At my current job, I often use Publisher when assisting my boss in creating a tri-yearly newsletter for a local mortgage lender's association here. Here is an example of a page that might be in one of our publications:
I feel that for a project to be visually appealing and gripping, the main message should clear, concise, easy to locate. To ensure that this was the case, I made the text at the top the most clear and noticable. I made the background of that text box blue so that it was easy to spot. I also made it blue to make it cohesive with some of the blue colors in the images I used, like the blue sky in the photograph and the blue in the picture with the pinata.
The next text is the part that explains the theme. I chose to place this in red and outlined in green since those colors match the theme of the party. I also kept in mind the other places that red and green are located in the images so that, again, the piece felt cohesive. I chose to make the font a fun font so that it depicted the fact that the party is supposed to be fun and light-hearted. I also thought that it looked similar to the image that says "Fiesta" underneath the photo.
As far as the images go, I tried to select ones that matched the theme of the event. I thought that the ones I found also felt cohesive in regards to colors. I wanted the flyer to be bright, clear, and simple, and I feel that for these reasons, I accomplished that. It was a lot of fun to make since there is so much autonomy with Publisher. I look forward to using it in my classroom for various lessons.
Desktop Publishers could be used in many ways in my future classroom. Instead of assigning students papers to write using only a word processor, allowing them to use Desktop Publishers would have the potential to spark much more creativity. An idea of an assignment which would use Publisher could be in a lesson where the class is learning about different cultures. This could be especially beneficial for a foreign language classroom. The students could be given an assignment where they have to create a travel brochure for a particular country or place. They could use Publisher to make the brochure colorful and filled with images. It would allow them to get used to using this program as well as help them get used to figuring out what makes their project appealing to the eye. They would also be using writing skills, as they would have to write some about the place they are studying. The student could then present their findings to the class. This is just one example, though, since Publisher's uses are really endless in the classroom. Another fun project would be to have students create an "about me" flyer at the beginning of the year and then one at the end of the year to see how they have changed.
Visual and Icononic Images
Why are visual images important?Visual images are such a common thing in this day and age that we don't often stop and think about their importance. We see visual images on our television screens, on our computers, on billboards, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets, on cars, and on countless other outlets. We are constantly bombarded with them day after day. Companies spend millions of dollars on hiring people to decide what visual image to use, why, and when. A great example of this is the Super Bowl. Every year, companies shell out millions of dollars to formulate and show a commercial during a break from the game. It reaches millions of people, and if it is creative enough, is talked about for a while afterward. That being said, visual images are important because they are an entire mode of communication.
How have you used viusal images in the past or how are you using them now? Personal or work examples.
I have used and am using visual images in my every day life constantly. One specific example in my personal life that immediately comes to mind is social media. I upload photos to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram regularly. These are shared with my friends and family and serve as a form of communication between us. I see visual images constantly. I notice them on blogs that I follow, on Pinterest, and on television. They are everywhere you look! I also use them for my job. I work at a Real Estate office, and am tasked with creating a tri-yearly newsletter (an example of this is above). I use visual images in this newsletter to help keep it exciting and colorful and not bland and boring.
Name one iconic image that you can close your ees and see right away.
One iconic image that I immediately picture is the famous image of the Afghan girl on National Geographic Magazine. This appeared on the magazine in 1985, and her bright eyes and haunting face showed the world the difficulty that the Afghan refugees faced at the time. It was also striking because it was rare to see a woman's face uncovered. Here is the image (taken from http://all-that-is-interesting.com/iconic-images-80s).
The Technology Explorations we did this week included some assistive technologies, some online tools for teachers specifically, and more.
gpat.org
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According to the gpat.org website, the main goal of their
main goal is to “improve student achievement, productivity, independence, and
inclusion by enhancing educator knowledge of assistive technology and
increasing student access to appropriate assistive technology devices and
services.” The gpat.org website shows that this goal is definitely met. The
website lists various assistive technology devices and resources for both
teachers and students who may need them. The term “assistive technology” is a
broad one. It encompasses any device, software, or program that assists
students with disabilities. This could include anything from word processors
to Braille writers to something that we recently studied such as the Read the
Words program.
I learned that there are many different types of
technologies that can be used and that are being used in the classroom to
assist students with disabilities. The website names these: Academic and
Learning Aids, Aids for Daily Living, Assistive Listening Devices and
Environmental Aids, Augmentive Communication, Computer Access and
Instruction, Environmental Control, Mobility Aids, Pre-vocational and
Vocational Aids, Recreation and Leisure Aids, Seating and Positioning, and
Visual Aids. The website also discusses the importance of Assistive
Technology Service, which basically the group effort of assisting the child
with a disability through things like evaluation of needs and coordination of
therapies and devices for the child.
This website is really useful in helping teachers handle
having a disabled student in their classroom. It provides different links and
ideas that might be useful for the teacher when deciding what path to take in
order to best help the student. The website provides lists that help guide
the IEP team’s process. They also provide a resource guide for this process. I
also liked that the site provided samples of Checklists. For example, I chose
one that was a plan for a Fourth Grade Orthopedically Impaired Student. The
document listed the subjects the student needed assistance with and then
spelled out a plan of solutions to help the student. This document could be a
great sample when determining how to assist a student in your class.
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This resource could be a guide for me for when I am faced
with helping a student with a disability learn and excel in my class. The
website mentions various sources and checklists that help with this. It also
lists samples, like the one I mentioned above, that show a document where
teachers have determined the best way to help a disabled student have an
easier time at school.
A specific way this could be used in my classroom is when
I need to help a disabled student in the best way, I could pull up this
website and use the resources listed here. Hopefully, there will be a team that
can meet to discuss the best path to take in assisting the student while
using these checklists and resources as a guide.
The website also mentions a significant type of
Technological Assistance Device which is Dolphin EasyReader Software. This is
provided free of charge from the Georgia Department of Education to their
educators who may need it for a student who has trouble with reading due to
dyslexia, blindness, or other sight disabilities. This is obviously extremely
useful and a great asset to teachers who are looking for assistance with a
student with this problem. A quick Google search told me that Dolphin
EasyReader is a software that allows students to listen to the book or
document they are reading at the time. It also allows students to change and
highlight fonts and text size to make the words easier to see for them. This,
though similar to Read the Words, would definitely be an asset to my
classroom in situations like these.
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I would recommend this website to other educators, simply because
it serves as a guide for what to do when faced with helping a student with a
disability. It shows the steps to take and what to discuss when meeting with an
IEP team. It also provides the Dolphin EasyReader software, which would be
useful for teachers. Even though I don’t live in Georgia and it is not
provided to me, it is nice to be reminded of the software so that you can
purchase it for the student if needed. I think the gpat.org website is just,
cohesive reminder of steps to take when teaching a disabled student and
making their school experience as smooth and meaningful as possible.
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Zoho
From exploring the Zoho website, I learned that this
company covers a wide variety of businesses or personal databases, spreadsheets,
documents, or application needs. It is somewhat of an umbrella that
encompasses numerous types of services. Its main goal, as it mentions on the
home page, is to allow the user to “focus on your business while we take care
of the rest with apps that help you get more sales, get paid, support your
customers, and make your business more productive.” I learned from tinkering
around on the website that the main thing that this company does is manage
just about everything technology-wise that a company might need.
Zoho can be used as a Document site similar to Google
Docs. It can be used as a way to create specific apps for your company. It
can be used for email, creating slideshows, creating spreadsheets, creating
graphs, as a word processor, as an organization tool for campaigns, as a
calendar, as a way to keep up with your company’s bookkeeping, and more. The
options on this site seem limitless. And all this comes with tech support and
the knowledge that this company is backing up your files, so you are pretty
much worry free as a business owner.
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The main way that I could see this being used in a school
setting is with the whole school using it as an online database. In my
opinion, it would be used best in this way rather than having students use
it. I think that this is the case because there are so many options with it
that it can be somewhat overwhelming. It can, however, have certain privacy
locks set on it, so it could be set to where all the students could see would
be the potential project they’re working on.
As a school-wide program, however, I could see Zoho being
really beneficial. It would serve as a place for all teachers and
administrators to go to keep all of their documents organized. It would also
be nice to have these documents readily available for sharing. It also
serves as a means of communication between coworkers, which is nice for teachers who may need to ask each other questions
throughout the day.
Another way I thought that Zoho could be used in a school
would be to use it to create a school-wide app. The app could be named after
the school and downloaded by teachers, students, administrators, and parents.
It could keep track of students, notify the school of weather alerts or
school holidays, keep students notified of school events, and more. I think
this would be one of the most useful and inventive ways for this software to
be used in regards to school.
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Though I don’t have my own classroom yet, I believe that I
would recommend this to other educators as well as other professionals. It seems like
this would be a helpful program for just about any business or job. I haven’t
used the program personally to know how effective and easy to use it is, but
the fact that it has so many options and can be tailored to your needs speaks
for itself. It also allows for peace of mind, since part of the package is to have your information automatically backed up in case of emergency.
According to the website, the pricing ranges from $25 per
month to $175 per month. Personally, I would not want to pay that for Zoho
unless my coworkers had it as well because, as we have discovered in this
class, there are other organizational tools and document sites that are more
affordable than this. If the entire school had it, though, I would probably
go ahead and pay the fee because having access to it in that way would be
worth it.
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Quiz Star
Quiz Star is a program that allows teachers to plug in
their data and create an online quiz. The program gives options of
multiple choice, true or false, or short answer problems. It also allows the
quiz to have multimedia options. In the example science quiz I looked at,
there was an example of multimedia in the quiz. One of the questions asked
the student to watch the video and then choose the correct answer from it.
Teachers are also able to put in images where they wish.
One of the best parts of this program, however, is the
fact that it keeps track of the grading for you. Instead of having to go
through and grade all of the papers, the quizzes are graded automatically and
can be saved, according to the website, by either class, student, or
question. Then, you can choose to either print the results, save them, or
keep them in an Excel file. I did not know that a program like this existed, and
it is even more impressive for the fact that it is free.
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This resource could obviously be used in a school setting
for quizzes of just about any type. There are limitless options with this,
since as the teacher, you are entering in the data that you wish to quiz on. I
like the idea of saving each student’s quiz results to Excel and then storing this in
whatever database you choose such as PBworks or a document site
like Google Docs.
This site could be used to create sample tests that don’t
really “count” so that students could use them to study for an exam. Since
there is a student log in on the site, it would be a useful tool to create
these so that students could study from home, or even from their iPads or
iPhones for that matter. It would be much more convenient for them as
students and for me as the teacher to be able to quickly create a quiz for
them than to deal with grading and administering various review quizzes
during class time.
This program could also be used for actual exams and tests. Students could take turns at computers to complete the test and then work on other assignments the rest of the class. It could also be meant for take home tests, assuming that the students in the class had access to a computer. |
I will use this program in my classroom as well as
recommend it to other teachers. It is simple to use, free, and very
convenient. The fact that it does the grading for you is wonderful. I also
like that it organizes the results in whatever fashion you choose. I am bookmarking this one to
remember for my class.
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PB Checklists
From the list of options on 4teachers.org, I also chose PBL
Checklists as one of my options. At first, I didn’t know exactly what it
entailed, but once I started exploring it, I was pleasantly surprised. From
this exploration I learned how simple this program makes creating a checklist
for almost any classroom project.
The site breaks down the subject areas to writing, science, oral presentation, and multimedia. From there, it is broken down into grade levels with groups such as K-1, 2-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Once you have chosen that, you can choose the area that you want students to focus on, and then the program provides prewritten checklist items for you to select. An example of this is a sample writing checklist that I created. Some of the options that were listed on the site that I chose were “I can summarize my topic in just a few sentences” and “Details in my report give the reader important information.” Once these are selected, you can click create checklist, and it pops right up. |
This program is made specifically for teachers and can be
used in a classroom in many ways, where checklists are concerned. Like the
sample checklist I made, this could be used in an English classroom for a
checklist to hand out to students when they are preparing to finish up a
large paper or report. The checklist reminds them to double check that all of
the items that they are being graded on are included. I like that as a
teacher, I would be able to pick and choose from the website which items I
want to include on my checklist. It could be tweaked per assignment, student,
and class level. It also gives you the option to create your own checklist items, which
is great. I like how the final print out looks. It is simple and has blanks
for students to literally check off the items as they complete them.
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I would recommend PB Checklists this to other educators. I think that it
is such a simple program to use, and could potentially save you so much time,
as it keeps you from having to manually create this type of document using
Word or Publisher. It is extremely easy to use and it is free. I chose to do
my Tech Exploration on this one so I was sure to remember it for when I have
my own classroom!
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Academic Skill Builders
The third 4techers.org tool that I explored was Academic
Skill Builders. This website consisted of various educational games that are
used to help with building skills. The website mainly focuses on math and
some Language Arts skills. The website’s home page allows the user to browse
grades 1 through 6 or view all of the games at once. They are divided into category
such as “addition,” “multiplication,” “decimals.” The Language Arts sections
consist of categories such as “typing,” “word relationships,” and “spelling.”
I sampled a couple of the games that fell under the typing
and word relationship categories. One game, called “Sky Chase” consisted of a
student flying a virtual plane against other students or users and then
typing words that appear on the screen as quickly as possible to determine who wins the race. It was
actually a lot of fun, and could be made even more fun if the students were
able to play this against one another. At the end, it showed how many words
you typed per minute, which is useful for students to know.
The other two games I sampled were under the Word
Relatinships category. One was “Furious Frogs,” where a word appeared in the
center of the screen, and your “frog” had to choose which answer matched up
with it. The one that I explored was a game about antonyms, so when “hot”
appeared, the correct answer was to select “cold” from the options. It was also fun
because it was a competitive game since there are other frogs who are also
competing against you.
Another game I sampled was “Word Frog,” which also focused
on selecting the correct answer when given an antonym. It was fun, and it was
also a single person game, so you’re only competing against yourself when
playing it.
In general, I thought this was a really fun and easy to
use website for developing skills like these.
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Though I am not yet a teacher, I can see how well this
resource would work in a school setting, especially classrooms from 1st
grade to 6th grade. The lessons in this program are focused
primarily on elementary and middle school students. In a classroom, a teacher
could use the games to help reinforce student learning about the subjects
listed on the website. For example, a math teacher could have their students
complete the math games about Algebra, decimals, etc. As an English teacher,
I could use these games to help my students learn about the Language Arts
aspects that are included. It makes learning about synonyms, antonyms, and
spelling more fun than just reading it out of a textbook or studying it on a
white board. It would be fun to use this tool as a review or allow students
to take turns playing the games while other students work on classwork
involving these subjects.
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I would recommend this site to other teachers, but mainly
only math and Language Arts teachers. The site is limited in its selection of
games, and there are not any that would necessarily assist with teaching
about science or social studies. However, for math and English teachers, this
site could be very beneficial. The fact that the site is free and easy to use
is the most positive aspect about it, in my opinion. It is intuitive, and I
believe that students of a young age would definitely be able to work it.
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Dimio
The Dimio product was probably my least favorite
Technology Exploration we have done so far. I just didn’t feel that the website
was clear or concise, and it seemed like you had to have a thorough
understanding of the way a computer works (which I do not) to really grasp
what many of his tools do.
Though much of this resource seemed to be not very useful
to me, the one part that did stand out is the section about DSpeech. This is
similar to the Read The Words program in that it is a program that will read text aloud. Like Read The Words, DSpeech allows the user to save the file as
an MP3 file and keep for future use. It also allows you to select whatever
voice you prefer the text to be read in and select how fast or slow the words
are read. I think this is a great program, but again, it doesn’t differ much
from Read The Words in what it actually does. Read The Words might be a little
easier to use, in my opinion, because it the steps to installing the
program are more concise and the steps to use it are simple, as well.
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I read through the items such as “DSynchronize” and
“DShutdown” and I am unsure of how these would be beneficial to a school
setting. The one item, however, that I would be beneficial in school would be
the DSpeech item. It, as I mentioned above, is a similar program to Read The
Words, and it allows text to be read aloud by a voice. The voice can be
chosen by the user, and it can speak as slowly or quickly as the user chooses.
It could be useful in foreign language classes in
particular because the program allows translations in many languages. This
would be helpful for students to be able to hear pronunciations of words they
are studying. It would also be helpful for ESL students who might need help
with pronunciation of English words.
DSpeech could also be useful for students to use to study, as it could record readings for students to listen to in their free time, instead of them having to sit down and block out time to read the assignment. |
I actually don’t think that I would recommend this site to
other educators. I didn’t see anything on this site in particular that would
really be beneficial for the classroom other than the DSpeech section, but
again, there are other options out there that perform the same task. The
positive of this is that the program is free, but I think that the fact that
the site isn’t very clear and the ease of use just isn’t there outweighs
that.
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Full Measure
Exploring this resource taught me that this resource helps
students who may have a disability when it comes to speaking or reading. The
PowerTalk tool, according to its website, was created when a person with
aphasia wrote a letter that appeared in “Ability” magazine that called for
help with presenting PowerPoint presentations to people who are blind or visually
impaired. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
website, aphasia is “a disorder that reults from damage to the parts of the
brain that contain language” and can “cause problems with any or all of the
following: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.” This letter sparked
creator Steve Lee to develop this software to help in situations like these.
The software itself is very interesting and could definitely be very helpful in a classroom. What the program does exactly is that it speaks while a presentation is running through Microsoft PowerPoint. For example, while each slide clicks over, the program reads the words that are on the slide, and it can read more than just that – you can set it to read more information that goes with the slide but doesn’t necessarily appear on the slide. |
This resource could be applied in a school
setting. It could be used for what it was initially created for, which is to
assist students who might have a reading or speaking disability. An
example of this helping a student in this situation would be if the class was
given an assignment to do a presentation and a particular student who suffered from this disability was able to complete this assignment using this software.
Another way that this could be used in school would be for
teachers to use it alongside their presentations. While I believe it is
better to have the teacher speak about their own slideshow so that students
are able to ask questions and the teacher is able to add to his or her own
topics, this could be used for times when the teacher is out and needs to
know that the topics will be covered. Instead of worrying about a substitute
covering it all, the teacher could simply use this software to
accompany the PowerPoint presentation.
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The software is simple enough to use, in my opinon, and so
I do believe that I would recommend it to other teachers. I think that rather
than this being something that would be used in every day class, it would be
a good resource to have if you came across students with this certain
disability, or if you were in a situation where you needed a PowerPoint
covered thoroughly, as I mentioned above. Since the website gives you step by
step directions, the installation process is not difficult, and the fact that
the program is free is a positive.
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Web Quest
Once again, I am blown away by the resources like this that are
online for teachers. I am so glad to know about this resource, and
I feel that it will be one of the most helpful ones we study. I
learned from exploring this that this is basically an online database of
teachers’ lesson plans that include any subject and topic.
The website’s home page explains that it is a great
resource to find sample lesson plans that can be tweaked to suit the lesson
that you are teaching at the time. To try this out, I did a sample search so
that I could see what exactly this meant. I clicked on the “Find Webquest”
tab and then chose the “QuestGarden Search.” This took me to a page where I
could type in anything I wanted in the search tab, and it would bring up the
results of my search.
For my example, I searched “William Faulkner,” and 6 pages
of results appeared. The results were divided up into grade and content areas
as well as grade reading level. There is also a brief description of each one
so that I was able to skim over the ones I didn't deem to be appropriate for
what I was looking for.
I clicked on one near the top, and it was a great lesson
plan idea. It was entitled “Poe, Faulkner, and Hawthorne,” and it asked
students to meet certain tasks such as “draw a timeline for each author’s
life” and “compile and annotated bibliography for each author.” It also had a
section where students were broken up into groups of five and given different
jobs like “biographer,” “literature expert,” “investigator,” and “thematic
guru.” The students were given specific instructions on what to do for their
part, and then the group presented their reports to the class as a whole. I
thought this was a great idea, and this lesson could easily be tweaked to
match many other topics.
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Web Quest could be useful for any teacher in any
classroom. This is because this resource not only gives you examples of great
ideas of lesson plans, but it also breaks them down so that you can search
for exactly what you are looking for. You can then use it as a guide to help
you create your own lesson plan. This could be useful when you have a topic
that you are unsure of how to handle or how to teach. I believe that this
resource would be particularly useful for first-year teachers, since they are
building every lesson plan from scratch. It would be so useful as a tool to
help them come up with good ideas.
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I would recommend this to other educators, and I will
definitely remember this one for myself when begin my teaching career. The
website is easy to use and organized well, since all you have to do is type
in the subject you are searching for. I think the only drawback to this
resource would be that some of the lesson plans that you come across will be
of poor quality. I imagine that is just part of the package, and those will
be rare and easy to weed through to get to the better and more useful ones.
This resource is also free of charge, which is great.
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Read the Words
Read The Words is really an amazing resource. Simply put,
it allows the user to highlight any words on a webpage and have them read
aloud. Then, if you choose, you can save the recording, and convert it into
an MP3 file that can be carried with you on your phone or tablet, and listen
to it whenever you want. I didn’t know anything like this existed, and it
could be useful for many people ranging from young students who are
struggling with reading to elderly people who have trouble seeing a computer
screen.
I watched the tutorial video, and in it I learned that
this program allows you to choose your “avatar” which is the “person” who
will be doing the readings for you. For example, you can choose an American
male or female, and then adjust how quickly or how slowly they read so that
everything is set to your liking. You can also download the button to your
computer’s tool bar, so that any time you are on a site and need something
read to you, all you have to do is highlight and click. This is a really
smart resource, in my opinion.
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This could be used in a classroom in many different ways.
For example, in a class where children are just beginning to learn how to
read or in a class where some students are struggling, this could be helpful. The teacher could have them work at computers and listen to the
avatars read to them while they see the words. This would give students that
are struggling a little extra practice. This could also be used to
help students with sight disabilities. If they are unable to see the screen
well, Read The Words could help them to understand what is on the
page they are looking at.
Also, another brilliant way that this could be used would
be to use it in foreign language classes. This would allow students who are
studying Spanish learn how to pronounce words in the correct way.
It could also be used for ESL students who are learning English. This would help them see how words are spelled and hear how words are pronounced at the same time. This could be a really useful took for this purpose.
This resource could also be used for older students who
have busy schedules. For example, if there were many readings that a student
needed to finish, they could record the avatar reading it and then download
it to their iPhone or iPad and listen to it while they are at the gym or attending
sports practice, etc., or even while driving to and from school. This would
have been a really useful device for me while I was in college because I
constantly had readings that were assigned for classes.
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I would recommend this to other teachers, and this is for
a few reasons. It would be good to have something like this in your bag of
tricks, even if you only used it to assist ESL students. It could be very
useful to tell busy high school students about to help them with squeezing in
time for a lot of reading. According to the website, the package for teachers
costs about $100 per year. I think this is a little expensive for what it is.
I would not buy it every year, but might purchase it on a month to month
basis if any of my students that year were ESL or struggling with reading.
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