Snowball Effect

I would like to credit this class with my current addiction to blogging. I have recently started a food blog and I am so motivated and inspired to keep up with it and make it engaging and interesting for others. While I do not share this enthusiasm with my grad school blog, probably because I do not yet have a classroom, I can see how I could become very engaged in it should a classroom find me next year. I also love that I could have students contributing to the blog. Now that I am balancing two blogs at once, new questions have arisen... I have to have the same "About me" info on both blogs because they are linked through the same email address..does anyone know if this can be changed? I have also spent more time looking for different layouts and gadgets, a task that, for my first blog consisted of " well that will do" for my background and picking assigned gadgets. Having the freedom to run my own blog about my passion has been the best way for me to use what I have learned in this class and expand my knowledge and experience base.

Interesting Thoughts

I was reading a blog by a peer who was discussing the use of cell phone text messages to students... The program Remind101 lets teachers remind students of assignments etc via cell phones.This issue caught my attention... Rubi's Blog made good points when questioning this program that I agree with. She questions whether parents would be on board, I'm sure some would be fine with this, but I don't think 100% of parents would be on board. I also don't think that ALL students have cell phones, and it is hard to implement a new program without a technology being fully accessible. Of course this is hard to believe since my k-5 students have better phones that I do.. My main concern is if we as teachers are giving our phone numbers to students. We can have seperate social networking sites for work and friends but we don't usually have seperate phone numbers. Since this technology, at least in my mind is more geared for middle to high school students, my concern is about protecting the teacher. If students have a phone number, who is to say they won't begin texting to ask what you are doing over the summer, what movie you are seeing...why you are out sick and they have a sub (I have seen this text sent in the middle of a school day to a teacher...why they are on the phone I do not know). With so many teacher-student stories in the news, I don't think this move would be appropriate UNLESS the program hid your number. Even though, I don't particularly care for this idea, I am sure teachers are doing this and it is working, and that this is the direction education and technology are going.

Diigo

With all of the new technologies we have been exploring, I must admit that Diigo is the one that I use the least. While I appreciate the usefulness of this online tool, I have to remind myself to go on and find websites to add. I can fully understand how I might use this when I am looking for teaching tools when I have a classroom, but as of now, the other technologies are more interesting and useful at the present time. What I do like about  Diigo is the ability to share Diigo libraries with peers. I could see this being useful for grade level teams who are collaborating on units of study. I do not think I am using this tool to it's potential...I know that we can highlight and use post its...This is what interests me and I intend to play around with this to see other ways to use this online tool in ways other than a list of resources. There are several introductory videos on Diigo... I liked this one that is directed at teachers and explains ways to use Diigo as a teacher...

 

Using this tool when researching with students is another way to use Diigo. A group can be created where a classroom of students can share their research sites and ideas and can also be monitored by the teacher. Another way to assess student research projects! I have been slow to start My Diigo, but I am starting to play around with it and am starting to come around to its handiness!

Engaging Learning through Technology

I was thinking back to technologies I have used in past classrooms that I would like to bring into my future classroom. The one that really stuck out to me was a clicker based response program. The Turning Point program was obtained through a grant and was shared by the three grade two classrooms. I used this program as a pre assessment and post assessment of my unit of study. The assessment took on a Jeopardy like feeling, with each student having a hand held clicker. When I went to the next slide (like a powerpoint presentation) Students were presented with a question and multiple choice answers. They hit the corresponding button on their clicker. The program shows which clickers have not responded yet, letting you give sufficient wait time. After all answers are locked in, the correct answer is shown and the number of students who clicked in each answer. The results during the test did not point out specific student answers, which I liked. This takes away anxiety of students who may be sensitive if they do not have the correct answer. Of course when I review the scores after the fact, I see each student's answer. Like Survey Monkey, I like this program due to the fact that it takes the grading aspect off of my list of things to do. It is certainly a program I would be willing to write a grant for..

Survey Discovery

I just discovered Survey Monkey and I am so excited to have a tool that is easier to send out and compile data than the old paper survey that you send home in Friday Folders and cross your fingers that it makes its way back to you.  I am taking Action Research, a course that requires data collection. Now mind you, I am NOT a "data person". I don't like coding or numbers or really trying to find the time to squeeze in another project for grad school. I hit a snag in my project, and not just a little one...my project site backed out at the last minute. I had all of the surveys printed and ready to go for a district that did not have all students online at home. As I scrambled to find a new location, I reached out to my mentor...the teacher who taught me everything I know when I was her student teacher. She suggested (since all of her students have internet at home) that I try survey monkey, as I would have a better response. I pasted all of my questions onto this survey site, which took some doing since you can only have 10 questions on the free version and I had to get creative.

I am so excited that this tool will take so much work off my plate for this project! Not only will it be sent out as a link and posted on the classroom blog...parents will respond and I will get immediate feedback, no students losing the paper in the black hole that is their backpack... AND, the best part is the site will analyze and compile your data for you. Can they please invent something like this for grading papers and scoring writing prompts??

Skype Session 2

I must admit that I am getting hooked on the ideas of skyping both for myself in terms of connecting with far flung family members and a brother in the Service, but also as a teacher. While I still don't have my own classroom after 2 years searching...I have gained so many ideas of how this classroom technology can be used! Lisa posted a video from the classroom of Ms. Dunsinger which I was blown away by. Lisa's Blog  With students going back to their neighborhood schools, teachers are incorporating a multitude of learners, with and without disabilities into their classrooms. Having worked with children and teens with Autism, making a video to introduce them to the space they will be coming to seems like such a no brainer, yet I have never seen it done, nor thought to do it myself!  This use of technology is even easier with small devices such as flip cams, with these, we can record the daily happenings in our classrooms, even students can be incorporated in this recording process.
Ms Dunsinger's blog is motivating for beginning teachers, like myself. I especially like the story telling aspect that was recently posted. This can give students the chance to post their stories online, collaborate and expand stories and allow parents to view what their student is working on in school. I always thought that creating a blog, wiki space etc would be one more thing I would have to keep up after school hours.
Our skype session with Ms Dunsinger and her students opened my eyes to the fact that we can allow students to take the lead on this classroom technology. This session also let me see how useful Skype can be when teaching classrooms to be "global learners". We can easily collaborate with students in different countries ( as we just did), different states or towns. We can compete, collaborate and learn from one another in a way that was not an option when I was a student.