Blog Post 2

Search Engines 

Technology has become a huge aspect of teaching and learning with this generation of students. It is inevitable that you will use search engines in your lessons. There are certain rules that you should keep in mind when you give your students time for technology. Most importantly you, as the teacher, should instruct the students to be specific when finding information on a search engine. "Type in a combination of keywords that could be found in the URLs of the sites or documents you want."(Roblyer) This instruction should help the students be more direct and efficient in their educational searches.

Website Evaluation

This video will be helpful in the classroom when you are articulating to the students how they should find resources and websites. A good time to use this in a lesson would be when you are assigning a project of some kind.

Favorite Professional Websites

When deciding what websites to use in your lesson there are certain criteria that these websites must meet. Having this criteria set in place will help you give the students a more fulfilling educational lesson and keep them completely engaged. The two website links listed below are very helpful and educational websites. They can be used in the classroom to help motivate and engage students. The websites could also be used in professional development for teachers. They both meet several of the standards from the Website Evaluation Criteria Checklist in the textbook Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching those being; 1) all information is the most current and up-to-date available, 2) the site is complete, and 3) content was free of bias.(Roblyer) Those are just a few of the needs met in these websites.

https://www.edutopia.org
https://wonderville.org

Online Safety and Security

Cyberbullying happens so frequently in our culture and it is beginning to happen at younger ages. "Cyberbullying is the practice of using technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person." (Roblyer)Part of the dynamic you should setup in your classroom is a safe zone. Since this is a very technological age and you never know what your students are doing when they leave the classroom, from the beginning of the year create a community. When you develop this community in your classroom, it is less likely to have cyberbullying happen in your class.

Works Cited:
Roblyer, M. D. (2016). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Boston: Pearson.

Blog Post 1

Word Processing Software

One way I would use word processing software in the classroom is to make newsletters each week for my students and parents. This news letter will be meant to notify parents of activities, projects, and tests during the week. This will also help the students be accountable for turning in their own work and making time to study for tests. These will newsletters will be delivered by email and by paper to avoid students not delivering it to the parents. "Word processing also helps teachers use preparation time effectively.." Roblyer, M. D., & Edwards, J. (2000). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
This could become an issue if the parents are illiterate, non-English speakers, or give false information. For the non-English speakers, you could plug your letter into google translate and send that home with the student.

Spreadsheet Software

Spreadsheet software can be used as a mathematics activity in the classroom, especially if you are teaching your students about percentages and pie charts and graphs. "Spreadsheets helps users manage helps numbers in the same way that word processing helps them manage." Roblyer, M. D., & Edwards, J. (2000). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. Quite like an activity we completed in our technology class, I would give the students a bag of M&Ms and ask them to create a graph on Excel. Of course, before giving them the M&Ms, I will instruct them on how to use Excel and how to effectively create a chart.
One way this could be an issue is not giving step by step instruction to use Excel. This could be overwhelming to the students if they are not given the effective instruction.

Presentation Software

I can use presentation software in the form of Slides in Google Drive. This will be an effective way to bring technology into the classroom and to also allow the students to access any lessons at home that they learned in the classroom.


Classroom Use--

More than anything I will use Word Processing software in the classroom as a tool and "it allows materials to be shared easily."Roblyer, M. D., & Edwards, J. (2000). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. I will encourage the students to use Google Drive for all online/digital assignments. They will share their documents to my school email so that I know where they are in their work each day and how much they accomplish.