7 Powerpoint and Website Creation

As a second grade teacher, I would love be able to incorporate Powerpoint into my lessons. Bloom's Taxonomy is a model showing the process of learning, beginning with remembering a topic, understanding it & applying it to other situations and resulting in the ability to analyze, evaluate & create new ideas and plans based on that information. Here's how I'd use Powerpoint to hit all those learning levels in a history lesson:

 In order to help my students reach each level of this model and achieve actual learning, I'd begin by introducing the topic on a Powerpoint and using short points to help the students remember what we're talking about.
Next, I could have my class create their own Powerpoint slides summarizing the history lesson we had just gone over (I'd have them tell me the really important parts and we'd decide together what was important enough to include in the summary). That would help secure the students' understanding of the subject.
The students could then use the information we had just gone over to create a timeline using Powerpoint or I would provide them with easily understood charts or diagrams of information relevant to that time period to help show them how to apply their new knowledge in other settings.
In order to help the students analyze the new information, I could have them use a Smart Board and Powerpoint to arrange ideas into a Venn diagram comparing life then and life now.
Evaluating the information would be the fun part but also a difficult way to incorporate a Powerpoint. Toward the end of my Powerpoint, I would have questions related to the historical time period we were learning about that have only opinionated answers, which would lead to a discussion of the evaulations and judgments of each student.
In order to help my students create new ideas or plans based on the new information, I would have them create a Powerpoint in order to "sell" a product that would have been most useful in the time period of the lesson, based on the events we talked about. That would allow for plenty of creativity while reinforcing all the other components in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Adaptive technologies are a great resource where they can be afforded. Adaptive technology helps people with learning disabilities as well as people with physical disabilities. Adaptive/assistive technology for physical disabilities can include voice recognition software or a trackball or joystick instead of a mouse if they have no ability to use a standard keyboard or mouse. I've never known anyone to use these specific types of adaptive technology and the only downside to the technology I see is that sometimes it is expensive and unattainable for some students in some communities, unfortunately.

Working on the website assignment has been a blast for me. I changed the entire theme of my site several times because I'm incredibly indecisive. There were a few things that irked me about Weebly but overall I think it's a great way to get information out there without having to pay to do so. Click here to view my website!

Check it out!

Here's a nice presentation offering some ideas of ways to make your slideshows a little more aesthetically pleasing. When viewers like the appearance of a slideshow, they are more likely to retain information from it. Some slides in this presentation are offering other resources, but the actual presentation itself also has some great ideas of how to execute.

The Science of Memorable Presentations from Ethos3 | Presentation Design and Training

5 Web 2.0 is the New Black

Web 2.0 is now a necessary component in teaching according to ELA standards. Students must be able to interact with their peers and sources in order to grow in a consistently growing field like technology. There are I think most password protected Web 2.0 tools can be used in a positive way in a classroom. However, I don't think having password protected sites is a necessity. There are other tools such as Youtube, blogs, and wikis that students can use to stay informed and interact with others. As the podcast stated, Web 1.0 is outdated, meaning students don't want to sit and look at static information. This is why I believe Web 2.0 tools are so important and vital to today's classrooms. It's important to make sure you have the technology required for effective use of Web 2.0 tools, however. You must have working computers, keyboards, and mice, as well as headphones in some cases.

I think Delicious is a very useful took for students in that it allows them to bookmark pages and sort them out. After playing around with it, I call Delicious the Pinterest of school webites. Pinterest and Delicious are both bookmarking sites that lead to quick, easy to access categorized "boards." This can be a key tool in a classroom because it's always difficult to just keep the ideas and articles you read locked away in your head and sometimes it's difficult to keep up with your list of sources as well. This website makes it a ton easier for students to keep that information at their fingertips. This could be great for organizing sources used for a research project or speech where sources are requested.

Working on the Concept Map was a hoot because I laughed at myself constantly for not knowing what I was doing. I did gain some pretty neat skills and knowledge through the assignment however. This was my first time using Webspiration and I think it's a good Web 2.0 tool for students and teachers to use in the classroom. I didn't realize how little I actually knew about World War I before this assignment. While I liked the concept of the website, I honestly didn't like the actual navigability of the site. I thought it was lacking in some areas of design. Putting a lot of information into a concept map online is actually a lot more difficult than I ever realized or thought it would be. Take a look at mine below!