Blog Journal 7

    School pages and teacher websites are another element of educational technology that can really enhance the quality of learning and assistance within schools. In my own education, each of my schools had their own specifically designed website that catered to their students, staff and parents. These websites are a great resource for information and tools. Many of these websites are protected by login systems that allows parents, staff and students to access the website but no one without a login.This ensures that the site remains safe for students to use and prevents confidential/personal information from being open to the public's eyes. I went back to the past for this blog! I visited the school website for my old Elementary School, Stearley Heights Elementary School located in Okinawa, Japan that I went to for the 4th and 5th grade. The website for this school is averagely helpful for educational technology. Most websites for schools will be limited because they have a login system that prevents information from being shared without access. I did not visit my past teachers from 4th and 5th grade because they no longer work there. However, I did look at other teacher's sites and they all offered information and resources helpful to both the student and the parent. https://sites.google.com/student.dodea.edu/stearleyheightses/student-zone/grades-k-2?authuser=0

    As a teacher, I understand how crucial technology will be in my career. Technology plays a key role in how we teach the newer generations of children. Not only are these kids exposed to more technology than we were as kids and our parents and teachers were in school, technology is growing as they are. Therefore, as their teachers, we must continue to learn the newest technology in order to best assist and teach. Each school has it required resources that teachers must make use of. however, personally I can see myself using either Google Classroom and/or Canvas. Both tools are very helpful and easy to navigate as a student so I think it would be useful to use as a teacher. When you are a teacher, you must think as a student and what resource would best serve their learning environment. Canvas is a great resource to post calendars and online assignments to keep students on track. While the Google tools such as Docs, Sheets and PowerPoint are all very useful. I would use Google Docs to plan out my lessons and create assignments and lessons plans. While I could use Sheets to track grades, calendars, planning for ahead, etc. Google PowerPoint could be used to create PowerPoint's to display to the class that help guide the instruction and go along with the lesson plan to keep us on schedule. 

    PBWorks is a wiki platform similar to the very popular wiki platform, Wikipedia. Wikis are publications that are edited and published collaboratively, meaning people can work together jointly to add information. Wikis aren't always the best resources because there can be a lack of credibility and accuracy from the people editing the source document. PBWorks was created for education purposes in mind, such as creating collaborative websites for teachers and students to use. After briefly using PBWorks, I noticed small negatives.The platform itself is outdated and hard to navigate. It's customization is limited. I could use the platform to create my own classroom website that students could interact and add to, like a joint online classroom space.