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Introducing touch-based technologies to low-income early childhood students

This article was about introducing touch-based instructional technologies in an early childhood education classroom.  It brings up the point about using technology as part of the educational experience for low-income preschool children who are at risk for failure due to poverty (McManis & McManis, 2016).  By using instructional technology at such a young age, teachers are finding that it can bridge the gap between where the children are when they start school in relation to where they should be academically when starting school.   Touch-based technologies are more easily operated by younger children as opposed to the older desktops and laptops previously used.  There are decades of researching showing the positive outcomes in literacy and math using desktops that had a mouse connected to it, but limited knowledge of how touch-screen based devices such as an iPad can reflect a positive outcome on math and literacy skills.  Some studies have found that low-income students did im
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Twitter and Wiki Pages

For EDU651 I had to create a new Twitter account.  That can be found  Twitter The wikipage I created is at  Wiki
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Blog Creation Process

I have been a Blogger for a very long time.  I think I joined Blogger back in 2006 and have continued to grow my blog over the years.  This particular blog I created for the MATLT program at Ashford and have used it for subsequent classes. Creating a blog isn't tough at all, and I think just figuring out a name for it was the hardest part!  Blogger is good about walking you through creating an account (I used my gmail account to make it easier) and then it's pretty self-explanatory on how to post and edit.  It was a little tricky linking my Twitter account to it, but once I figured out the Twitter button was already there it was fine.  It took me longer to link my Blog to my Twitter account because of how Twitter has updated their settings. I had a harder time creating my wikipage than anything else.  I'm not familiar with wiki and really don't use them for sources ever, so I don't tend to visit wiki pages.  I've never tried to edit a wiki either, so I found
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Instructional Technology - Augmented Reality

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Augmented reality is still virtually a new idea in classrooms.  Most of it is limited to apps by using a smartphone which makes it hard to integrate into a classroom.  Google Glass is a new technology that allows users to see additional information layered over what they see through the lens of the device (Poh, 2017).  Augmented reality is really interesting to me and I'm curious to see how it continues to evolve for classroom use. This video shows an advertisement that works with a smartphone application to demonstrate AR. Source: Poh, M., (2017).  8 Technologies That Will Shape Future Classrooms.  Retrieved from: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/future-classroom-technologies/
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The Importance of Iteration

Iterative design is a continuous cycle of creating, testing and making refinements and adjustments.  It's an ongoing, incremental process (Enginess, 2018). Iterative design is a way to start a project when the outcome isn't clear and helps move the project towards being seen and tested so that reviewers can offer feedback.  Iterative design offers a starting point that can then be refined as the designer continues to improve the product. When using iterative design with regards to course design it's useful for the designer because he or she might have several ideas and is unsure of which one to start with.  A prototype of a course is a relatively inexpensive way to gather rapid feedback to make sure that the best ideas are taken forward and those which do not provide as much benefit are abandoned with no investment in their development (IDF, 2018).  Once the designer has identified the user needs he or she can revise the course accordingly and then have it tested and rece
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Communities of Practice

Leslie Bowman (2013) created a Comunity of Practice for her online students and writes that students fulfill a role as coaches, mentors, and reviewers.  Through peer mentoring students are able to share existing knowledge and instruct other students while developing new knowledge of the subject through the analysis of the content.  Bowman (2013) writes, "...the COP provides a more balanced perspective of the learning process for students by addressing strengths and weaknesses simultaneously and with equal emphasis."  Self-directed learning continues throughout the whole course. Another CoP that is useful to the online learning environment is the cohort model.  The cohort model shows that each group of learners are expected and encouraged o to stay together as a group (Conrad, 2005).  The cohort model is supposed to strengthen the online community between classmates and increases the bond.  It builds the relationship that enables students to learn from each other. Developi
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Motivation and Support for Online Learners and Instructors

In order for students to be successful in the online courses, a variety of tools must be used.  I believe online learning must be mostly student-led, with the instructor taking more of a guidance role than the active educator like classroom-led learning tends to be.  In order for the online learning environment to be student-led, the instructor should integrate technological tools to facilitate student engagement. Pelz (2004) wrote a report on his Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy.  His first principle was to "let the students do most of the work."  (Pelz, 2004)  For example, students would lead discussions while the educator would support and contribute to the discussion with questions to help draw students into deeper discussions while deepening critical thinking.  This would help with social presence in the classroom because students would interact with one another and the instructor, while also strengthening cognitive presence because they would be required to res
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