I had difficulty finding class websites for any of the teachers
in my county, all of the “teacher websites” that I clicked on just linked to
blackboard which I no longer have access to, or were inactive links. I asked
one of my classmates if she had any trouble and she told me her high school, Walled Lake Northern, had
websites, so I found a teacher from her school for this blog post. I looked at
Mrs. Woodard’s class website for high-school students in Financial Literacy,
Marketing, and Web Design classes. She has upcoming assignments on her website,
and minor syllabuses for each of her classes. Surprisingly she posted her student’s
birthdays for this month, this is information that could be dangerous because
it is public, but also is a fun way to make your students feel celebrated.
Professional teaching responsibilities can be greatly simplified
by collaborating with other teachers. I can definitely see educational
networking communities being helpful for lesson planning and teaching
materials. Sites like Diigo are definitely ones to keep in mind. The podcast
also mentioned spreadsheets and programs that are helpful for grading and
keeping records, which is certainly unavoidable in the profession recently. I
have not seen a paper grade book since elementary school because that just
isn’t how things are done anymore because online grade-books are much more
efficient and eliminate much of the human error. Communication tools such as
emails and class pages are also more efficient forms of reaching out to
students and parents and are much easier than phone calls and notes home.
Overall technology is successfully working to make the classroom more efficient
and effective.
I have been to the Technology sandbox before and had a wonderful
time again. There was a new piece of technology, or one that I hadn’t seen the
last time I was there and that was a QR cube that could link with 3D images on
a SMART Board. Underneath of a document camera you are able to manipulate the
cube to adjust the image on the screen. It may not be the most exciting
technology, but for some reason it struck me as a really awesome tool for
education. It is so difficult to picture certain aspects of a complicated
diagram in 2D, and this will make it possible to alter the image on the screen
without having to be standing in front of the screen blocking the whole class’
view of the image. The example we saw was the inside of a human ear canal, it
was incredible to see this image from all sides instead of some cartoon
cross-section diagram. This technology will take students’ learning to the next
level.
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