PCTELA

This past Saturday I went to the PCTELA (Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts) conference. It was very fun and informative! It was definitely better than I was expecting it to be (I had never been to a conference before, so I didn't really know what it would be like).

I got to see some great presentations from Slippery Rock students and learned a lot about the student teaching experience from people who did it last semester. I saw some new ways to make learning fun for your students and I got even more excited about my future as an educator.

I really enjoyed the conference, and I wish I had been there on Friday too for the first day. The reason I signed up for the conference in the first place was to fulfill my service requirement for NCTE, but I ended up loving it and I'm so glad that I went!

Digital Citizenship

This week in my Production and Utilization class I learned about Digital Citizenship, which is how to use technology appropriately and responsibly. There are five elements of digital citizenship:
   Digital access
  Digital commerce 
 Digital communication
Digital literacy
Digital etiquette
 Digital law
Digital rights and responsibilities
Digital health and wellness
 Digital security

        I think it is important to learn about this elements especially because we are using a lot of technology in Non Print Media. We have to know how to safe online, whether this means having anti virus software or not giving out personal information. We also need to be aware of how to be polite and respectful online and not to attack other people for their opinions. 

   

     As you can see, one of the elements of digital citizenship is digital literacy, which is something we focused on in the first few weeks of Non Print Media. The fact that I also learned about it in another class shows how important the concept is for our future, whether it is as educators or in another field.

Podcasts

I'm excited to do the podcast project because I have listened to a few podcasts and they seem like they can be fun. They're a different way to keep people updated rather than just writing a blog, but they seem to be pretty simple to figure out.

I really liked the article on D2L about using the podcast in place of a book report. These were more exciting than just a written report, and there was more room to be creative. Also, future students could listen to the podcasts which might entice them to read the book.

Although technology is sometimes a bit frustrating for me, making a podcast doesn't seem too challenging, and I think it will be fun. If I like it, I may even make one for fun.

Digital Bootcamp

I liked doing the Digital Bootcamp in Non Print Media the past two weeks because I got to see tools that I doubt I would have found otherwise. There were some cool resources that I saw people present about. I would not have spend the time going through all of these tools and learning how to use them in my spare time, but now I have an idea of what they each do based on my classmates' presentations.

I really liked the tool that I presented about, Kahoot. I think this is a fun way to get students to review the material and it would be a good way to prepare them for tests. I also thought Powtoon and Narrable were a lot of fun. These were tools that you could be creative with and could engage the students easily. I feel like these are sites that I might use in my free time even if I don't use them in the classroom.  

Hypermedia Powerpoints

One of my assignments this week was to make a hypermedia Powerpoint. This is an interactive slide show that will take you to different slides depending on what option you click on. These can be used for review games in the class room, so students can prepare for an upcoming test.

We used a template to create a Jeopardy game based on our content areas. I made one using SAT vocabulary words, because this was something I remember studying in my English class in high school. The template I used to create the game is on this website. All I had to do was type in the questions and answers. All of the links were already done for me, so it did not take too much time to make the game. I think this is a good time saver for teachers, and I know that students enjoy playing review games and use them as an opportunity to solidify their knowledge before a test.