed with what is currently available to help students with disabilities. For instance, I was already familiar with the SMART learning suite but I was able to learn about lesson plans that the suite offers for educators. Additionally, I was able to learn about different text to speech technologies. These seem to be very helpful to students who have disabilities such as dyslexia. Through creating and viewing the group presentations in class, I was able to learn about how ELL students use technology in order to learn and expose themselves to the English language. Furthermore, I was able to learn a little more about gifted students. I enjoyed this because I was in a gifted classroom in third grade. I feel that oftentimes, these students can be overlooked while educators focus on students who are lagging be...

     I have really enjoyed using Twitter for EME2040. Using this resource for classroom purposes has allowed me to learn how I could someday implement Twitter in my very own classroom. My favorite thing about using this website for educational purposes has been that it allows me to keep myself updated with educatinal news. By following educational accounts such as EdTech K-12 Magazine and U.S. News Education, I constantly see their posts on my timeline and get to know what is currently happening in the field of educaiton. These are only a few of the benefits of using Twitter. Personally, the greatest benefit has been communicating with my classmates online. I really like that this allows us to collaborate and learn together. Since I was very familiar with Twitter prior to using it for class, I haven't experienced any issues with it. However, I could see how students who are unfamilar with it would experience issues. Understanding concepts such as "hashtag" can be very dif...