TECH PLAY 4 


WHY I SELECTED CONTENT OBJECTS OVER INFORMATION LITERACY
I selected content objects over information literacy because I felt that my student would benefit more if they had access to apps that would helps to build skills that would improve their performance inside and outside my classroom. Even though the app I chose to expand on, www.Learning.com, is one that we utilize in the classroom on a dialy basis, it has projects and assignments for the students to complete that teach them about information literacy, like the lesson on WEB SEARCHES, and many other technology focused TEKS.

TOOLS EXPLORED

This one was a bit difficult for me this week because I completely cracked the screen on my iPhone 6S Plus on Friday. (I forgot that I placed it on back of my truck while putting my son in his car seat and drove off. Thanks for Find my iPhone app! My phone would be lopst without this app...) My screen is completely shaterred and unreadable, making it iimopossible for me to play around with them on my phone and I don't have an iPad nor iPod. So my thoughts on these apps are truly from reviews that I have read about each that I chose. (Sorry Professor Lee). 

Technology Applications focuses on the teaching, learning and integration of digital technology skills across the curriculum. "Digital technology" refers to the use of computers and related technologies such as digital cameras, scanners, probes and handheld digital devices. The TEKS for this course curriculum has 7 strands:

1) creativity and innovation

2) communication and collaboration

3) research and information fluency

4) critical thinking

5) problem solving and decision making

6) digital citizenship

7) and technology operations and concepts.

So I chose a few apps few that would support these strand listed above. They are hyperlinked back to the apps website for future exploration.

The first app selected was:

iBrainstorm

This is a multi-device collaboration tool for brainstorming ideas, thoughts, and discussion topics. It is used like a pinboard with sticky notes and the ability to draw out your visual ideas. This app can keep groups in tap with updates for projects while distanced from each other. We don't have to all meet up to share ideas anymore. Here is a video to show some capabilities that the app can do.

Brainsparker

This app gives creativity prompts to brainstorm new ideas, trigger creative thinking, overcome blocks, inspire creative writing and spark innovation. This is something that I woluld like to utilixw in my classroom to get my students brains moving to thinking about a topic and then expanding their thoughts about it. 

Critical Thinking Basic

This app helps you rate and reflect about an idea, a point of view, a decision, a work, and more, against nine simple universal standards of reasoning. It aims to assess and improve the quality of a reasoning. Many times my students are afraid to think on their own and would rather ask me, "Mr. Robertson, Would do you think I should do now?", or " What else should I do to it?".... instead of thinking for themselves. I feel this can improve their thinking skills by challenging them to answer the quotes. The answers then would be answered with thinking skills and prior learned knowledge or experiences.

Math Land

 
With this interactive gaming app, students will be asked to exercise logical and critical thinking but in the comfort of gameplay and puzzle solving.  Mathland supports the development of maths skills, trains memory and logical thinking.
Being that I am an ex-Math teacher, our students need as much assist in math as any other core subject. Math just seems to be the subject that more student stray away from the most, but the most important of the core subject in my opinion. Not knocking reading, because thats very important also. 

Google Docs

Before taking this class, I have known about Google Docs but have only used it at a minimal. This is a great tool for groups at large to access updated information all at one location. This is also a tool we use in our current course for information to be displayed, viewed, and edited. 

Google Docs is an online word processor that lets you create and format text documents and collaborate with other people in real time. Here's what you can do with Google Docs:

• 1. Upload a Word document and convert it to a Google document
• 2. Add flair and formatting to your documents by adjusting margins, spacing, fonts, and colors — all that fun stuff
• 3. Invite other people to collaborate on a document with you, giving them edit, comment or view access
• 4. Collaborate online in real time and chat with other collaborators — right from inside the document
• 5. View your document's revision history and roll back to any previous version
• 6. Download a Google document to your desktop as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file
• 7. Translate a document to a different language
• 8. Email your documents to other people as attachments

This video explains Google Docs more in depth.

Evernote

This app helps you take notes, capture photos, create to-do list, record voice reminders--and make these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, at work, or on the go. The app is used on Windows OS, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms. Each platform have different features though. Here is a video to for more information.

Learning.com

This app allows teachers to give assignments, journals, and exams to students aas their learn digital literacy skills through engaging digital content that acts like a cartoon series. It shows the student how to perform certain task and then asks the student to answer questions based on information that was just explained to them in the videos. This is an all around tool. After a student completes an assignment, Learning.com grades the work and dispalys it on the teacher's gradebook within the program. This is a program that I utilze daily in my classroom because my district has paid for it to be used. Even though, it is very useful tools that keeps the student engaged in meaningful learning and is TEKS centered. This program allows students to work at their own pace but needs some tweeks to it. I wish it had capable of transferring the grades directly into my school districts gradebook. It also gives the teacher the abiltiy to control how a student can complete assginments, whether in linear order or non-linear order. I have mine set to linear order so students can't jump ahead to lessons that we have not be taught yet. This tool is aligns great with the TPACK model because it is created around the TEKS and curriculum standards.



Here are some screen shots for the lesson titled "Web Searches"

This is the teacher view page that explains all that needs to be taught to the students: Vocabulary, Estimated Time, & Objectives

 Here are additional notes for the teacher. It gives discussion topics to get the students motivated for the upcoming information.

This page displays the multiple subjects that the lessons covers, some even outside of the technology classroom.

And this page displays all the standards that are covered by this lesson.

And this is a screenshot of the lesson: It provides audio and visual content to inform and entertain to students, It provides a page bookmark to let you know where you are throughout the lesson (locasted at the bottom right...4 of 40). It posts instructions for the students to complete a task (far left in light blue section).

This technology helps out my classes and the student can access these information anyway with computers, tablets, smartphone apps.