Blog Journal #4

 One of the standards for ELA technology for 8th grade is being able to evaluate what mediums are appropriate for presenting a certain idea. This could be having students pick between a video, printed media, or multimedia format and having them decide which would be the most effective to get a certain point across. While this is a subject I feel somewhat comfortable teaching due to my English major, I'm not really familiar with a lot of the technology listed to go along with it. I think in order to teach about different methods of conveying information, I should be really familiar with all the technology i would be asking students to use.

I think the CPALMS lesson plans could definitely be beneficial for teaching. Even if they aren't just taken from the website and used, it's a lot easier to build off of a template like what they provide then worry about creating something entirely new. Some of the student tutorials for ELA seem genuinely interesting and relevant, and I could use those if I feel like they articulate what I want to teach particularly well. The tutorials also offer a variety of texts to be used for teaching each standard, so even if I didn't follow the lesson plan exactly, I could still use those suggestions. 

Teachers really need to be proficient internet searchers because that is where a lot of education materials and conversations about teaching seem to be found. The twitter conversations we looked at in class today seem like a great resource, especially if you have the skills needed to search back through them for specific key words. I didn't know I could search for specific file types only, and I think that will be super helpful in the future if I just need a pdf of something. I also just learned how to exclude phrases, which currently might help a lot with completing research projects as a student.