Blog Journal 8

 1) I acquired so many new skills from designing a webpage. I never used weebly prior to this assignment but I have visited previous teachers' weebly pages and I had no clue how much work they actually put into creating their websites. I learned how to create a drop down menu on a specific page of the site, I learned how to custom crop and size images so that they were aligned, I learned how to insert a embedded code for my google calendar and so much more through this assignment. An overarching thing that I learned from this assignment is that educators put in so much work behind the scenes and all we see is the pretty, finished product and not what it took to get there so they deserve so much more appreciation. This can be useful in my future career when it's time to create my own class website because I know how it works already and how to make a pretty page!

my website

2) Diijo has been very tricky for me but I have learned so much. Through Diijo, I learned how to add an extension so that I can bookmark and annotate texts which is helpful when trying to remember the most important pieces of text. Also, Diijo taught me how to share documents that aren't on that website and create comments that my peers may want to read. Diijo has just been really helpful with teaching me how to virtually annotate and that's something I never did before. Diijo can be very useful when communicating with other educators about important texts or educational legislation to see their opinion (annotations) and comments about what we are reading. 

3) Technology and teacher professional development are heavily related because educators depend on technology to teach effectively often. A teacher is responsible for teaching and interacting with students but it's impossible to truly get in touch with them if the teacher is not "up to date" on technology and what electronics are cool. I think this is a tough cookie because how can we expect older teachers to be the driving force with new ideas in technology if the children they encounter each year have created new difficulty with the technology just created? I think it's important that there are seminars and conversations had throughout the year to make sure teachers are educated and suave on the consistently developing technology of this world. 

teacher technology help

(this website gives good tips for teachers who are falling behind in technology and the edutopia website is helpful overall because there are several articles about technology and the trends that are happening now.)