Websites & Technology in Education

 Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog!

    To begin this week's blog, I wanted to start with talking about schools and teacher websites. For an example, I wanted to use my high school's website (Sunlake High School) as an example because I had to use a teacher's website to get class information, so I have firsthand experience with this. Although the website is not listed on the website anymore, given that I did use it about five years ago, but I found another teacher's website that I really liked, Webster Classroom, in which he showcases lots of different class information. On the website I noticed many different links, but most specifically on the from page a section that points out a Remind code, which I know allows the teacher to communicate with students and remind them of due dates and update them on any last minute changes they need to know before the next class (I used this a lot throughout high school). I also noticed a tab at the top of the page specifying the two different classes Mr. Webster has, Digital Media and Yearbook. Both webpages seem to be a bit outdated, but he has specific links to the course syllabus and resources that may be utilized in his class. The layout is a bit messy, in my opinion, but it gets the job done and probably gets easier as a student who needs to use it frequently. It's also a bit not aesthetically pleasing, but that may be just because I am used to viewing cute elementary school Teacher websites!

    When I start my career as an educator, inevitably I plan on incorporating technology into my curriculum in any way I possibly can, while also trying to find a balance so that children who do not have access to technology can participate. With my past experience, my schools provided technology to every student to use during the class time, so I would make sure that if assignments are to be done online, my students have time to do so with the given class time. There are so many resources at teachers' exposed such as NearPod, Kahoot, and Microsoft Products, and even Minecraft like I've mentioned before in a previous blog post. I really want to involve technology to make my students' learning experience as fun as possible for them so that they actually really want to learn and love to learn. I think it's really important, no matter what grade is being taught, to allow students to have fun so they look forward to learning and form new connections to the material. Besides students being able to learn better, I think it's also important to use teacher resources like Remind, Canvas, and many others, to stay in contact with your students after school hours so that they can get help, feedback, reminders, etc. from their teacher, which in many cases can relieve lots of stress and anxieties about homework assignments. I also plan on making my own websites like many of the ones I have looked at for this class, and personalize it to my class, so that students may get extra resources and help at home, as well as staying updated on what is expected of the class.

    On the topic of teacher resources, in class we used a wiki platform called PB Works. I think the website is really nice for group projects, since everyone in the group can work on it and work can be evenly divided among their own, so everyone gets credited for their own work. I think a wiki platform like this is very useful in an upcoming digital age in education, especially given our current situation in the world. However, with PB Works, I will be honest, I did not like it all that much because of its layout and how it is presented. It was really confusing for me to get used to and I feel like it is not all that much user friendly because many features I felt like I had to go hunting for it. Towards the end, I started getting the hang of it, but for me personally I love to use websites that look nice and I get overwhelmed if there are too many tab options and it's not presented in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Thanks for reading more on my experience with technology in education! Until next time!