My New Website, Diigo, and Technology Trends in Education!

 Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog!

Last week, we had an assignment creating a website, which I really enjoyed and had fun with! I have never created a website before so this was a really big learning experience for me. Since I love doing anything fun and artsy, this project was pretty simple for me to get used to once I learned where all the right buttons were. The only thing I disliked about using the website Weebly was that I couldn't figure out how to make a website from scratch so I had to use a template website, which they had a very limited choice range of. Otherwise, I really liked the interface and system that Weebly has, as I think it makes it very easy to make websites as a first time learner. I made my website based on a fourth grade class and I think the way I organized everything turned out really well! I think for sure in my teaching career, I will absolutely be using a website as a way to adapt to a very digital education experience, as it would be such a great way to get information to primarily parents who like to stay updated on everything. If you would like to check out my new website, here's the link!

We also learned how to use Diigo recently in class, which I think is a pretty neat interface to share resources with other people. While the website itself was a little bit confusing and overwhelming at first, I think once you get used to it, Diigo is a really handy dandy website to share resources like blogs, lesson plans, inspiration, and fun games/activities. I think its so important to utilize a tool like Diigo in a professional career because in a profession like teaching, you have to collaborate with other teachers so you can learn and improve yourself, as well as improving the classroom and providing the best learning experience as possible for your students. I learned a lot already from Diigo in just the short time we've used it so far, and I think this will be really helpful to use in annotating important things and sharing resources to my peers.

When you're a teacher, it's incredibly important to stay updated on technological trends and advances so that your students can always feel engaged with the lesson by using things they are familiar and comfortable with. By doing a simple Google search, I found a website, eSpark Learning, that describes and explains current technological trends in education. They explain blended learning, gamification, differentiated learning, flipped classroom, DOK, and next generation assessments, as well as a few more definitions. All of these, as described by the website, are different methods of adapting a technologically advanced classroom that appeals to the current generation of students and new developments in teaching styles. Some of these like flipped classroom and blended learning, I have personally experienced in some high school and college classes. This website seems to stay up to date on the current trends in education so I am sure they will update it as more time passes and more advances are made!

Thank you for reading my blog, I'll see you in the next post!