1. Looking at the Wordle provided, it is increasingly obvious that I am a visitor to digital media. I literally only recognize one word provided - Weebly - and I only learned of it this semester. My tech life primarily exists on social media, though not a huge variety of social media. Once upon a time, I, like many of my fellow classmates I'm sure, was the proud owner of a MySpace account. I abandoned MySpace for Facebook and other more contemporary social media sites, though I still do not branch out much on the social media spectrum. I primarily use technology for research, conversing with friends near and far, and most especially, posting hilarious and stupid memes.
2. Many of these tools shown are especially useful for teachers and parents. My favorite of these sites, however, was Kahoot. I have seen this app used before and I think it is an effective teaching tool that I could actually use in my classroom on a regular basis. This app can be used on most devices, but it is most readily compatible with a smartphone. While students are often exposed to technology in their classes, their phones are rarely utilized as teaching tools in ways that laptops or ipads are. Additionally, I like the competitive aspect of this app and I think it would keep students engaged. I would use it as an informal assessment tool throughout teaching to check comprehension. Offering extra credit points or some reward to whoever wins the Kahoot quizzes can also serve as extrinsic motivation if the sheer joy of annihilating their classmates does not satisfy them.
3. Virtual writing is one of the most important things technology can be utilized for in classrooms because students will realistically compose quite a bit of digital writing both inside and outside of the classroom. Some sites, such as MemeGenerator, takes something that students already do regularly with interest - look at and/or create memes - and allows for an academic application as well as a social one. The prewriting websites can give students easily accessible templates and organizers for planning their writing in a virtual frame. However, some of the prewriting tools may cause students to rely too heavily on them and not wish to deviate from their format. The publishing tools are useful to students because they allow them to put their writing out to be read by various audiences, bringing their scope of writing beyond that of having just a teacher audience. My favorite website in this section - despite the fact that I couldn't properly open the site - was ComicMaster. Graphic novels have become increasingly popular among students in recent years, so giving students an outlet to create their own graphic novels can be useful in a variety of ways. It also allows students to look at text from a variety of different mediums as well as take printed novels and stories and transform them into graphic novels.
4. When first looking at the "Top 100 Tools for Education", I first noticed that many of these sites are ones that students are likely to be familiar with already in a social context. Using Twitter and Youtube as teaching tools helps to show students that they can engage in a social and interactive platform while attaining necessary knowledge and skills to make them successful both academically and professionally. Additionally, using technology that students are likely to be familiar or comfortable with can make the teaching process easier because it frees teachers up to actually teach the content instead of spending a lot of time teaching the processes of using the technology itself.
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5. Teachers should focus on getting students to the "Creating" level of Bloom's taxonomy. In order to do so, they must become proficient in the other taxonomic levels first. The way this pyramid is set up illustrates how different sites and apps can be used to help students gain proficiency in different levels of taxonomy, while some (like Google) are beneficial at nearly every step of the pyramid.
6. I definitely want to use some social media sites to incorporate into my curriculum. I also like the sites that allow you to transform literature into various forms - graphic novel, movie, newspaper articles, etc. Google has a lot of applications that I have found useful and that I have seen used in my internship that I would like to use as well. This exploration has made me more receptive to using a variety of technological tools in my classroom and has helped me find ways to incorporate technology that is less intimidating to myself as well as my future students.
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