Technology Disconnect Reflection

As some of you may know my first project for this course was to disconnect from technology for 24 hours. You really don’t realize how reliant upon technology we are in every minute of our day until you remove it. Overall my 24 hours of disconnecting went fairly well, it did have some struggles and temptations however. My day began with a different alarm sounding, because I usually use my cell phone as my alarm clock. I had borrowed a standard alarm clock from my parents to use during the disconnect. As the day passed I realized how bored I quickly had become without checking social media after classes and in my free time. I think two of the toughest things for me to give up we're listening to music while I was exercising and not being able to just turn on the tv or music while I was doing homework or a variety of things.

Oddly enough one of the easiest things was giving up my cell phone. I had left my cell phone in my roommate's room so I wouldn’t be tempted or accidentally use it. Without my cell phone I got a lot of things done and I was much less distracted throughout the day. However I will not say just because it was easier to give up than others, doesn’t mean it was actually easy to go without. I think what surprised me the most throughout my day was how much I seen others obsessively looking at their phones throughout the day. Also how many times I encounter technology through my day. When I was in my friends car driving I couldn’t listen to the radio, or when my roommates were in the living room watching the tv, I couldn’t join them. Even the slightest things when my roommate would say “hey, look at this on my phone” or “hey did you see that person's post on Instagram”, I almost slipped up not realizing what I would be doing. It was frustrating sitting in a room with my roommates when they would all be listening to music or Netflix through their headphones or scrolling through social media on their phone. It was very quiet at times and all I wanted to do was talk to pass the time.

I think my disconnect was tough on my mom. She was not happy when I told her she wouldn’t be able to get ahold of me for 24 hours. Also my roommates had a tough time, because they would forget that I couldn’t check my phone or join them during a movie and a variety of things. Overall I wouldn’t say that I overly enjoyed this assignment, but it did give me some perspective on how much technology exists in my life. I wouldn’t attempt a disconnect again however, because it takes a lot of planning and willpower to succeed. In the end I realized how much I appreciate the technology in our lives.

Website Project

The next project we are working on is creating a website, which will display our findings from our research paper as well as our survey project. I plan to first make a plan of what exactly to display on my website and from there I will complete the tasks within this project and finally then create and design my website.

My initial ideas of this project is that I am excited for it. I created a website in a class in high school and I think that will be helpful with this project. I am excited to do this, because many teachers have website to help connect with their students, colleagues, and their students parents. It will be a very useful tool for me to know how to use in the future. I feel ready and excited to complete this project!

Survey Reflection

The survey project I had been working on finally came to an end this last week. After I wrote out my survey questions I began distributing it. I shared it here on my last blog as well as on twitter, Facebook, and I sent out emails as well. Once I received enough completed surveys I began. writing up my report on my results and making my infographic. What I enjoyed the most about this project was making the infographic. It was fun to display my results in a more artistic and visual type of way. I have posted the image of my infographic to the right.

What I found hard to do for this project was actually get completed surveys. I had to remind people about it in order to get enough results. This got to be frustrating, but I was in the end able to accomplish it. I think all of the sites such as google forums works really smoothly for surveys. It is a simple and very user friendly. If I were to do this again I would distribute my survey in more places to ensure I was able to get more results in a quicker amount of time. Overall I thought this project was a great learning experience and very beneficial to my future as a teacher!

Survey

Hi everyone, below I have posted the link to my survey! If any of you could take a chance to take my survey for my information media class, I would greatly appreciate it!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpe2MKUh_fmFCZahh5PcRNNA1_Zgve3ioa2I9hxr-kmqIPjQ/viewform

Survey and Infographic Project

Our next assignment for this class is to complete a survey/infographic project. I’m thinking that this project will be interesting and useful to learn how to do. Overall I am excited to get started working on it. I will first start by picking a topic and making a list of survey questions to ask. I will then narrow my questions down later on. I will then proceed to make my survey. After I make the survey I will work on distributing my survey through my social media accounts. I am however worried that I will not get enough responses from my survey, despite sharing it through social media. Overall I am looking forward to getting started on this project and I hope to learn more about how this could be useful in my future career as a teacher!

Intellectual Thinking

Our next blog assignment is in regards to intellectual thinking. I believe it is always important for everyone to be critically thinking and analyzing things. Sometimes all we do is listen, but never really analyze or think on our own. We read an article titled “Universal Intellectual Standards” , this article discusses the importance of teachers asking questions, that allow the students to think. The article discusses eight standards essential in the reasoning

process. Although they each have a different purpose, they all stem from evaluating and questioning your thought process.

I believe relevance is one of the most important of the eight. You must ask yourself when writing a paper and doing many things if what you're saying and thinking is relevant. If what you are writing isn't relevant, is it teaching you anything? Is it engaging your audience, or teaching them something important? As a future teacher, I believe it is important to encourage to think about these items, such a relevance, accuracy, and logic. If teachers introduce these strategies from a young age students will gain a deeper understanding of how to use these techniques in many ways, not only in the education setting. I believe just like we learn a sequence to a story, that we should be taught through worksheets and assignments how to think intellectually. I believe the tools that could be used are worksheets to assist with organization of thoughts. I also think discussions within a class could be a resourceful way to learn from each other about deeper questions and reasoning. Overall it is a learning process that involves practice and continued learning from teachers and peers to achieve.

Research Project Progress

The topic I have chosen to research for my research project is looking at how technology affects  students with special needs in the classroom? I find this topic interesting, because so many schools are becoming one to one with technology. Technology has become such a useful tool for classrooms. I am curious how technology has become incorporated into special needs students lives in the classroom. So far the research process is going fairly well. It has been more difficult to find scholarly article on how effective it is so far. However the internet has provided some very interesting and useful websites.

I have learned quite a bit from my research so far such as,  that technology can not only help motivate special needs students, but it gives them a better way to communicate or become more involved in their classrooms. I read a very interesting article titled “Bridging the Gap” today that I highly recommend anyone interested in this topic to read. I have posted the link to the article below. I do wish there were more articles pertained to a smaller range on this topic, because it is a fairly broad topic. The hardest part of this project is going to be to narrow down my focuses and to begin the writing process. I am looking forward to learning more about the correlation between technology and special needs students.

Here is the link to the article:

Bridging the Gap