Tweeting, Blogging, & Adapting (BP7)
Using Twitter for educational purposes was something that, before this class, I hadn't really given much thought to. However, upon further investigation and experience using it in this context, I have come to really enjoy it. Initially it was hard for me to get into the habit of using it as I haven't had a Twitter account since the beginning of high school. I was one of those people that really only created one to catch up on the latest gossip or get announcements from the clubs I was in. What I like most about this new educational tool is that you don't have to put out any information in order to get ideas or feedback. Considering millions of people uses Twitter, there is bound to be at least one other person with the same question or concern as you. For me, not really liking tweeting in the first place, I really enjoy just following other accounts and reading threads based on those accounts. I'm still getting information and learning things without creating anything myself. If I ever feel the need to put something out there, it's still an option. The only issue I have really faced so far with Twitter is navigating which accounts are real or fake and which ones I should follow.
Designing a website, in theory, is so cool and allows for such creativity and freedom. However, even when you have a website that gives you layouts and ideas, it can still be so frustrating. The website I created for this course was, sadly, not my first website. I was required to design one in high school for a graduation project. I remember my partner and I agreeing that we were going to the minimal work required for the website because we both weren't sure what we were doing. I also attempted to create a website for personal use (a blog) towards the end of 2017 but gave up after not being able to format what I wanted. I love the ability to personalize almost anything you want on sites like Weebly and Wix. Really the only issue I had while designing this website was how time consuming it could be. I liked playing pretend and creating a fake persona and a fake class. To view the final result of my website, click here. Overall I think it is a really cool tool that I hope to use in my future career, either as a teacher or something else. I would start by creating it earlier rather than later, knowing how time consuming it was. I would also try to plan out what I envisioned for content beforehand so it would be less stressful when actually creating it. As a teacher I think I would use something like this as a form of Google Classroom where assignments and calendars are posted for the class to see.
Before this class, I had heard about things such as adaptive technology and ILPs but never really thought they went together or what each one even was. Now I understand how they can work together. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience with such technologies. The brief interaction I had with them was for an extracurricular activity that I am currently involved. For more experience with my major in psychology, I volunteer with a crisis hotline where I answer calls and help short-term counsel people. As part of our training, we learned about technology that might be used by callers in order to communicate with us if they have a certain disability. For example, a caller might be hard of hearing so they type what they would like to communicate and a third person gets the message and reads it to me so I can reply. the third person then types my response back to the caller. It is an interesting concept and I am so happy that it exists so that all people, no matter their disability, is able to reach out for help. However, bringing this into the classroom could be a little challenging. Aside from the financial aspect of being able to afford all of those technologies in each room, it would also cause a lot of chaos at times to be able to manage everyone and every disability to do one activity. I know at my high school, we had our own disabled and special education programs that had their own classes and teachers with people educated on how to work all of these technologies and trained in special ed. We hosted students with disabilities from all over the district and county. It was also very heart-warming to get to see them still participate in things like lunch and gym class and graduation, they just had their own specialized classes. Although this creates a certain aspect of isolation, it was beneficial to a lot of people to make classes a bit more efficient. It would be amazing if we could figure out a way to incorporate all of these things without removing these disabled students from the regular classroom but overall I would say the system at my high school worked pretty well.
Designing a website, in theory, is so cool and allows for such creativity and freedom. However, even when you have a website that gives you layouts and ideas, it can still be so frustrating. The website I created for this course was, sadly, not my first website. I was required to design one in high school for a graduation project. I remember my partner and I agreeing that we were going to the minimal work required for the website because we both weren't sure what we were doing. I also attempted to create a website for personal use (a blog) towards the end of 2017 but gave up after not being able to format what I wanted. I love the ability to personalize almost anything you want on sites like Weebly and Wix. Really the only issue I had while designing this website was how time consuming it could be. I liked playing pretend and creating a fake persona and a fake class. To view the final result of my website, click here. Overall I think it is a really cool tool that I hope to use in my future career, either as a teacher or something else. I would start by creating it earlier rather than later, knowing how time consuming it was. I would also try to plan out what I envisioned for content beforehand so it would be less stressful when actually creating it. As a teacher I think I would use something like this as a form of Google Classroom where assignments and calendars are posted for the class to see.
Before this class, I had heard about things such as adaptive technology and ILPs but never really thought they went together or what each one even was. Now I understand how they can work together. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience with such technologies. The brief interaction I had with them was for an extracurricular activity that I am currently involved. For more experience with my major in psychology, I volunteer with a crisis hotline where I answer calls and help short-term counsel people. As part of our training, we learned about technology that might be used by callers in order to communicate with us if they have a certain disability. For example, a caller might be hard of hearing so they type what they would like to communicate and a third person gets the message and reads it to me so I can reply. the third person then types my response back to the caller. It is an interesting concept and I am so happy that it exists so that all people, no matter their disability, is able to reach out for help. However, bringing this into the classroom could be a little challenging. Aside from the financial aspect of being able to afford all of those technologies in each room, it would also cause a lot of chaos at times to be able to manage everyone and every disability to do one activity. I know at my high school, we had our own disabled and special education programs that had their own classes and teachers with people educated on how to work all of these technologies and trained in special ed. We hosted students with disabilities from all over the district and county. It was also very heart-warming to get to see them still participate in things like lunch and gym class and graduation, they just had their own specialized classes. Although this creates a certain aspect of isolation, it was beneficial to a lot of people to make classes a bit more efficient. It would be amazing if we could figure out a way to incorporate all of these things without removing these disabled students from the regular classroom but overall I would say the system at my high school worked pretty well.
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