Posts

Final Reflection

 This semester has been really intriguing. This is the most that I've used and tried out AI, and I've learned a lot about how to use it to help me as an educator. The other various tools that we've explored have been helpful as well, but AI was my favorite to get to try. When I initially considered AI, all I associated it with was cheating. I tell my own students all the time to stay away from it because it doesn't help them actually learn. There are definitely ways to use it effectively, but I know my students aren't using it in that capacity. I teach math, so I believe in can be useful if they used it to learn what mistakes they may have made, but usually they use it to just get the answer. All that being said, when we started using it in this class, I felt like I was cheating or taking the short way when I should be doing everything that way I'm putting in the most effort. After this class, I've come to realize that we can use it as an actual tool to help...

Universal Design for Learning

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 Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a learning structure used to help students, or people in general, learn in the most effective way possible by using scientific insights into the methods which people use to learn. These guidelines include Engagement, Representation, and Action/Expression cross sectioned with Access, Support, and Executive Function.  Currently, I am already using the Executive Function in all three aspects of Engagement, Representation, and Action/Expression. When I am teaching math, I always aware of how I am teaching the information and taking in students' body language and informal assessments to see if they are understanding the material or getting lost in the delivery and then adjusting based on their responses. As a teacher, I am also making sure that I am connecting the information when prior knowledge either from earlier in the year or from past math classes. While explaining the material, I try to give them multiple ways to solve if applicable to...

Teach Someone - How to Research a Topic

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  This video goes over a brief introduction and method into research suitable for high school students. Using Google, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar, I go over what types of sources to look for and tips and tricks for research.

Podcasts - Turnin Pages (Secrets of the Shelves)

     My partner and I used a variety of tools to create our podcast including Zoom, Podbean, and Garageband. We wanted to record our own voices for this podcast, but we live pretty far away from each other, so we thought Zoom would be the best option. The great thing about Zoom is that after the meeting is recorded and it downloads, it downloads as a video and audio file separately. This was perfect in our case because I took the audio file only and edited in Garageband. I had never used Garageband before, but I have a Mac and it was easy to understand. I'm sure I could've done a better job if I had known more, but it was easy to cut out audio and add music where need be, and I would definitely recommend it to people with Macs. Lastly, I sent the finished file to my partner where she then took it and uploaded it to the Podbean platform, which provided the HTML, making it an ease to imbed here in the blog.       Out of all the platforms, Podbean was per...

AI-Assisted Newsletter

To create an AI generated newsletter I used ChatGPT. The initial prompt that I used to create my newsletter was as follows: "Create a newsletter for a high school librarian that includes hours of operation, contact information, a booklist for young adults, and an upcoming meet and greet event. Make it fun and optimistic" Along with the following edits: 1) "Add in more upcoming events and a reading challenge of the month" 2) "Add a small description of each book on the recommendations list" 3) "Make the newsletter pretty"      The newsletter actually did come out very nice and detailed. I liked that once AI generated the newsletter the program opened it up in a split-screen format. That was beneficial because I was able to make my own edits on the small things that wouldn't take up a lot of my time, such as dates and times, and could still prompt ChatGPT to create bigger edits such as adding or deleting events and adding book description...

Environmental Scan

     Five years ago I was hired at New Caney High School, which is located in the North Houston area, for my very first teaching job. This was in August of 2020, at the end of COVID where the students and staff came back online for the first 3 months and then with masks for the rest of the year. Being a first year teacher, this was particularly difficult and I wasn't able to really know what it was like to be a teacher. Now however, I finally feel like I have enough experience to truly understand what I'm doing and how best to reach the students at New Caney. The majority of the community here is in a lower socioeconomic status, hispanic, and have different cultural norms. After all these years, I do my best to take these differences into account when teaching and attempt to be a little more understanding when it comes to due dates and making up missed assignments.      Beginning with the environment of the school, my school is old. It's the oldest in the ...

Pedagogy Before Technology

           Education is one of those professions that changes each year, seeking to improve based on data collected from previous years. Administrators and district level workers use technology as a means to gather test scores, progress checks, and keep track of the overall improvement of students. On the teaching side, technology is integrated more and more into lesson planning, the curriculum, and with student activities, which is something that wasn't used to the extent it is now. Students today see technology in a different way than they did two decades ago, and as education continues to be modified, technology will continue to become relied on more as a means of education. Take Bloom's Taxonomy as an example. The hierarchy of learning has been modified from its original design to incorporate technology vocabulary and can continue to be updated as technology develops. Continuing with this trend is important as it seems to be the way the world and educat...