Reflection

ring this webinar, I learned a lot about very useful resources covering tools to teach history. I am deeply interested in history, and it has always been one of my favorite subjects throughout school and now. Learning about TweetDeck showed me how the Internet has truly changed the game for education and I never realized before how hashtags on Twitter can be a community. A lot of the applications shown for history I felt could be used in various subjects, and showed a deeper learning experience other than lecture. History as I know it as always taught in a lecture style, and of course that is beneficial for many reasons. However, I never had technology used in my history classes beyond writing essays in the computer lab so I found it very inspiring to see these applications including the one that lets you see art work from around the world and even walk through museums. Of course art has been something that reaches all types of people, it is not always possible to have a class trip to a museum especially if it is in a different country. I am inspired to use these applications in my future, and I loved how these tools enhance our learning and teaching experience. 

I have never thought about webinars as a technology for me to use as a teacher, I have always thought about them from the student perspective. however, when I was listening to the webinar I started to think about how cool it would be to use for parents and with parents. this wouldn't necessarily be perfect for a general education setting, but I feel like special education just has such a different need to it. I could be able to communicate and talk to parents about what I do in the classroom for anything ranging from routines to curriculum and make it available for them to reference later, or ask real time questions that more than one parent most likely has as well. 

This workshop taught me new tricks and methods to use a smart board. This is important, because smart boards are more and more common. I believe this workshop was very beneficial. 

I have really enjoyed using google for documents and slides, so it was nice to learn about more things I can do through google. I loved when my teachers had websites because I always knew what was going on. As someone who is a planner, having a calendar on my website for what the month will look like would help me and my students stay organized and on track. 

I will for sure use this in my future classrooms. I'm not a special education teacher, but I will have students that have IEP's or accommodations in my class. I never considered that the ipad or other tech would be that helpful for accommodations. However, playing with accessibility settings and finding different apps was really cool. Different apps make it easy to help all kinds of learners. Whether they have sight problems, hearing problems, or attention issues, there are tons of different apps to use to make learning easier. I also think that it could be fun for all students to do PBL or use apps (robots/story apps/flipgrid) to learn things.  

I didn’t consider google calendar to be of very much use. However, even my boss at work uses it to coordinate our shifts and it’s very effective. I feel that using this for my classroom to set up conferences and times would be a very practical and helpful way to stay on track in the midst of a busy schedule. By learning how to use this tool to the best that I can, I can be creative and leaner to use it to my advantage the most that I can. I think that is a great idea for schueleing class tasks and assignments, as well as sharing with the rest of the students in my class so they can learn to follow along and be organized as well. 

This is relevant to my future classroom because I will be using technology on a daily basis. I will also be having my students use technology daily, so it is important that we are aware of our resources regarding technology. I am not the best at figuring out technology (especially things with smart boards or printers!), so I know that I will certainly come across issues that I need assistance with. I think that learning about their jobs was interesting because it enabled us to think about technology from their perspectives. It is important to understand other's perspectives before interacting with them. I learned that it is important to be patient and respectful towards technicians because they have a handful of work that they deal with on a daily basis and are constantly interacting with people, fixing things for them. It is important to acknowledge them and show our appreciation! 

I think this seminar had a lot of great information for me in the future. Since I am in the last 10% that he mentioned that is not as tech-savvy as others, there were some great tips. I took a lot away from the parts where they told us to try things on our own first and to identify whether things are a need or a want in my classroom. I feel as if checking that before demanding help and asking 'what can I do to help this IT person, not just take from them' is important, because in some ways that's how students refer to us as teachers. I also thought it was very important to remind me, as a future teacher, that we need to plan and double check things are working properly and according to the plan before its executed, because this was not even something I considered before regarding internet safety and blocking websites. Overall, this seminar gave me a greater understanding of the behind the scene life of an IT Tech and how I need to be proactive to achieve the results I want for myself and my future students. 

In my special education classroom, inclusivity, understanding, respect and community are all values and characteristics that I want my teaching to encourage. With this webinar, I was able to discover some very helpful ways to incorporate these items into my classroom. Ensuring that my students are represented, advocated for and gain a meaningful education is something that I strive to do. With the use of the anti-bias framework, I know that I can do just that. I learned how I could present these practices in ways that foster a healthy learning environment for all and every student. 

I think Google Calendar will be incredibly important to my future classroom. As discussed in the webinar, I could post what we're doing in the class so that way students know what we're going to be doing in the classroom on a particular day so that they know and are prepared for it. In addition, it helps the teacher, in this case, me, to be organized for as far ahead as they can get. Plus, I know that I get overwhelmed when a lot of things happen at once so I definitely think that it would help me out. The format of the website makes everything easy to read and easy to find as well as pretty simple or sort through with different colors. With the multitude of functions that the app can do, I see it being used frequently in my classroom. 

Using Google Calendar to create and organize my events will certainly help keep things in order as a teacher, and give myself some idea of when things may be due as both a student and an educator. Calendar and Forms can both be used to better inform students of my expectations, and be used to give parents an idea of my schedule, as well as additional information they need to know. As the Designer section of the ISTE Standards says, "Use technology to create, adapt, and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs". This applies to personalizing you Calendar and your Forms to best suit what your students respond to, since each needs their own special treatment.

I think this can be used in the classroom in so many ways. They talked about using film and multiple forms of literature to help teach about slavery which is the part of history this webinar focused on. I know that in my future classroom I am going to have to teach about slavery and when teaching this subject to my kids I don't want to sugar coat it and I don't want my white students to feel guild and my black students to feel forgotten. Which is why this webinar would help so back because I know I can look back onto this and reference it when I hit a hard spot. Also I can use the resources that were given to us at the end of the webinar to use in my classroom.