Reflection of diigo

As a tool, I think DIIGO does a really good job of organizing one's personal information and findings as well as connection someone to the ideas and articles of other people. I liked the ability to bookmark an article on a separate website, because it allowed for transfer to other computers besides a personal laptop. I also really enjoyed the tagging as a means of organizing the articles, so ideas do not get lost, and the ability to highlight and comment, so you can easily return to specific ideas on a website. Both of these features make it much simpler to recall the information on a specific site that you are wanting to remember.

I think that I will use social bookmarking in the future, specifically the bookmarking of websites and the groups. I will be able to use the bookmarking for both personal and professional usage, and the tags will give me the ability to separate these two while remaining on the same platform. I think that I will also use the DIIGO groups as a source of professional development, allowing me to connect with other educators and get new ideas for the classroom.

ILP Design- Prezi

For my Independent Learning Project, I used Prezi to create a presentation about watercolor techniques. Prezi is a presentation tool that exists online and allows the user to create an interactive presentation building off a present template. It allows the user to insert content such as images or PowerPoint slides within the prezi itself. Prezi functions on movement as the program pans from one slide to another, creating visual interest.

http://prezi.com/rjpvhqvkvmv2/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

#8 Technology Trends

Last week we visited a lab that helps accommodate students with disabilities. It offered a wide range of technology that would make it easier for students to perform daily educational tasks. My favorite technology that was introduced was the LiveScribe pen, and this could have broad applications in schools for students with and without disabilities. The pen records a lecture and then can match the timing in the recording to notes that are written down by the student. This could be helpful for students who are reviewing for tests, to connect the teachers actual words to their notes, or for students that have difficulty processing all the information during a lecture, they would have chance to go back and hear the content again.

Bloom's taxonomy is six major categories that divide up educational goals. The main categories are: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. Powerpoint can be used to help achieve these educational goals in a lesson. For example, a history lesson on the civil war may use PowerPoint to present information to the class. For remember, the teacher might list terminology and definitions onto the PowerPoint slide for the student to memorize. For understand, the teacher might include a bulleted list of questions for the students to answer aloud in class. For applying, the students might use a line tool to edit a photo of the US. The could draw a line that shows where the country was divided, in between the North and South. For analyzing, the teacher might insert a chart into the slide and have the students help them fill out a cause and effect chart for the causes of the war and their impending effects. For evaluating, a teacher might embed a video of a historian discussing his opinion on the reasons behind the south leaving the union. This could cause a class discussion where students either need to defend or argue against the historian's viewpoint. For create, the students could be divided up into groups and have to create their PowerPoints on a specific civil war battle which they will need to present to the class.

The Huffington Post Tech is a division of the main Huffington Post, a news website that posts daily updates on current events and trends, that deals specifically with technology. The site includes daily updated content on trends in technology from a variety of authors and technological fields.

DIIGO #4

This week, I learned that there are a lot more solutions to students with disabilities using technology than I had originally thought. There are increasing solutions for students with disabilities such as dyslexia, with programs that are not only helpful but also can be fun and inspire learning for students.

#7 Adaptive Technology and Website

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that accommodations to individuals with disabilities. One way that this translates into schools is with adaptive technology. These students may not be able to use technology traditionally, due to either physical or mental disability, but they are able to use it with the help of certain input and output devices. Devices for students with a physical disability might include a brail printer, voice recognition software for a student who cannot type, or alternative keyboards and/or switchboards who might not be able to use a normal mouse and keyboard.  A student with a learning disability might use a content mapping software, such as Inspiration, to link together ideas or a spell check software to help with word processing. These devices can help support both the use of the computer or learning while using technology. This technology was used in one of my classrooms in high school when a student with dyslexia had text from websites read aloud by the computer. Adaptive technologies would be very useful in the classroom to help students with disabilities, but these devices are often very pricey and would require training from the teacher.

I think that building the class website was something very beneficial for me as a future educator. Class websites are very common and building a website is a task that I will most likely have to do when I start teaching, so it was nice to have experience with this. I thought that the program we used was very intuitive and it made it very easy to place items on the page, and the type of item you were wanting. It felt like using virtual blocks to build the page. The only thing that I did not like was I found it kind of difficult to edit specific fonts. From working on this webpage project, I learned how to embed code into a website, putting in my google calendar. I also learned how to navigate a web creation software. Next time working on this assignment, I would like to take more time getting higher quality photographs to improve the website's aesthetics.
http://mskayladallen.weebly.com/

From DIIGO, I learned how to organize pages beyond simple book marking. The website allowed for coherent organization and the referencing of specific material within a website. I learned how to select specific material within a page that would be most helpful for future projects and the importance of having quality material. DIIGO could be used in my personal professional endeavors by letting me save specific ideas for lesson plans or relevant material for class. This would also be useful for team members, because the information in a group would be easy to share as well as highlight and sticky note specific content within a website and tell the group why this material is important. This could also be used in a classroom assignment for students to examine articles or other websites and be able to share these with the class. Other students would easily be able to access this material as well as make comments on it.

ILP

For my independent learning project, I worked with a program called Sketchup. As a future art teacher, I am always looking for new programs and technology that I can bring into my classroom and I think this would be a cool new technology to consider. This would be really great for students wanting to make models for larger scale projects, but this allows for technology as a nontraditional material. The program allows the user to create 3D models in a three dimensional space. You can use both lines and solid forms to create a model in the space. The tool does take a little bit of trial and error when you are starting out, so you can figure out how to use the different tools, especially when working with depth. I decided to create a model of a pavilion for my project. I used circle, polygon, square, and text tools most often to help create the structure.