Blog Post 8

Diigo seems to be a quite handy tool for teachers.  If you find a group and all use the tool, you can easily share articles and reduce the amount of time necessary to find and interpret them.  In addition, the ability to annotate the articles and post notes means that others can see the highlights of an article so they can know without reading the entire article whether it is of interest to them.  Anything that can save time for a teacher is greatly appreciated.  In the classroom, you can use it to generate a class discussion on an article.  Let the students go through and pick out their personal highlights from it, then discuss as a group.

PowerPoint is a handy tool for any level of Bloom's Taxonomy.
Remember - The simplest one, just provide the powerpoint to your students after you have used it for a lecture.  It always annoys me when a teacher refuses to distribute their presentation after the lecture.  It's not like this is top secret material, we're not going to run out and sell it, just let us study it!
Understand - The details that you can add to a presentation are pretty much limitless, the use of animations to show progression and the facts that can be incorporated help students better understand difficult concepts.
Apply - For me, as a history major and history nerd, I love applying situations and thought patterns both forward and backward in time.  I have a situation presented to me, how would someone 100 years ago deal with it, how will future students look back at our time period and problems and see them?  You should use questions like this in your presentations to try and impress upon the students that they are not alone, every time period has struggled with similar issues, use their experiences to help you.
Analyze - Linking information together in multiple ways is simple enough to do if you can fashion a complex enough powerpoint.  You can use hyperlinking to branch out your presentation similar to how wikipedia and other resources are hyperlinked.  Let your students go down the rabbit-hole by linking concepts together and letting them take them however they wish.  You can lose yourself in that fashion for quite a while and end up in a completely different place than you anticipated going, but it will still all lead from your basic idea.
Evaluate - As you've presented your lesson, include questions that enable the students to come to their own conclusions, lead them, not to where you think they should be, but to where their own minds take them.  Give them questions that involve taking the information presented and having them describe how things might change with different variables, or how certain actions caused different ripple effects.  Learning should be much more than simple memorization and regurgitation.
Create - You can have your students create their own powerpoint presentations in lieu of writing papers if they wish.  They will probably learn just as much about the topic, while also learning a skill that will benefit them in their future study and life.

The Teacher's Guide to Tech - Link Here, is a fantastic resource that is released annually for teachers that lists, describes, and gives you instructions on how to use each resource or tool, plus a glossary of terms and everything you need to learn about and implement those tools into your teaching.  It is released by Jennifer Gonzalez who publishes the Cult of Pedagogy site, another tremendous resource for teacher development.  This is one of the better examples of this kind of thing out there since most will list resources and maybe tell you what they can do, but not explain and show you how to get the most out of them.

Blog Post 7

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter...Nope, it still sucks.  I tried following some interesting people, history stuff from teachers and researchers.  Still don't like it.  Don't like the notifications, don't like the truncated content, don't like the comments and constant retweeting and hashtags.  It's a pox on the face of humanity and needs to die.  Seriously, I see the use, I just really, really dislike most social media, particularly Twitter.  I hate what it is doing to people in general, and the less that people use it, the better off we'll be.  Until this class, I had completely cut myself off from social media for about a year and didn't miss it a bit.  So, if I've learned anything, it's that social media is definitely not my thing, and I will be glad when I'm not forced to participate in it. 

The website design was simple and pretty basic.  The Weebly site is pretty handy for setting one up without learning to actually code, which is something I've always wanted to do, but never actually bothered to learn.  Since most people won't take the time to learn code, it doesn't get much better than this.  Drag and drop is something that is simple enough for most anyone to do, and creating something that looks at least halfway decent is within anyone's reach.  The easiest way to improve it next time would just be to spend more time on it.  This was kind of at the bottom of my priority list this week, so it didn't get much time devoted to it.  If I use it in the future, I will take more time to set up something much more interesting looking, but it would help to actually be creating it for a class so I could post actual content instead of having to make everything up.  It would be simple to use in the future if I needed to create a site for an actual class of mine.  Remembering to keep it updated is the problem I'd struggle with, as do most teachers who have websites from what I've seen.

Here are a link and screenshot of my site:
Website

Assistive technologies are technological items or programs that assistive people who have some difficulty in accessing materials in a classroom.  It can be a visual or hearing impairment, or a learning disability, basically anything that impairs their ability to use or obtain the information you are trying to teach.  They perform a wide variety of functions with the singular goal of enabling all children to participate regardless of their disability.  My fiancee has used some of these items when she was teaching in an elementary school computer lab.  They had various items that were mentioned in the article, substitutes for the mice, screen magnifiers, and various other items that ensure that all students would be able to perform the tasks that were required on the computers.  She said the main difficulty in using the equipment for her in the lower grades anyway, was simply determining who needed what.  She was in a low-SES school, and many of the children had issues that were undiagnosed, so figuring out who needed help, and then figuring out exactly how to help them was the main problem.  Another issue she had was that many of the students who needed help, could not effectively communicate what their problems were.  It made it a challenge to assist them in getting the help they needed.

ILP Participation - Sandbox AR/VR tools

I went up to the Sandbox to complete the tour that was cut short the other week.  I wanted to get into the AR and VR items because I feel this is really where the applications are enormous for students in a history or social sciences classroom.  "History is boring".  Probably the most common phrase you hear from people about history classes.  I don't think it is, but I've always been able to see the drama in everything.  For most people, it's a collection of dates and dead people.  I think AR and VR, in particular, can help to change that. 

Currently, there is not a ton of content available for the systems for History and Social Studies courses, but there are a few, and I was able to look at a few of them.  Under the AR heading, there was Civilizations AR, which is an excellent tool though limited by content.  (This will be a recurring theme with these programs)  It allows you to see and manipulate items that are superimposed on the background of your space on your phone.  The personal interaction with the objects and the ability to focus on areas you want to see better is nice.  JigSpace is another program that lets you again, insert an object into your space and manipulate it with similar limitations in regards to the availability of content.  These are limited by the sometimes difficult process of maneuvering your phone and having it register a space to place objects.  They can be a bit finicky and difficult to use.

Here's a pic of a mummy sarcophagus on my floor at work, this was taken with Civilizations AR and shows a bit of what you can do with it.

VR is where the technology really has a chance to shine.  I firmly believe that in the next 10-15 years, class field trips to chosen sites and even observation of particular historic events will be as simple as putting a headset on and entering the VR world.  As it currently stands, you are generally limited by a couple of factors.  They have not completely figured out a movement method that is simple and intuitive, but some options are better than others.  You are also usually tethered to the computer, though the wifi revolution is changing that slowly.  The most important limitation currently is (Say it with me) lack of content.  I know there are groups out there who are preserving ancient sites like the Acropolis by taking detailed 360-degree video and using drone photography in order to create a perfect 3D representation of these locations so eventually, you will be able to stroll through these historical sites completely virtually and even, if combined with the 3D modeling techniques, be able to wander through them and see it as someone from the time of their construction would have.  This is where the future of teaching history lies.  Not just a dry talk about an object or a time period, but actually (Well, virtually) seeing it.  Even with the frame rate and resolution issues with the headsets currently, your brain can be completely fooled.  Imagine if when discussing the Civil War in your US history classroom, instead of talking about Pickett's Charge, you could put your students in the front line and let them see what one of those soldiers saw.  Or let them watch the Gettysburg Adress like they're seeing it live.  That is how you can get people interested in history.  Let them be IN the stories you're telling.

As it is, there isn't much to talk about for the history programs for VR, there simply aren't many.  Google Earth VR is useful, as you can somewhat get in and see sites, but the range of motion is limited and the controls are mind-bogglingly frustrating to learn.   We are just on the cusp of what this technology can do, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it will take us.  I appreciate the Sandbox for having these items so we can see what we can do with the technology and letting us try it out.  You can't understand how much your brain can be fooled by this stuff until you actually try it.  I hope I can find some more time to go back and try these items out some more.  I also wish I was in charge of setting up the programs in the pipeline to be made because I have so many ideas for things.

Blog Post 6

I went back to my old school and looked over their websites, unfortunately, there were only two of them (Way to represent Niceville High School!).  Teacher websites were not a thing when I was in school.  Honestly, websites themselves weren't really a thing back then.  I visited the two sites available which were both Honors English sites, Mrs. Ellis' site:

And also Mrs. Mixon's site:

Unfortunately, I could not find a grade level, but given that these are Honors/AP English, it would have to be grade 11 or 12.  Both websites show a list of upcoming homework, have a slideshow with class slides, and also links to external resources for the students to use.  There appear to be discussion boards possibly for them that might allow class discussions.  In general, the layout of Mrs. Ellis site is much better looking and organized and pleasant to look at.

I could see using a website to distribute homework and send out class announcements.  It would be a handy resource to keep communication with parents up, especially these days as the parents have probably also been on the internet for the majority of their lives, so it seems natural to them.  Ideally, it would be nice to be able to exchange comments between the teacher and parents on the site, though given the normal way website comments run, that might not be a great idea.  I would also like to use the site as a discussion board for students to discuss the class activities amongst themselves.  The issue there would be getting them to actually use it.  Perhaps if they were prompted to do so, it might continue.

The tech sandbox trip was too short honestly.  We needed at least another 45 minutes to an hour to get through the whole thing.  As it was, my group only got to see the smartboards and the 3d printing before our time was up.  The smartboards are handy for some things, but I feel that they are perhaps a little overhyped.  I don't deny that they are significantly better than the reel to reel projectors we had, but in general, they really do not have much more than the "wow" factor.  Some things will be easier, and the ability to manipulate items in space is useful.  I see them being much more useful for the younger kids as they beg for interactivity, and once you reach the upper grades, you generally want the students staying in their seats to minimize disruption.  I'm sure as time goes by, they will expand the software and programs available and think of uses beyond what we have now.  As it is, for my purposes, it's not much more than a glorified whiteboard that I can put pictures on.  The same goes for the 3D printing.  I can see tons of applications for this in certain fields of study.  For Social Studies/History, it's not much more than a novelty though.  If we'd had them available back when I was in drafting classes though, I would have been in love. 

Blog Post 5

Diigo looks to be a very interesting and useful tool for teachers.  I can see it being used for teacher/student interactions also, but the inter-teacher communication aspect seems like it would be incredibly handy.  The ability to share links and annotations between your peers without sending each individual contact a link and notes is great.  The main thing I see as being an issue with this is simple overload.  If you have a large group, many links could get lost if there is a large influx of posts at the same time.  Aside from that minor niggle, I think this is one of the better applications I've seen for the dissemination of information between teachers.

Blogging so far has been okay.  It’s not a true blogging experience, mainly because we have topics to talk about in each one, so it’s not free-form rambling of the type of most blogs I pay attention to.  Still, writing off the top of my head is one aspect of school I never struggled with.  Term papers, essays, whatever, just go from base knowledge and then go back for sources is necessary.  I’m good at it, and writing is something I should probably do more of.  As for what I’ve learned from it, aside from how to use this particular blogging site, not too much.  I mean, I’m learning the systems we use, and learning about the problems and issues that we need to discuss in class, but as far as blogging goes, I’ve done it before, there’s not a whole lot of new stuff coming in here.

The Map As History website is a useful site for a social studies teacher.  The website itself is not the prettiest site ever made, but it has a list of historical maps with included videos that explain the progress of the map through time.  This could be a useful resource for teachers to present a basic rundown of different periods of history before using class time to go more in depth.  The maps update as the video presents new features and the timeline advances so the students will be able to see the procession of time, a topic that is difficult for many students to grasp when simply reading text or listening to a lecture.  In an ideal world, the maps would be truly interactive, with the teacher able to control the progression, but this is still an excellent resource.  You are able to get a subscription to the site as an individual or as a school.  They provide a list of all the available maps and have a list of all contributing authors.  The site is fully functional and recommended by a couple of groups, including the French Ministry of Education.

https://www.the-map-as-history.com/

Blog Post 4

Twitter is, in my opinion, one of the worst of the social media platforms, which is saying a lot since I believe that social media is honestly one of the banes of the modern age.  The format and users are overall, terrible.  Yes, there are useful things about it, and if you try, you can find good information and great links, but the format is conducive to insults and pointless one-liners and nearly anything seen by the general public is liable to go political.  Like all social media, Twitter is only as good as the users, and like all social media, the users tend to be awful.  I can see the use for it, but I find it very hard to deal with being on it.  I have followed one person outside of class, which is Dr. Bob Nicholson, who does humorous Victorian history tweets, but aside from that, I really can’t bring myself to be on there long enough to discover much, even though it will negatively impact my grade.  I am serious when I say that Twitter is the worst of social media sites.  It will likely not be very helpful in the future, because as soon as the requirement to have an account is over, I will be deleting the account and never, EVER, looking at it again.

The digital divide is a serious issue in schools today, particularly in areas with a disparity between socio-economic levels or rural and city lifestyles.  As a teacher, you have to take into account those students who do not have ready access to up-to-date technology.  If you teach in a rural area, the students may not even have access to computers at all.  In cities and large towns, children could at least go to the libraries to access one if necessary.  In smaller towns, even that may not be an option.  You must structure your classes in a way that does not disadvantage your students who do not have access to all the modern conveniences.  That means no homework or testing that requires online or computer research or work.  Luckily, we’ve been teaching without computers for a few millennia now, so figuring out how to go about this shouldn’t be difficult.  A lot of schools are now providing computers and/or iPads for the students now, but even then, you must account for any students that are not as adept at using technology as others, and anyone who may not have internet access at home.  

Next up is software for students.  Having just said you must accommodate your students who may not have computers and access to the internet, it seems like an odd transition to then talk about software for them to use.  Particularly since I am aiming to teach in rural communities where they may not have access to these things, so I will hopefully not be requiring my students to have any of this.  I suppose if I have to use them, then things like DropBox, which is a simple to use file sharing service.  I could use to share files like a syllabus and videos or allow students to submit assignments online.  The only other I can think of requiring students to use would be Microsoft Word, which is an easy to use word processing program.  I would mainly use this because as a history teacher, the students will be doing a good bit of writing, and I don’t have the time to be trying to decipher handwritten papers, plus the spellcheck is vital since nobody knows how to spell anymore.