Having tools that are easily understandable makes the user more likely to return and use the tool. Keeping technical and academic terms limited helps with user interface. People who are new to the tool might have a limited working knowledge of the functionality of the menu. Like the book says, scaffolding the language in as you go along is better for learning, so people are not overloaded with information. When I feel that there is too much information within a program, it deters me from using it. I prefer a minimalist look to tools without all the distractions and fancy graphics. The purpose of the tool or app is to facilitate learning, so it takes away from learning if you’re focused on the app itself and not the content.

PDFs have added new features that offer read-out loud. I use this functionality whenever I have to read long articles or books. It really helps me get through the material. I can learn when I go on walks, on the drive to work or during my free time without having to read something. I get sleepy when I read so distracted easily so this option works best for me. Sometimes there are certain formats like pictures of text, infographics, or diagrams that doesn’t work well with it but for the most part, pdfs can read plain text outload.

Having multiple means of representation of the material makes it easier to reach more of your students. Some students need longer to process information and having your lesson on video or YouTube allows them to watch the lesson at their own time going their own pace. I try to post my lessons online when I can. So far I have 21 lessons online, I used to make them more frequently, but over the last few years, I haven’t had the time to post. Not all students watch them, but the ones who do say that they help them with the material. I also have notes posted for students as well.

When the pandemic first shut down schools, it was a rush to keep learning going. Lots of things were overlooked like adapting for students who had disabilities. It was difficult to help kids that had vision and hearing impairments, since everything was online where it was difficult for a teacher-aid to be there to help them. Some of those students fell through the cracks. The following school year was a little better for kids with disabilities since districts had the summer to try and figure out how to better serve those students. At my school, the aids went to breakout rooms with those students to better assist them one on one. It did not solve most of the issues though. Blind students still couldn’t see or get braille help.

It is crazy how many apps that we have on our phones track us. We essentially have to allow them to collect our information in order to use it. Google always knows where we are since most of us use GoogleMaps and give them access to our location data. It’s a necessary evil, there’s not a way of getting around this. At one point or another, we will need directions and have to use some kind of app to get us there. The tradeoff to allowing this is the convenience of not having to use a paper map and having different places saved in one place. It allows us to find the fastest route too. I think it’s worth it but there are some that don’t. Of course, they will sell our location information.

I tell my students that when they are in school, everything that they search for and look up on the school computers is not private. They are tracked at all time and everything is recorded, they are monitored as soon as they sign into the computer. We use a program called goguardian. This app allows teachers to see exactly what is on every student’s chromebook at all times. It tracks how long they are on each website, what they search up, it can take screenshots of the student’s screen. It can also lock a student’s Chromebook and send direct messages to the student. It has caught students looking up stuff they are not supposed to and we have evidence to show the parents. When using school equipment, there is no privacy for students.

Remind is a really good app that my school uses for clubs when we communicate with students. It allows you to message both students and parents at the same time and they can message us back. You are able to create a classroom or group with everyone’s information in there. From there you can message the whole class. It makes communication with everyone a lot easier and private. You do not have to give your number out. It has a free version which is what I use.

When we sign up for any free services, we should just assume that they are collecting and selling our data whether we like it or not. Every company has to make money to cover costs of servers, labor, etc. and if they are not making you pay for something or have funding through external parties, then they need to collect and sell your information to stay afloat. It sucks but most of the time using that app/program is unavoidable especially if it is a requirement for a class. Teachers should be mindful of this and try to minimize the amount of information that is being collected though choosing apps/websites that do not require a lot of information collected.

I think it is important to develop each of these types of knowledge when trying to learn a new concept. Having the basic knowledge of how stuff works and being able to recall them at a later time is important in learning new concepts. If you're not able to recall prior knowledge then it is impossible to build on and expand what you have learned. The book gives the example of using flashcards for factual knowledge and using spreadsheets to help plan and create strategies for metacognitive knowledge. I think the most important one of Bloom's Taxonomy is the Remembering part. If you are not able to remember then you can not build off on it. A lot of times we are tying to get kids to move on to the create and evaluate stages without them being able to recall and identify information.

Students learn what is acceptable behavior through rewards and punishments by praise or consequences. Like the book said when a kid touches a stove, they learn quickly that it is hot and they probably won’t do it again or when babies cry and a parent show up, they learn that crying gets the parents attention. When they want something, babies start to cry. In the classroom, I sometimes give candy to student who are doing good to reinforce a behavior. When a student is doing bad, they’ll get a warning or email and call home and that works to stop the unwanted behavior for some students.

After students have a working knowledge of a concept, you can bring them up Bloom's taxonomy. Once they can remember and understand things, it becomes easier to create, analyze and evaluate. To me this is the best time to introduce new technology to the students. That way they don't have to struggle with both learning the concept and a program at the same time. It will make the activity flow smoother if they are only focusing on applying the technology with concepts that they already comprehend.

Learning is an active activity. Doing assignments and activities that are hands on allow students to make connections between something abstract and something concrete. This allows them to see what they are learning. It is not enough to explain the structure of a molecule and expect all students to grasp it. I think that it would be more beneficial to explain it and then have students play and manipulate the molecule on a computer program or physical models.

Building a professional learning network can be extremely advantageous to learning about new resources, collaborating with others, getting advice or just bouncing ideas off of another person. Teachers attend conferences every year to learn and grow as educators, there are people out there who have skills that you do not possess. Getting their information and engaging with them will be beneficial to both you and other people. You know things that others don’t and others know things that you don’t. Share your knowledge and others will share theirs with you. I have always taken new techniques and tricks that I learn from these conferences back into the classroom.

Life can get hectic. When you have a lot on your plate, it can be difficult to remember what you need to do. I really like using Google Keep for notes on my phone. I can make a check list of things that need to get done and cross them out as I get through them. Google Calendar is another tool that I use to help remind me of meetings and places that I need to be at. I like jotting down stuff that pops into my head and Google Keep is a good place to store them for later.

This tip is one that I use numerous times a week. A lot of the time, I am looking for a pdf file or word document that I can edit and use. Using file:pdf has saved me a lot of time looking for those specific files. This is one tip that I do not think many people know. You can put .pdf or .doc in your Google search to bring up those types of files too. Sometimes you need a quick worksheet or ideas that others have posed which you can use to create your assignment.

We all have gone through this late at night before we go to sleep. You’re scrolling and scrolling then something interesting catches your eye. You open up google and search through the internet about that topic only to end up on Wikipedia clicking through links leading down a rabbit hole then you look at the clock and it’s an hour or two later. It is very useful to learn tips that help narrow your searches down to exactly what you’re looking for. I use quotation marks a lot to make sure that the search brings up exact words or phrases. This is very useful in finding the exact thing that you are searching for. I try to show my students simple tips that will help narrow down their searches as well.

A good tutorial is important for the user experience. Having to learn the program from scratch by trial and error can be challenging and intimidating. Especially when it comes to people who are not tech savvy it is really overwhelming, and they quit. Even if the tutorial is not created by the program that you are using, as long as there is a community of people who share their expertise on YouTube or other how to websites, it gives the user more confidence when they use it.

This is very important in determining if I will use a program or not. If it takes a lot of time to figure out code to make it look pleasing, then I will probably not use it. Google Sites does a pretty good job with this. The assignment where we had to embed code into it was easy and simple to do. What we saw on the screen was how it will be published. This makes things easier and is one less barrier to using something new. WIX is another tool that is pretty good at this. The goal of it is not to learn coding sills to create a webpage, but to actually create a webpage that you want to use and share.

This is definitely something that teachers have to me cautious about. There are a lot of amazing programs out there that will enhance student's learning, but in order for them to be implemented successfully, the teacher has to have training and be able to use them fluently. When my school district rolled out a program called ALEKS, they did not give teacher adequate training and time to play with the software, but expected students to use it from day one. It was a mess because teachers had no idea how to set up a class and have the students use it as the creators intended. Definitely try out and play with any new program before assigning it to students.

G Suite is an awesome tool to use. My school uses Google Docs, Google Sheets and others when they are trying to get a lot of people's ideas on to one document. It works on virtually all devices especially all you need is internet. It is also free, which is a huge factor for schools since funding can be limited. It is much easier to share and collaborate than Microsoft Word or Excel.

This is really important because we want students to use technology in a safe and responsible way. School is where we can monitor and provide a safe environment where students can learn without fears of legal, ethical and safety issues arising. We can explain the pitfalls of technologies like getting addicted to social media, how easy it is to plagiarizing and get caught, or even not knowing who you are talking to on the other side of the screen.

Turinitin has an interesting concept in that it is supposed to check for plagiarism, but at times this is not effective or possible to use because there are only so many ways that a paper on a mathematical concept can be restated. Sometimes students submit a draft into turnitin to check the plagiarizer score and would get a low score. They think it's okay, but then when they submit the actual essay in it comes back as a high plagiarizing score due to turnitin comparing the final paper with the draft. There are downfalls to a lot of programs that have pitfalls that teachers do not think of. Like the video said, some collect your data and sell it to others while other give you targeted adds or use it to "predict" your future. Use technology with care.

It is important for students to be able to apply what they are learning to real world problems. Seeing the connections between what goes on in the classroom to what they will encounter in life after school motivates them to learn and keeps them engaged in the lesson. Technology must keep up with what is going on outside the classroom. You would not want students to make a cassette recording, most of them would have no idea what that is. Instead a voice recorder app on their phone would work better. This is something that they can use outside of the classroom when they have to record a lecture or meeting.

This is important. It is such a waste of money buying all the expensive and shiny new technological devices for students and teachers to use just so the school can brag about how much new stuff they have. My district was/is guilty of this. Seven years ago, they got every student a chromebook to use during the school day to take notes or work on online programs like ALEKS or no red ink, but they didn't set up the network infrastructure for it. When a lot of students got on at the same time, the internet was throttled and slow for everyone connected to the same network. The goal of it was to change the way students took notes, instead of taking notes on paper, they would do it on a google docs and always had it with them. In theory it was a good idea, but it was not thought out. Some days the internet was down so students were not able to take or access their old notes. It is also hard to do math and type up math notes. Spending money on programs that showed things to students in a new way like Tinkercad is worth spending the money, it improved comprehension and an understanding of 3D models. They are able to design and manipulate it all in one place.

This is important. It is such a waste of money buying all the expensive and shiny new technological devices for students and teachers to use just so the school can brag about how much new stuff they have. My district was/is guilty of this. Seven years ago, they got every student a chromebook to use during the school day to take notes or work on online programs like ALEKS or no red ink, but they didn't set up the network infrastructure for it. When a lot of students got on at the same time, the internet was throttled and slow for everyone connected to the same network. The goal of it was to change the way students took notes, instead of taking notes on paper, they would do it on a google docs and always had it with them. In theory it was a good idea, but it was not thought out. Some days the internet was down so students were not able to take or access their old notes. It is also hard to do math and type up math notes. Spending money on programs that showed things to students in a new way like Tinkercad is worth spending the money, it improved comprehension and an understanding of 3D models. They are able to design and manipulate it all in one place.

This is really important because we want students to use technology in a safe and responsible way. School is where we can monitor and provide a safe environment where students can learn without fears of legal, ethical and safety issues arising. We can explain the pitfalls of technologies like getting addicted to social media, how easy it is to plagiarizing and get caught, or even not knowing who you are talking to on the other side of the screen.

Turinitin has an interesting concept in that it is supposed to check for plagiarism, but at times this is not effective or possible to use because there are only so many ways that a paper on a mathematical concept can be restated. Sometimes students submit a draft into turnitin to check the plagiarizer score and would get a low score. They think it's okay, but then when they submit the actual essay in it comes back as a high plagiarizing score due to turnitin comparing the final paper with the draft. There are downfalls to a lot of programs that have pitfalls that teachers do not think of. Like the video said, some collect your data and sell it to others while other give you targeted adds or use it to "predict" your future. Use technology with care.

It is important for students to be able to apply what they are learning to real world problems. Seeing the connections between what goes on in the classroom to what they will encounter in life after school motivates them to learn and keeps them engaged in the lesson. Technology must keep up with what is going on outside the classroom. You would not want students to make a cassette recording, most of them would have no idea what that is. Instead a voice recorder app on their phone would work better. This is something that they can use outside of the classroom when they have to record a lecture or meeting.