Post 8

One of the technologies introduced in the Sports Psych lab that I found would be beneficial in schools is the eye tracking device. The device would help both students and teachers. Teachers could use it to monitor where they are looking around the classroom, how long they are looking at a certain spot, and how frequently they are looking at certain areas. This would benefit teachers by improving their social interactions with the students and improving their attentiveness to the entire class. It could be used on students to track the same exact things like location, frequency, and duration on an area. This would benefit them because teachers would get the feedback to change their teaching strategy to help the student have a better learning quality.

PowerPoint is a great resource to enhance student learning through organized visuals. The Bloom's Taxonomy organizes objectives clearly for students to learn better. Powerpoint will be used to guide the remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create process of the Bloom taxonomy in a lesson about the novel The Catcher in the Rye. For "remember", I would begin with a slide that has the students list the characters out loud and then they would appear on the slide. Then for "understand" I would be to have the students describe the characters. A slide for "apply" would be that they have to predict how a character would react in several situations listed using the information they have about the character. For "analyze", I would have several of the themes that are found throughout the book and have students analyze the meaning of them. An "evaluate" slide in Powerpoint would include having the students justify why a character is the way he or she is. And for "create" I would have students create and design a visual that shows their evaluation of each character.

EdTech Focus on K-12 is a website that provides articles about technology and education issues. It has so many topics ranging from how and what educational technology works in the classroom to managing technology use. The website also offers webinars for teachers to optimize technology use and accommodate to the newest educational technology. It gives tips and tricks on managing, networking, and classroom use as well as reviews on different technology. The website is constantly updating with new articles about new educational technology that can be integrated in the classroom

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/

ILP "Participation"- Lynda.com Tutorial

I completed a Lynda.com tutorial about Google Apps for Educators by Aaron Quigley on October 16th.

3:30pm Began tutorial with "Getting Started with Google Apps for Educators.

It started with an explanation of Google Apps for education which is nothing different than a normal Google Apps account, but Google can certify an educational institution account. It's a collection of applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google sites which can help educators save time and deliver lessons. It explained how to setup the account for an educational institution, how to customize it, and add other users.

3:50pm Began “Using Gmail” section

The tutorial explains how to configure Gmail and customize our account. It explains mail delegation which allows other teachers to access others email boxes in the event that one is absent, so any work that might be in the mail box could be retrieved. An email whitelist is helpful because emails from specific IP addresses can be chosen to always appear in your inbox and never be sent to junk mail. Restrict delivery can be used so that students can only email each other and teachers. Gmail can be organized very efficiently. Archiving emails is really important for teachers in case of emergency to reference the principal, parents, other teachers, and students. Adding a signature to the end of each email makes it easy for contact information to be found.

4:15pm Began “Using Google Calendar”

Google Calendar is not only really helpful recording events and times, but it also gives teachers an opportunity to collaborate. It’s a way for the entire school to know what’s happening and when. Google Calendar allows you to have several calendars for different things such as a personal calendar, task calendar, and a school calendar. A schoolwide calendar would be beneficial and allow teachers access to edit it and add events. Google Calendar events also act as an invitation for people to respond to. It also provides reminder notifications for events.

4:30pm Began “Using Google Drive”

Google Drive is a network drive that allows us access to documents in various places such as at home and at school. We can upload documents, worksheets, spreadsheets, pictures videos to the server. It’s beneficial for teachers for collaboration. Teachers have access to edit documents with each other. We can also share documents with ourselves so we never have to forget materials at home because we can access it on our school computer using Google Drive.

4:38pm Began “Using Google Documents”

Google Docs is available to anyone who has access to Google. There several Google Docs such as documents that works like Microsoft Word, presentation that is like Powerpoint, and spreadsheets which is like Excel. All of these automatically save changes in Google Drive. These can be used to collaborate with teachers to work on projects because everyone can access them and have the ability to invite people to edit the documents.

4:50pm Began “Using Google Site”

Google sites is a great way to create a quick template-based website. As a teacher, one can create a school based collaborative website and edit it. Teachers can also create a google site for each class and upload student work like a digital bulletin board and include class calendars and other resources.

5:15pm Began “Google Apps in the Classroom”

Google Apps for Education allows teachers to link third party applications to accounts. Google has EDU apps for educational purposes to use in the classroom. Youtube can also be a very good educational tool to engage students as there are many educational channels. Google Scholar provides students with journal articles, conference papers, and newspaper articles.

5:25pm Began Conclusion

My learning experience with this tutorial for Google Apps for educators was good. It was easy to follow because of the mirrored screen that guided you where to go. I also appreciated the transcript that was provided to follow along if I missed something said and I did not have to rewind and rewatch it. I liked that it was an overview of how teachers could use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Documents, and Google sites to collaborate, communicate, and create. The tutorial course has given me advanced tips and tricks that I can use now as a student as well as a future educator.