ILP #2

Interview with my sister, a first grade teacher at Westgate Elementary - Ms. Tringali

Question 1: What kind of educational technologies do you use in your classroom?
Aside from the typical technology seen in the classroom - an over head projector, and computers - Westgate Elementary uses Class Dojo. This is an application where students can earn Dojo points to earn rewards or get Dojo points taken away when they misbehave. I can also communicate with parents through this app through a messenger. 

Question 2: Do you think they are helpful and/or make your job easier?
Having a form of incentive defiantly helps my students with their behavior. Whenever they hear the noise that someone has lost a Dojo point they automatically quiet down because they are afraid it could be them. Using an overhead projector during lessons also makes explaining things much easier, and I am able to project exactly what they class is working on. 

Question 3: Do the technologies help with communicating with the parents?
Parents are able to see how their students Dojo is doing through the application so this defiantly helps with communication. Many of my students parents are hispanic so communicating in other ways can be difficult but they can see how many points their student has at all times. 

Question 4: If you could change the technologies that you use in your classroom how would you and why?
I wish that Class Dojo had more to the application. I wish there could be a calendar aspect of it or it could send reminders to parents about homework due. I wish that there was a way to allow my students parents to write in Class Dojo in Spanish and then have it translate to English so they could better communicate with me. 

Question 5: If you could get one free piece of educational technology what would it be and why?
I have always wanted a smart board for my classroom! I think they are super helpful and can be utilized in so many different ways. When a piece of technology is both cool and helpful more students would want to participate in the lesson so that they can interact with the technology. 

Interview taken on Monday April 16th and 7:15pm 

Blog #10

I think as a teacher I can use surveys to get an anonymous opinion on how the year is going from my students and parents. I think it is important to understand how your students are reacting to your teaching  so that if it is not going as well as it should you are able to alter it and better the students. I can also use a survey prior to teaching a lesson such as U.S history to see how much prior knowledge my students have on the subject. 

I really enjoyed reviewing my classmates blogs and seeing their newsletter assignment. You could really see different levels of creativity in each students assignments. I enjoy web design so seeing these different creative layouts was very interesting to me.

Next, I would like to learn more about website design and creation. Although I did the assignment through weebly there was so much more that website had to offer that I did not know how to use. I think having a classroom website where teachers and parents can interact and see homework posted or reminders is super helpful. To achieve my goal I will try to spend more time on this site and play around with the different tools in figuring out what they do exactly. 

Blog Post #9

The flipped classroom takes on a different method to teach. It is a method where students learn the content prior to coming to class through online lectures or videos and then in class they talk about what they learned, ask questions or work on assignments. I have never been in a flipped classroom and I do not think if I would really like it. There have been studies showing the benefits of the flipped classroom and how it can help students, so I think it would be very interesting to try it.

More about the flipped classroom: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/ 

The podcast discussed different "open terms" including open source and open content. one term mentioned in the podcast is "open source". The definition for this term is software that is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.Open source can be a type of  software with a source code that anyone can change, inspect, and enhance. Open source seems like a really great way to allow more students to learn and get educated. Many students cannot afford textbooks or software for their classes and this closes that financial gap. 

More about open source: https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source

While I was working on the PowerPoint assignment I had to use many skills. One skill that I acquired was how to make the nonlinear PowerPoint. I had always seen my teachers make fun jeopardy games but I had no idea how to make them. After this assignment I can see myself creating fun games like this for my future classroom. I also enjoyed making the trivia about a show that I really enjoy. Adding the narrations was a fun feature that I have never used either. I think this will come in handy if I ever have to post an online lecture for students to watch.

Assignment 6

Assignment 5