Nicole's Tech Blog

     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...

Prior to this project, I had never used Prezi. Therefore, I chose to create my presentation it in order to familiarize myself with the website. Although I found that I prefer Microsoft PowerPoint, I found Prezi to be a fun tool that students might find more engaging. My presentation is aimed at teaching students about the characteristics of polygons. Attached is the link to my presentation: https://prezi.com/view/IoBc7r9PPfrcL7r0b5Vx/

We reviewed Mrs. LeBlanc's Kindergarten Classroom Website from Diplomat Elementary School. https://app.oncoursesystems.com/school/webpage/452539/494293 Contrast:      The contrast is well done and you can read everything quickly. When you hover over certain headlines with your cursor, the headlines turn a different color which allows you to know exactly what you are clicking on. This is a very helpful tool and makes the website look more neat. Repetition:      Mrs. LeBlanc uses similar visual elements repeated throughout her webpage. For example, the titles are bold and the headings are both bold and underlined. She also uses images throughout her page consistently. This helps to create organization for the webpage.     Allignment:      Although she did a great job with her webpage, similar elements are not alligned within her website. If she did this, it would improve her webpage greatly. She could allign her content wi...

     In class, we have already learned to evaluate websites but I liked that this assignment in particular exposed us to evaluating teacher resources. This is a useful skill to have as a teacher. Through my individual efforts, I was able to learn about RescueTime. This website manages your time by keeping track of what teachers are doing as they surf the web. By viewing the bookmarks and annotations of others, I was able to learn about other interesting teacher productivity tools. Most of these were new to me and I found them very interesting. I was able to discuss these resources with my classmates.

     I visited a few of Diplomat Elementary School's Kindergarten class pages. Information that I see publicly includes teacher contact information, the class' weekly agenda, the classroom schedule, and important upcoming dates and activities. This is essential information that all parents should have access to in order to be involved with their child's education. I like that the teachers to keep their websites up to date by updating them each week with new learning goals and agendas. Each of the websites also has a sidebar with important links such as the school district website, parent portals, and additional resources that parents can have their children use to aid in the learning process. Check out Diplomat Elementary School's page with links to classroom websites! http://dpl.leeschools.net/classroom-websites Here is a classroom page that I thought was very helpful for parents.       As a teacher, I can envision myself using too...

     This week's topic revolved around the use of Web 2.0, which allows users to interact and share with each other online. I was able to experience this myself through the use of Diigo in class. Personally, I really enjoyed collaborating with my classmates in order to have effective dialogue in regards to the website that we were assigned. It has been wonderful to get to know this website. Since I'd like to teach at the Kindergarten level, I cannot see myself using this tool with my students. However, I know that I could use this website to share resources and helpful teaching tools with my coworkers.

I reviewed @smoothjazz_eme blog post about a video project that allows students of different grades to work with each other! #FSUEdTech — Nicole Garcia (@nicolegarcia_ed) October 10, 2017

     Of the Web 2.0 technologies covered in the podcast, I would say that blogs and Diigo are the most useful classroom tools. These tools seem very effective as they allow for teachers to monitor what students are publishing online and how they are interacting with one another. Specifically, blogs allow for students to have an online publishing platform where they have an audience. This gives students some freedom while also allowing teachers to oversee what they are positing. Diigo allows for students to share resources online with their classmates. When students post on this platform, they are posting to a classroom page, which allows teachers to view their content. These tools support teacher professional development as teachers can responsibly oversee their students. On the other hand, I would say that Web 2.0 technologies such as Wikis and Twitter are less useful in the classroom. This is because it makes student collaboration more difficult while also making it ha...

     Twitter is usually the place I go to for weird cat memes, pictures of food, or just to read celebrity drama. Therefore, I never imagined using Twitter for school related purposes. I remember chuckling to myself when we were told that we would be completing an assignment via Twitter. Despite my early doubts, I have found Twitter both productive and informative. I would have never expected to use those words to describe the social media platform where I spend hours procrastinating and honestly, wasting my time on. So far, I have interacted with Brenna Carrigan and Andrew Woodle. I look forward to talking to more individuals from our class in order to get to know one another and share our viewpoints on education related topics. Using Twitter has been beneficial since it has allowed me to interact one on one with my classmates, therefore providing a more personal interaction. This is nice because we don't always have time to do this in class. In my future career, Twitter...