Educational Technology

My Teacher Website I would like to maintain a teacher website. I think that it offers some great opportunities to send reminders, helpful articles and announcements to my students and their parents. It is also important to have because my students and their parents can find out about who their teacher is in my About Me page. Being able to stay in constant communication with students and parents on an accessible medium is worth the effort that it takes to make one and keep it updated. All in all, teacher websites are important and I believe that all teachers should have one that they consistently update and use. Technology for Efficiency Technology does a good job of taking tasks that would take hours and hours before, and making them into a 10-15 minute process (ie. going to the library for resources vs. searching Google Scholar). I see myself using technology to help accomplish my professional responsibilities more effectively and efficiently by utilizing different resources th...

School Websites Most schools have their own websites where people can go to find out information and important dates regarding the school. A lot of schools go even deeper and put links to their teacher's class pages on their website. I looked on Google for some examples of this, and it brought me across the Waterloo Local School District website, where they had class pages for every teacher in every grade for every subject. I clicked around on a few of the 8th grade teacher's pages and I really enjoyed looking at their class pages. Most of the class pages that I saw had a weekly assignments tab and a tab which brought you to the teacher's bio. Each teacher added their own flare with math problems of the week and links to fun resources to help their students. Here is a link to the website as well as what it looks like:  Waterloo Middle School Class Pages The Digital Divide The digital divide is considered to be the increasing divide between people who have easy acce...

ELA Technology Standards Incorporating technology into education is crucial in being able to captivate young learners by speaking their language. However, even though these young learners have grown up in an era full of very innovative technology, they need to be educated on how to use that save innovative technology to benefit them in the world of academia. ELA stands for English Language Arts. ELA is very multifaceted and being proficient in it is key to success in all subjects of school, so to incorporate ELA and technology is important. There is one 8th grade standard that effectively draws the importance of a connection between ELA and technology. The standard is below and can be found at  ELA Technology Standards .   Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others. In my own words, this means that students can t...

Learning Management Systems My experience with online learning started in college. Throughout my K-12 experience, I never personally participated in virtual school, but I did have a number of friends that did. They all had great experiences with virtual school because it fit their schedule and accommodated for them better than their neighborhood school could. When I entered college, I had the opportunity to sign up for my first online class and I fell in love with the flexibility and accessibility of course materials. All of the online courses that I have taken in college have been asynchronous. I find this to be the best part of online classes because it allows for students to learn on their schedule. The fact of the matter is that life is hectic, so having the ability to make your education work for your schedule is very empowering. An important term to know in the online learning community is Learning Management System (LMS). An LMS is the system that serves as the online dashb...

Microsoft Word Throughout my academic experience in K-12 and college, I have become intertwined with and become great friends with Microsoft Word. What I failed to realize in the moment, but do in hindsight, is that when I began getting older and producing more official academic work, the more I used Microsoft Word as opposed to putting pen on paper. I now realize that this was the case because of the amazing capabilities that Microsoft Word has.  To start, Microsoft Word can identify grammar and spelling errors on the spot, which makes it easier for the student to see and fix their mistakes with ease. Microsoft Word also helps educators because they can easily put their student's work in a program that identifies plagiarism to see if their students are turning in their own work or not. In addition to the simple ease of writing and grading, Microsoft Work also increases the accessibility of your work by other people exponentially. This increase in accessibility c...

I just made a new twitter. My twitter handle is @FsuLoveland

Technology in the Classroom Technology has a large place in the classroom in the current day and age. When broken down, there are two main influences that educators and students have to use technology in the classroom: The first influence is that the students who are currently in the K-12 setting have all grown up surrounded by an immense amount of technology. For educators, the influence of technology on their current students is something that CAN'T be denied and CAN be used as a leg up for educators because their students are heavy technology consumers and subsequently, are drawn to it. This means that if educators can effectively build technology into their curriculum, then it will allow the educators to speak the language of their students and increase the chances of the curriculum being able to effectively engage many of their students.  Technology was made to make life easier. Though I find that there is beauty in putting pen on paper, having the ability to check entire...