blog journal 8

    My first time learning about and using Diigo was for this class. With all of the different adventures we had using this tool in the class I have learned a lot and found it to be very helpful. Diigo allows you to bookmark and annotate whatever site, article, document, etc. that you are looking at. By having it bookmarked with Diigo, it makes it easier to look back at these sources whenever you may need to. The main skills I have obtained using Diigo are bookmarking, annotating, and interacting with others. Within Diigo, you can see what other pages others in your group have looked at and bookmarked. You can also comment back to their posts and interact with them about what you found to be interesting in their bookmark they saved. If I were to use this tool in my classroom, I would use it to bookmark sites that would be helpful to me and what I need to teach. For example, I would bookmark sites that have lesson plans that I can use and annotate within the site certain parts that would be of main focus for me. With team members, such as colleagues or students, I would use Diigo to create a group where we can all bookmark important information that we may need help on, or are working on. That way we can use Diigo's group interaction platform to explore others' ideas and problems and work together. For my individual professional use, Diigo would best be helpful for me to use the annotating tool and take notes of whatever documents, or lesson plan that I am viewing to make it easier for me to understand.

   PowerPoint can be very helpful when teaching in the classroom, in fact, I have had many teachers use this tool for teaching lessons. To support my students' learning at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy, using PowerPoint would be very easy to do so. There are six levels of objectives within Bloom's Taxonomy. If I were to be teaching a lesson that may be hard for my students to understand such as learning different letter sounds, I could create a PowerPoint with each of my slides having the different levels of objectives for us to go through step by step. For example, with the letter 'C' sounds, there are two types which are hard C and soft C. Below are examples of how I would teach this lesson using Bloom's Taxonomy in a PowerPoint to my students:

-Remember: I would explain to my students the basic concepts of how there is a difference between the two C sounds and how they can remember them

-Understand: to help my students understand, I would give them examples of everyday things they typically see that each have the different sounds. Giving them examples that they could relate to would help them to better understand

-Apply: under this level, sketching is a good way to apply the information taught. I would give my students certain words to draw that they also would have to place in their rightful category based on the sound the word makes

-Analyze: to analyze, I would make my students draw connections. For example, seeing if they could differentiate the sounds

-Evaluate: I would then evaluate their work so far and efforts in understanding the concepts from each level as we move onto the next

-Create: with this slide, I would ask my students to come up with their own words for both soft and hard C to finish off the lesson and ensure that they have understood, and applied the information taught from the previous levels

    Technology continues to advance each year, which means that it is very important that it is integrated into education. With teachers knowing of all the latest technology and using it in an educational context, students can gain a better benefit from it rather than only using technology for social purposes. This can help them to stand out amongst others. By staying updated on the newest technology trends, this would help teachers to professionally develop as well because they are continually learning of something new that can be useful to their career field. The website that I found to keep teachers in the loop of technology trends is called 21 Century Ed Tech by Michael Gorman. For those teachers who want to know more, there is an about me page and booking info for the author provided on the site. On the site, Gorman posts blogs about technology within the classroom and by the title of the site, you can tell that the information you will see has to do with recent technology trends (21st century). He also has provided on the site different resources that teachers can look into to use technology within their classrooms. A screenshot of the site is provided below, and if you want to check it out click the title within this paragraph.