ILP Design- Edmodo

            For my second independent learning project I chose to design an Edmodo account learning environment. This is projected towards a third grade classroom because that it what I intend to be teaching in a few years. I thoroughly enjoy Edmodo. I believe it is a safe and easy way to communicate with students and even parents.

            Edmodo has many great accessories. Some include creating quizzes, assignments and polls. I utilized these three in my page. I made a multiple choice quiz to see how well students comprehended a story we read in class. I also assigned a science fair hypothesis to be typed and turned into the turn in box by December 1^st. Edmodo has the option to close off the turn in box after the due date which I found to be very convenient. Another feature I liked is the capability the teacher has to decide if she wants the quiz grades to automatically be put in the grade book.

            All in all, Edmodo is an efficient way to keep in touch with parents and students. If a student misses a day of class he/she will be able to check Edmodo to see what we did that day. The automatic grading system after taking quizzes also cuts down on the grading teachers usually have to manually do. I would recommend this to any teacher!

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ILP- Participation in Webinar

I participated in a Webinar on October 17^th. The webinar was titled, "Making Online Student Safety a Priority”. Throughout this webinar, three people spoke about slightly different topics all relating to the online safety of students. The first woman spoke about “Cyber Civics” which is a three step program for teachers to gain knowledge in: digital citizenship, information literacy, and media literacy hands on skills. The next woman to speak spoke about Gaggle and shared personal stories from the wonderful program. Gaggle has been able to help many students on the verge of getting in trouble or harmed. Lastly, the topic of Google Documents chat was brought up. Students are using this as a secret way to communicate back and forth. All in all, this webinar made listeners aware of the harmful things children could be exposed to online. Great one to listen to!

Here is a shot I captured at the end of this webinar.

10 Last But Certainly Not Least

I enjoyed this week’s assignment! I chose to do a Jeopardy PowerPoint on third grade American history. I never knew how to use a template from the Internet and was glad I learned how to do this. This is very useful to know how to use when I have my own classroom seeing as kids love games and if I can make them an interactive learning tool it will be the best of both worlds. I thought the navigation links were tedious, but that goes along with making a PowerPoint.

Data collection tools can be very useful in the classroom. Although I will be teaching the younger range of children surveys can still be effective. I can gear the questions towards the age group of second and third grade students.

Throughout this class we have had the opportunity to view everyone’s blog each and every week. I enjoyed reading about different opinions on technologies and teaching tactics. I think the most interesting was the post we were allowed to share our personal technology advancement and how it will be used in the classroom. With technology constantly changing, I’m sure we’ll have different views about teaching devices when the time comes to have student of our own.

The next technology skill I would like to learn is more about video conferencing. Conferences and webcasts seem to be the new up and coming thing. If I learn how to video conference, this could save from calling parents into a parent teacher conference.

I plan to have a very technology friendly classroom in the future. My kids will be skilled in different types such as safe Internet browsing and teaching through collaborative learning. Ways this can be done is by insuring adequate lessons about ways to use the Internet in a safe way through different activities to show their understanding. Also, when working collaboratively students can do work together without physically being together. They will be taught the different resources available in order to achieve sufficient collaborative learning.

Survey: Study Spots

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9 Technology: The Constant Change

The Flipped Classroom idea in my opinion is great! This allows students to watch video podcasts pertaining to each lesson before coming to class. The flipped classroom idea changes the teacher’s role when she is in the classroom. Students have more time to actively learn and discover rather than listening to a lecture for the whole class period. Upon searching for a site with vodcasts I found an 8^th grade class’ vodcasts for math and science. Each vodcast is labeled with the standard they are learning. Vodcasts

Professional development is the term used to describe the lifelong learning that teachers engage in throughout their years of teaching. Just as us students are furthering our education, teachers need to as well. Traditional teacher development is when teachers attend classes to learn and keep up with the technology advancements. Blogs, Webinars, Diigo, and Twitter are all different ways teachers can use professional development.

If I were to choose a web-based resource to use for professional development I would probably use blogging. I liked the tip that the podcast made about current teachers blogging so new teachers could read them and see the norm in classrooms. When I have a classroom of my own I will definitely utilize all the resources out there in order to ensure my classroom schedule is relatable to other teachers. I came across a blog from a teacher who shares what's going on in her classroom as well as everyday life tips as well. Check it out!

The PowerPoint assignment this week was very time consuming and tedious. I did learn how to put fewer words on the slides and more time into explaining each topic more thoroughly when presenting. I also learned how to find and use different PowerPoint layouts on the Internet. This will be a good skill to have when presenting different topics to my classroom. The layout designs allow for a more aesthetically pleasing presentation. Next time I make a PowerPoint I will probably start by creating a few master slides in the beginning so I don’t have to stop mid way and create them. All in all, this was a helpful assignment!