My EED 605 Instructional Technology Blog - Hunter Rhodes

Flipped classroom is a teaching strategy where the students first get introduced to content they are learning at home or outside of the classroom. Then, the students would work on practice and activities at school concerning the content they took in at home. As you can see, it is called a flipped classroom because usually the content is introduced at school and then the practice and work is completed at home.  My findings and thoughts from researching this method: 1. It forces students to be independent 2. It requires students to actually study the content because it shows in the classroom if they did not prepare 3. It premotes more engagement in the classroom and more social engagement because often times they are working in groups complete their practice in the classroom 4. All in all, it is a good strategy when used correctly          - It because a bad strategy when the teacher uses it to be lazy in the classroom.

  Blogger.com is what I am using to make this blog. It is a great platform that allows you to create a blog with many different options for uploading images, links, videos, etc. I think this would be a great idea to use with your students throughout the course of a year class. You could have your students create a blog entry at the end of every unit that allows them to be creative in expressing what they learned from each unit. Allow them to be creative and make sure you make it fun. Having students create blogs can be much more of a fun activity for the students to have a non-stressful and creative way for them to express what they have learned. Here is a link to the website:  Blogger.com - Create a unique and beautiful blog easily.

I recently put togwther a QR code quest using Google Slides. The goal was to provide 5 resources on a Google Slide over a specific topic. I chose to cover Chinese Dynasties. I have 5 separate dynasties and created a QR code for 5 different resources that cover 5 different dynasties. I chose to use  QR Code Generator (the-qrcode-generator.com)  to make my QR codes. Making QR codes are as simple as copying a URL and pasting it into the website I provided above. It instantly creates a QR code that can then be copied and pasted as well. Therefore, I copied and pasted these codes onto a Google Slide.  Here is a link to my QR Code Quest:  QR Code Quest .

Screencastify is an extension of Google Chrome that allows users to record voice, video, and computer screen. Users can choose to record all 3, any 2, or just 1. It is a good resource to use if you are teaching virtually and do not record live lessons, it would allow you to pre-record lessons and upload them for your students to view them. Additionally, it is a good resource to use if you are presenting or developing some sort of professional development. It records everything it needs to for your videos to be successful and sufficient.  Here is a link to my screencastify tutorial for Google  Screencastify

 Canva is an online platform that has thousands of templates for infographics, social media posts, business cards and so much more. I love using Canva for infographics. I have made many for my class, especially during my internship. The most recent one I made was covering the ancient civilization of Egypt. I will upload a link to it at the bottom of this post. You can go along completely with their template and just fill in your information where it says to, along with pictures as well. Or, you can customize it entirely. It also allows you to provide hyperlinks on it as well. In my opinion, Canva infographics are just a good way to provide smaller bits of information at the beginning of a unit or lesson. It allows you to give the highpoints out there before you cover the more in-depth content. Here is my Ancient Egypt infographic: 

 Another web-based resource that you can use in your classroom is called smore. It allowed me to create an introductory newsletter to a unit that I completed on Abrahamic religions. I was able put information on the newsletter as well as links to additional information like readings and videos. Then, I was able to attach an activity that the students could complete after they studied up on the religions and then finally, I attached a Google forms quiz at the end of the newsletter.  Using Smore for electronic newsletters was very easy. I was easily able to upload the images and all resources without much trouble.  To view my Smore on the religions click here:  Abrahamic Religions

Google Forms is a web-based tools that can be used as a formative assessment.  It allows you to gauge students' knowledge at different times in a unit. You can view this link to watch a quick video on how to use Google Forms:  Google Forms Tutorial .  Ways to use Google Forms as a formative assessment: 1. Pretest (beginning of unit) 2. Exit Ticket (throughout the unit) 3. Post Test (end of unit) Purposes: It allows you to get a better understanding of where the students are at the beginning of the unit. The pretest might tell you that you might need to focus instruction more on vocabulary because the students do not have much prior knowledge at all, or it might tell you that you can start further into the meat of the content because they expressed a good amount of prior knowledge. Exit tickets can show if you need to revisit some information when you start the next day or if you can keep moving forward with the unit. Post-tests allows you to evaluate yourself as a teacher...

 Interactive slides can be similar to just a typical slides presentation. However, often times presentations are just full of text and images for students to view and record notes. However, interactive slides are different because it allows the students to view and interact with the presentation on their own and in their own way. Interactive slides are full of hyperlinks that take the viewer to a specific resource. I will include a link to an Interactive Slide that I have created so that you can view it, but I will also try to quickly describe it. How to create an Interactive Google Slide: 1. Choose a background 2. Find resources that pertain to the unit you are covering. 3. Find images that you can add to the slide. 4. Hyperlink the images you add to the slide so that when they are clicked on, the viewer will be redirected to the resources you found.  Click here to view my Interactive Google Slide on Ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia:  Civilization Interactive Slides

 Symbaloo Webmix allows a teacher to put multiple resources together in one central location digitally. This is an important feature to have when you are running a virtual classroom or just a classroom that heavily uses technology in learning. It allows teachers to upload a wide variety of resources like images, videos, websites, readings, and much more.  My takeaways from using Symbaloo Webmix: 1. Easy to upload resources to it. 2. It makes it easy for a student who misses a day to view what they missed in the same fashion as if they were present. 3. Can be used similar to Google Classroom, etc. My suggestions for using Symbaloo Webmix: 1. Develop a webmix for each unit you teach. 2. Designate each column, starting on the left and going right, a day, starting with Monday or whatever day your unit starts with. Then, upload each resource in the column for whatever day it will be used.  View my first webmix I created on Ancient Mesopotamia:  www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAA...

 Hello everyone, my name is Hunter Rhodes and this is my blog concerning instructional technology. I am from Florence, Alabama and a graduate of the University of North Alabama where I received a degree in Secondary Education General Social Science in December 2022. I am currently working on my master's degree in Collaborative Education 6-12. I have recently been hired at Muscle Shoals Middle School where I will be teaching 8th grade Ancient World History. This past spring, I worked as a teacher aide at Central Elementary School with a second-grade student in an inclusion classroom.