Website Design

            Who knew designing a website could be so easy?

             Today I learned just how easy it truly was as a guest speaker in my ED 270 class walked the class through a tutorial on WordPress. In under an hour we learned how to create a page, a website theme, links, videos, blog posts,  and so much more. It's been a long time since I learned so much in such a small time frame, and actually enjoy myself while doing so. The tutorial made me extremely excited to dig further into the world of website design and start my own websites. The uses for having my own websites are mind blowing in their breadth and depth. One use I will take advantage of in the future is creating a website for my classroom. Having a website where I can easily communicate to students and parents what lessons, tools, etc. we're going to be doing in class is invaluable. I could even use the website to have notifications when exams and projects are due, post a calendar of school and class activities and even update parents on how their students are doing. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination when it comes to website design, and that is an amazing thing. One that I can't wait to take advantage of myself and hopefully gift my future students with.

Hour of Code

     

               Last week my ED 270 class provided a crash course in coding. When I heard that our activity for the day was coding my first thought was "good luck with that. There's no way I'll be able to code." I was proven wrong in under an hour. How? Well, my professor introduced the class to the groundbreaking website that is Hour of Code. This website teaches people of all levels, from kindergarden to computer science majors, the art of coding through interactive games. I personally chose to play Frozen and Angry Birds to learn basic coding and was surprised by how easy and fun coding was. This is definitely a tool I would use in my future classroom, especially considering that in twenty years most of the jobs my students will have will involve coding, or at the very least computer science.

If we teach kids like we taught kids yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow. We must prepare them for their future and Hour of Code is a great tool to do just that.

Generating Apps

                   Yesterday, my ED 270 was pretty cool. Why? Because I was given the chance to create my own app! As most people do, I always thought about how cool it would be create an app, and maybe get rich from it, but assumed that you needed to be a tech genus to make an app. The reality is that as long as you have access to a computer and know basic computer skills you can generate your very own app. My mind went into overdrive thinking about all the different ideas I had for an app. I choose to make one with an educational theme that I could use in my classroom. On my app, there was a calendar for important class, school and community events, a tab for lesson plans, a tab for extra resources, and alerts for when projects and tests were. To be able to give such a device to parents that would easily allow them to know what's going on at school and how their child was doing would be invaluable. This will be a huge part of my future classroom, as will using other apps to enhance my lessons and help students learn and have fun while doing so.

Podcasting

                 Last week, I was introduced to, and had the opportunity to explore, podcasts. Now, I knew what podcasts were. I had just never listened to one. The amount of podcasts available is mind blowing and quite overwhelming. Basically any subject you could think of there's a podcast for it, which means that it could be a phenomenal resource for the classroom. However, to sort through all the ones that are unhelpful and find one that covers the topic you want in a way that could enhance a lecture is extremely time consuming.  In a half hour of surfing through all the podcasts available from ITunes, I found a lot of interesting podcasts but none that I would use in a classroom without modifying. Given this, if a teacher has time it would more effective for the teacher to create  their own podcasts. Such podcasts could be good for kids to listen to at home and for review of materials. Not to mention, if a kid had been sick or away, podcasts would be a simple way to keep the child on track with school. I'm definitely keeping this in mind for my future classroom and can't wait to create a podcast of my own.

Real or Hoax?

           

              Last Friday, my teacher for ED 270 gave the class the opportunity to test out real and hoax websites. It was a really fun experience-- the class was laughing as we scoped and evaluated sites about pregnant men, the country of Ruritania, and jackalope conspiracies. I found this lesson entertaining but also very helpful as it taught us how important it is to teach our future students about safe Internet usage and how to identify legitimate and accurate websites. From this activity, I plan on teaching my students about how to identify fake websites, especially before I have them explore the Internet or do research projects. It might even be a fun to have the students create their own websites and then have the class see if they can spot which ones are real or fake, using the students' creations. Overall, this is definitely a lesson to keep in mind for my own course work and for the future.

The Final Product

 

             A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had the opportunity to learn how to use iMovie through a video project. To remind you guys, the topic of the video was going to be what words can a person use other than the r-word in conversation. This topic is near and dear to my heart as I have younger family members with intellectual disabilities who have to deal with being called the r-word and bullying, on top of learning the best way for them to navigate society and still be happy. Today, people use the r-word as a slur in conversations, which is completely unnecessary as there are thousands of words in the English language that could articulate your point more effectively. I'm proud of the job I did on this assignment and had a great time interviewing people, as well as learning such a cool tech tool. After this project, I can see how having students create their own videos could be a fun and interactive way for kids to learn and take charge of their own learning.

            On the day of turning in my video, I was also taught how to use Google Earth. Now, like most kids nowadays I have used Google Earth to travel through my own neighborhood and exploring the Loch Ness. In this class, I learned the wide scope of the app and all you can do with it. A cool feature is that you can create tours and at the spots you want to travel to you can include information, pictures, and links to other sources. This could be a great tool to teach kids about their local neighborhood and states. Or you could use it to show students different types of animal habitats, the lands of past and current wars, battles, historical events or even for comparing the different types of towns across the world and how similar conditions cause different effects in different living situations. I can't wait to explore this app and utilize it in my classroom someday.