Summary of attendance

Today I attended the Teaching Tolerance: Teaching Digital Literacy webinar. First, I learned the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is the lack of information, where as misinformation is incorrect information. Studies have shown that teenagers are unable to distinguish correct information from misinformation and disiformation. This is why it is important that we teach digital literacy to our students. This is important because in this day and age social media is being used as the primary news source, and this news source is easily editable and can be written by the common man. Essentiallly, it’s not necessarily reliable sources writing the news anymore. I will use this knowledge to teach digital literacy skills in my classroom from an early age.

I listened to a Webinar about Teaching Digital Literacy by Teaching Tolerance. This webinar went through how we can teach students about "fake news" and how to look at safe media/research sites to use when we gather information. They discussed that students/teenagers have become accustomed to getting their information from social media sites and question news media sites.They talked about how to incorporate digital literacy into a classroom and create a safer environment for students when they are researching. Using and teaching digital literacy is important for students to learn because they will need to know how to use their internet resources, but also use their resources wisely and safely. Students will need to know how to determine if the information they find is reliable or not. As a student, I relate  a lot to what the instructors were saying about relying on social media to be informed because I do rely on my social media to keep me informed. As a teacher, I want to be able to provide my students with reliable resources and to be prepared to understand how digital literacy works. 

However, for some reason, google classroom wasn't working on the bluejeans app so I was unable to make my own google classroom. But I watched Chris set up his. 

For this workshop, I went on the bluejeans app to view this webinar. The workshop was on google classroom. Chris showed us how to set up a google classroom and post different things such as quizzes, assignments, and posts. He also showed us how to invite other potential students. I can see myself using this very often as a teacher. I like how it feels like a mix of facebook and canvas for the classroom. I think that it gives students a great way to always stay connected to the classroom and reach others and the teacher quickly. I don't see myself using this as a student unless one of my teachers has their classroom set up with it. 

In this workshop, Chris taught us the ins and out of Google Classroom. First he showed us around his virtual class and then tasked us with creating our own. This included, adding other students to our class, connecting the date to our google calendars, creating tabs for topics, uploading files and hyperlinks, incorporating google forms, posting announcements, and creating/grading quizzes. After the workshop I feel confident in how to efficiently and effectively use a google classroom. As a student, I could use google classroom with a group to collaborate on projects. In the future, I can definitely see myself using google classroom. I will 100% use it if the school I am not does not provide their own canvas, blackboard, d2l, etc. 

This webinar was presented by Trevor Mackenzie and it was about how we can use technology especially flip grid to create an inquiry type learning in a classroom. It also talks about how we can use our students interests dreams and different abilities and use technology to help facilitate those. They talked about the different types of inquiry learning from, structured inquiry, controlled inquiry, guided inquiry, and free inquiry. They also talked about sketch noting in this webinar and had a sketch note of student inquiry that is a very good resource to use in a classroom. In the middle of the webinar they did a twitter chat, which since I was not watching it live I could not participate but It was about how to use inquiry based learning in a classroom. They talk a lot how to inquiry learning can foster a deep love for learning in students and motivate them. They talk about how flip grids is a safe place where students can feel confident in sharing their voice. They also talked about the power of provocation and how they can reflect on flip grid.They also showed an example of flip grid being used in kindergarten which I thought was really cool because I really only thought of it as more of a secondary tool. And they showed how to use it in high school as well.They also showed that they use flip grid with other teachers to create a professional learning environment. This was a good webinar on how you can use flip grid in inquiry learning in any grade. I love flip grid and am excited to use it in my future classroom in any grade.

We talked about how to use Pear Deck in the classroom. The program reminds me a lot of NearPod but you can edit the slides as you go whereas NearPod makes you start over if you need to change something. We were also shown how to add Pear Deck as an add-on in google slides to make the creation process easier. Pear Deck is an interactive tool I can use in my classroom as bell work to get my students engaged in the material or use it to review material studied before. I can use Pear Deck now in the place of a PowerPoint presentation to make it more interactive for future courses I will be taking.

This webinar was an online video recording and screen display on the topic of Teaching Digital literacy. This is one of the most important topics that should be incorporated into every classroom. They talked about different ways to teach about it, how to make sure you are providing a safe environment, and how you can teach students "fake news" or real news, and lastly the importance of knowing what resources are best to use. 

In this workshop, we learned about how to use the free app/website peardeck. This app is similar to using Nearpod. It is very interactive and allows the teacher to have control over all of the students iPad during the slideshow. While using this, the teacher can do survey question, text books, pictures and much more. While in the workshop we took the place of the student in a class so we could get the feel of how it would work out. Additionally, we were able to view the teacher view on the board; therefore, it allowed us to be able to see all aspects of the app.

In this workshop I learned how to use iMovie. We made a video about why we chose the teaching profession. I learned how to cut videos, lap videos with music, and how to upload pictures within the video. This will be useful in social studies. I can have my students create a video for class presentations or I can prepare a video if I have a substitute. 

In this workshop we learned more about the different features of accessibility that are available on the IPad. We learned about different features, including some that we learned about in class that will help meet the needs of certain students in our classroom. Including but not limited to inverted colors, zoom, and even text to speech. Some things I knew and heard about but was not sure how to incorporate them and this really helped me fill in those areas of confusion. Not only did we learn about them, but we tried them for ourselves which really helped me as a visual learning. Knowing and doing these asseessibility options will help me as a future teacher so I know different ways to meet the needs of all my students to make sure they are getting the best education they possibly can and benefiting from it as well.