Digital media

There are many types of digital media students could use in class. These digital media improves students writing, reading, and communication skills. Podcast is a form of digital media and improves students speaking skills and creativity. Students are able to upload their audio recording on their blog post. Podcasting helps students engage and  hear and listen at the same time. The audio recording acts as a reading and students are able to experience how technology makes learning fun. Students are provided with reliable microphones and iPad. Podcast changes the way students view education. Students are becoming more engaged in the classroom because of the use of technology. Students are not focused when teachers are teaching the traditional way. Students could download podcast on their iPad or computer. Students would be able to add pictures, record their voices, and add sound effects. This could be used for any subject areas. For example, students could create their own story by using their imagination. Students could travel back in time for any history events by creating a story of what had happened.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/

Interactivesites.weebly.com

Interactive Sites for Education is a free website that has various games for students to play. The website includes many subjects such as Math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. The purpose of this website is to allow students to practice a variety of stuff all while having fun and being interacting. Each subject has a long list of subjects to practice on like addition and subtraction on the math portion of the website. Interactive Sites links teachers and students to other helpful sites, the games are not made by the website. So instead of searching on Google for fun math games, simply type up Interactivesites.weebly.com and there will be a long list of fun activities and games to play with your students!

The Interactive Sites for Education also has a teacher tools section where it provides you with a couple of tools to help you out in your classroom like creating mini word search, game makings of your own, and a classroom set up tool. My favorite tool is the classroom set up tool because it allows you to prepare ahead in case you want to set up the classroom a different way or switch seats. The classroom set up tool provides you with furniture like desks, windows, doors, shelves, and much more to create your virtual classroom set up. It also gives you the option to input the student's names and drag it into place. Something I do not really like is that the student's name is replaced with a number in the seating chart rather than with their names, therefore, you have to kind of switch back and forth to see which student is what number. Other then that I love how there are many games for students to play with and practice their core subjects.

                                                                  Funbrain

                                    Trying to find a educational website or app that the students will love is sometimes a hard job. Not every website you come across has the educational background in it but it may just be fun and games. I found a great website that i think all parents, teachers and students will enjoy. Its called Funbrain and it has all the aspects of learning but with fun characters, games, stories, and yes even learning. In this website a student can have fun playing a game of tic-tac-toe but having to answer math questions to get the square that they want. They can even read some books online. What I really liked the best about this website is that it has its own spot just for teachers to use. With the teachers tab, they can find all different kinds of ways of teaching for different elementary grades. It also gives the teacher different subject matter to teach on. This is a site that benefits both the teacher and the student in many different ways. Kids just think they are playing games, reading books, playing puzzles, but they are learning while doing so. Ant the teachers are getting so much material out of this website that they can talk about anything. The many webpage is found at http://www.funbrain.com/ and the teacher webpage is found at http://www.funbrain.com/teachers/index.html

                                                      Little Bird Tales

                      Since we have been talking about pod casting in my technology class the last few weeks I decided to find some type of information that would give me a better idea of how to use it. I came across this website called Little Bird Tales. I really liked what this site had to offer to students. It give them the ability to put together a story with their own pictures and tan add their own voice to it. This lets the children explore their creative side and also use their imagination and come up with many different stories. Not only can kids write stories, but they can also send cards with a message to their friends or family, use it as a journal or write a report about someone. This website can be a great tool to use for kids during story time in school. This website also includes lessons for teachers or parents to follow to get their kids more involved. Not only can the kids share their own pictures but they can make drawings of anything they want and add to the story. I really think kids at all ages would love to use this website to make all kinds of fun, silly, or or just everyday things for school. I would totally want to use it myself. It can be found at https://littlebirdtales.com/.

Research With Technology

     When looking for some policy or standards for Michigan secondary students in regard to education and the use of technology, I came upon the "Research and Information Literacy" standards for secondary students in Michigan schools (9-12 RI).

     All the standards are pretty straight forward, each one detailing how the students should be able to distinguish between facts and sources that are questionable and would not be good use as a place to pull information from. One such standard I found, one that not many people think about when researching for a paper or presentation is the fact that biases may occur in the articles. Take for example an article from Fox News versus a story from MSNBC. Fox News is well known for being a conservative news station while MSNBC is considered more liberal. Sometimes the biases in stories or articles do not matter if a person is only concerned about the facts. The problem arises when it comes to the author commenting or expressing an opinion of the story and trying to pass it off as news. The most common place this occurs is on news stations when they bring in 'experts' to comment on a story when the facts are not yet in. An example of this is when Donald Trump made the abortion comment. CNN and other stations had people on trying to predict what the fallout would be from such a statement. The only way the public will know how this effects the polls is when the actually voting takes place.

     Another point of contention is the saying "I read it on the internet, so it must be true". In section 9-12 RI.7: "understand that using information from a single internet source might result in the reporting of erroneous facts and that multiple sources must always be researched". Just because one source, no matter how credible it may seem, reports a story does not mean it is true. A student can still use that article, but they should at least do a search to try and find another story that covers the same topic. Reporting false information, especially in a presentation or paper will make the students look rather foolish and lose points.

     The main point is to have the students learn how to use technology safely and responsibly when doing research. The job of the educators is keep students from finding misleading information, how to interrupt biases in reporting and how to correctly cite online material to avoid plagiarism.

Source from "2009 Michigan Educational Standards for Students"

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/9-12_150927_7.pdf

Google Slides

Google Slides is one of the many tools that Google offers, along with Google Docs and Google Drive. I've only ever used Google Slides once when doing a lesson plan, I do like using it because its just like PowerPoint but I think I would rather stick to that. The one thing that I like about Google Slides is that you can share your slide show with anyone you want, you can do that with PowerPoint but it takes a few more steps than just hitting a button. Its just like Google Docs where you can share it with anyone and the people you share it with can edit and add to the slide show. I think this way of doing a slide show presentation would be easier for your class than a PowerPoint. You can have each student have a Google account and when they are grouped together they can use the Google Slides to make their presentation. The good thing about this is that each student can contribute to the project on their own laptops. they can even continue the work at home and be able to each see what is being added to the project. I think when I become a teacher this is what I would do because it would be easy not only on me but also on my students. They won't have to worry about if the other people in their group are doing the work, and they can also all be able to give their own input to the project. For me personal I said that I prefer to use PowerPoint but that's just because I'm so use to use it and know how it works.  

Funbrain.com

Some of you may have never heard of the website Funbrain.com, well I'm gonna tell you what it is. Well Funbrain.com is a website that I was actually introduced to while I was doing my practicum. Funbrain.com is a website for kids that offers many different games that kids can play. A majority of them are educational and can be used in the classroom. As in my practicum the teacher did use this website and a couple other ones to have her students practice their math skills or writing and reading skills but in a fun way. Before them would get on their computers she would go through one game or two with the class and show them how they play the games and then she would tell them what they can play, because some of the games on there are not educational at all. The kids all really seemed to like it and I do believe that it help them develop their skills better and they gain more confidence when the crowd cheers when they get an answer right or etc. I think that i would use this website or ones like it because it will get your kids into the lesson and actually enjoy learning. You have to keep their attention and their excitement for learning. I think this website is a great tool to use for your classroom and I think it will help you out when teaching lessons to your students.