Reflection

As a future special education teacher I think I would use some of the new features in my classroom or at least make them known to students who could utilize them; one of the things that I found really interesting was the students, and people, are now able to use their AirPods as hearing aids- they can connect their phones, leave them near the front of the room, and use their AirPods from the other side of the room to still hear the presenter. Another future I would use in my classroom is the Complete Voice Control feature- students can turn this feature on on their iPad and control the iPad completely with their voice- making the iPad hands-free. 

The main thing that I can take away from this update (at least before another one comes out) is the new accessibility functions. I really enjoyed how now Siri can read to you at a pace you can modify to understand and now air pods can be used for hearing aids and you can connect a blue tooth mouse which I can use for students who may have limited motor control. I just really hope that future updates will continue to add and modify accessibility features so my future students will have easy access to resources and technologies they need to succeed. 

It is not a secret in that wherever I teach, my students are going to walk into my classroom with different privileges, experiences, perspectives, and abilities. As an educator, I need to celebrate these differences in the classroom where all students feel comfortable and want to share their thoughts and ideas with the class during discussions. These tools and strategies that I have learned will even allow me to help my students form their own self-identity and how to be an advocate for themself.  The ideas from this webinar along with discussions happening in my current classes, will hopefully allow me to become an ally for social justice. I know now that I need to be careful because despite my well-intentions in the classroom, I am not focused on the cause that needs to be addressed. Right now, I believe that my motivations are more altruistic, so I need to work towards being an ally for social justice.The webinar emphasized decentralizing oneself in order to become a better educator and I know that I am working towards that now. 

This webinar showed me how helpful google forms can be. I can already tell how useful this will be in my future classroom. Even if my students are too young to be taking tests online I can use this for parents to collect information. I loved all the different things you can do when creating a test or survey even simply changing the background and font. I am confident that I will use this in my classroom. 

As a special education major, the students in my future classroom will all be living some form of disability that influences their identity. This webinar reminds me that these disabilities are not the only part, or even the majority part, of my students’ identities. It will be just as important for me to create spaces for their wonderful little identities as it would be for their neuro- and physio-typical peers. Additionally, this webinar was useful in challenging what type of ally I can be for my future students. I realized that despite by best interests, I tend to fall into the all for altruism’s sake. I focus deeply on helping the students immediately in my care, and less so on the broader cause. This webinar has helped me reconfigure how I approach special education in my classroom AND OUTSIDE OF IT. I feel that I am on the way to truly decentralizing myself so that I can appropriately use my own abilities and privileges to challenge systems that would adversely affect the lives of my future students with special needs.

This webinar, to me, falls under the ISTE standards for learner, leader, and collaborator. Obviously, I learned several new things in this webinar, which, ostensibly, should help me improve as a future educator for students with special needs. Moreover, I was able to connect and thus indirectly collaborate with the facilitators of this webinar. I can now take my new learning into my future vocation to collaborate with and possible lead my future teaching peers towards being more social justirce oriented.

This is the first webinar that I attend and it was nice because having a busy schedule makes it difficult to attend workshops in person, so being able to use technology to meet a requirement was very helpful and relieving. It brought into context just how connected people can be with the use of technology and as you become more knowledgeable it becomes easier to create connections and learn new things. In term of Google Forms, the resource can be very helpful in classrooms because it moves away from conventional pencil and paper quizzes. Technology allows teachers to become a little more creative to try and get students to become more engaged; Google Forms definitely makes it easier for teachers to create a more fun experience when it comes to quiz and text taking. Google Forms is also constantly receiving updates which allows teachers to do more things as time passes; also the people at Google listen to suggestions or requests according to professor Williams.   

I could have this set up so that the students in my class have pictures to choose from and match with the words or they can have videos to match with the worlds that I will put on there for them. 

I have only taken these quizzes in the past but never knew how to actually make them so it was really interesting to learn about. Also all the different options the it gives to make the quiz your own is very cool. I think this will be very useful for my classroom.

On a more surface level rationale, this is a good way to accomplish some of the tech requirements for the classroom in a way that can actually be beneficial. However, I have always loved the functionalities and convenience of google forms, and definitely see the value in my future classroom. While I may not necessarily use it for tests, it can be used for bell work, small quizzes, and surveys. One thing I learned in this webinar that I MOST DEFINITELY will use is the option to create a spreadsheet with the responses. This will help me keep track of all students in a more condensed manner. 

This workshop taught me how to use a smartboard in my classroom. There are many new things that smartboards have that they did not have when I was in school such as QR codes. I learned about calibrating which is essential to using a smartboard.

In the workshop, we discussed literacy, engagement, flipped classrooms, and flexible seating. 

I learned that flexible seating can definitely be appropriate in a science setting; however, certain age groups may require restrictions. Most of what we discussed was primarily related to a gen. Ed. Classroom and in a high school or middle school aged setting. However, I think that I’ll be able to use flexible seating in my future classroom as long as I introduce it gradually, with patience, and restrictions. 

At first, I had no clue what a flipped classroom was, but I learned that it can be useful depending on the students. It definitely wouldn’t work well with younger students, but I think you could start introducing it around 4th or 5th grade—if you have parent support probably a little earlier. You would definitely have to make sure that students have access to Internet as well as devices, so it could be a bit tricky.

Google slides is a great classroom tool, being a free service and being available on virtually every device. It allows for great creative freedom and is also a great way to present lessons or projects. The simplicity of the software allows quick startup, but it also has room to learn much more and create very involved presentations. While it does have limitations as it is web-based, so internet is a necessity, it does offer an amazing amount of features for a completely open and free resource.