Google forms is one of the most
facilitative programs that is very useful for teachers. For me, I am the leader
for the annual science fair in my school this year, I was so happy to learn
about this program. I divided the jobs in this science fair for all teacher in
the school, so at the end of this science fair, I'm going to use the google
forms to analyze some data. I'm going to make a questionnaire and send it via
the mail to all the teachers. The questionnaire is going to include some
questions about the science fair after it finishes, first to get the answers
for my questions fast and in a very organized excel worksheet, I'm going to
obtain the data in a very well organized graphs. Also, I can receive any
comment about the science fair, so for the next year, the process will be
easier. Google forms is so helpful for teachers, we can use it with the
students to, for example, we can make an exam for them and ask them to fill
this exam on the google forms, and we can also automatically correct the exam
(by putting the answers in google form), and it is going to put the mark
directly for students. Really, it is so nice to use it.
Online webinars are online seminar courses given by
professional doctors all over the world. You can should any webinar that you
want, you can find a seminar topic that you are interested in, register it for
free at any time you want, any attend it online on your laptop wearing your
pajama. Wow, that's really great. This is so beneficial for us as teacher,
despite the pressure that is exerted on us, and the less time that we have, or
we can't drive very far to attend a seminar that we want, we can attend it now
at home. However, while we are attending it, we can communicate with the
presenter, we can ask questions, and receive answers directly, we can chat with
other audiences too from different countries in the world. Thanks to this
technological century that makes everything easier for us, but just we need to
know how to use it in the correct and beneficial way. 
Microsoft publisher is another easy program for
everyone, especially to business, accounting and management majors. You
can easily create a business card, and make hundreds of copies very rapidly. Or
if you want to send a formal letter, you can use publisher. For us in the education
domain, I can benefit from this program so much, it helps me in organizing some
stuff, like a calendar, a greeting card, a weekly plan, certificates,
graduation announcement, graduation party invitations, posters... and so many
readily forms that you can use and just fill the information you want.
Referencing is a way to write the source of your
information, from where you get it, who wrote it, which year it is published,
is it a book, article, or a journal, in which year it is published. Everything
you want to write, can be summarized in few lines, in referencing, because the
work that is done by others, it is not our right to publish it our use it as if
we are the ones who did that work. The writer/s deserves to be mentioned. You
need to have a reference whenever you draw someone's else's words, ideas,
opinions, quotes, or researches. Microsoft world had make this process of
referencing much more easier than before, just with few clicks, and after
choosing the referencing style that you want, just enter the information about
the taken information, and Microsoft world is going to organize it with the
professional form. 
Blog can be used by all people, its somehow
like facebook and instagram, but its a website that you create, where you can
share your thoughts, pictures, videos, events... You can follow in a blog, you
can follow your friends, another bloggers, writers, so you can enter their
profiles and see their posts. Blogs can be used in education too, you can make
online portfolios, you can share knowledge, that's what I did in my blog, i
created a page for biological facts, and I'm going to post latest and
interesting facts related to biology, so my students can take a look of them. A
blog is your professional network that you can create.
A
poster is one of the most attractive form that can attract a reader or an
audience to a topic that is interesting and knowledgeable. Its commonly used
for university students, or students at schools, where they have been working
on a certain topic, and they need to present it in an organized way to a judge,
doctor, or classmates. A poster should be neat, very well organized, and
contain only main points and not paragraphs. The size must be suitable for a
reader to be able to read without moving closer to the poster. Any poster
should include a title, introduction, objectives, methods, results, discussion,
conclusion, references and contact information. A scientific poster should have
a scientific design, and power point program provides many of these scientific
designs, that are comfortable to readers eyes. Mainly, these posters are used
by senior students to present their senior presentations. In this course (Media
and technology), we learned how to make a very well organized poster, from the
spaces between lines and ideas and that no empty white space should be found,
to the size and font that must be followed while making the poster, to the
color of the poster and its size in order to have a successful poster Its very
helpful and nice to make a poster for a topic that you worked very hard on, and
have all audiences able to summarize everything that you did in a simple and
clear poster.
tools, that make the
lesson more attractive to students. It enhances the presentation, it allows
students to perform different activities in front of their classmates.
This program contains
many tools that are restricted to this program, and that give the lesson a
tasteful touch. This program can be used and presented in Promethean
ActivBoard, using a digital pen. Students can come to the board and perform
several interesting activities.
Some of the tools that
I liked the most was the magic tool, shapes, revealer, spotlight, and sound
recorder... The most interesting part was the resource browser, where you can
find a very wide region for activities, backgrounds, grids, lesson building
tools and sounds which you can add to your lesson explanation to prevent boring
stops or pauses in the class, they will make the class more interactive and all
of the students will have the opportunity to try one of these program
activities.
You can check flowers
reproduction lesson that I prepared using Activinspire in this link
Padlets are online walls that we
can use to express our thoughts and opinions and share them with other members.
To create a padlet you just have to enter the website (padlet.com) and create a
padlet by choosing a wall background then pose a question, later send the URL
to the members or students (if you are a teacher), they will open it, and they
can just press on the wall to leave their comments. These comments will be
visible to all members that received the URL. All of their comments will be
shared together, they can see it and discuss it. This is an easy online way to
share comments and opinions with others and discuss them, it is very useful,
very easy and interesting. 
Pollev is another online program used by
group members that also can include the teacher and students to collect answers
for given questions from the students and analyze them in graphs and show the
results directly. This is very effective program and a facilitator for the
teacher. All of the students can answer questions online in an easy way, and
after they all finish giving the answers, the answers will be viewed with the
average answers of the class. There is not only one poll activity, there are
many, like: multiple choices, open response, live word clouds, clickable
images, up and down voting for questions and answers and rank order. it is a
live interaction with any audience, it can be done through phones or through
laptops. These interactive activities if used in classes, they will grab
students attention and they will enjoy it.
Bitly is an online URL shortening website. What you have to do is just enter
the website (bitly.com) then copy paste a long URL address that you just want
to make shorter, and its is going to be shortened automatically. This can be
useful for example in doing posters, when you have a 3-4 lines reference, you
can just use bitly to shorten it, and make it one line only, this is going to
affect the general look of the poster, and you can add more references more
comfortably without caring about the number of lines that each reference have.
A web Quest is an online web that can be shared
between students and their teachers. It provides students with an endless
information that the teacher give to them in the WebQuest concerning a given
topic. It can be given as an online assignments for students. Where the teacher
is going to provide them with a general introduction first about the topic and
to have a general look about the topic they are going to work on. Then, the
tasks (objectives) will be given, later the process. The process include all the
websites and references that the students are going to refer to in order to
collect information, this is very helpful for students to conserve time. The
process provided and specified by the teacher will be used by the students to
collect the information related to the tasks that are required from them. These
processes can be a padlet, blog, pollev, powerpoint, book or a video… After
that, the evaluation rubric will be added to the students too, with a final
conclusion. The aim of the WebQuest is to increase the cooperative work between
students, and to stimulate the students to use technology in an effective way. 
Pechakucha is one of the presentation that can be done according to certain conditions: 20 slide, each slide with 20 seconds (6 minutes and 40 seconds in total). To me, this presentation style have some advantages and disadvantages. We tried Pecha kucha presentation in our media course at LIU for the first time this semester. I found that its very nice because it controls the time, its strict about the time, and in the slide you don't have to fill it with information, you can just put main points and talk about them just for 20 minutes, so here you can select the main points or important information and present them. But oppositely, I've found it a little bit annoying concerning the time, because some topics need more time, if I want to use it in my major for example (Biology), any topic related to my major needs more time than 20 seconds, and since there is a lot of information, I don't think it is useful for me as a teacher, but however, I think that this presentation style can be very useful for my students, how?. Next time, when I'm going to ask them to make presentations, i'm going to use Pecha kucha, so first they can manage their time for 6 minutes and 40 seconds, and they are going to choose the main points only that I'm going to ask them to bring, and their presentation will be more controlled and beneficial this way.
Zoom is one of the online video communications that can be done. Its just a link that is send to you, then you will join a group meeting. When we used it in media course, I felt its something like Skype program but more professional. You can chat while you are talking with the group. Although it is more organized, and a group of people can talk at the same time. My media members and I discussed with the doctor some topics related to our course comfortably, with the ability to see each other. However; I like when the doctor is able to mute others, and when we are able to mute ourselves, that's a new feature. But I wish the internet in Lebanon is a little bit faster so no problems will face us while we are in the online meeting. For teaching, I think that zoom is very cooperative with us, how? Since I'am teaching high school level students, and most of them are able to have success to internet, we can for example in snowy days we can talk, or I can talk to them all about a specific topic, I can for example if I have a group work given for them, we can make a short discuss using zoom. 
Kahoot is one of the very funniest but knowledgeable games that can be done in a classroom. Kahoot is an online website where you can create a small quiz as a game for the students. Once you open kahoot.com and create a quiz, you can perform it for the students after giving them specific pins to start the game. While playing this game, on the teacher's main screen, will be the question, under it the answers which are 4 choices in different colors or shapes, what students have to do is to choose the answer they want from the screen of the teacher and on their computers or phones they press the shape of that answer, after a certain time (chosen by the teacher and shown on the screen), the results will be represented directly after each answer, and the winner will be the fastest and the one with more correct answers. Kahoot might be used to introduce a topic, to discover what students have about a certain topic before explaining it, or to assess students understanding after the explanation finishes at the end of the period. This brings a lot of interaction and excitement to the classroom. All of them will be participating, and this will enhance the competition between them and they will benefit from the information. 
Quizlet! From its name its a small online quiz that teachers can make for students. Teachers can provide them in this online quiz with flashcards containing the information that she wants students to study and have a quiz in them. Students open these flashcards and study them, they must be small and not big as I think so they can understand and memorize them. They can read them as much as they can. Then they can quiz themselves, through a written quiz for example, and what's nice is that directly they will be evaluated if there answer is correct, and if not, automatically the correct answer will appear to them. In addition, they can spell any word, they can just type it and hear how to spell it, they can also perform the quiz as matching activity. Also they can play a gravity game about the information they have studied, which is very fun, and so many activities by which students study by themselves then quiz themselves and receive automatically the correct answers if they get a mistake. So in this online quiz, the teacher can allow students to read and understand certain ideas by themselves and the assess themselves alone. It allow the students to become more interactive and more dependent on themselves.
MindMeister is an online application that teacher and anyone can use to share some thoughts with others, from its name its a mind mapping application. By entering the website mindmeister.com, and signing in in any of you accounts, you can follow the easy and ordered steps that this website provides for you, can can write your thought or your question and share it with others. Then the audience that you are sharing with from a laptop or phone, they can add by pressing the + bottom what they want to add from thoughts or phrases or statements, what is added will be directly shown on the screen of the mindmeister maker. You can also change the font, the color, you can add shapes, interestingly, the emoji's that you find on watsapp application, are also found here and you can add them. As teachers, this is a very funny and effective and cooperative way that might be used as a warm up activity before starting the explanation, maybe to brainstorm what students have information about a certain topic, this stimulates team collaboration
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