Blog Post #8

During our field trip to the Assistive Technology Lab, we got to witness and experience many different types of technology that could be useful to students with disabilities - these technologies ranged from braille typewriters to speak-to-text computer programs. One of the smaller, but still essential, tools that we got to see was the different colored keyboards used by colorblind students. A picture of one of these keyboards can be seen below.

Bloom's Taxonomy, as understood by Google, is a set of models used to classify educational learning objectives - knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. You might use PowerPoint to support student knowledge by providing basic details and definitions on each slide, to support comprehension by providing explicit examples for said definitions, to support application by asking "what if" scenarios, to support analysis by asking specific discussion questions, to support synthesis by comparing the topic to another relevant issue that the audience may better understand, and to support evaluation by providing valid feedback at the end of the PowerPoint and/or discussion.

Chapter twelve pushes teachers to be the "driving force" of technology innovation in education, and the only way to be this "force" is for teachers to be aware of the educational tools that surround them. Honestly, when asked to provide a website that allows users to stay updated with technology trends, the first website that comes to mind is Twitter. Since Twitter is utilized in this course, we all understand the communication aspects it gives its audience. However, if you follow the right users, Twitter can open a world full of technology updates and upcoming educational tools. A picture from my educational Twitter page can be seen below.