Week 3 Reflections

This week we created a Google Survey and had to organize the results into a PowerPoint presentation with the results and why we thought the survey was important. The standard met this week was in the category of Model Digital-Age Work and Learning, the sub-standard being "collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation."
This standard was met because my parents, peers, and students in my class helped me by taking my survey for class and it helped in my success and bettered my learning. I worked with Google Docs to create a survey and I think it definitely will help me in the classroom because I could use it as a tool to learn more about my students at the beginning of the year. Also my students could create surveys based on topics that interest them in a certain subject matter. This type of survey-style learning could be used in so many ways I could go on for days.
Another site we learned about this week was Diigo. At first I thought Diigo would just create more work for me and that I wouldn't find the site resourceful, but then when I actually started using it I realized how great it was! All you have to do when you find a great site is click the "Diigolet" button in bookmark toolbar and then you can start highlighting, making post-it notes, and bookmarking the article on your Diigo site. This can be something private on your Diigo, like for a school projects research, or public, like on the groups we are using for our class. Many groups can be created on the site and it makes collaborating very easy. I could see this being a great tool for students in my future classroom because they would be able to only read what other people highlighted or their comments if they wanted so that they got the jist of the article.

Week 2 Reflections

This week we focused on designing a PowerPoint that related to our content area. I chose to make a PowerPoint relating to Fibonacci's sequence. This PowerPoint would lead students to figuring out Fibonacci's sequence for themselves and then discovering what the equation for the sequence was by looking at the properties of the sequence itself. I think that discovering something on your own furthers your learning because it then becomes much more interesting to you and you will remember it because you discovered it mostly on your own.

We met the NETS Standard of Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments. We met this standard by designing these PowerPoints and are wiki spaces page which we could use to further education in our future classrooms.

I found the PowerPoint project very interesting. At first it was hard because I didn't understand how I could incorporate High School Calculus into a PowerPoint but once I started searching on the Internet a bit I knew what I could do. I made the PowerPoint into steps of figuring out a sequence through pictures and a word problem. I kind of played off of how Fibonacci, himself, discovered his sequence but in a digital way with having the problem become interactive.

Week 1 Reflections

This week in class we learned how to sign up for a GoogleSites page and how to navigate it. We most importantly, though, learned how to bookmark websites and link them into our bodies of work. This will be a great tool for us as educators because we will be able to give adequate credit to the work we site within our presentations and we'll be able to make it easy for students or even other educators to see where we got the work from by just clicking on the link.
The ISTE standard that we met this week through doing this assignment was number three Model Digital-Age Work and Learning. The sub-point that was met specifically was to "Demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations."
The ways that I could use this in future classrooms would be to have well-documented pieces, to be able to make great GoogleSites for each set of students, and teach them how to make websites for themselves and how to document them. I could use the tools I've learned this last week to enhance the way my students learn because I'd have a thorough way to teach the material also since I learned it in a classroom just like they will.