Emily Danielle

         As an elementary school teacher, there is so much more things to keep up with in the classroom other than just grades. Excel is the perfect tool to keep track of not only grades but attendance, transportation,volunteer information, parent contacts, events and many other records teachers need to keep up with. Having a workbook with multiple sheets in it is a great way to be able to organize information that is easy to find and access. Surveys are another great tool allowing students to have their input that is anonymous, which may encourage students to be more willing to participate and be honest. Qualtrics is a great service tool because of how easy it is to create as well as access results.       Seeing other student's blogs throughout the semester has been a great way to see all of the amazing things we can create with educational technology. Since there are many different ways to use the technology we study in class, it's very interes...

       A flipped classroom defies the normal roles you would normally think of teachers and students having in a class and the way their time is spent. Rather than a teacher lecturing during instructional time, for homework the students listen to prerecorded lectures. this changes the student's role changes from "passive receivers to active learners engaged in exploration and discovery" since they have already learned the basis of content and fundamentals through homework. This allows for teachers for take a guidance role in deepening understanding of content rather than an information source pouring/drilling information into students. Technology is vital in the success of flipped classroom, so students can access their at home lectures through YouTube, Twitter and other websites. Here is a link to "TeacherTube" a website full of educational videos that teachers could use in their classrooms:  https://www.teachertube.com         Thro...

Today in class individually I got to look deeper into a specific teacher professional development resource called EdCamp. These online conferences are great for teachers to connect with other educators from anywhere in the world to discuss topics that they are interested in, whether it be technology in the classroom, behavior management, etc. It is a great tool for teachers to gain insight of other strategies and ideas used around the world that they can implement in their own teaching. Through viewing others bookmarks it was cool to see how many of the professional development tools we use in our daily life. These include twitter, linkedin, diigo and other social media/bookmarking sites. These tools we may use at our own leisure in our free time but it's amazing to see how educators can communicate and share ideas with other educators to continue their professional developments through these same sites. I also tough the use of ted talks were very interesting because as a student ...

   Adaptive technologies are used in classrooms to support all kinds of learners including gifted and english language learning students as well as those with disabilities such as visual/hearing impairments, dyslexia/other learning disabilities, motor disabilities and many others. When paired with effective teaching these technologies can help students with limitations excel in the classroom, adapting to their disabilities through technology allow these student's capabilities in the classroom to improve as they reach their highest potential as learners. Students with learning disabilities can be supported with technology by using grammar/spell checks, audio books so they can get the information both visually and by hearing, and programs like ReadThinkWrite explained in the book that help students organize thoughts and ideas. For physical disabilities there are input devices such as enlarged keyboards, joysticks, etc. making technology more accessible for these students. Studen...

Individually through this week's lesson I got to research all the different forms of adaptive technology that exists.  It's amazing to see how students with all disabilities ranging from visual, auditory, physical, learning and beyond are able to be incorporated into a normal classroom through the use of technology. Through pervious lessons we saw the features of all these technologies including the smart board, text-to-speech, and other amazing technologies. But through individual research I got to see that these great technologies can really help people with disabilities keep up in the classroom. For example, the interactive features of the smart board allow students with visual impairments to be able to participate in these hands-on activities because visuals are often larger and contrast is better, allowing the to be able to see. Through group presentations I got to specifically focus on how technology can help both english language learners as well as gifted students. F...

By using twitter as an educational tool, I never realized how informational it can be. There are so many different accounts making it easier to connect with big educational companies, educational professionals and even allows you to see what things are going on in FSU's College of Education that we may not have seen or heard about if it hadn't been for twitter. Personally I don't like to read really long articles, by having a 140 character limit I can get the summary of an article/report and then decide if I want to read the whole article that is attached. The biggest benefit is definitely  the accessibility to big company's ideas, products, services, etc. that we may not have heard of without twitter or other social media, allowing for educators to employ these new ideologies in the classroom. The only issue I have with twitter is sometimes the 140 character limit isn't enough, although it is great to summarize sometimes you cant get enough in with the link or hash...