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Website Feedback

After some small changes I feel that my Google website is now improved. While I felt that the colors I used were suited well and did not change them. I did take Michael’s advice and changed the font I used so that the words are easier to read. I also edited my website so that it is more organized and user-friendly. Originally I had everything on website on one single page but I changed it and divided the material into separate pages with their own buttons.

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Blog 6

My top five take aways for this class are all very useful. My first of my top five takeaways is of course the concepts of design and detail to attract peoples attention. My second would be that using technology is very useful but it has to be implemented properly to serve its correct purpose. My third is that Google websites can be used to make a plethora of different materials and can be used in multiple ways in the education setting. This is especially useful if the schools are having fully online days. Fourth is that you can get students parents more involved with their child’s education by taking them online. And finally, my fifth take away is that using technology in the class room can help students to further comprehend class material and also help them to collaborate together on projects.

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PowerPoint Renovation Justification

In renovating this PowerPoint I took into account all five principles of design. Alignment, along with Proximity and balance were important to me in cleaning up this presentation and keeping the information intact but presenting it in a more orderly fashion. Aligning the materials helped me to create a visual connection and tighten the design eliminating the haphazard, messy effect of scattered items on random slides. I also integrated Repetition heavily to strengthen my design by tying together individual elements. The consistent repetition of material and designs helps to make the information stick in would-be students’ minds. In terms of Contrast my PowerPoint was fairly reserved. I didn’t apply much contrast because I felt that the focus should have been more on relating the information together rather than putting them against each other.  Proximity and Balance were also applied liberally to make sure that the information was presented clearly and neatly ensuring that the students are not overwhelmed by the materials. The balance provides stability and structure to the chaotic design of the former presentation. The Proximity provides easy to understand focal points determining what is important and what needs to be focused on. Throughout my slides the materials are visually connected by use of font size, font style, color and layout. I chose a blue design feel overall because I feel that the color design of choice for technology is blue. Blue is also cool and calming which provides focus to the task at hand without being too worrying or stressful. After a second, more observant look at the rubric for this assignment I realized that my newly renovated Powerpoint was well below the ideal twelve slides; however, I still believe it functions far better than the old and while it is short and concise it covers the important topics of the class effectively. I think that a Presentation like this should not have too many slides to keep the students interested and paying attention. A presentation like this should have other aspects and formats as well such as handouts and other segments for introduction to the class like group exercises.

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Blog 5

In the videos I watched students used various forms of technology to further their education. In the first video the students used a program with games to help them learn addition and subtraction. A major benefit these students got from using this was that they were provided with instant feedback. The teacher was not at the front of the lesson and let the program do most of the work giving  him time to help the small group of students that need extra help to stay at the same pace as the rest of the class. In the second video the students were using programs like Google Slides and documents to collaborate on projects together. This not only helps students to become more technologically familiar but it also helps them learn to work with others and to assist each other in understanding the course material. This is not a particularly new idea and as a student I have had to work together on numerous projects with other students using google slides. A significant advantage of online collaboration is that you do not have to be together. I can remember teachers assigning us group projects in grade school and none of us could drive obviously so it was always a pain to get together and complete the work.  Students in my class would be asked to use computers to perform group work and projects together as well. The teachers in both videos are not taking active roles in the lessons and are instead asking the students to participate and become active in their own education process. While technology and the knowledge and power it provides are useful tools for education we need to be careful to not allow it to overrun classrooms. Many teachers and administrators simply use technology for the sake of just using it and go overboard. In these cases the technology is not really helpful to the students and is most often abused. I can remember taking several classes where computers were used by students constantly but they did not offer any genuine learning benefit. I would also like to use interactive software like Smart Notebook to make lessons more dynamic and interesting in my class.

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Blog 4

In my future class I will be happy to use technology within my classroom and a 1:1 setting could be very beneficial. I think that 1:1 and Bring Your Own Device are both positive steps in the right direction; however, I think that 1:1 is a much more beneficial set up and BYOD could have more problems such as students forgetting devices or getting more easily offtrack on their own personal devices. 1:1 would be very helpful in my classroom and I could use it to give my students regular access to PowerPoint presentation I have given in class or helpful online reviews of important course materials. Students would be asked to use their laptops or tablets to perform group work and projects together as well. While technology and the knowledge and power it provides is useful I would also be careful to not allow it to overrun my classroom. Many teachers and administrators simply use technology for the sake of just using it and go overboard. In these cases the technology is not really helpful to the students and is most often abused. I can remember taking several classes where computers were used by students constantly but they did not offer any genuine learning benefit. In my time at a private school I had far more access to the internet and technology in general and while it was not 1:1, each floor had its own “mobile lab” with roughly thirty laptops that could be checked out daily. One major problem of trying to incorporate 1:1 in most schools is that different school districts have more or less access to money for technology. In many inner-city schools the taxes paid by student’s parents do not allow for much excess spending while many suburban schools do. In my classroom I think it is important to integrate technology only when it will benefit or enhance the learning of students and using it to supplement the course materials making the classroom a thriving environment to teach the subjects of Social Studies.

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Blog 3

I will be teaching Social Studies to high school students. I want my future classroom to be an ideal learning environment for everyone regardless of if that student catches on to course material quickly or they need more encouragement to pursue active learning in the class. While teaching high school Social Studies classes I will encounter many different types of students from diverse backgrounds. I would like my students to feel safe in my classroom and feel comfortable enough to learn and thrive no matter what background they come from. I want my future class to be accepting and embrace everyone’s own specific identity as a valuable asset to our class. As I plan and design lessons for my students I think it is important to provide different learning experiences for differentially preferences learners such as lectures for auditory learners and discussions. PowerPoints and SmartBoard activities for visual learners and group work for kinesthetic learners. T the beginning of every school year I will give my class a survey. The survey I give to my students would help me understand how they prefer to learn and in what ways I should present course material to them to help them best succeed. This is something that Professor Okrah does every semester and I think it is a really good idea. As Dirksen says: social interaction and visual cues help students to maintain attention towards the information you present. However, it is important for the lesson being presented that it pertains to important course material and that the material being presented is actually being learned. Some methods are simply distracting and have an adverse impact. Something that comes to mind off hand is the pre-K and Kindergarten teachers making slime or other silly projects that we discussed in class. Keeping students attention is classes like history is difficult because many students think that the information being presented is outdated or irrelevant in the current time but they are wrong. I can make subjects like history interesting by explaining how this history being presented is relevant in their daily lives. A quick example would be explaining how many of the problems the we read about in the Middle East today stem from the Allies in World War I. In my class I hope to have access to a wide array of technology with daily access to a projector. As a teacher I will try to make use of all three learning methods so that my students can feel comfortable with the materials.

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Blog 2

What helps me to remember things is when I have them written down somewhere in a notebook or in a planner. Another thing that helps me to remember things is if I put them in my calendar but just for remembering course material I do not really have a set strategy for memorizing things. If it is something I am really interested in then I’ll make it a point to remember it like in E-201 with Okrah I started motivating myself to learn the capitals of countries because it was fun and I was curious about them . For remembering other things I do not have a set way to do it. Most of the time I’ll quite literally just read the material. In high school I would usually do this but I never really needed to study for quizzes and tests I would just look at the study guide once or twice and I was good to go and take the test. In my classroom I can help my students remember materials by not overloading them with too much information at once and giving them the information in chunks so that they have time to breakdown and understand the material because the brain can only remember a limited amount of information thrown at it and it can be very easy to overwhelm a new learner. I can also keep information we discussed early on relevant in the classroom and ask them to do activities or exercises the pertain to the information they’ve already learned throughout the school year. This will be helpful because students will hold information in working memory as long as they need it for a purpose so by asking them to continue using that information for activities they will retain it longer and increase the likelihood that the information will eventually be stored in long-term memory banks. Repetition can also be helpful for remembering things but not as helpful as many people think it is. After a while, repeated information will be placed in long-term memory but it will on be able to be accessed from one place which is not very helpful which is why it is better to use multiple types of memory. Unfortunately, I usually just use repetition for things I have to memorize but do not actually care about and eventually I just forget about them.

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Blog 1

I anticipate teaching Social Studies to high school students, ideally I would like to teach World History, World Geography, or American History. I assume that some students will catch on rather quickly to the course material while others with need more encouragement in the class. While teaching high school Social Studies classes I anticipate encountering many different types of students from diverse backgrounds. I would like my students to feel safe in my classroom and feel comfortable enough to learn and thrive no matter what background they come from. As I plan and design learning opportunities and tools for my students I think it would be a good idea to give my students a survey asking questions about how they feel that they would learn best. Dirksen has lots of helpful suggestions such as a pre-test assessment, but pre-tests are often not implemented correctly and must be carefully planned out so that they truly show a student’s knowledge of course material. The idea of Scaffolding brought me back to Professor Okrah’s P-250 class. Scaffolding would be a good strategy to implement for students who are uncomfortable with the level of course material as it can safely introduce them to it and gradually prepare them to deal with it alone. The survey I give to my students would also help me understand how they prefer to learn and in what ways I should present course material to them with visual learners benefitting from PowerPoints, auditory learners from lectures, and kinesthetic learners through hands-on interactions. The most important thing I took away from Dirksen was something that I have thought for a long time. The fact that learning is a two-way street. I remember throughout my education the majority of my instructors simply lectured without end and just gave us quizzes and tests to measure our “understanding”. Making students memorize and spit back out information like a computer is not beneficial and it does not qualify as actual learning. Students cannot learn properly in a learning environment where the teacher is treated as knowing everything and the students know nothing. Students are not empty containers that are to be filled with the teacher’s wisdom. The banking-concept of education does not work simply because nothing is learned its just memorized. Students might memorize that 2x2=4 but they can not explain why that is true.When learning is processed by both teacher and student then the teacher can help the student to learn through use of their own experiences. This is why its important for learning experiences to be two-way interactions so the teacher can comprehend when a student has understanding of a concept or needs further review. I would like my future classroom to be a place where my students are comfortable enough to learn and converse with other students and the teacher about the course material and to help further their education and each others.