Reflection

Reflection

This will not answer the statement directly but in my personal opinion all of these modules will be beneficial to my future career. I will be certified to teach grades 1-5th. With that being said, Module 4: Multimedia,  I would definitely use Youtube and TeacherTube to find videos that support my lesson. For example, when teaching theme, The Princess and Frog and Nemo are two good movies with several clips to support the topic. Module 5: Evaluation and Assessment, included Quizlet. Quizlet could provide me questions from host portals that can be included within my lessons and test. I could create a set of flashcards for the students so they can study at home. Module 6: Collaboration, included DropBox and Poll Everywhere. I really liked these two programs because I have never used them nor been exposed to their software. Dropbox would allow me to create work at home and just pull it up instantly at work. Poll Everywhere would let my students vote on what they wanted for their class treat for example from home. Module 7: Virtual Learning had one of the best tools ever Wix. With Wix you can create your own class website and include any additional information for your students and visiting teachers. Module 8: Visual Learning included popular programs like Pinterest and Flickr. I personally like to use Pinterest to find supporting activities for my lessons,  manipulatives and cute DIY (do it yourself) activities. Flickr provides an abundance of pictures for the lessons and/or topics. Module 9: Whiteboard Technology covers one of the most essential items to a classroom in today's society. With ActiveInspire/Promethium it has prepared SmartBoard activities that correlate with your lesson. For a first year teacher, I think that is great and will be very beneficial. Trying to work that piece of equipment alone and learning all the software it posses will be challenging.

Apps for Teachers

Apps/Technology Tools

1. Class Messenger

2. Class Dojo

3. DropBox

1. Class Messenger

Class Messenger is a way for teachers to keep parents privately aware of what is going on in their child’s classroom. Teachers can send messages individual parents or those of the entire class, reminding them of upcoming school trips, prompting them to volunteer, or surveying them regarding certain material. Messages and push notifications also sync across both mobile and desktop platforms, ensuring up-to-date content. This app would come in great handy if you forgot to make slips to send home or forgot to pass out. It would also keep the parents up to date 24/7. 

2. Class Dojo
ClassDojo isn’t your typical classroom-management platform. Whereas others concern themselves with gold stars and charts, this app lets teachers emphasize positive feedback, allowing you to elaborate on the behavior of your students with comments such as “working hard” or “participating.” You can even send parents public and private messages regarding their child’s progress, and if they desire to do so, they can view their child’s feedback in real-time. The best part of this program will restrict the student from foreging signatures, not showing the parents their behavior charts and simply provide the parents with detailed explanations as to why their student was on a specific color. A con would be parents not having tech savy phones so you still have to send home paper reports.

3. DropBox 

The service and accompanying application are terrific when it comes time to upload and store presentation photos, assignments, videos, and anything else you might need to access while at home or in the classroom. The dedicated app also lets you create and edit Microsoft Office files on your mobile device, and moreover, share file links with your students so you don’t have to clutter their inbox with a cacophony of enormous files. The only con I could see is the file not saving properly.

Interactive Whiteboard

Technology Tools

1. ActiveInspire/Promethian

2. Smartboard

3. Quizlet

1. Promethean and SMART provides an unlimited amount of resources for every subject. They require the students to be actively involved and cognitively involved. The programs are derived from Common Core material or you may change it to correlate with your class material. The one challenge with the programs is the students being previously exposed to the activity. Secondly, the content level being too high or low on the activity. Lastly, the students not being engaged or the material included in the activity inaccurate. 

2. SmartBoards allow the students to get actively involved. Depending on the activity, they could come up and answer the questions accordingly. The board allows for you to open all types of manipulatives. It also allows the student to choose their pen color freely. This board has several pros but one major con, if the board crashes you have ultimately lost any program saved on it. It's hard to backup/retain any information saved on the board. If students are skipped over during an activity that requires a smartboard, they may become frustrated or intolerable. The students ho are not participating may become loud and disruptive and/or off task.  

3.Quizlet has answers to questions that you may ask during the activity. It also has questions you could include into your lesson. The questions on this program generally range from lower to higher order thinking skills. The only con is students getting clever and looking the answers up themselves.