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!