Ms. O'Connor's class

Proposal Reflection While writing the learning specialist/instructional designer proposal, the process has been very helpful. It has allowed me to look at the needs of my classroom and come up with a way to help support my students using technology. I have found that by using the  smart board, iPads, Seesaw, and tying it all into my classroom management that I have found a great way to utilize technology.  There has been a challenge right in the beginning of the process. When I was looking for the needs of my classroom, I knew that it would be speech and social emotional. I already knew going into this that I don't use technology that much since my students are only three years old. Initially I wanted to find a balance to use technology in my classroom. I then realized I can use a smart board or the iPads for technology to help meet those needs. There was that small challenge of how much technology to use with young learners since they are on...

 Social media  I wanted to explore teenagers and social media. I wanted to explore this because my cheerleaders are always on their phones, recording tiktoks, taking snapchats, etc. I remind them quite frequently to be conscious of what they are posting online. I tell them that they never know who may see it and what they post, reflect on their team and the school.  The first article that I read was " What is a 'Finsta' Teens and their secret instagram accounts"  This article caught my eye because I even use to have a 'finsta'. A finsta is a fake instagram account that you mainly only allow your very close friends have access to. On finsta, there is more of unfiltered content being posted. The article mentioned a college athlete that was kicked out of her sorority and soccer team because a video from her finsta surfaced. While I had a finsta, I was still smart enough to not post anything that was inappropriate, it was mainly used as a "spam" account ...

Reflection I can't believe how fast this class went! The first week of class I was excited to learn about new things that I could use in my classroom. I was excited to learn about how I can incorporate technology into my everyday routine.  Overall, I think I learned a lot about technology and how other teachers use it in their classrooms. There were a lot of interesting tools that I learned about and liked using myself! I think participate was a really interesting tool. I liked that I could put all of my resources in one place by topic. This will even help me in the future and can share resources with my friends that are also teachers. I also liked using flip grid for the side chats. I think this was a nice way to have a conversation about a topic, rather than a traditional discussion post! If I taught older grades I think this would be a nice tool to use for any remote learning that would ever have to take place again.  I think the digital tattoo assignment was an activity th...

Digital Tattoo When I first started reading about this weeks topic, I thought to myself that I was going to have a pretty big digital tattoo. I thought I would be able to find everything about myself very easily. It's scary how easy you can find someone online by just having their first name and where they are from. I started having social media when I was in 7th or 8th grade. At the time, the thing to do was to post all the pictures you could with your friends. I went from having 1 social media account when I was in 7th/8th grade to now having almost at least one account on any platform you could think of. Do I use all of these accounts still? No, but at some point in the past 10/11 years these accounts were active and in my name.  Gif source- Giphy Google: I started off my deep dive by googling my name. My full name is Caitrionagh O'Connor, but I never really go by that name. My family will sometimes call me Caitrionagh but that's pretty much it. When I googled my full n...

 Professional Learning Network I have used Twitter since I was in high school. I mainly have just used Twitter as a social media platform to connect with my friends. I also tend to see a lot of news updates on Twitter as well. I knew that Twitter was used as a resource for teachers, but I had not used it for that purpose myself. The main social media platforms that I use for resources and ideas for teaching are Facebook and Pinterest. On facebook, I am in a good amount of groups for teaching. I am in a few early childhood groups, a few special education teacher groups, a few special education preschool groups, and a couple ESL/ELL teacher groups. In these groups teachers can post questions, resources, activities, etc. Teachers can talk and collaborate with each other and can even bounce ideas off of each other. I really like being apart of these groups because they really are helpful! I made a separate twitter account for this professional learning network so it was all education r...

 Assistive Technology As a special education teacher, I feel that I am pretty familiar with assistive technology. Luckily in many of many classes, assistive technology was covered. Assistive technology are tools used by an individual to help perform tasks that could be challenging or difficult.  Assistive technology can help many people for different struggles they may have such as hearing, vision, physical, fine motor, memory, and more. These tools help make different aspects of life accessible and more equal to everyone. These assistive tools can range from low tech to high tech.  These tools do not all have to be technology based such as iPads, communication devices, etc.  Low tech assistive technology are tools that do not require training, may not be too expensive, and are not complex. Some of these tools may not require technology at all! Some examples of low tech assistive technology are fidgets, pencil grips, using large fonts, using a different fon...