Blog Journal 8

One example of an adaptive technology the textbook mentioned is word prediction software. This helps students with special needs who struggle with spelling and writing in general. The textbook also mentioned text to speech programs such as Write Aloud which can help students hear the words they have written back to them, often making it easier for the to catch spelling and grammar mistakes. This is especially helpful for people who are better auditory listeners than visual listeners. In the TechnologyProfessionalDevelopment podcast the speaker discusses technologies such as Diigo and Twitter for teachers to help in their own professional development. I am not sure that these are examples of adaptive technologies but I still have found both very helpful this year in helping students in the class learn collaboratively. I have used text to speech software before and do indeed find that it helps me catch my spelling and grammar mistakes as I am more of an auditory listener. I suppose a problem I can see running into when using adaptive technology is, not having the adaptive technology to help every student and only being able to help certain students. It seems like it will be difficult to find technology that can cater to each of my student's needs, but I am up for the task!

If I were designing a powerpoint aimed toward helping students at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy, I would first make each term and concept I wanted my students to remember a different font and color. I find that this technique can be quite helpful for giving concepts different character in our heads. This would help students in the remembering category of the pyramid. I would also be sure to include in-depth explanations of the topics I presented in order to help them understand the material. I would then task them with a problem that I would ask them to try to collaboratively work through with the information I have just presented. I would then have the students all present their solutions to the problem and try to foster a group discussion in order to help the students analyze which solution they found to be the best. I would try to have the students pick a few that seemed to work best and work on democratically combining these solutions. This would help the students with their evaluation skills as they would have to evaluate the solutions they found to be the most effective. Using the new information, I would task the students with creating a problem of their own, splitting the class into two teams. This would help allow the students to be creative. The teams would then work on solving each others problems.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/social-impact-and-educational-initiatives/overview.html

Above I have included a screenshot and the url for a site called engage which is great for educators to stay informed about emerging technologies. It allows teachers to "post an interest thread or post ideas or questions" (Lever-Duffy and McDonald) about new educational technologies for teachers. The site is also free. The site says on its homepage that it aims to "ensure that the next generation of educators is empowered, diverse, and inclusive will enable us to harness the full power of technology to create the best future possible for everyone." 


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