A Semester Filled With Learning

By Allison Johnson

This semester has been full of learning. I have learned about a lot of different technology tools to potentially use in my future classroom. I have learned about a lot of different iPad apps to use. I have decided that I like having an iPad and being able to take notes on it so much that I am highly considering getting one. I also learned how to do things on a SMARTboard and Promethean board, which I was very excited about. Elementary-aged Allison would be so happy, I remember always wondering about how you work a smart board and I loved playing on it when I could.

This week we had a Desmos art project due. Desmos is an online graphing calculator. We had to create an image of some sort in Desmos. This activity was challenging, you had to graph a line and then just keep changing the numbers in the equation until it looked right. I was able to find some resources online to help, which was very nice. After I finished my activity, I sent a video of it to my parents. My mom said something along the lines of “that looks great, I would have no idea how to do that.” My dad is an engineer, so I often tell him about stuff we are doing in the classroom. I explained to him what Desmos was and what the assignment was, and he said, “wow calculators have come a long way.” I never even realized that neither of my parents have ever used anything like Desmos because I am so used to it, and I have been using it in a classroom since high school. 

Last week we got a TI-Nspire calculator. Our assignment with this is to learn more about how the calculator works and then teach our classmates how to do some math activities on it. For those of you who do not know about this calculator, it is a very advanced calculator. You can create shapes, make word documents, calculate, do derivatives, and much more that I have not figured out. I had no idea this calculator even existed and honestly, I do not know when I would ever use it. I do not foresee myself using this calculator daily because of how complex it is and how hard it is to figure out how to work it. This was another instance where my parents were flabbergasted by how far technology has come. They had no idea they made calculators this advanced and neither did I. 

Right now, in Math 371 we are working on a group teaching project. Each group got assigned a different learning management system. My group was assigned to Canvas. As of right now, I am not a big fan of Canvas. It took me almost an hour to figure out the settings and figure out what settings I needed to change for people to get into the class without the school having a license with Canvas. My classmates are also having issues logging into their accounts after they make one. I am having trouble getting things to show up where I want them. The feature to make quizzes was nice though. They have a lot of options for the types of questions you can ask and the types of answers such as true/false, multiple-choice, fill in the blank, essay, etc.