#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.