Bruce's EDU614 Blog

Below is a video of my final presentation from this course. It includes my philosophy on education, how the technologies we looked at this semester fit into that philosophy, and parent involvement. Below is the power point presentation that I used to go along with the presentation above.

Bellow is a ling to my Growth plan. It includes information on resources to help students become more engaged int he classroom, infomration on special education, and links to technology to include in instruction. My Growth Plan

At our school, we are required to use one of two classroom management programs for our students: Schoology or Google Classroom and one for administration issues, ASPEN. These tools are great for helping to keep track of students and managing their work. But they aren't the most efficient programs to help keep students on task and at an appropriate level. I want to introduce two forms of technology that can help with this. For When I Want it Busy The first technology I got from a colleague, it’s simple: a YouTube timer . This timer plays techno music and adds a lot of energy to the classroom. Also, it allows students to realize that they have a finite amount of time and they end up using their time efficiently. When students do not have a timer, they tend gravitate towards discussing issues not pertinent to the class activities.  These timers come in 3,5, and 10-minute increments. What I like about this is that the timers do not go too long so as to make the students bore...

Introduction to Tech for Students with Disabilities Tech for students with disabilities is an important situation for all teachers as all teachers will have students with disabilities that they will need to accommodate at some point in their careers. For example, this past year our school had a new student entering grade six who required the use of a wheel chair. However, what many of the teachers did not take into account was "how are we going to seat the student?" Yes, something as simple as finding ways to seat the student became an issue that took about two weeks to handle. Some classes had tables that his wheel chair would not fit under, other classes used individual desks which the student could not sit in and be safe. Now, not all teachers will have a student with a wheel chair enter their class, nor are the guaranteed to have students with other disabilities that require major technology in order to participate fully in the classroom. And even if they do, some sc...