Devin's Blog

As I was browsing through class pages, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and visit my high schools’ website. There I found several of my old teachers’ websites that were posted publicly for parents and students to view. Mr. Brennan was my old economics and government teacher, and he was one of my favorites when it came to engaging students and making class enjoyable. On his class website you can view several links including some of the first homework assignments as well as the syllabus and course outline. This trend followed for most of the teacher’s websites and none were too in depth when it came to class information. Class websites are an easy way to organize course materials in a single place that allows parents and students to access class information. If I were a teacher, I would likely use my class website to help students stay organized and give them a single place they can view everything they need for my class. Some teachers like using other resources to organize ce...

 Diigo is a tool that, before this class, I had never heard of or used at all. The purpose of Diigo is to create personalized online libraries which are especially important for teachers. It creates a way for professionals to bookmark, tag, and index certain websites they come across. Using Diigo so far has been fairly straight forward and I can see some of the powerful utilities that Diigo offers to certain groups. I have been able to easily bookmark, annotate, and tag certain websites I have come across in my research in this class. The formatting of the website does make it appear to be very dated but the usability has not suffered. Blogging is another mode of communication with others that I was not very familiar with before I started this class. So far I have learned how to use blogging websites such as blogger as well as how to personalize your blog to make it more inviting. After using blogger I realized that this isn't my preferred method of research and communication but i...

 Using Twitter has not always been a useful experience in that most of the information gathering that I was doing was coming from Google news and various news outlets. Whenever I used Twitter, it seemed like a clunky way to gather inconsistent and rumored material. As of recent, I have been able to use Twitter in a way I actually feel benefits me. Following more Twitter pages that I find interesting has allowed me to get a glance of several social circles that I enjoy. Being able to get early news on new stock market movements and learning about new advances in companies around the world allows me to be more educated in the way I conduct my personal and financial growth. Using Twitter in the future will allow me to stay updated and connect with people as well as update other people on new findings that I might come across. The digital divide is the separation between students who have access to the internet or technological tools and those who do not. As a student this is very impo...

 The ELA technology standards were implemented to help equip students to learn how to utilize the newer technologies that have become available and in the recent years. The LAFS.4.SL.2.5 ELA standard for 4th graders states that the student should be able to add voice recording to different types of media. This is extremely helpful later in life whenever composing presentations and other media to display to an audience. I feel like this can be applied fairly easy in a classroom and I feel like I have adequate skill to teach this standard. It could be as simple as a quick narration of a PowerPoint or an audio clip embedded into a digital project. The robotics on a budget project for fourth graders requires the students to propose a new robot set for an after school enrichment program. The student is presented with four models and they must stay under a budget of $2,000. They must utilize adding, subtracting, and multiplying in order to efficiently select the best possible model ...