Reaction to Todd Oppenheimer's article

Tedd Oppenheimer mentioned that technology can rather have a negative impact on students’ success when it is used constantly in schools. Schools today are forgetting about the basic fundamentals that are essentials but rather are more focused on how to advance their schools technologically. Schools are shortening physical education, art, and music to increase time for computers and other technologies, and spending more than enough money on technologies while it should be used for other classroom and school materials and equipment, such as books, tables, chairs, etc. Students should be able to be active and moving around in class being interactive rather than staring at a computer screen all day. Schools and classrooms should never forget the basic structures as a classroom should have a teacher, for a person-to-person interaction, and books rather than both the teacher and the books being replaced with computers and other technologies.  

Useful Technology for teachers

Pear Deck

• make slideshows 
• able to view progress of each student
• NEED Google Drive to use
• able to view students' response to each questions
• not able to collaborate with other teachers

Google Docs

• students are able to collaborate to work on a project or to write a paper
• NEED google account
• slides= powerpoint
• sheets=excel

Class Dojo

• for classroom management & engagement
• to manage the students' behavior
• App
• can view it for whole class or individual student
• messenger
• parents can be updated and notified on how their child is doing in class
• over 20 different languages
• can see who (teachers) are using this website
• parent can only see information about their children

FactMonster

• interactive activities for different subjects
• different homework resources
• cannot choose grade level but can choose the subject area
• in depth information about each state

InstaGrok

• similar to Google
• search engine
• concept map about the topic
• journal
• quizzes
• keeps a report of your history

PBS Kids

• game- Super Market Mania
• like a board game
• choose gender
• mini games within a game
• for younger children

Flip Snack

• Flip Snack classroom 
• different versions (free, paid)
• can link to social media
• different resources all in one 
• can be downloaded, edited, and shared

PowToon, Thinglink, Meme

I used the three technologies, PowToon, Thinglink, and Meme, but I had the hardest time with Thinglink. I was not sure on how to create a Thinglink and how to navigate through. The assignment was to include an image, a video, and an article, but I did not know how to add all three into one Thinglink. I thought that PowToon was pretty interesting and fun because we got to create an animation for the topic and do a voice over, however, it was also quite complicated. The Meme was easy and fun to do but it was not too easy to create a Meme with only few words.

Thinglink

https://www.thinglink.com/video/719013081597870082

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/719012358743130114

Powtoon

https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/dcaiBQAlE2w/the-use-of-social-media/#/

Meme

New Game

This is a math game where as you go up the levels the math questions become more difficult. The game player can also choose what level of math they want, algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. The motive of the game is to get as many questions correct and earn points to buy new items to decorate and customize the background and to open mini games using the points they earned.