Professional Development in Technology Integration

I chose to follow Kelly Tenkely, who, I learned, has started her own school and also created the Learning Genome Project. After watching some videos about her school and about her project it is clear that she is an educator that is all about the students. The Learning Genome Project is actually a “hub” that will allow teachers to personalize for each and everyone of their students. I watched her entire video about this project and it sounds incredibly interesting, but it sounds like the actual program is still in the works. I am definitely interested to see how it turns out for teachers and students. I think it could be a very powerful tool, but like many things I think I might sound good in theory, but very hard to actually initiate. On top of everything she has going on it surprises me that she even has time to post on her blog, but I’m glad she does. Although some of the apps and websites that she posts are gear more toward younger students, I still found them interesting and helpful in many ways. It was helpful because she still chose apps that focused on different learning styles and multiple intelligences, and just by demonstrating that she gave me ideas of how I can integrate apps and websites into the classroom. What I like most about her blog entries is that she not only gives you a description of the app or website, but also how you can integrate it into your classroom. I also really enjoyed how she took current movies, and social media and related it back to education, or to her students’ lives. For example, she took some of her students to Big Hero 6 and then was able to write about what the movie taught her about education. The best part was that one of her students actually recognized it, too. However, not all of her posts were about app or websites she also talks a lot about what she is doing in her school. In one post she discusses how every year they sit down and create learning profiles for each student. After following Kelly for a little while now I am truly inspired by what she is doing, and she is somebody that I definitely plan to keep following.

Fires Final Reflection

I really enjoyed Fire in the Bathroom as a text for this class. In many ways it was helpful and even provided me with insight into some of my former classmates’ lives in high school. I gained a lot of ideas and tips that I plan on holding onto for when I become a teacher. Probably one of my favorite ideas that I gained from this book was the journals. This seems like something very small, but ever since I read that idea in this book I have wanted to incorporate it into every lesson. The thing I enjoyed most about this text is that it involved real stories and quotes from real students. Hearing some of the things they had to say about what they want from teachers and what they’ve actually experienced shocked me. I think the biggest thing that I’ve gained from this text that I could see myself growing with in my field experience was not assuming what abilities my students did and didn’t have. I knew that all of my students were capable of doing what I was asking, but I also knew that they were going to have questions. It took patience sometimes, but I took the time to answer every single one of their questions. The only thing that I would’ve changed about using this text was how we reflected on it. I commented on this in my Digital Text post, but I would have benefitted more from more class discussions or activities based on our readings. Other than that, I had a very positive experience reading this text for class.

Show and Tell

One of the running themes throughout this book has been using technology to allow parents and the community to see what students are doing in schools as well. What I learned from this chapter is that students are never too old to do “show and tell,” and it’s not only important for students to show off their work and success to their classmates, but also their parents and community. I also learned that the best way to do this is to have websites and blogs that parents can access, and there are many resources that you can use to do this. This chapter mentioned Wikispaces, Googlesites, Facebook, or “digital open houses.” I personally found Googlesites difficult to use when I used it, so I would most likely use Wikispaces in my classroom. I feel that Wikispaces is great because of the way that you can create different templates for different assignments and artifacts, and I think that it will be easier for my students to use. This chapter talked about using Facebook, and although Fryer discussed how you could control the restrictions on Facebook, I just think that it could all be avoided by using another website that will work just as well. I also liked the idea of having a digital open house. My school did a similar thing with art every winter at our middle school. I think those kinds of open houses are great, because not only do students get a chance to show off what they’re doing, but it gives the parents and community members a chance to see what’s going on. Not that parents and community members wouldn’t have access to the sites that my students create, but I will be there to facilitate any questions and concerns, and it’ll be a more sociable way of getting to show off what my students have been doing.

Digital Text

I enjoyed the blogging process during practicum, I had never used Wikispaces or Blogger before so it gave me a whole new experience. However, there are a few things that I would change about it. I felt as though we did the blogging only as a way of submitting it. I wish we had more discussions in class about our posts on our blogs and about what we read or did for the blog. I also wish we had the chance to look at our classmates’ blogs. One thing that another professor of mine did was have us comment on at least one other person’s post. That way we got the chance to look at how our classmates analyzed the same text that we read, or what they found when they did the same activity as we did. I checked out three different links from this chapter, two were blog websites, Wordpress and Kidblog and the other was a Wikispace that a kindergarten teacher created. I tried to look at Posterous, but it was shut down, which I was really sad about since Wes Fryer spoke so highly about it. Instead, I looked at Wordpress, and Kidblog and I read a little bit about them on their websites. I definitely see myself having a class website in my classroom because I think it’s important for students to have connect with myself and each other inside and outside of school. I would use Wordpress or Kidblog, however I am leaning more toward Kidblogs only because it allows the teacher to be the Admin and delete any inappropriate posts made by their students. The Wikispaces link I looked at was such a great website for students. It was easy to use, and it had so many resources on it. I liked how she had the Glogster poster on the front page. It makes her page very visually appealing and very simple to navigate right off the bat.

Audio

For my three links I took a look at StoryCorps, Rock Your World, and audioBoom. Both StoryCorps and audioBoom were very similar. They were sites that had many audio recordings available from real people, which I really enjoyed. I even found a BBC recording on Black History, which is essentially want my unit for Dr. Grace is on. So, if I were to actually teach this unit I could potentially use these two websites as resources for my students. The only thing that was a little bit different about audioBoom was that you are able to record your own audio recording through their website. Not only is it an online resource for information, but also an online resource for creating your own audio recordings. The last link I explored was Rock Your World, which is a website run by an elementary school teacher. What her class does is send video chats all around the world of different musical recordings and voice records to students in the other countries to respond to. By the time that the recordings come back there are all kinds of instruments involved, and they essentially have a song. Part of this project is also having the students do live video chats with those students from the other countries, where they discuss various topics that are related to their curriculum. I think that this project sounds super interesting, and like it’s a great hands on learning experience for students. I wouldn’t exactly do this project the same way this teacher did because I will be working with older students, but I think it would be a great experience for my students to learn about other cultures through a project like this.

Images

I felt that I already knew a lot of the things that Fryer went over in this chapter, and I realize that could be because it was written a few years ago and a lot has changed since then. However, I still feel like I gained a few things from this chapter. Although I already use apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on a daily basis, I never really thought about using it in my classroom. I liked Fryer’s idea about the 365 or 180 projects. I learned that social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or forms of them, could be useful and educational in situations like this. I also had never heard of VoiceThread and I definitely think that will be a great tool for me and my students. A product like this would be very visually appealing for visual learners, but also appealing to auditory learners as well. The last thing that I gained from this chapter was more information and more resources for finding and citing photos that are under creative commons. I found myself struggling to find pictures for my student sample, classroom management textbook, and mini student sample that were under creative commons. So, I definitely gained a lot from going, using, and looking through those different image resources that were given. Specifically, I looked at the Behold website and I liked that, however it isn’t really cut out for my content area. I tried to look up “civil rights”, which is what my unit is on, but nothing came up. I feel like that would be my only hesitation about using sources like these. I also looked up the Skitch program and downloaded it to my computer so that I could play around with it. I also think that this would definitely be a program that I use with my students. They would be able to upload a reading I gave them, highlight it and annotate it on their computer using this program. I think it is another great opportunity for students to do something hands on and interact with technology.

Diversity Conference

Before this conference I was actually already thinking about becoming an ELL teacher. For me, this conference only made me want to do it more. I really enjoyed how the panel answered questions, and how they would bounce ideas and answers off of one another. However, I wish we had gotten to ask our own questions instead of them answering questions that were already prepared. Nonetheless, I did learn a lot from this conference that will be useful even in a general education classroom.

For the most part a lot of what they had to say seemed the common sense. For example, they said you should understand where your kids came from, you should use a lot of visuals, they’re going to meet standards in different ways, etc. What I really found interesting was when they mentioned that if those students don’t know how to act socially they’re probably not going to thrive academically. If you think about this it makes complete sense because if they’re cut off socially they’re going to have a hard time even asking the teacher a question in class. A couple of things that I enjoyed most about the conversation was when they talked about parent meetings and resources for the classroom. The conversation about parents was interesting because, even more so than other students, you need to have good communication with ELL students’ parents. It was great to hear about how some of those parent meeting go, and it was really interesting to even hear the administration side of things. Lastly, I enjoyed hearing about the different resources for the classroom because they can be used in both an ELL classroom and a general education classroom. I made sure to make note of all of them because I’m always looking for new ideas now.