Tuesday, May 29, 2012

AarOn Bentz Tech Review


Technology Review


Delicious Stack

Application Review: Behavior Status:

                This app is a sort of behavioral check-in that can be used to document students’ behaviors throughout the day. The main menu after it is set up will be a list with all the names of the students in the class or group you want to document. From there the user can tap on a student’s name. From that point a stop light will show up and the user can change the stop light based on the student’s behavior. When a stop light has been changed, the user has the option to change the time of the incident and make a note of what happened. There is an option for an advanced organizer of behaviors, but that is not available in the free version. This app would be very helpful in a behavior classroom where the students have many different behaviors that must be documented in order to comply with IEP goals. This is a fairly new application (this is the first version released to the public), but is fairly well designed and is usable as it is now.

My Choice (Picasa):  https://picasaweb.google.com/home

                This technology resource is a great resource to use whenever you have the need to move photos from a phone or other device to your computer and ultimately a different technology. Using Picasa makes the necessity of having your pictures on your computer a thing of the past. This website uploads the photos onto an online holding space where you can then organize them however you want. These photos can then be accessed from any device online. Another great aspect of this technology is the ease of uploading your photos. When I first started using this resource I had pictures on my smart phone that I had to get onto my Personal Learning Environment. When I took a picture on my phone it gave me an option to upload it strait to my Picasa account. From there I was able to organize them online for further use. Regarding the PLE’s for this class, Picasa makes including a slideshow extremely easy. There is a button that will let you choose to input a premade slide show from Picasa.


                This article was about whether students in the digital age need to memorize facts or not. This is a, “point/counterpoint” article and gives opinions both supporting the memorization of facts and not supporting the memorization. It was very interesting to hear both sides of the argument and gave me a more in depth analysis of the issue. One side claimed that memorization was crucial to obtaining knowledge while the other side claimed that it is not the memorization of the facts, but the analysis of the facts that is the important aspect of learning. This is a very small article, how many of the “point/counterpoint” articles are structured, but it is able to explore the topic thoroughly given the typical structure of this type of article. The article only represents the opinions of two professionals in the field, so therefore will have a lot of bias that must be interpreted in order for this resource to be used properly in an essay, but will give a good amount of great information about the topic. 


                This Talk is about the journey of technology from its infancy to where it is today and the place it now holds in society.  The speaker in this edition talks thoroughly about the early technology and how impactful it was for our earliest ancestors, from being a species that could not defend or feed themselves with any amount of success to the species that dominated all other species. This first step was only with the introduction of very primitive technologies, such as stone tools and fire. The speaker then goes on the claim that we as humans could not survive without technology. This Talk is very insightful and a new way to think of technology. I believe this is a great source for proving the essentiality of technology and to show that we must keep up with technology in order to be effective.

                The TED Talks as a whole is a great source for teachers if your subject area is ever a source of one of their Talks. The people they have talk are experts in the field and present the information in incredibly clear and insightful messages. TED Talks needs to be considered as a source for topics that are covered in their Talks.


                This is a fairly good resource to have as a teacher if you can manage to get over the issues navigating the site. It is quite tough to get to what you want, and when you do get there it is often times difficult accessing information that is published, even if you are a member of the site and have paid the dues to get access. On the site (once it is located) there is an abundance of journal articles that apply to technology in the classroom. One aspect of the article database that was frustrating to me was the difficulty I had getting an article to download onto my computer. Once I found the article I wanted it put me through a few pointless pages until I finally got to the point where it would download. It even made me go through a purchasing process, even though the article was free to members. Another difficulty I had with the website was searching for an article based on keywords. I was not able to narrow down my search enough and ended up simply finding an article from the mass list that interested me and applied to my subject area. Overall, if the navigation and other issues can be overlooked this is a great resource, if and only I you put the money up for a membership.


                This Webinar is about the problems those who are disabled may confront with public technologies and what sorts of assistive technology there is for public computers. This Webinar applies to my teaching career because technology is becoming (has become already) part of the classroom and being in the field of Special Education finding assistive technology for computers is going to be a part of my job in the future. This webinar is structured as interviews with people that are involved in the field of assistive technology and will be very helpful for those who may have a need to implement assistive technology in the future. This video was uploaded to Youtube from Tech Soup Video In Dec. of 2011. All of the information within is still valid and applicable.



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