The Story

For teacher websites, I looked at FSUS, a school that I am currently observing. With the second grade classes, I noticed that they all have an "About the Teacher" tab that is available to everyone. On this site, it includes the teacher's history both in their K12 education and their career. For the teacher I am observing, Mrs. Wilson, she was in the military for a couple of years, and then came back and got her degree at Flagler College. She has been at FSUS for the past seven years. Also, all of the websites had a class schedule. I'm assuming this information is given for parents so that they know where and what their kids are doing during the school day. Finally, in multiple class websites there are tabs for upcoming events such as field trips, book fairs, and there are links for newsletters and curriculum so that teachers can stay up to date with their child's education.  In my future as an...

For my project, I did a Lynda.com course on Keynote for Educators. It went through why teachers should use Keynote if they have an IOS product, like I do, and how to use action buttons for an interactive tool. Also, it went over how to use Keynote for a flipped classroom, or teaching outside classroom hours and reinforcing activities during class time, with the feature of being able to record yourself over slides to create a short video. Finally, the video went over how students can use Keynote, with using it to assess students through presentations or having them create a flipped classroom lesson themselves. Overall, this course taught me some features Keynote that I can use on my laptop as a future educator and why it is an effective educational tool. The VoiceThread summary can be found here .

Initially, Diigo seems like the best resource for collaboration and research. When learning how to save the social bookmarking website in class, I was surprised that there were different groups that you could share information with. Knowing that Diigo is a good tool to use, I am excited for future assignments, both in class and out, that require collaboration on different websites. Also, I like how it keeps track of who has commented and when people post the same website. It keeps an organization level that is really appealing, so I will definitely use it more often. Furthermore, I am especially intrigued by the feature that allows you to annotate  the resources that you have found. I am looking forward to this feature because in my past experiences of researching, it can be very hard to remember what every source you read was about, so I had annotations everywhere within my computer. All in all, I like t...

With these first few weeks of using Twitter, especially it being the first time I have ever had a twitter account, I can honestly say that I am enjoying all the information that is available to me. I have followed many, many educators that have first-hand experience with their teaching classrooms, and politicians who are very informed with educational policy. I am learning about different aspects of my chosen profession that I didn't even knew existed. Mostly, I have been interacting with Vicki Davis, a woman who has her own blog called "Cool Cat Teacher." I haven't had direct interaction with her, but I have retweeted some of her things because they are just so insightful. For example, she blogged about the idea of being childlike instead of childish, which was very interesting to me because I had never tried to separate the two ideas before, but she gave an excellent description and used her experiences in the classroom to help her case. Also, she tweets about oth...

For a second grade class, I feel most prepared for standard LAFS.2.L.3.4. This standard states that technology must be known for finding the meaning of unknown words; in a sense, it is the knowing how to use technology as a dictionary. Furthermore, this standard also ensures that students know how to change words from their root, but that they also know it is still, essentially, the same word. I feel very prepared for this standard because ever sense technology was implemented into my elementary classroom, this is something that my peers and I have been doing for a very long time. I can easily give my students the resources they need to use the internet as both a dictionary and thesaurus and give them practice worksheets of looking up words, defining them, and finding root words. Another standard that I feel comfortable with is standard LAFS.2.W.2.6. This standard uses digital ...