Sunny's EME2040

I have had many experiences with distance learning because I was an online student from seventh grade to ninth grade. This was during the COVID-19 shutdown, and teachers were new to a lot of the distance learning technologies. In my K-8, they started with BigBlueButton. It was confusing for everyone, including the students, and it made it very difficult to interact with learning. In eighth grade, they switched to Zoom, and that made things a little easier because people had more experience with it. However, many of my teachers couldn't figure out how to balance virtual students with in-person students, and I oftentimes would be forgotten or left out of class activities. I've used Canvas for my dual enrollment class since tenth grade, so my distance learning didn't end even when I started high school in-person. I feel like I've used many technologies over the years, and there aren't any that I would like to experience simply because I don't know of anything new t...

I enjoyed working on the Web Design project. I've only ever used Wix to create a website, so this was a nice change in what tools I use. I learned how to best utilize text over images for looks and for easy reading, and I really like how my website turned out. I also think my colors flow very nicely. The only thing I wish I could've done better was hyperlink the websites to the names of the websites, but it just wasn't working through Weebly. I checked tutorials and I was doing exactly what it showed, but it didn't want to link to the text. While I do think it's nice to know the basics of how to use Weebly, I see myself more likely to use Wix in the future. The QR code to my website is on the right. I do also think QR codes can be very helpful in a classroom. Much like the one above, they can give easy access to important information for students. Stuff like websites, Google Forms, PDFs, etc. can all be turned into QR codes. Students can take a picture of it for lat...

 It was honestly kind of hard to find a school website that has teacher pages on it. My elementary and high schools didn't have them, and I couldn't find any schools in the area with it either. I had to specifically search for schools with teacher pages to find one ( https://mhs.floydboe.net/academics/teacher-websites ), and it's a high school in Georgia. They included information about who they are, where they're from, and how they can be contacted. At my K-8 school, we used Schoology; this is an app that has class pages where teachers can post announcements, resources, and assignments we were working on. However, these pages can only be accessed by logging in through student or parent accounts. Being a kindergarten teacher, I don't think I would want to use any apps or websites that my students would need to make an account or work on themselves. However, I could use stuff as a teacher leading the class. When I was in elementary school, my teachers would use GoNoo...

I  really  enjoyed  getting to visit  Tech Sandbox last week.   I learned that  there's   a lot of  different  technology that's  used in education that I didn't know existed.   There were  these  tools that worked like headbands  that read  your brain activity.  There was also a counting board that looked really fun, but I didn't get the chance to use it while we were there.  Apparently,  a lot  of these tools are used  for  athletes to test their reaction time,  and that was  a really cool concept  to me .   I  don't  know  if  there are  any of these  that I  would  use in  my future  classroom since I want to teach kindergarten , but they're still  really neat   tools . One standard that includes technology is  SC.8.CO.1.2 - Create a collaborative project utilizing an online digital application ....

I've really enjoyed writing blog posts so far. I have two classes that I write weekly blogs for: this one and my Writing and Editing in Print and Online (WEPO). In my WEPO class, we do have more freedom with the writing, so while we do have to stay relatively on topic about what we learned or did in class that week, there's more creative liberty for how you write it. I do like having the questions as a guide for what I should be writing about, but at the same time, I feel like I end up focusing on whether or not I answer the questions fully rather than truly reflecting on the class. I've learned that the topic of the blog heavily impacts the strength of writing--if I don't enjoy a topic, I tend to write much more blandly than I usually do. Moving on, I think AI can be a useful tool in some education settings. Personally, I don't think it should be used in elementary classes, especially at younger ages (like kindergarten). Children's minds are very susceptible to...

While I made both a Pinterest and an Instagram account, I've been looking at Instagram more. I feel it has better material for me to look through and take advice from. There are many teachers who post strategies that they use in their classrooms, showing what works best with different students. Since kids now are growing up differently from the way I did, it's cool to see what works best for students, especially in the age bracket I'd be interested in teaching. These platforms can be very helpful in the future in the same way I'm using them now; the only difference is that I don't have a classroom to utilize the strategies in yet. Growing up, I went to digitally rich schools. My K-8 had laptop carts for classes and laptops available to be rented out and brought home if needed. In my high school, there was even more technology introduced. While I wasn't in the academy myself, there was a Biomedical academy that had huge screens to mimic animals and skeletons to l...