Kadi's Educational Tehcnology Journey

     The week before spring break was the last time we used Diigo's software in my educational technology course. While it is sad to say goodbye, I know that I can always go back and use it as a resource and I learned so many great things through our in-class activities involving the software. One of the best moments we had while using Diigo this semester was when we were trying to create a discussion thread. Initially, it seemed quite unorganized and not set up in a way to easily interact with on another's comments, however, one of my classmates found that you could use Diigo's highlighting feature on the thread itself so we could easily respond to each other's individual comments! It was a learning moment for the entire class which was pretty great. I think in the future I would encourage my students to use Diigo when writing research papers or any papers that require sources that are accessible online. Through Diigo, they can share their resources with peers writing ...

     It’s been a few months since I opened my Twitter account for my Introduction to Educational Technology class and quite a lot has changed in terms of my view of Twitter. When I first started using Twitter back in middle school, I didn’t really use it at all. I saw it as similar to Facebook at the time and didn’t really know how to find other accounts to follow. When I revisited it in high school, I used it for memes and other funny content on the internet. Towards the end of that period of me using Twitter, I used to to socialize and have conversations with my friends. Now that I have been using it from an educator’s point of view, I see everything in a new light. I have been able to hear about some really amazing things happening around my own school and in the world of education in general and I’ve been able to see what my classmates think about what we are doing in class. There is so much information and so many Twitter accounts that post new information as it come...

     Technology is becoming more and more intwined with education. Ever since I can remember and since I had access to a computer, my teachers have had websites online. This online engagement transitioned from pages on the school website to classes on Canvas and Blackboard. One example that I found from my elementary school is from my 2rd grade teacher. She teaches at James H. Cox Elementary School which runs from Kindergarten through Fifth grade. Other schools in the district go up to Sixth grade as well. She now teaches 3rd grade as clarified in her bio on the website. She includes things like weekly homework assignments and announcements online so that if a student loses any papers or a parent wants to check what work their student has for the week, it is easily accessible online. She also includes school supplies that are needed for the class, academic resources, the vocabulary for the unit they are on, and more. Each page of her website has a cute graphic that is vi...

     The link below will take you to my VoiceThread discussing my experience using Lynda.com. I chose to complete a course on Lynda.com that had to do with education since it felt most fitting. I also wanted to explore the work that really goes into the packets of paper that we receive during the first week of classes that most students never look at again. Overall, I learned so much about how to write a syllabus and how important each piece of a syllabus is and I wish more students took this course just to understand why it is so important and a blessing that professors take the time to create and go over the syllabus with them. My VoiceThread

     Diigo, the social bookmarking tool, was introduced to us these past few weeks and so far, it is pretty awesome. I really like that we can be in groups and share websites and article we find related to a similar topic or even just for friends. Being able to share things and go back to them later on in one place is so convenient versus my 500+ notes on my phone with random links to things I saw online at some point and forgot about by the next hour. The annotating and highlighting feature is probably my favorite feature since the Diigo website shows you all of the parts you highlighted so you can remember exactly what you wanted to and not have to sit through entire articles again. I really wish that more people and groups in my life used this tool. I might have my mom download it after I show her how to download Google Chrome to her computer.      Since I already have some experience blogging from previous attempts at self-care and to just try to docum...

     Twitter has fought its way through the social media gauntlet and made its name as a social media powerhouse alongside Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. This being said, it has become one of the main sources of information for the average modern-day individual. I, personally, don't use Twitter as much as my peers. In high school I used Twitter pretty consistently for about a year or two once I attended a national convention for TV students. This convention had so many opportunities to connect and so many fun interactive accounts on Twitter and I kind of had to get more involved. After that convention, I also became a Senior News Director for our daily broadcast and at the time we hadn't really had any segments that involved social media, which was one of the components that was looked for in shows for competitions. So, I ended up coming up with a weekly social media segment to keep up with what students wanted to see on the show. Since then, I haven't used Twitter un...

     This week we discussed ELA standards and explored the different standards for different school levels. I decided to explore the 11th and 12th grade standards further since that would hopefully be the classes I would teach if I were to decide to follow this career path. Overall, the standards seem familiar, which is to be expected since I was in classes that utilized these standards less than two years ago. I would say I feel most prepared to teach students the skills to meet standard LAFS.1112.W.1.2, which focuses on writing informative texts to discuss complex ideas, essentially. I feel most prepared to teach this standard because I spent most of my time during my Junior and Senior year of high school learning how to write scripts for and produce a daily news show. The reason this really helped prepare me to teach this standard is the fact that producing a daily broadcast that does not eat into the school's class time requires me to pick and choose exactly what info...