Digital Blog Post # H - Chapter 9

    Becoming a teacher with this generation, technology takes a big toll on thee kids. You want to use technology inside the classroom in order to engage the students on the lesson being taught. There are way different ways nowadays to use it inside the classrooms. It seems like each day a new type of technology is being produced. Kids today know how to use technology better than adults.
    Ever since PowerPoint came out, it's been used into the classroom to teach the students a lesson while the teacher played the slides. With these generation, there are many tools that are classified as the nest-generation presentation tools. A lot of students are familiar with Prezi which allows teacher and students to create visual displays. Prezi allows you to zoom in and out throughout the presentation, show animations, more clearer key points, and allows student to view it whenever they need to. Another web 2.0 presentation tool is called Animoto which allows teachers to use video clips, pictures, sound, and text to expand the learning for the students. Students can also create short video presentations. In Glogster, this web tool allows teachers to create digital posters with the use of images, sounds, and graphic with text. This digital poster tool can be emailed, put on a blog, or even a classroom website.
     Another way for students to interact with the lesson that the teacher is teaching is by using videos with students. Teachers can use the pause and rewind effect in order to stop the video talk about it as a class then go back and start the video. Another concept is the writing responsive where the students take notes about the video being played by the teacher. Sometimes teachers will use a video first and then a lesson right after in order to inform the students on the next lesson and what it's all about. A great way for students to inteprt the video differently is by turning of the sound and having them come up on their own on what's going on in the video. You can do this too by turning off the picture and just having the sounds play from the video.
     This next piece of technology helps with teachers and students who are in Kindergarten, first and second grade. It's called Alphabet books which allows the students a way to practice spelling patterns, letter sounds, vocabulary words, and reading skills. With this tool, students are able to create their own alphabet books using photographs and hand-drawn illustrations.
   The comic I made shows two students wanting to use different presentation tools for their project using technology. One student chose Prezi because she gets to use her creativity skills, while the other student chose Powerpoint because it's easy and he doesn't want to put that much work into it. My comic below, I'm not to sure if you will be able to read it, but it says the following:
Teacher: Which ways you will be using to present your project using technology?
Student: Prezi because it's fun to use.
Student: Powerpoint because it's easy.

     The following video is a middle school teacher who explains why Prezi is great to use in the classroom. She states like PowerPoints are boring to students and I agree with her. With Prezi, you can make slides more eye-popping and more appealing to the viewer as well. It allows the students to get excited about learning more. Allowing students to create their own Prezi makes it fun for them versus using PowerPoints because you can create it your own way and not use limited elements that PowerPoint offers. Prezi is a way for students to present their Prezi to the class to show off what they did with their creativity by using Prezi.

Sources:

• Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
• Assistive Technology for Challenged Kids. (n.d.). Retrieved October 25, 2015.