Brad's Blog

    I think that the best way I will personally use data collection tools as a teacher would be to ensure that all students are able to be fully up to par with all of the information that they are being given. While I hope to teach American Government as a class, I think that at times testing and quizzing could put unnecessary pressure on the kids which might affect their grades in a negative way too, and with surveying potentially there could be a bit of a way to ensure they are all caught up without making anxiety occur. With this I would basically try and figure out what fields they struggled with the most, and through this I could try and adjust the class in real time. I think this would be a good tool because not every class is the same, and some classes need help with different areas than others.     One of the things I found most unique from reviewing other classmates' blogs was that some people are much more into the distance based learning than I c...

      I find that my experience as a distance learner this semester has actually been quite difficult to manage for me, due to the fact that I really struggle with the lack of routine from staying at my house. I guess it makes everything feel like homework, even going to class on zoom and it feels as though I have lost a lot of motivation from the lack of being able to enjoy the campus and the social aspect of it all. While respecting the social distancing, I just wish that we could get through COVID-19 but I know that it is only bound to get worse until we can achieve a vaccine that is widely accessible. I think that as a teacher, the way to improve the experience of distance learners is to ensure that the class has some flexibility, and allow for a greater level of interaction if possible. I know that everyone was sort of thrown into this whole thing, and I guess the best way moving forward is to learn from what has occurred this semester and over summer.  ...

       When we started the process of working on the websites, I was actually quite intimidated at first. With all of the issues that I tend to have with technology, it was quite intimidating. However, I found the website design to be relatively easy. With simple tools in order to drag and drop things, I felt like I could design a website that at least had the capability of navigation, although I really feel as though many people would be able to do a much better job than me. But, nonetheless I was able to accomplish the goal of producing a website that works. Website     Diigo on the other hand was much easier for me to figure out, and although at times it felt sort of difficult, having the ability to group source information like that was super useful. This is a resource that I would certainly use moving forward, due to the ease of use from multiple platforms. With everything being so contained, it is really good for sharing work and academic article...

      I found Diigo to be a very good interface, although it is not something that I enjoy using due to the fact that there are several sub-menus that I have to navigate through. Although as someone who is generally bad with technology, I found it to be surprisingly easy to work my way through. I thought that the highlighting and sticky note functions in it were incredibly easy to use and useful tools for the future, although I am under the impression that Diigo is a paid service that I will be unable to access. But with that being said, I did find it to be much easier to use than I had previously expected going into the process.     Blogging has been an alright experience for me, I typically have strong opinions about things so it is not very difficult for me to write all of the required sentences for these assignments. I don't know if I have learned much from blogging, but it is really nice to hear from classmates and see what they think about the sa...

 My early interactions with twitter have been minuscule in nature to be honest, but I do not tend to use social media anyway. While I recognize the importance of using theses sites, and how the influence of social media grows constantly I am trying to hold off on it for a little while. When I have used it though, I really do enjoy seeing some of the things published by NPR, since it posts links to the articles as they come out in real time. While I think that twitter might not be the tool, I know that some form of social media will dominate social network that we are all a part of. I really do think that the digital divide is something that greatly affects students in school as we are seeing now, especially due to COVID. While there are people who do not have internet at their house, we have lost the ability to loiter at places like coffee shops and other "free wifi" destinations, and its proving slowly but surely that since internet is a necessity, it should be subsidized fo...

 For my standard, I decided to choose the LAFS.910.WHST.3.8 standard that was present in the grades 9-10 section. This standard seems to be largely based on how to construct papers based on research, and is a great means of teaching students how to use things such as bibliography generators, and plagiarism checkers alongside other means of working on papers. I think that I have the tools to teach this, due to the fact that I have used all of the examples of programs that the page suggested for this, but I should probably refresh myself on different citation styles. The only fear I would have is not being quite well versed enough in order to prevent misunderstood citation generation, where I would be unable to tell if it was correctly cited or potential for plagiarism disqualifications. The tool that I decided to use for this section was a video entitled "Thinking Like a Historian", which basically was a rundown on how to A) get students involved with learning about history, a...