After receiving my mid-term assessment I am grateful for the changes recommended by my instructor, Katia Hildebrandt. My audio recording of assessment is below along with my improvement plan.
Note: near the bottom of this post you will find questions addressed to my Dear Reader. Here is my Improvement Plan for my Technology Blog 1. Replace my stats posts with a widget to count the hits on my blog. 2. Remove citations from posts - not needed. Instead the links are sufficient and give credit to the source. 3. Engage and invite my audience to contribute to my blog. 4. On my I am So Hungry blog and elsewhere I need to link persons and websites that are referenced. 5. Adding gifs and images to break up the "big chunks of text" 6. Improve the visuals. Here is my Improvement Plan for my Twitter Account 1. Continuing to engage, interact, and explore. 2. Find opportunities to participate more frequently in chats to help build my Professional Learning Network (PLN). 3. Follow and respond to different people. 4. Join a vegan cooking community or two on Twitter. To further my learning and to expand on my limited knowledge I found this video to take things a step further. After scouting around for a website visitor counter I found that Google Analytics is not available in Canada, CrazyEgg requires payment for all plans after the 30 day free trial. I saw this during my DuckDuckGo for Chrome search: Free is always nice. No registration or email either is super fantastic!!c So I clicked on the link and look what I found!! Woohoo!! Now I have a hit counter. I am so pleased right now. Did you know? There is difference between hit, page and web counters. This article explains the differences. Dear Reader: What have you found that you like to see be included in a blog? Do you have a blog? If so, what worked? What didn't? Your suggestions are much appreciated. Next up: Mid-Term Assessment Improvement Plan - Part Two.
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Going to school in the 60's and 70's was a chalkboard dominated classroom with textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopedias as our resources. We were a happy bunch. Today almost every classroom I see comes equipped with an Interactive Whiteboard (IWF)/SMART Board that provide teachers with technology resources from around the world. Firmin and Gelesi discuss the transition from the chalkboard to technological advancement through to the Interactive Whiteboard in use in the classrooms (History and Implementation of Classroom Technology, 2013). Levin shows four uses of technology as media: for research, for conversation, for building, and for assertions (as cited in Firmin & Genesi, 2013, p. 1604). The educator is cautioned to choose quality resources over quantity. I can only imagine the image of a child in a candy shop. What is the quality of material you are looking for? The question might be "will I use this regularly"? The temptation might be to gather as much as you can because it does not take up physical space. However, does the storage of extraneous technology make it difficult to access what is valuable to our students? Firmin and Gelesi encourage the inclusion of quality technological resources in the classroom as it enhances "both the teaching and learning" (History and Implementation of Classroom Technology, 2013, p. 1605). However, the article does discuss the hesitancy of educators to embrace technology to it's full potential and, instead to explore their pedagogy in relation to the successful integration of technology into their classrooms. Students found that the use of technology in their classrooms helped them to be more interested, more engaging, and "made the information seem more real" (Firmin & Gelesi, 2013, p. 1606). Without having to rely on one textbook learners now have quicker and more far-reaching access to many sources in which they might "seek evidence to support what they are learning" (Firmin & Gelesi, 2013, p. 1605). However, they did agree that, ultimately, it was the teachers, themselves, who make a successful learning atmosphere. This article, History and Implementation of Classroom Technology, extensively talks about what is an IWB?, the uses of an IWB, the advantages of an IWB, to a lesser extent the disadvantages of an IWB, and how teachers and students feel about them. Note: the article, History and Implementation of Classroom Technology.
Where can I go if I am hungry for technology in a one stop pit stop? Feedly.com? Will they have what I am starving for? First I look at the menu. There is so much here for every appetite and taste. What to choose is quite a task. Next I start narrowing my focus to what I need to fulfill my 'nutritional' technology needs at this time. Free is always good for teacher resources. I found a great video, Practical Ed Tech Live (PET), on the Free Technology for Teachers feed in which the host, Richard Byrne, answers a number of questions listed below the video. PET is live every Thursday at 3:30 p.m EDT at bitly.com/petlive46. Within the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning feed there is a wealth of learning Apps for elementary students from resources for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) educators; iPad writing apps; Bloomz parent communication tool; digital story-telling apps; etc. The Edudemic feed introduces me to 15 top educators to follow on Twitter, tips for keeping students engaged and others. However, the links are not working. This is too bad because they seem quite interesting. Note: I sent a tweet to Edudemic to let them know that even their most recent posts are inaccessible. What can I say? I love TED talks!! By association I believe I will love TED Education. I found a very interesting video on why are some people left-handed. Why does this particular topic pique my interest? I am a leftie. I have never been forced to use my right hand, ever. However, it is a right-handed world when it comes to most kitchen tools - can opener, scissors, measuring cups; sitting next to people when eating; instruments (guitar and other string instruments); computer mice; etc. I am always having to accommodate for these. However, I am a left-handed pitcher and batter when I play baseball. :) Chitty, Chitty, Chat, Chat!! Did we ever. Although many of our class are new to this feature of twitter we were welcomed with open arms and listening ears. I was awfully frightened initially as I tried, with a lot of help from our instructor, Ms. Hildebrandt, to get on alongside the others in this community. We were strongly encouraged to follow @LemarrTreadwell and @missjacbruce to increase our personal learning networks. They both seem to be pillars of #saskedchat.
Ms. Hildebrandt suggested tweeting/retweeting at least twice per day to increase our awareness of others and they of us. Along with Feedly I am certain that my days will become much longer. :). The questions posed encouraged participation and follow a theme - I think this week's was technological media in the classroom. Each week we are told follows a similar format but with different topics up for discussion. I had a few too many windows open and my computer was very slow and cumbersome. However, the chats stay up and I could respond much later than jumping in at the moment of the tweet. Interestingly enough my tweet count jumped quite a bit during this chat - cool!! I enjoyed the answers of others and gave likes or comments on a few. Afterwards, while reading through my notifications it was heartening to see other's who liked my posts, too. Some even made comments on my posts. Indeed those are "feel good" moments. Why, because my posts are being read and have sparked a response. This format felt a little more real than the regular tweets. I had no idea which questions were coming and it was a treat to hear the next question. Listing them by number made it easier to keep track of which I answered or still needed to reply to. I love @LemarrTreadwell's tag line at the bottom of the post "Grow Your PLN Without Walls". He provides a list of Twitter educational chats all in one link. I have been trying different sites for social sharing buttons - WebNots, AddThis, and GetSocial. These are not that easy to install into my site. Tough WebNots I have placed some sharing buttons on the bottom of my home page. However, they have a set of numbers above them that I am having trouble getting rid of.
There are some great YouTube videos that I will need to explore to find my way through to successfully incorporating these icons into my pages. I will update this post with an update soon. The tweets are coming fast and furious tonight. Ms. Hildebrandt has introduced our class to many features that Twitter offers. First and foremost is concern over using an appropriate handle. I had @weller2t and am now realizing that my initials and last name is much more professional (@tmweller). Changing my Twitter handle in my website is turning out to be a cumbersome task, as is a lot of changes I made. The use of hashtags was explained and now is not so foreign. Giving credit when borrowing from another - let's say classmate - needs to be acknowledged. To do this there is a neat term called via and then the person's twitter handle. I have gone in and removed a tweet and retweeted acknowledging my source. It is nice to be able to delete a tweet, not that tweet this one, when needed. IHi, I am Tanya Weller.
I have always been interested in learning. It is a bonus to get credit for classes. I have lived in Toronto and Shelburne, ON; Nackawic, NB, and currently reside in Regina, SK. I attended school in Ontario, New Brunswick and here in Saskatchewan. I am currently a second year student who from a young age was interested in becoming a teacher, but only just now realizing this as a present goal. I learn best when I am organized, focused and diligent in doing my assignments. I have 7 children so I am guessing that I am interested in children and their well-being. Until recently I never felt like I could accomplish much. However, I am finding that I can be good at what I set my mind to do. I have taken a few courses online – Psychology 230, Biology 140, Cree 100, Sociology 213, ECS 100. These are challenging because I needed to be on top of everything in order not to fall behind. Learning different kinds of technologies and how to submit assignments, participate in online forums and even compiling voice recordings for my Cree class was novel. I hope to learn a lot about Native culture, beliefs and traditions as well as the struggles Indigenous peoples faced as they try to overcome so many trials through their colonial experiences. I hope to understand and become more aware of the strength and unity the Native community has at their disposal. I work in a community school and I am excited to get a more intimate knowledge of the people who were here first before any of us. I have only started a Twitter account in 2016. I am new to technology in the socially connected sense, excepting Facebook. I have not been very active before last year. Since then I have been building this blog and exploring Twitter a little. ECMP 355 is teaching me a lot more about engagement and the possibilities of professionally connecting via the cyber world. I am being introduced to better ways to use my blog and Twitter. Exploring others' sites and Twitter accounts is helping me to broaden my web presence and to see it is a big wide world of others helping others. Did you know that you can upload features to Weebly? Simple Table simplified my list of Resources. My content looks organized and easy to find what you might be interested in. I am still working on the page so it has repetitive content right now. I have not explored customizing my tables with the colour options as yet. I found, like other reviewers, that the pop-up is annoying, but I could still enter what I needed to enter. I wonder what other neat elements are available for Weebly outside the basic tools that come with?
Finally, after searching through numerous sites to try to find help in giving photo credit properly it dawned on me to try the embed code function in the Weebly sidebar. It worked, it WORKED. It is just after 1:00 a. m. and success finds me elated, not at all tired. See my Home page for proof. :)
When I was looking for the source for the guacamole recipe I discovered something I never seen before. When I right click on the picture on a website (for example, a picture of a recipe of a chef) I found the command Inspect. Woohoo!! A box comes up on the top right of the screen. I clicked on Sources and then to the left side of the box I clicked on pineapple-guacamole html and the code was highlighted. The code just had the website address. Is this common for webpage owner's photos they put up? Last night a few of my classmates made suggestions to improve my website. This was great to have been able to have a critique of my site. I have been hard at work changing the colour of my resources section for better visual effect. I tried various colours. Some helped, most didn't. Settling on black seems to work the best. I did find it hard sometimes to convert a whole line to black text and found that doing portions at a time worked. There must be something I was doing wrong?
It was suggested that I upload a picture of myself on my About Me page. I am going to work on getting a more professional looking photo of myself as a "teacher" to better represent who I am to be. In my Educational Philosophy I removed the downloadable file and replaced it with a Scribd slide show. This I am hoping makes it easier for my visitors to view material without having to use up space on their own computer. Next to work on is the Professional Knowledge section. First I made a dummy tab and then put each of my documents in tabs below this. Then I converted them all to Scribd files that are readable within my site. The Professional Knowledge section has now all been converted to Scribd files downloaded onto my site. A drop down menu assists in accessing and viewing of topics of interests. This section has a large sampling of my completed assignments. This has taken a few hours as I needed to create new pages, convert files and ensure that a consistent layout was achieved. I am pleased with the results. Thank you Ms. Hildebrandt for bringing this to my attention. My next journey is how to credit an image properly. Compfight was suggested by Ms. Hildebrandt to find images. I am having a bit of trouble figuring out how to do photo credits with Weebly. Off to google to learn. Why is this so difficult??? I still need to use the tool to clip out portions of videos. I tried downloading ClipGrab but had trouble. Perhaps tomorrow? |
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