Final Blog Post

This class has been an awesome experience for me. I personally have never written a blog before, so doing so in this class was a new learning experience for me that was actually very fun! I could definitely see myself continuing to write blog posts for my future classroom and their parents. Each assignment in this course was relevant and made sense with what we were learning and writing about in our blog posts! It definitely opened my mind doing online projects with my classmates. I enjoyed the instructional strategy wiki project and the lesson plan projects the most, because even though we were all assigned different things to do for the page or lesson, everything pulled in together nicely. It was also cool to see how other people handled the assignment and how they interpreted it differently than I did.

I thought the textbook was great, it was easy to read and got the point across throughout each chapter. Our assignments also connected nicely with it, and had great information to help us understand them. The only thing in the course that was not easily readable were the directions on some of the assignments, such as the discussions and the bigger projects. I feel that sometimes there was just too much information on the page and it made it feel cluttered and hard to read. That was the only issue I had with this class though! Everything else was great, especially the screen casts for larger projects.

Concerning the learning outcomes, I think that we achieved all of them. Learning how to use technology as "both a medium and a goal of K-12 instruction" definitely occurred. I like the way that outcome was phrased. Since learning about and seeing all of the different ways technology can be used in the classroom, using technology in my own classroom has definitely become a goal.

Because of this class I can see myself in the future sharing knowledge through technology more than any other generation of teachers, this is such an exciting time to be an educator!

Photo Credit to Nancy White

 

 

 

Digital Badge L

I really liked the title of Chapter 12; Integrating Technology and Creating Change as Teacher Leaders. That just shows that we as teachers are the ones who have to push the technology for change to happen, which I think is really cool. Chapter 12 made me realize that teachers have an important decision to make: to infuse of include technology in their teaching. Inclusion of technology would mean that technology is present, but not central to a students learning. An example of this would be students using the computer lab for an hour every other day. They are using it and practicing skills with technology, but it is not a main part of their day. Infusion, however, is complete use of technology for learning. Games, word processors, and research are all examples of this. When a teacher uses a computer and interactive white board to teach for most of the day, that is infusion of technology. I personally feel like more teachers are infusing technology into their teaching styles rather than including, and I would do the same. For example, in high schools teachers put up notes on the computer and interactive white board, they play videos and movies and research solutions to problems right there in front of the class. Infusion is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

Concerning digital inequalities I think I may be naive, but I believe that every child has had computer access before starting school. In this day and age, it's impossible to not have an email. Bills, receipts, Facebook, and numerous other things communicate through email. So I would think that a student would have access to a computer if their parents do, whether at home or at a public library. A lot of college libraries even have public access. So I would not let the thought that a family does not have computer access stop me from using technology in my teaching.

The book then went on to discuss one to one laptop computing. I personally have had experience with this program, as my high school took part in this. It did make learning very different and more technology oriented. Each student used their computers as textbooks, quiz and test centers, a place to turn in homework assignments, and a place to take notes during class. It was awesome, I barely picked up a pencil all year. However, I also beat the computer game Plants Vs. Zombies that first year of high school. My friends and I were also able to video chat funny faces to each other while in different classes. So really, the idea of having personal computers for each students in class is great in theory but as a student I know that I didn't always use it for the right reasons. Maybe having the computer to take home would be beneficial, but having them in class throughout the day can become a major distraction.






Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge J

With all of the technology available at our fingertips, it's a mystery to me how anything can get lost forever. The thought of a digital teacher portfolio excited me! I kept my binder from my first teaching class, however my second one was online and I don't have anything from that class. It makes me think, how can I really review what I learned if I can't go back and look at my work? This also applies for when I will start teaching. Keeping track of things I did my first year, materials I used and projects I wish we had time to do, may make the next year easier since I can just flip through all of the different things and pick out what I would like to do or maybe not do. It would also be a good thing to look back on and see how I improved as a teacher and show to future employers.

Teacher portfolios aren't the only type of portfolios that are beneficial though. Digital student portfolios excited me even more. Imagine a teacher having access to each students portfolio and adding projects and assignments to it throughout the year, and then the next year it gets passed on to the next teacher and they continue to add things to it throughout the year. Eventually in middle and high school the students themselves will have access to it and can add essays they've written, art they've created, math they've conquered, and experiments they've observed throughout their schooling. It would be so cool to look back at the end of senior year through each grade level of work and see how far they have come. High school essays and research papers may even come in handy later and would make good references if doing a similar thing in a college course. I wish I had done this, because I did a lot of cool projects in graphic design courses in high school that I don't have any more because of lost flash drives, crashed computers, and other technology failures. Having a drive of all of my work like in Google Drive would have been great at that time.

I read about the topic of democratic schools and classrooms in this chapter and was surprised by what critics said about it. I think it would be really cool for students to have a choice of what goes on with their learning. This way, they're happier about what they're doing because they chose it, and they're also learning about the democratic system daily. Critics of this say that students would choose no homework, lots of socializing, and easy problems. However, no true teacher would say "Okay so lets vote: Who wants homework tonight? Okay good who doesn't want homework tonight?" That just doesn't happen. The democratic process wouldn't happen like that, but more like "Do we want to turn in the whole chapter of homework in at once, or one assignment a night so that I can go over it and help you understand it better?" I would really like to incorporate the democratic process into my classroom, even if it is barely noticeable at first. Asking the kids if they would like to go to the bathroom before special or after special, if they want to do snack with centers or with reading. Simple things like that which allow them to feel like they are taking control of parts of their learning. It will work if the students are given two good choices to choose between rather than one good choice and one bad choice.

Digital Badge I

I really enjoy the student learning objectives that help students understand what is happening throughout the class. Knowing who is doing what when, how often and how it will be evaluated can really help calm students who get anxious about not knowing what is going to happen next. A easy way to display this would be on the white board (an older form of technology, technology nonetheless) so that it is visible throughout the entire day, which would be hard to do on the interactive board.

I can see myself using some of the lesson planning apps mentioned in chapter four, as well as some that are probably out there but not in the book. My Lesson Plan looks like one that would be really helpful, seeing as you can customize the app to fit your school districts requirements, which I thought was cool. There are a lot of times where I'll download an app for something but it's not entirely customizable so it becomes useless to me, so I'm excited to download My Lesson Plan on my iPad and start playing with it. The other apps mentioned, Today in History, Math Ref Free, and iBooks are great too because it's an easy way to just throw some math equations up for the kids to do without digging through a math textbook. One thing that apps may all have in common are their time-saving abilities, which could work wonders in the classroom. Having your lesson plan on an app or a Google drive is majorly helpful too in case you forget your lesson at home (which I can see myself doing multiple times).

Electronic grading software is something that will also help me save time in the classroom as well as at home. Between being able to take attendance and keep grades on it, it can also have the lesson plans on it as well as encourage communication between teachers. This is really cool because again, it's a time saver. If all kids got a one hundred on their assignment, you can easily enter 100 into all of the grade slots, where it would take a bit longer to enter them manually. Electronic grading software isn't a completely new technology though. My boss recently became a music teacher at an elementary school. The first week of school he showed me this paper grade book and asked "What is this and what do I do with it?" So he obviously was used to the newer way of entering grades through technology! It was definitely funny, he was quite confused when I explained it to him.

I created an online bulliten board through Padlet, and it's easily editable and you can even add pictures to each post. I used it to display objectives and the daily class schedule, as well as specific notes for each day. It is a simple thing to have up on the board when not in use, and was easy to make.

Created with Padlet

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge H

Technology is a funny word. The first thing that comes to mind when the word "technology" is said are things like iPhones and computers and tablets. But every kind of advancement is technically a piece of technology. Minimal technologies are not to be dismissed as they still have many benefits in the classroom, however multimedia technology covers a wider range of things to be done with it. Minimal technology includes things such as whiteboards, hard copies of worksheets, overhead projectors, TV's with VCRs, and handheld microphones. All useful things, but multimedia technology is more efficient. Now we have interactive whiteboards, computers with internet and software, digital projectors, digital cameras, voice recorders and surround sound. Some of these things are used daily in classrooms all around the world. Since my last attempt at embedding a Google Form into a Digital Badge assignment didn't work out so well I decided to try it again, and ask my readers what their favorite piece of technology to use in the classroom is.




I think that my favorite would be the Smart Board. Between the SmartBoard and the document camera, I believe you could change the world in a major way. Seriously! Page 222 in our textbook does an in depth description on document cameras and their benefits. One of the best things about them in my opinion is that the teacher can now write notes for the class to see without their backs being towards the class. This works really well for middle school and high school, especially math teachers. For elementary school this is a great piece of technology for multiple reasons. One would be that the teacher can work through a worksheet with the class, and another would be that the teacher can praise a student and show their good work on the board for the rest of the class to see. This could also be useful at open house and events like that.

There are countless ways that middle school students and high school students can use technology to help with their learning, but its hard to imagine elementary schoolers using the same technology. The textbook suggests using digital cameras to build up an alphabet book for kindergarten-2nd grade students. I think this could be a really cute project, maybe walking through the school with my class and a digital camera, and having them point out things that start with whatever letter of the alphabet. This could be an awesome way for them to begin to recognize the letter sounds they are learning in the real world around them.

Digital Badge G

The concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was really interesting! The three different designs of learning opened up a whole new view of teaching for me. Multiple means of representation is something that I feel like is my strength out of the three. I can easily take one objective and teach it many different ways until someone gets it and can understand it. Multiple means of expression is a cool way to think about teaching. I’m always thinking about how I can express what I know to students differently, but never really take into consideration how they can express what they know differently. The third is multiple means of engagement, is definitely something I need to work on. I feel like it would be easy to learn about each student and what they like and how to incorporate those things into their learning environment.

Other than the things they enjoy, it is important to incorporate their disabilities into consideration when incorporating technology into the classroom. There are different levels of technology to consider though, and access to them could depend on the school. Low-tech accommodations are easy and inexpensive, so they are usually the easiest option. Mid-tech accommodations include shifts in teaching and need the use of digital materials. High-tech accommodations include computer incorporation and other special technology. A few years ago my mom had a student in her class that has Downs Syndrome, and they added a touch screen computer for him to use during computer centers because he could not use the mouse.

Word clouds are an interesting concept. They are a simple way of introducing a story or piece of text to the class without just having a picture of a rabbit or a dog to introduce the story. They consist of words from the text, with the most frequently used words bigger than the rest. I think it is a good way to engage the students in a simple way. It is a good example of the UDL of multiple means of engagement.

I have made a Prezi of the things I have discussed in this blog as my digital tool. I think it is another interesting way to engage the students. When I was a student and I saw a Prezi for the first time, I was amazed! It is so much more fun than a boring powerpoint, and I would like to continue using them for my classroom.

Digital Badge F

Communicating is so important, and knowing how to do it through technology in this time period is basically mandatory. I enjoyed the topic on teachers and students communicating with technology. Towards the end of my high school career teachers started sending out reminder text messages to us about tests and projects, and it seemed weird that they were texting us but it was definitely a life saver. If I had a question about the project that I forgot all about, emailing the teacher was so easy and quick. Another way we communicated that was suggested in the book was through blogs, which was nice because my English teacher would post what we did each day on the blog so that if someone was sick they could easily catch up from home. It really made me feel like our teachers were helping us and encouraging us to succeed, which was important because I know so many people who felt like their teachers were against them and wanting them to fail their whole time in high school.

Going further into the realm of communication, I want to touch on the different types, which was cool to read about in chapter 8. Synchronous communication is immediate interaction, in real time. This includes texting, phone calls, or instant messaging. I really like this source of communication, especially for students and parents, because it is sent directly to the person, which is almost a guarantee that they saw it and received the information. This is not the case with asynchronous communication, where there is a delay in time and really no guarantee that the audience you're sending it to saw it unless they reply. This includes emailing, blogs, or discussions. I know that with blogs it's hard unless you're subscribed to it, because it's very easy to just forget to check it and then miss a homework assignment.

My third concept is about engaging students. The text book had a lot of good suggestions on how to continue to engage students outside of the classroom, after school. Some of the suggestions were; posting lesson plans, lecture notes, discussion questions, practice worksheets, ideas for further study, and student written materials. I think that the last one could be really cute with a younger classroom, like elementary school. The teacher could scan the students work as they grade it and upload it to the blog for the parent to see, and then give it all back at the end of the year to see how their child progressed throughout the school year. Another thought I had was using Google forms to ask parents questions, and I made an example one. I can't figure out how to embed the form to this blog post, so here is the link. Having all of the parent's emails in can be a good way to remind them that a new survey was posted on the blog, and to respond to it to help making their child's education more effective. I'm definitely going to be using Google forms for my class!



Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.