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Blog #9 PowerPoints and Flipped Classes

         A "Flipped Classroom" is a class that delivers content in the opposite way of the traditional class.  The lectures and lessons are assigned as videos as homework.  The students then watch and take notes on these lectures, and bring their newly gained information to the classroom.  Once in class, the teacher helps them put that lesson into practice by exploring the subject.  To do this, the students and teachers will work on what a traditional class would call homework, together.  This ensures the students are grasping the concept and can get help as needed.  Flipped classrooms are probably the most common form of blended classrooms in modern schools.

          I have had experience with flipped classrooms, however, I did not get out of it what one might have hoped.  This is mainly because the homework that we would do in class became actual homework if we didn't finish it.  The assignments were always too long to finish in class so we had both traditional and flipped homework every night.  This was frustrating and quite exhausting.  However, I still do believe that if implemented properly, this system can work well.

          Khan Academy is a great place to find math and science video lectures.


          As someone who group in the American public school system, I have created my fair share of PowerPoints, so I did already know a lot of the skills needed for my assignments five and six.  However, there were still some things that I was able to get out of it.  For example, learning how to properly use animations.  I never tried to use them before because they had always seemed too tacky. However, by learning how to select the right ones and how to edit when and how they appear, I learned how to make animations fit very well within a presentation.  I also had a similar experience with learning how to properly implement SmartArt.  The biggest skill that I learned, however, was how to use the Slide Master.  I had never even heard of it before, and even thought it to be a little unnecessary when I did.  But now that I am comfortable with it, I use it as much as I can.

          For Assignment Five, I was very proud of my work.  What I was most proud of was the fact that I was able to implement SmartArt and shapes into my project, along with transitions and animations while still having them all fit the theme of the presentation.  It was my first ever PowerPoint that was not based on the standard bulleted structure, and I am proud of myself for being able to accomplish that.  However, if I could fix anything, it would be to trim it down a little as I felt not everything was super strong on topic, and to maybe have the SmartArt be somewhat more uniform.  I felt as though sometimes it did not fit as well as it could have.

          For Assignment Six, what I like most is that it is a little more uniqie than the usual jeopardy and that I wrote all of the questions myself.  Initialy I was going to just grab some questions offline, but I thought that since I will one day be a teacher, it is important to learn how to do this myself and I worked very hard on it.  My only complaint is that I could have worked the transition buttons a little better and figured them out more.  For the most part, they work perfectly fine, however I was unable to find out how to keep the answers from coming up immediately if one had already viewed the slide, gone back to th home screen, and made their way back to the questions.

Diigo Reflection

          What I liked about Diigo the most was the ability to have an aggregate of information on various topics, that others could add to.  I could document research while simultaneously receiving tips from my colleagues.  Because of this function, I believe that I will use it as a way to organize research and gain new information about topics while also connecting on a social level.  I believe that the social features were incredibly helpful because instead of one person having to spend incredible amounts of time searching for various articles and blogs, everyone is working together to achieve the same goal of compiling research and tools in the most efficient way possible.  Individual efforts were very effective in my learning because I was able to understand better how the tool works, but once I had figured it out, the ability to work with others to achieve a similar goal was much more beneficial.

#8 PowerPoint in the Classroom

          I absolutely loved the tour that we were given of the lab.  I was amazed by every piece of assistive technology we were able to experience.  However, personally one stood out above the rest for me and that was the smart pen that we were shown at the very end.  It had the ability to take an audio recording of the lecture while you take notes with the pen.  Then when you go back to your notes you can touch a certain part of the paper and it will play you that portion of the lecture!  This absolutely blew my mind and would be so incredibly helpful for studying and making sure students are able to know what is going on in class.  If they have a question about what something means as they are going over their notes they can relisten to the lecture.  They also have the ability to take that to me and ask what I meant, if they need further clarification.


          The base of Bloom's taxonomy is "remembrance".  PowerPoint would assist in this, as I would share my presentations with my students so they could go back over them and recall what was talked about in our lectures.  To help students with the second portion of "understand" I would add definitions and captions to more difficult concepts.  I would also add links if there was a useful link to help the students further understand the concept at hand.  For the application portion of Bloom's Taxonomy, students will be able to take quizzes that I will have set up in the presentation.

          Through a presentation, I will be able to show various points and sides to a concept, especially with a subject like government.  This is very important to helping my class analyze the information.  PowerPoint gives me the option to have lectures and discussions with my students about different concepts and through these discussions, we can evaluate the subject matter, which is the next step up. Finally, students can reach the tip of Bloom's Taxonomy, by creating their very own presentations.


           In order to stay up to date with education technology news, I can follow Education Weekly as they have a technology section of their magazine.  This is an online magazine about current events that relate to education and the technology section focuses the news to be all about ed-tech.

ILP#2 - Design - Podcast through GarageBand & iMovie

          For my second independent learning project I decided to make a podcast.  To do this, I made an audio recording on GarageBand, added the photo and made it into a video using iMovie, and uploaded it to Youtube in order to add it to my blog.  I had never used GarageBand or iMovie before and this is my first ever podcast.  The podcast is done as if I am a high school government teacher that makes a weekly podcast to give educational tips to other government teachers. If the video below does not work you can find the video by following this link: ILP #2.

Diigo #4

          Diigo allowed me to learn more about assistive technology as a whole and the different fields it can work in.  By looking at multiple articles that have been aggregated, I was able to get a broad view from multiple different angles.  For example I learned that students with intellectual, physical, or learning disabilities are able to become more motivated through the use of assistive technology.

#7 Adaptive Tech and Web Design

          Adaptive technologies are very important for the modern classroom.  As we progress through time we are gradually becoming more and more supportive and accommodating of those with disabilities.  This began with the American Disabilities Act which made it illegal to discriminate based on disabilities and required accommodations be made for those that do live with these disabilities.

          As heard in the podcast, there are many students that will require alternate input or output devices.  For input, they may use text to type instead of having to work a keyboard or a trackball instead of a mouse.  They may also make more use of touch screens or have various different types of keyboards such as expanded, customizable, or mini keyboards as seen on pages 74 and 75.  For output, the student may need a software that speaks the text to them if they are unable to see.  The student may also need to make use of screen magnification software and screen readers as seen on page 76.

          I have had very little experience with adaptive tech, however, I spent a semester working with special needs students as a teacher's aid during my junior year of high school.  During that semester, I was able to see students work with touchscreen keyboards as well as a lot of text-to-talk and talk-to-text keyboards.  Seeing them use these was quite fascinating as it was able to help them communicate what they wanted to get done, much more efficiently.


          From working with Weebly, I learned far more than I expected too.  At first, I did not expect to learn much as I was very well versed in using Wix.  However, I soon realized that the two software were very different as Weebly focuses more on drag and drop technology.  While it was initially frustrating to learn something new, I soon grew to love the software far more than Wix.  I found myself having fun creating a new website and I did not want to stop adding different aspects to it.  I love how user-friendly it is once one is able to get the hang of it.  The only complaint that I had was how long it took me to figure everything out on my own.

          Learning about how to make a website is incredibly helpful for my future career.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the teachers that I enjoyed the most were those that showed that they cared the most.  I find that the most outward way to show this is by having a well-designed website that makes it easy for the class to understand what is going on and retrieve information easily.  If there is something that I could do better, it would be having the text easier to read on backgrounds.  I would have liked to be able to give my text that is over pictures borders, but I was unable to figure out how.  Even with this, I am still very proud of what I created.

One can find my website by clicking on the picture below.