Blog 10

Some of the new skills that I have acquired from assignment 5 is disabling linear numbers and including action buttons. This is not necessarily a new skill, but I have learned more efficient ways to lay out several little boxes on a slide (I did a jeopardy type of game and putting all the boxes evenly was difficult until I added gridlines). Overall, this assignment was very fun, especially with the amount of customization I could add (technically the difficulty would not be that hard for an actual class as the book is typically taught in sixth grade- however my goal for the assignment was to also create it to make it difficult for my sister in high school). The only thing I didn’t like about this assignment, although it was self-inflicted for the reasons before, was that I had to reread the book to source some of the questions because there was not an online database for questions that were at the difficulty that I was striving for.

I think I will use data collection tools to survey how much students may know before I start teaching a unit. If I teach 6th grade world history, then the surveys would more informal and asking very vague questions. In comparison, if I teach high school world history, students are more likely to have a background, and so I can ask more specific questions in the survey before I teach a unit. Besides those uses, I might use it as a mid-way through the unit check-in to see how comfortable with the information the students are so I could circle back if needed.

A technology-related skill that I am interested in learning at some point is Excel (like understanding the functions and what they do more).  So, in terms of SMART goals, I want to be able to know 5-10 new Excel functions that work within the next 2 semesters so I can analyze data easier. I especially want to be able to do this because sometimes teachers get a huge portion of student data, and if I can efficiently analyze it, I can better serve my students in what areas they need support in. Some of these functions I will learn to analyze my Qualtrics data, but some I will need to do individual research to see what may be beneficial for me to learn as well as learning it.