Blog #10

Data Collection and reporting are essential tools for every teacher, regardless of subject matter and age, as it allows teachers to see where their students are at. For me specifically, wanting to teach high school math, this means recording students grades, not just for assignments and tests as a whole but on individual questions as well. This way I can see which questions are being the most consistently missed, by both the class as a whole and by individual students. Once I have this data, I can attempt to tailor the lessons better to each student.

My favorite part of looking at everyone's blogs is seeing all the different ways people think to apply the lessons we learned in class to our own teaching. An example of this is both in the question on Bloom's Taxonomy and the question prior to this. Every one of us has had different learning experiences and as thus have been affected differently in how we will teach. For example, when we had to come up wit the lesson for Bloom's Taxonomy, my mind went immediately to derivatives. However, when I later read other peoples posts, everyone had a different idea on how and when it could be directly implemented. Reading all of their thoughts gave me new ideas on how to improve what my lesson would have been.

The next technology-related skill I would like to learn would probably be how to use interactive whiteboards, such as SmartBoards. I feel like this would be a very useful to skill to have as they are being implemented more and more in schools everywhere. Thus, I find having this skill to be something important going forward. I definitely intend to go to the Tech Sandbox to learn about this as they are very knowledgeable about it and have boards there for me to practice with.

ILP "Participation" - VR

I went to the tech sandbox and received a lesson on potential VR use in the classroom. Then I got to use both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Using the Oculus Rift, I was shown a program called Tilt Brush that allows you to draw in 3D, as well as drawing with materials such as snow or lava. Then, I was moved to the HTC Vive where I was shown the program Universe Sandbox. This program allows you to see the universe and manipulate it by adding mass, altering orbits, and colliding objects. The final program I looked at was Edmersiv, a virtual museum with interactive exhibits on math, science, history, geography, and more. All of these can be easily utilized in an educational environment. Tilt Brush can be used in math to demonstrate 3D images and 3D graphing. Universe Sandbox has obvious applications to science classes. Finally, Edmersiv is particularly interesting for elementary students as it has basic knowledge in all of the areas.
https://www.tiltbrush.com/
http://universesandbox.com/
http://www.edmersiv.com/

Blog #9

Flipped Classrooms are a creative new instructional method where students do readings and watch lectures at home and then utilize their class period to work on projects, activities, and assignments with their teacher. This helps support students by allowing for more practice time in order to make sure the students really grasp the material. It also makes a class more interesting for your students because with this sort of classroom you can assign more creative group projects that they can work on in class. Khan Academy has instructional and educational videos for all of their lessons that could be used in such a flipped classroom.


I've done non-linear powerpoints before, as well as those for information dissemination, and didn't really learn anything new. My history with powerpoint is more of an exception than a rule. Something I didn't like was that powerpoint changed the color of the hyperlinks orange and would not let me change it to any other color. Something I would potentially change would be adding a black outline to the text in my Information Dissemination powerpoint as it could be a bit difficult to read.

Blog #8

You could use PowerPoint at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy for a variety of lessons, but for this example we will use the example of derivation in math. We would begin the powerpoint with a few slides doing example problems on exponents and limits to cover "knowledge". Then we would move on to breaking down derivation in the next few slides for "comprehension". Then, for "application", I would use the limit definition of a derivative to apply current knowledge to what we are learning with example problems and step by step solutions in the powerpoint. Then I would have a slide with some problems and have them try taking the derivative and using the limit definition and follow that up with slides of my own comparison for "analysis". Then, with these comparison slides still up, I would have a discussion with the class on the merits of both approaches and which they preferred to cover "synthesis". Finally, I would have them each write three problems of their own and pass it to the person on their right, and when that person was finished pass it to the right again and have the third person try the other method, and finally pass it to a fourth person on their right to compare the two results for "evaluation". While this method does not require powerpoint, having the problems worked out and organized in their slides makes the lesson much smoother.

There is an edtech subreddit that allows users to post questions, answer each other's questions, and post articles involving exclusively edtech. Users can them move posts up or down based on quality and relevance. This allows a circulation of up to date, curated information.

https://www.reddit.com/r/edtech/