This was by far my most exciting learning week thus far for me. Not only were the ideas technology based, but that learning at it's best is meant to be fun for all. When I decided that I wanted to be a teacher it was because I wanted to include games and having fun into learning. Somewhere along the way I lost that drive and got steered in the wrong direction. I finally feel as though I am finding my way back to my true intentions as an educator.
The article that I loved the most was Peter Barnes idea to relate (Science) Ninjas as highly trained persons that use their sharp thinking skills as in the movie Kung Fu Panda's journey to overcome challenging obstacles using Perseverance, Curiosity, Stamina and Collaboration to learn grow. The idea that they make mistakes and push through difficult tasks as a part of their journey. He gave great ideas to use scavenger hunts based on various units. He was talking about Test Prep, but I was thinking that these strategies of classroom themes to teach growth mindset, perseverance and grit throughout the year. I was so inspired that I want to get an Breakout EDU Box to do the educational material scavenger hunts based on a reward system according to the units we are working on or as an anticipatory set for the next unit. Gaming is the practice of memorization or trivia in a fun game-like setting. Gamification is the idea of building on skills to learn mastery through problem solving and possible collaboration. Games are a fun method to engage and teach skills and critical thinking. According to Jordan Shapiro who wrote Games in the Classroom: Overcoming the Obstacles", says that games are not to teach the curriculum, but to give a different perspective on the skill being addressed. She definitely gave some great ideas of sites and resources to check out:
Gabe Zichermann, in "How Games Make Kids Smarter" introduced the 'speed camera lottery' which blew my mind as a real life game-like experience that changes the negative consequence mentality of a community and culture by rewarding the law-abiding citizens. I have three boys (11, 9, and 7yo) and I am always the mom that refuses to join in their love of video game heaven. They play Mindcraft, Fortnite, Apex, Slimeracher and Idle Miner. After watching this Ted Talk by Gabe I really want them to teach me how to better connect and teach my students in their virtual worlds of learning that is fun. It was a real stop and smell the roses kind of moment, not only for time spent with my own kids, but time spent with my students. He also said that playing violent video games does not make kids violent (unless they were exposed to violence in real life, it makes it worse) according to research that has been done for years. This information actually made me feel better as a mom that I wasn't ruining my kids via Fortnite and Apex, which is apparently more violent.
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The tools that I played around with this week were EdPuzzle, an Add-On for Google Docs called Kaizena (Voice Comments) and VideoScribe. I just loved EdPuzzle because I already tend to choose a lot of videos and voice over with out recording. I usually just pause the video and ask questions which is exactly what the program does for you with perfect timing and grace. It also makes the student recall an answer that is needed to retain and be listening, which is GREAT! And it's FREE! A teacher's dream come true. I used the EdPuzzle for my Washington DC presentation for this coming Wednesday. I changed and modified what was already there, shortened it, deleted and made my own questions. It should be a fun add on to introduce the beginning of the trip in June.
Lately, in my Language Arts support group, I was asked to edit work that is being done in their core Language Arts class. The first day I started to use the suggestions editing mode, thinking that I was really looking cool and awesome and helping them a lot to learn new technology features in Google Doc. After sitting down with each student one-on-one and editing their work using suggestions and explaining why it needed work after they read it back to me, they would go back to their desktop and just click the green check marks and say, "I'm done!" They learned nothing and it wasn't their work. In comes the Add-on Kaizena (a voice comment). So I went back to the Google Doc's that were shared with me and recorded where the student could stand to use some improvement and where they were strong in conveying their points. Instead of it being a correction to change where I do all of the work, it is now a correction that they have to listen for, find and change on their own. I will be using this all of next week to get my 5th graders to look at their own work and make adjustments with my direction, but not one on one with the teacher. This will give me the freedom to facilitate and encourage peer editing and self-grading with a rubric. Again, this was a free Add-on that can change a teacher's life with direct student feedback that John Hattie so much adores in his Visual Learning book. And then there was the VideoScribe. VideoScribe was generous enough to give a 7 day trial with lots of pushes towards purchase. It is not cheap and I thought that it would be more user friendly. I am no techie, but if you are going to charge so much for something I would prefer it would be link friendly, slide friendly, insert into anything friendly; it was not, at least for me. I spent 6 hours trying to create, load, insert and then I went back and they two slides that I had created were gone. To say the least, I was frustrated and then some. I do not just pick up technology in one swoop and it did have some tutorial videos when I came across things that I repeatedly clicked on and a link to watch a video for more understanding would come up, but it wasn't enough to make me successful enough to get my creation the way I wanted it. I decided to just let it be in a simple form and put it as a link for the other part of my lesson and loaded it to YouTube and it disappeared, downloaded it to the screen on my laptop and it wouldn't upload, and then put it in a Power Point and didn't have a way to do anything with it but put it on my desktop screen. I honestly, did like the potential of what the program can do for me in my classroom when it comes to visual access, but with the high pressure sales, non-usability, I really struggled with its use. I would love to know if someone else tried it and got a better result because it would be worth it to share a membership with team teachers or grade levels at the school site for Anticipatory sets to introduce a lesson or tell a Social Studies story about something historical or even for teaching science concepts and just share the log in. I have been to one class on Forms that Napa Learns put on during a weeknight class earlier this year. I got the gist of how it works and I tried a few generic features, but never made form that I could use with my class. As a reading specialist with many different groups it takes some time to set up a test or quiz that I will only use once. It is fun for the kids and is great for a quick exit or check for understanding, but I already have so little time with my kids to get to the already prescribed and very expensive curriculum. I could see myself using it on one of my Technology Tuesday classes for end of unit work or pre-unit work on vocabulary, but I like other tools to reinforce vocabulary concepts. My job as a TOSA (Teacher on Special Assignment) Intervention was cut with the 7 million dollar budget cuts in the past few weeks and I have no idea where I will be going or what I will be teaching next year. I am going to keep these tools in my back pocket as the school year winds down and more and more of my classes are geared towards CAASSP testing prep.
I love using games and fun ways to get my students excited and motivated to learn and I could use some Google Forms to recall summative information as an accumulative reminder as to what the year of knowledge has brought to their learning. I like the idea of using these forms for conferences, quizzes, opinions and surveys or polls and quick short answers to check for writing skills, thoughts and knowledge around processing information such as writing a summary or retelling a story. It is fantastic for gathering data from parents and students to make my life easier with contact information. There are so many ways my teacher brain has changed in how I think about using these various tools. Something that I am going to use for my Touro Capstone is the Survey. Before I knew about Forms, I did a survey in the word processing and pencil format. I wish that these two classes were the first two classes of the year to gain knowledge and understanding as to how mini-cycles work and then I would have all year to play with digital tools throughout the heavy school units in the beginning of the school year and work on the Action Research plan closer to the Capstone. It seems like more of a natural progression to the program. But I digress... I am going to do the survey on Forms for my next culmination cycle to see where the students are now as the year ends. have actually found other reasons outside of the classroom in which Forms will come in very handy and I will be using them for the Washington, D.C. trip that I have been planning for June. I am having a meeting in April and this is giving me the reason to experiment and explore with some of the Add-Ons that I may not use at this grade level at this point in the year. I am excited to keep exploring and keep learning more and more when it comes to tech tools with my staff at meetings and other members of my technology learning community. 1. How can/Should social media be used to help you develop/collaborate/communicate as a professional? What are the critical issues to consider?
2. What would you do if you were to come across an inappropriate post made by one of your students outside of the school. Do you address the post and, if so, how? Whom do you involve in the conversations? What considerations must you make in determining your course of action? Social media is all the rage with 9/10 students using various forms of social media daily. 76% of students in high school have an account and are using Instagram and 45% are using Facebook already (Benmar, K 2015). Anything is possible when it come to technology and creating a culture around the use of technology, but it will take time and will need to have systems set in place with a unified goal mission statement. As a culture we have become addicted to technology that is within a foot of us at all times. The companies design it that way, so why not use it to connect with students that are always on their phones and use it for education instead of just cat memes and Hollywood? Technology has a use and a purpose to give abilities to communicate, collaborate professionally or academically and develop relationships with people that are near or far. The things to consider are that the technology has moved at such a rapid speed that the socially acceptable culture has not been properly trained or caught up to what those norms are. People have the ability to shoot off Tweets and social media messages when they are under the influence, angry or just plain uneducated statements whenever they want and is usually considered freedom of speech and does not set a great example for the youth in our country. Living in a time with such a litigious society makes many teachers fearful of introducing technology into the classroom because of parents and families that hold such tight restrictions on their families and have low incomes and do no have such money to spend on expensive devices and pay for wifi in their homes for homework or long term projects. I have been in a situation where I saw a post from my teenage god daughter where she was drinking from a keg and partying with friends, cussing, making rude comments and did not show her in her best light while she was in high school. Her mom is my best friend and as a friend knowing that the mom is not on Facebook or monitoring her in any way I felt obligated to let her know what was happening with her daughter online. I let the mom know that she should know her audience and who else might be seeing these posts that she is unaware of. She was shocked and embarrassed and said that she would talk to her. That day the daughter unfriended me and my girlfriend and I never talked about it again. Any time it came up my friend diverted the conversation to something else and would not discuss it. It did not ruin my relationship with the mom, but did clearly change the dynamics of what we could and would not discuss. I think that there needs to be more classes for parents on how to keep track of what our kids are doing on the internet and what kind of impact they are making in the world. Taking technology into the classrooms needs to be done with a systematic approach with components of digital citizenship and digital media awareness in place before it can truly be effective without major ramifications and personal liability. A new tool that I am reviewing and playing with is Socrative. I am trying to do the emoji paragraphs that we were shown how to do at he InnovatEd conference. I have been watching videos and playing around with it, but I still have some to learn. My plan was to introduce it on Tech Tuesday last week, but I had a conference and therefore got bumped until tomorrow (Feb 26). I am interviewing a colleague about how she uses it and what she finds most useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upY8uG3NFfY&feature=youtu.be There are various options for instant feedback from the class on the understanding and concepts that were taught recently. There are Quiz, Space Race, Exit Ticket questions, multiple choice options, T/F and (what I am trying to figure out) a Short Answer section that I can use with the random emoji generator. It offers a lot of great and useful tools, but my concern is that it takes time to set up each test and quiz and in my job right now, I do no have a prep for Language Arts and I have 7 classes that I teach that I need time to plan for. I think it would be much easier to use as a middle school teacher that can use it over and over again and see the benefits of making it, instead of just having it as a one time use. I never know what I am going to teach from year to year with grade or curriculum and as great as this would be to use, it takes time to set up for students. My goal this week is to use Socrative on Tuesday and practice writing with short answer and the emoji generator. Digital Literacy: How to teach and embed tech into the curriculum and teach digital literacy?2/24/2019 My favorite quote from this week's exploration of information was, "How can we leverage the opportunities to prepare young learners for globally connected learners and information saturated world?" (Teaching with Educational Technology video) As a learner myself, I am still trying to find:
After this week of exploring the apps, tools and teaching website curriculum support I realize how endless the resources are to support kids learning. I found a few that would be helpful with my own kids at home (Raz Kids, IXL, Freckle, Ed Puzzle, and Tynker) and some that I would like to experiment with at school on Tech Tuesdays (StoryBird, Matific, Canva, Tes Teach with Blendspace). It takes time to develop the tools that are most effective to me and my own personal curriculum and what I am willing to pay to use these products. I am taking it slow and starting with the free ones that I can try out with students to try out and get feedback on. Having time to coordinate with colleagues to develop an annual lesson plan coordinated with technology is next on my list for site CIP time. Working with teachers, students and staff to have a more unified goal and plan is that key to success. Common Sense Media Google's Internet Be Awesome Stanford's History Education Group What is Digital Citizenship? Why is Digital Citizenship Import? The internet is the way one is seen online. Digital Citizenship's purpose is to develop skills to keep everyone safe online. Some rules and guidelines for teaching and using might be:
On Google Internet Be Awesome, I am going to add these games to my Tech Tuesdays with my kiddos to start the process of teaching Digital Citizenship. The games are fun and challenging, fun graphics and they teach a great message. I am very excited to teach one of these games at a time in a group. In Stanford's History Educational Group, I found this to be a little higher level than what I would teach for my groups and definitely not how I can see fitting in to my curriculum currently, but could be very valuable to homeroom teachers. I loved the Reading Like a Historian and how it engages student and their inquiry to all sources and how they should be evaluating all resources they encounter. The skills in Reading Like a Historian would help students prepare them for CAASSP testing as the students are asked to do similar tasks in the terms of looking for primary and secondary sources. The other area I enjoyed learning about was Beyond the Bubble in which History Assessments of Thinking (HATS) are "sourcing the document". As we know history books are not all written with all parts of the historians in mind equally. This would be fabulous when evaluating what perspective of history bias in the information students are reading from (i. e. on topics such as: Columbus, Native Americans, Times of Slavery, etc.) February 9th's Technology Saturday!
As everyone probably already knows, technology is not my strength. Since the beginning of this program I have struggled with every step when it comes to the technology component, which is almost everything. To improve my skills I have been attending the Napa Learns Technology Thursdays to learn and sharpen my skills in Google. I have learned a lot, but I thought that this workshop "Innovate Ed." would really give me some good tools, google add-ons and resources and it did not disappoint. For those of you that were unable to attend I am going to mention some of them here for you to star for your bookmarks and check out when you get a chance. I was going to link them and I can't figure out why it won't do it. Honestly, there were so many that I'm not sure when I will be able to get to them all to use them, but I'm going to try during my Technology Tuesday with my students. Each week we try something new to expand my skills and theirs. John Corippo started off the main session with a fun way to encourage creative writing. https://socrative.com/ using http://byrdseed.com/emoji/ to generate emojis randomly to write a story about what pops up. It was very fun and creative and kids will love it because most that attended got a kick out of it. As a Reading Specialist, teaching grades 3-5, my students will love it too. I am starting with this on my very next Technology Tuesday. All that attended will eventually get a copy of his book, Teach Better, Work Less. In my first chosen workshop I chose Google Classroom and unfortunately there were so many people in the fairly small room I and many friends sat on the floor. I have dabbled with it minimally before and set up my classes, but I took nothing away that I didn't already know in the beginners course. I really wanted to take the Advanced version but didn't want to walk away with two unlearned blocks, so I chose to head to the Shortcuts to Success: Mastering Digital Resource Tools with Rafa. In the Library Digital tools there really are a lot of resources for a Reading Specialist that are not being maximized to their full potential. The cites are great academic resources to so many research projects and reading of all levels K-12. Britannica Schools, Teachingbooks.net, OverDrive, GALE, Tumblebooks, School Libraries, and Napa County Library were just some of my favorites to get kids reading. I would like to have the tech lady put some of these on the home screen as a first line of defense to the automatic Google search bar that inevitably happens. This would also be a good way to introduce good and reliable academic sources for digital citizenship awareness. After lunch was "Open the Box". This was literally an industrial tool box with many locks to engage students in hands on problem solving to engage students in learning, taught by Sarah Magallano at Phillips. The students would cooperatively problem solve multiple clues from around the room to unlock the codes to discover what is in the mysterious box with locks. It was very active and engaging and meant to insight enthusiasm around a topic that will be studied by the students. Some teachers suggested that it could be used as an award as it was very similar to the popular "break-out rooms". It will cost about $60-75 to get started or there is a marked one out there called "Breakout Edu" that costs just a little bit more and comes with lessons and the box. I would love to get the resources to do this with my kids on Benchmarks units that relate to science and history. I think the black lights were the coolest tool that we got to use beside QR Codes. In "Mass Individualization with Merge Tools" I got a couple of great Google Add-Ons to be and look more organized and ideas to work smarter, not harder. As a reading specialist learning to use Google Sheets and Form Mule (add-on) and this could change my life no matter what I do in my next job. I definitely need more practice with it, but WOW! It showed me the ability to make formed letters and send up to 1500 a day. Form Mule allows the ability to create birthday cards and send out messages timed out for whenever the timer is set. This could be very valuable for me when sending kids records for RI results and making parent contact by doing Google Forms to get the information instead of inputting it in on my own. It scares me to death, but fear is growth and I am ready to try and expand my learning. Overall, it was a very productive day full of friends and learning. There were more class sessions that I wanted to take, but that will keep me motivated to go to the next one. 702 Blog 1:
What is the role of personalized learning and competency-based learning in education today? The role of the teacher in a personalized learning environment is to be the facilitator to the student driven learning goals and support their action plans. The teacher guides the students towards their strengths and smart goals starting with their personal interests and needs for areas of growth. The teacher creates an autonomous classroom culture with a strong sense of belonging, a very positive growth mindset and a work at your level and pace experience. Students are empowered to meet the goals that they set to move ahead when they are ready and checking in with the teacher when they are ready to move forward in their learning growth goals. Teachers seem to have almost no behavior problems because the interest level is suited to their wants and needs to learn. Autonomy in a classroom has always been one of my goals. It is much easier said than done. I like to give my students as many opportunities as I can to be independent and have choice in their educational experiences. With more and more IEP's and 504's for a more Individualized Education Plan, it is the direction that education is going with the cross-balance between Problem Based Learning (PBL) and leveling curriculum to suit various levels and needs in the classroom at one time. All students have strengths and weaknesses and according to "StrengthsFinder 2.0" by Tom Rath, the business world is also looking to groom the strengths of employees instead of trying to improve the weaker areas of an employee. Individuals are naturally gifted and drawn to some areas of strength and building those strengths builds on positive growth, self-esteem and encourages leadership within and from their special talent and gifts. When students make smart goals that are specific, measurable, attainable and have an action plan this allows the teacher to check in and give feedback instead of lecture and teach whole class. Students are in charge of their learning and this style of learning creates life-long learners that aren't given fish, but are taught to fish for a lifetime to feed their hunger for knowledge. -Varatta, Katie.(2017). “Teaching in a Competency-Based Learning Environment.” KnowledgeWorks.org. 30 May 2017. -“Personalized Learning:What is it?.” (2018). Education Week. 6 November 2018. Video. A short video that attempts to define personalized learning.Herold, -Benjamin.(2018). “What Does Personalized Learning Mean? Whatever People Want it To.” Education Week. 6 November 2018. [Note: You will need to sign up for a free trial of Education Week to access]. -Personalized Learning at Ola Elementary School (video, 2016 Youtube) Given your students’ grade level and the subject matter you teach, consider how and whether you can incorporate competency-based learning and/or personalized learning into your practice. Please provide at least 3 specific examples on how you might use/are using personalized learning/competency based learning in your practice, and discuss what role educational technology might play in these two areas. I am a 3rd-5th grade Reading Specialist. I have many roles, but supporting the Benchmarks curriculum for 4th and 5th grade is one of them. The Benchmark curriculum lends itself well to doing some sort of PBL learning projects where students can work at their own pace and develop projects that correlate to the unit topics. I have developed a Technology Tuesday for my students and have given them projects to work on and experiment at their own pace teaching peers or working by themselves to accomplish their technology skill set and improve by learning from others and asking for help as they need it. I also have two phonics based classes that have set goals and some choice currently and could use more. I would love to set up a reading charts goal sheet to have students set goals around reading books from now until the end of the year. Students read now each night for homework, but having a book goal with many options for styles of reading may encourage students to push their limits and read beyond what they think they are capable of. |
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