Abigail DeCamillo's EME2040 Class Blog

My experience with distance learning was primarily during Covid-19, when we were all quarantined in 2020. I was in 8th grade when this happened and my middle school used Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Classroom. I found them effective; they allowed us to collaborate virtually and complete assignments. However, I think that there was a lack of accountability due to classes being online, so that is a definite struggle that comes with distance learning. Some technologies I have not experienced that seem useful for distance learning are virtual reality platforms and AI; both seem like they could be great ways to enhance personalized instruction from afar. To define it in my own terms, open educational resources (OER) are educational tools that are accessible to all. Linked below is Indiana University of Pennsylvania's LibGuide on OER, which provides some examples of open educational resources, such as streaming videos, open textbooks, and digital learning objects. These resources ar...

 

The Web Design assignment allowed me to develop a very useful new skill: how to layout and organize a website. Prior to this assignment, I had no experience with website design, so this was a great way for me to learn some aspects of it. Some design principles that I made sure to use when designing my website were accessibility, simplicity, and consistency. For example, I made sure to keep the fonts that I used consistent (and follow the CRAP principle), make my website easy to navigate with clear directions and embedded links, and aligned all of my text and images to ensure that they looked neat. While I enjoyed the creative aspect of this assignment, I found it challenging at times to embed certain items or make my website aesthetic and functional according to the rubric. I can definitely use my newfound skills in my future career in creating my own class websites, digital newsletters, or interactive assignments. A creative way to use QR codes in my classroom is incorporating them in...

This is a resource that provides free, virtual workshops for teachers in a variety of topics/subjects. This specific section focuses on teacher professional learning, allowing teachers to obtain new classroom ideas or resources. https://tinyurl.com/freeteacherworkshop

I visited the Chiles High School website to find teacher websites, but surprisingly not many teachers had them available (at least not as many as I expected). I did try and find other schools that included teacher websites in their departments section, but did not see any! However, I really enjoyed looking at the websites that were available. Most included information about themselves, an announcements page, and a calendar with important dates. I think that this is a great resource to provide to parents and students; none of my teachers ever provided websites but I think it is an accessible, user friendly way to get information across (and much more environmentally friendly than sending paper newsletters home!). Here is the link to the website I visited!  https://www.leonschools.net/chiles  I can envision myself using a lot of technology in order to accomplish my responsibilities effectively. As a future teacher, particularly looking to focus on early childhood education, I th...

So far, I have really enjoyed blogging in this class! I think it is a really good way to reflect on what we learned in class throughout the week and to look back on if we want to recall what we have learned so far. While I do think the workload is a little bit much for a simple reflection, I do understand the benefits of blogging in this class. As a future teacher, I think Blogger is a really good resource to use in the classroom (i.e., posting blogs and sharing the url with parents and allowing them to read and respond to your posts).  For the Generative AI assignment, I utilized ChatGPT and prompted it to make me a lesson plan for a Kindergarten Science class. As it gave me responses, I asked follow up questions to make sure I was getting a well rounded lesson that included everything required of it. I did ask for links to websites or songs, but that part did not work; the links were not all real. Next time, I would likely include more descriptive words or instructions in my orig...