Johnson Standard 6.2

LiveBinder 8th grade history

PowToon

Candidates select and use grade-level and content-specific technology resources, including assistive technology, to increase student participation in the total curriculum.

This particular standard is meant for me, as a prospective teacher, to become familiar with ways to enrich my lesson plans with technology that is developed specifically for what I will be teaching. For instance, if there is a virtual museum tour, I could use that. It also means that I need to be comfortable enough with new technologies for assisting me in the classroom. Being familiar with tablets for instance. Tablets are being found in more and more places now and they can be as good as having a secondary teacher in the classroom. Even if you have a limited number available to use, splitting the usage up to small groups at a time allows you focus on a particular group of students that might need more attention and help with something, while other students are using the tablets to do the next assignment. IT will also help with the fact that I will have inclusion classrooms. I have a niece who was having trouble developing her speech. So much trouble that she, and my sister and her husband, qualified for a program whereby they were able to get a tablet device at an extreme discount in order to use the various programs available to help my niece, Samantha, develop her speech! She can now talk to me on the telephone and be perfectly understood. I know that I will have students who have similar problems in my classroom and there are so many different programs out there to assist them, that it would be foolish not to utilize it. After all, if I want to inspire my students, what better way to inspire them than to show them that no matter what sorts of difficulties you have, you can still learn the same things as everyone else. I really really enjoy Livebinder!! IT is so fabulous that I plan to continue to use it, both for professional and personal projects! It's better than Pinterest in some ways because I can link directly to what it is I want to do instead of repinning something from someone else's board and having to go through several clicks before reaching the actual content. I like it better than Evernote in some ways because it has more of a notebook feel to it, which kind of makes me feel a little safer, haha! I can't help it, I guess I'm slightly anachronistic in wanting to still do things with paper and notebook and this gives me the best of both worlds!

The biggest concern I have about using various technologies in the classroom is that how will I stay on top of all the different ones that will continue to be developed? I'm primarily worried that I'll end up using something that becomes so out of date that it's more harmful than useful in my classroom and I won't know for sure what technology to start using instead. 

Standard 6.1

Quizlet

Colonial WebQuest

Google Drawing Classroom

6.1      

Candidates integrate instructional technology to facilitate learning in their classrooms, to supplement instructional strategies, to design instructional materials, and to enhance hands-on experiences and problem solving

A teacher needs to be able to implement many facets of technology into his/her classroom. With technology surrounding everyone of nearly every day of their lives now, it is virtually impossible to keep it out of the classroom. I need to be able to include plenty of opportunities for my students to use technology to learn. This will help to keep them interested because it will seem more like the things they do in their everyday lives. They can take virtual tours of Williamsburg to see the day to day life of Colonial Americans. They can create a vacation plan to follow the trek of Washington's army, checking for memorials in different locations for a virtual field trip. By implementing various technologies into the classroom, I will also be given all my students the chance to learn in ways that will suit them best.
I really like the Quizlet. I think that will be wonderful for setting up flashcards for the students to use that they can access from anywhere they have an internet connection (with most people having smartphones these days, I expect most of my 8th graders will have access to the internet). The students can also help me with creating future flashcards that they feel will benefit future classes. While I will probably use WebQuests that others have created, I'm not sure yet that I feel confident enough in my abilities with it to create one for my students. I know I've created one that's linked to this blog, but to be honest, I'm not sure I completely understand the process of creating a WebQuest. That and despite the fact that the platform has already been set up for me to create one, I do not feel internet/tech savvy enough to create one that looks polished properly. This will be something I will have to spend more time with. I'm going to ask my sister (she has 5 kids) and a few of my aunts/uncles (I have several cousins that are close to the 8th grade range) if they will allow their kids to look at these WebQuests and see if they are something they would like to try. Maybe if I get some feedback from the demographic I'm aiming for, I'll find some ways to work on what needs to be improved.
I hope that whatever school I end up working for in the future has some of these technologies already implemented in their curriculum. I plan to work with other teachers to help myself stay up to date on what is in use and the best way to use these technologies. I expect that this particular class, Instructional Technology, will continue to be offered and to that end, I'm thinking that it may be beneficial to retake the class every few years to help keep myself up to date on what sites are out there for teachers to utilize.

Johnson Standard 6.3

 Standard 6.3

Taking the quiz
Results Page
Johnson Standard 6.3

1.Teachers and those training to be teachers need to be able to utilize technology in order to help streamline their assessment of their students and the students needs in the classroom. This means that I need to strive that much harder to become familiar with the many different applications of technology out there in order to make myself the best possible teacher I can be. As an 8th grade history teacher, having these many methods available will be extremely useful in my classroom as my students will be of an age where having their homework and possibly class discussions online will be more appealing to them. They'll be able to work on their assignments wherever they are and can keep in touch with myself and their fellow students if they need assistance. With me being able to analyze how many of my students are performing better with different the different platforms available, I can determine the best one to use for my classroom experience.
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2. I know I'm not the most tech savvy student in my class and to be truthful, sometimes the sheer volume of different applications out there makes my head swim. I did enjoy creating the infuse learning quiz. I thought it was much more streamlined than the flubaroo quiz. If that is still useful when I graduate, I want to continue to use it. I can easily create short daily quizzes for my class to take or weekly quizzes. It is also easier to analyze the results in my opinion. The Jing application was interesting. Much easier than using the Mac video editor for what we were trying to accomplish. I would like to see if I can use that in my classroom with my students by having them find images that answer questions from class and using Jing to upload them to our virtual classroom.

3. The biggest questions I have are primarily, how will I know that something will serve my purpose best when there are so many choices out there? I know that in part, I will only arrive at a conclusion by some trial and error and using recommendations of those who have gone before me or are more fearless with technology. I think that if I can become familiar enough to not get my students to roll their eyes at me too much (not at all is a bit much to hope for I think) for being behind the times, then between my students and myself, we can create a virtual classroom of sorts where we can exchange ideas and information about history and how is affects us today. I know I can easily get into a rut with things I'm familiar with so I think I will try to ask my students for suggestions and other input, both at the beginning and the end of the year.

4. I would love to have practice items to do in order to practice with the different applications more. Maybe an additional virtual classroom where I have to do a more thorough preparation of some of these things in order to actually drive a class forward. I suppose I can create one myself, but I would like to have someone to evaluate and gauge how I'm doing with the different technologies I'm using. It may be useful to create a small group of other students who want to continue practicing and see if it's possible to develop a system of practices with them. I need to devote some time at least once a week to review some of the new items I'm learning about in order to stay as up to date as possible.