May 29 (Day 9)

Today we had a guest speaker talk to us about how to use WordPress. He showed us how to change our themes, and how to add text, images, and links. I think some of the most important things to remember from what we learned was that dashboard is where to go whenever we want to make any changes to our site, how to make our blog into a webpage, and to always remember to save our changes before checking our active site. I thought that it would be really difficult to use Word Press, because it looked so complicated, but after today, I feel a lot more confident about being able to use it to make my website. We also used DreamWeaver a little more today, and I was really impressed by how much there was to do in the application. Although it still feels a little more complicated than WordPress, I really enjoyed learning how to change the font of my text, and how to add columns into my webpages.

May 22 (Day 8)

Today we learned all about coding. We used Hour Of Code for an hour in class, and I really enjoyed it. I played a game with a robot that I moved and used to light up squares on the ground. It was kind of like a puzzle. After that I played the Elsa and Anna game, which was also really cool. That one had blocks that we put together to make the characters do certain things, which is a type of coding I'm somewhat familiar with due to the fact that I took a week long technology class last summer that used it. We also used Dream Weaver, which was an application on our computers that required the use of actual code, like "<...>" and "</...>". This was really interesting, and although the website that we made was really simple, I was still pretty pleased that I was able to create anything that actually functioned by using code.

May 15 (Day 7)

Unfortunately I was not able to attend class today. My theater class went to Ashland to see a few plays put on at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While on our trip, we did use some technology though, I used the map app on my phone to help find our hotel, and I used the "Yelp" app on my phone to find a good pizza place near us.

May 8th (Day 6)

We used a lot of different technology in class today. The first new piece of technology that we used was called "Socrative" and it's basically a way for whole classrooms to take tests with true/false and multiple choice questions. I remember using something like this when I was in middle school, but every student had their own remote that they had to get out of a basket in the classroom. This new way of using the technology seems a lot more efficient, because students can use their phones, computers, and iPads to answer the questions. This gives teachers the opportunity to see what their students understand from their lessons right then, instead of having them take pen-paper-tests later on in the unit. We also used iTunes to look for podcasts that we could use to teach our students. I found a podcast about Aesop's Fables, and I thought that using that in an elementary classroom would be great, because they're stories that children would like listening to, and they also teach the students morals.

May 1 (Day 5)

Today we learned a lot about websites, and how to tell whether or not they are real. It was pretty easy to tell that my website was fake due to the fact that some of the links had flames around the letters. This was a pretty big give away, but the website also had a lot of links that lead to articles that looked like they had authors that were doctors, and that kinda threw me off. It's no wonder students have a hard time telling whether or not the websites that they get their information from are reliable. When I'm a teacher, I feel like whenever I assign a project that includes research, I should try researching some phrases that my students are likely to look up and make sure I show my students which ones are reliable sources for information. I think this would also be a good way of demonstrating to my students subsection d of standard 3 in the ISTE Standards for teachers.

April 24 (Day 4)

Today we learned about how to use iMovie to make a trailer. Although my group didn't end up making a very educational trailer, we had a lot of fun. We also realized how useful that kind of resource would be in the classroom.  I think that using iMovie in a science class would be especially useful, because students could record experiments, and watch them multiple times which would give them the opportunity notice more in their following views of the video. Having access to old projects would be helpful to students for review as well. I also feel like students could use iMovie to record presentations for classes to help teach them about the importance of collaboration. I also feel like having these videos would be a really beneficial resource for teachers to use as examples in later years to show their new students some previous ideas that other students used. We also learned a little bit about how to use Google Earth. I'd never used Google Earth before, and I thought it was a very useful resource: a friend of mine told me that one of her family members actually uses it for directions instead of a map application. I think that using Google Earth would be really helpful to teachers when students are learning about geography, because actually seeing places and being given an idea of the distance between them would make a bigger impression on the students, and they would be more likely to remember where places are.

April 17 (Day 3)

Today we talked a lot about how we could use cameras in the classroom. I feel like everyone had a lot of great ideas that would be very beneficial to students. I think that using cameras to record presentations would help students learn how to plan in advance with regard to their videos, and it would highlight how important collaboration with group members is during the whole process. I also think that recording students reading would be a big help to them, so that they could then go back later and watch these videos to see areas where they could improve, and areas where they've improved already. I also liked the idea about using videos in PE classes, because that sounds like it'd be a great way to show students proper technique for activities. I feel like these are really important things for future teachers to consider, because of the fact that technology is becoming such a huge factor in society.