Alyssa's Blog EME 2040

If you click on any school website, there is often a tab for teacher or staff pages. Here you can find links to all teacher and staff member pages that each contain different information specific to whos page it is. The page I visited was Lemon Bay High School's Staff Page. This is my old high school so I knew exactly where to go from the home page. Below is a screenshot showing a list of several staff members and teachers, each with their own page and it is categorized to make it easier to find who you're looking for. Clicking on a few of the pages, you can easily see a trend. Each teacher provides their name and email making it easy for parents and students to contact them with any questions and concerns. Also provided usually are several links to pages with activities or class lessons, sometimes even a schedule or calendar for the class to follow along with. http://www.lemonbayhigh.com/staff.html In the future I definitely see myself using technology in many differen...

Initially, I believed Diigo was not really something I would use alot. I personally am not a tech-savvy person, but in my future classroom, I hope to change that by incorporating educational technologies, maybe even Diigo. Diigo is a perfect online platform and it has many capabilities. I like being able to post and share things with my group members or other students from my class. I surprisingly enjoy blogging. Blogging gives me the ability to share my interests and thoughts with a large amount of people, almost instantly. Blogging, especially using Blogger or Twitter is actually extremely easy. Just click "new post", type your thoughts, then press "publish" and you're done! That's amazing, coming from a person who is not necessarily good with technology. A Web 2.0 tool I find valuable and may use in my future classroom is YouTube. As a teenager in the current generation, YouTube is a common thing. In my future classroom, I believe YouTube could be a p...

For my design project I chose to create a tool that was personally helpful to me back in middle and high school. In school, my teachers would use Kahoot to create trivia games where we would be quizzed on how well we knew the topics discussed in class, and it gave us students a nice break from the constant lectures and notetaking. Designing a Kahoot trivia game was not hard considering Kahoot's website makes it super easy to do. You simply sign up and create a game! I chose to create a small trivia quiz which related to my major as well as my future career as a special education teacher. My quiz consisted of six questions, giving students 120 seconds to read and answer each question. Normally teachers only give around 60 seconds to answer each question, but knowing that special ed students often lack the fast cognitive reactions we have, I extended the time. I also chose to include images for each question that I believed most went with the topic. My question were straightforward a...

Using Twitter has definitely been new for me. I have had a personal twitter in the past but I never actually used it. In this class, I have used Twitter to connect with several educational groups and advocates for special education. It has been beneficial because it has provided me with current information on the constantly changing education system. Twitter may be beneficial in my future career, because it may allow me to connect better with my students or may allow me to be quickly updated with changing information that may be important to me as an educator. The digital divide can affect student success in schools because it may cause students to be unable to turn in assignments because they do not have access to technology. Causes of this digital divide can include a student's socio-economic class, race (segregation in certain areas), and possibly just the school's inability to provide students with internet access. As a classroom teacher, I can not expect every student to...

In my personal case I believe the three main ELA Standards listed for First Grade I would be able to adequately teach using just my prior knowledge. I have been around a first grade teacher almost my entire life, and I have gained classroom experience through my own teachers and my internships in classrooms. To teach first graders text features, it only requires that you are able to teach simple skills and to be able to explain each feature. Asking and answering questions is a basic skill and can be taught easily but also be a type of trial and error; the students need to know that there is "no stupid questions" and I believe I can establish that. The use of digital tools to "produce and publish writing" may be a little more difficult simply because as a teacher of first graders, there may be some slower learning students who have not reached the ability to produce pieces of writing as they are still learning basics such as sentence structure and punctuation. In t...

As a student, I use Microsoft Word almost everyday. I use Word to primarily write essays. However, I also use Word to take notes in class because it is faster than writing them. I have seen my teachers use Word to guide presentations in class. My personal experience with copyright is just making sure every source I use is cited or I always credit the person I get the information from. Being fair with materials in an educational environment is just proper etiquette and cheating is not something I take lightly, as a student or as a future educator. I am always fair and I believe in doing my own work and not stealing someone else's or allowing them to copy off me. As a teacher, I would just begin every year by making it clear to my students that copyright is serious and that cheating will not be tolerated, and consequences would be given. To combat academic dishonesty in my classroom, I would ensure every student took an oath and signed their name to a quote or paragraph on cheati...

As a future teacher, I believe what most influences teachers to use technology in the classroom, is the way it instantly engages the student. As a student myself, I know that if I am able to use any sort of technology in the classroom, whether it be a computer or my cell phone, I am going to be engaged because it gives me an easy way to access help but also gives me a chance to use something I am familiar with and connect it to what I am currently learning. ISTE standards for educators all include the idea of improvement with both the students and teachers practices involving technology. One standard that is meaningful to me is the standard under leadership. Standard 2b for educators states that the educator must "advocate for equitable access to educational technology, digital content and learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all students" (ISTE). This standard specifically stuck out to me because I have personally been impacted by teachers that have over qua...