AS12 - Concept Mapping

ILP "Participation" - Sports Psychology

When I went to the Sports Psychology lab, I learned a lot about how trainers keep their athletes' minds' sharp and strengthen their mental ability when it comes to playing their sport. The guide showed us numerous pieces of technology that they use to exercise their players' brains, including multi-focus technology, eye-tracking devices, motion sensor simulations, and even GoPros. He showed us examples of how they use the technology during sessions with a player, and tried to give examples of how we could use the technology in our classrooms. One great example of classroom application involved the eye-tracking device. It could be used to analyze behaviors and tendencies of newer teachers and help them grow in their field. We could look at what aspects of the classroom newer teachers focus the most on or which students they pay the most attention to, and watch those first-person videos together with the teacher in order to train their abilities to be more well rounded when it comes to classroom scanning and student supervision, as well as be more aware of classroom activity as a whole. It could also be used to analyze more experienced teachers to see what they focus the most on and how they divide their focus across the classroom in order to gain insight on what newer teachers need to be focusing on during the class day. I think this is an incredibly great use of technology in the classroom, and I would totally be willing to be a subject of this type of activity in order to improve my teaching and classroom management abilities. He also showed us how GoPros can be attached to and record athletes during practices in order to critique their movements and improve their skills, as well as to see where they may be going wrong during a play.

There weren't too many technologies we could all try out on our own this time, but we did go through one specific one together, which was somewhat of a multi-focus piece of technology, where players are required to look at a small screen in the middle of a board that asks them to complete math problems or read passages, while also trying to press buttons that light up all around the board. This gets them to strengthen their ability to multi-task and pay attention to multiple different stimuli, which is incredibly valuable in sports, since you always have to be focusing on your movements as well as the players around you.

Overall, I really enjoyed going to the Sports Psychology lab and seeing how we use technology in many different aspects to improve skills in our everyday lives. I'm always astounded by what we are able to create to train our minds and advance our capabilities within a field.

Blog Post #10

I think using Data Collection tools are greatly beneficial to your teaching experience. You can use them to collect data regarding how well a students know material, student views and opinions about classroom topics, and create surveys to learn more about your students as people. For example, if you're teaching a 5th grade history class, you can use data collection tools in various ways. You can make a survey about certain historical figure's beliefs, like Abraham Lincoln or Susan B. Anthony, to let students see how they relate to and agree/disagree with that figure and their ideas about certain topics. You can also use surveys to conduct short quizzes or tests to get a feel for how well your students know the material you've been covering, asking questions like "When did the Civil War start?" or "What group of soldiers fought from the south?" Another use of data collection tools in a history class would be to create a survey presenting questions about how they've enjoyed a unit, asking questions like "How well did you enjoy this unit about the Civil War? or "Did the classroom activities and projects make this unit more enjoyable?" in order to see how you could improve your classroom to make students more interested, as well as see how what you've already done is working.

One topic that I found very interesting and helpful was Daniel's post about technology resources. He provided a link to a super helpful website called "Educational Technology and Mobile Learning" that provided tons of resources and articles about useful technology that could be used in the classroom. I had a hard time finding a good resource to put in my own blog post, so now that I know about this website, I can better keep up with educational technology advances and not have to weed through tons of technology posts. Another topic that I found interesting was in Morgan's post about Bloom's taxonomy and PowerPoint. She did an amazing job applying it to a lesson about gravity, addressing each level of Bloom's in an aspect of PowerPoint, including addressing Analyze by having a list of questions on a slide asking students which object they think will hit ground first, if they will reach at the same time, and then why did they think one way or another. A third topic I found super interesting was Rachel's post about Web 2.0 tools. She talked about a resource called Dragdis, which is a visual bookmarking tool that allows users to click and drag images into a sidebar that allows users to save the images under certain folder names to make resources more organized. You can also share findings with other users, and they will get instant updates when the people they follow add new images. This is a great online resource that I am happy to know about and potentially use in my future classroom to find images for lessons, share images with fellow teachers, and allow students to contribute helpful resources as well.

Another technology-related skill I would like to learn next is is how to create a grade book, attendance sheet, or any other database related material in Excel. I know we just went over the basics in class, but I think it would be super beneficial to see Excel applied to actual future uses in the classroom so we are not only prepared to use those applications in the classroom, but also know the in's and out's of how to use them so minimal mistakes are made when presenting student information/data. I can achieve this goal by looking up some online grade book and attendance sheet resources that can be applied to the Excel program, and analyze how they work in order to make my own and practice the motions that are needed to accurately form my own material.

Blog Post #9

A flipped classroom involves students listening to prerecorded video lectures for homework before coming to class, and use class time to work with content in group or individual activities and with their teachers in order to deepen understanding of the content. This allows for students to become active learners engaged in exploration and discovery within the content's framework. Teachers can use various technologies to record and share their instruction with their students, whether it be through a closed network, website, blog, or YouTube. A great source of educational videos that could be used for online instruction is www.brightstorm.com

This podcast talks about how open education, open content, and open source all affect the classroom. Open education involves making educational experiences available to a wide audience. This includes lessons on various material being available online for anyone to use when they please. A great source to access open education is https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm which offers free courses and materials. Open content specifies what people can and cannot do with the educational material they find online. It is made up of four credentials, including reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. Reuse includes using material for your own needs, whereas redistribution includes putting the material out into a different means of access to be used by others. Remix and revise includes modifying content on it's own or to be combined with other useful related content. A great source to access open content is http://search.getty.edu/ which provides free access to periodicals, photographs, and many other resources on a variety of topics. Open source includes software whose source code is available for anyone to access, allowing for people to modify or add new features to it. A great form of open source software is Linux, which is a free computer operating system that can be used on PC's.

Some new skills I gained from working on this assignment is using action buttons to make presentations more interactive and including audio throughout a presentation. I really liked creating questions and linking the answers to multiple slides in order to navigate through the presentation. The only thing I was hesitant about was making sure everything linked to the correct slides. I think I could improve my presentation by making it a bit more interesting with animation, but I wanted to make the presentation as clean and clear as possible. I think this assignment was a great way to prepare me for making these types of interactive presentations and quizzes for my students in the future!