Learning Objective 2:
Promote
and demonstrate effective use of digital tools and resources.
Familiarize students with Web2.0 tools that may be used professionally
or within the classroom environment to establish deeper learning
experiences through proper curricular standard driven development.
I have been involved in a lot of the new technology that has come into our building and I am always looking for ways to use it. I have found that through this class I have seen many uses for the new tools that have been introduced. I have already been thinking about starting a blog for the craft ideas that I have and love to do. I know this is not tied to education but in a way I think it could be. We are starting an enrichment program at our school and I would love to be able to teach kids a craft but then also have a place where we can share our ideas. I like the idea of a blog for this because it would give kids and people who are interested in crafts a place to share ideas. I also like the idea of embeding podcasts with directions into the blog. I think if I can make this idea work then I can probably find some cool ideas to use this in the classroom.
Learning Objective 5:
Establish
a core personal learning network of technology leaders to follow.
Utilize this new network of educators as personal professional
development.
This is an idea that I feel I have only started to develop but have definetly made strides towards using a PLN to develop my professional development. I like the idea of Diigo and I was reading an article that described an easy to understand way to use Diigo or Delicious to find others who have used tags to identify sites. The other thing the article talks about is how to use Twitter to find and follow people to building your network. I have this basic understanding and I am looking forward to trying this out.
Learning Objective 6:
Use
knowledge of digital tools and technology applications to facilitate
experiences that advance learning, creativity, and innovation in both
face-to-face and virtual environments.
I had originally gotten an incomplete in this class because I had issues outside of class but also because it was very overwhelming with all the tools and how to make it work and how to follow all the parts. I feel now that I am understanding more about how all these tools are connected and the overarching idea of these tools is to help build a personal learning network to help your learning and understanding of the tools and technology. This in turn will help me to use them in my classroom. The more a person is confortable and familiar with a tool they are more likely to use it on a day to day basis. I was at a workshop about how to use the new Apple Book Air recently and when they started sharing some sites and information the first thing I did was open my Diigo account so I could save them to the site and be able to find them again later. I loved the use of the tags because I know I will be able to go looking for the sites but all I need to remember is what we were doing at the time. Then with the article I read about how to use Diigo better made me realize that I can search other peoples sites to find more that will help in my lesson planning for school.
Overall I am very excited about all the tools we have worked with so far and I am looking forward to the rest of them. I am especially looking forward to being able to use them in my school. Since we started the blog through Blogger and Google Reader to keep track of the blogs we are following, I have this idea to introduce it to my collegues as school. I would like to be able to introduce this to my collegues as a way for use to communicate about things we do in our classroom to help our students because our time to meet face to face is so very limited. I think we could accomplish a lot and have a great way to share these ideas with each other. Once this class is done and I have time to work on the presentation to my collegues I am going to bring the idea to my adminstration and see where it takes us.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Week 4 - Digital Media - New Learners of the 21st Century
The PBS video "Digital Media - New Learners of the 21st Century" was really interesting enlightening on how areas are helping students to reach their potential with the tools of the 21st century.
I particularly like the quote in the video about "If we teach today's kids the way we taught them yesterday we rob them of tomorrow". This rang true to me as we are working towards new ways to integrate technology in our school. I have found that the more I want to integrate the harder it is becoming mostly due to resources. There are tools in our school but sometimes the bureaucracy about obtaining it makes it very difficult to want to use the technology. Yet this is what we need. I feel that if the administration and the Superintendent are not feeling the same way then it makes it even harder for the teachers to get what they need. Funding is always an issue but there are so many ways around that now with grants and sales. If the whole building or district could work towards a common goal of 1 to1 technology use then it would be so much better for the students.
I feel very strongly that teachers need the resources available to them on a day to day basis. The idea of signing out and sharing netbooks, or ipods or ipads or even projectors is ridiculous. I was part of a grant that our school got to research the use of 1 to 1 technology verses technology that was shared between two teachers. The grant was the ARRA Title IID and Somersworth was awarded approximately $250,000 to conduct this research. I was part of the beginning of the research and then was moved to another grade level so I was not able to keep the technology that was part of the grant. Having gone through the year with having the technology accessible whenever we had a question or so forth was extremely useful, the students were engaged and behaviors were rarely a problem. The following year I did not have the technology readily available so I found it very difficult to integrate it more because I had to hunt down the cart and then make sure that no one else was using it and then make sure that I got it for the day that I wanted it to be with my lesson. It became very frustrating so I found that I did not use technology as much as the year before. The schools in the video that show students engaged and wanting to learn because now the learning is taking place with materials that they are much more familiar with than we can even imagine. It really gives them the support and desire to learn how to do something when they can get the information right away. I think this is what our schools need on a regular basis. We need more technology in our classrooms and we shouldn't have to worry about will the tools be available on the day or time that I might need them.
I particularly like the quote in the video about "If we teach today's kids the way we taught them yesterday we rob them of tomorrow". This rang true to me as we are working towards new ways to integrate technology in our school. I have found that the more I want to integrate the harder it is becoming mostly due to resources. There are tools in our school but sometimes the bureaucracy about obtaining it makes it very difficult to want to use the technology. Yet this is what we need. I feel that if the administration and the Superintendent are not feeling the same way then it makes it even harder for the teachers to get what they need. Funding is always an issue but there are so many ways around that now with grants and sales. If the whole building or district could work towards a common goal of 1 to1 technology use then it would be so much better for the students.
I feel very strongly that teachers need the resources available to them on a day to day basis. The idea of signing out and sharing netbooks, or ipods or ipads or even projectors is ridiculous. I was part of a grant that our school got to research the use of 1 to 1 technology verses technology that was shared between two teachers. The grant was the ARRA Title IID and Somersworth was awarded approximately $250,000 to conduct this research. I was part of the beginning of the research and then was moved to another grade level so I was not able to keep the technology that was part of the grant. Having gone through the year with having the technology accessible whenever we had a question or so forth was extremely useful, the students were engaged and behaviors were rarely a problem. The following year I did not have the technology readily available so I found it very difficult to integrate it more because I had to hunt down the cart and then make sure that no one else was using it and then make sure that I got it for the day that I wanted it to be with my lesson. It became very frustrating so I found that I did not use technology as much as the year before. The schools in the video that show students engaged and wanting to learn because now the learning is taking place with materials that they are much more familiar with than we can even imagine. It really gives them the support and desire to learn how to do something when they can get the information right away. I think this is what our schools need on a regular basis. We need more technology in our classrooms and we shouldn't have to worry about will the tools be available on the day or time that I might need them.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Week 4 - Google Reader and Social Bookmarking
Google Reader was better than I had expected. I was wondering how to keep track of all the blogs for this class and how to remember which ones I had commented on and so forth. By having Google Reader everything you need is at your finger tips. It has made it easier to keep up with all the readings and comments to people's blogs. I find myself asking now, where do I find good blogs and resources that will help me professional and personally. I want to find some sites that I can follow that will help me stay up to date with the uses of technology in the classroom as well as sites to help with the content. I am a math teacher and sometimes we forget that there are new ways to teach the same information that has been around for centuries. So to have a few sites to follow will be exciting.
This is a great lead in to how social bookmarking is going to work. I have found that as I was writing the first paragraph I was answering my own questions. Social bookmarking with diigo. With the idea of sharing resources through social bookmarking is a great concept. Students could really use this idea when working in a group on a project or even using it from grade to grade. This would give them a place to reference back when they were working on something and then a few years later they could go back and reference it again for a different class or to refresh their memory.
All of these tools are great to have and use but our job now as educators is to educate our students on the hows of each tool. We also need to educate our students on the drive to be "Do-it-yourself" learners. We need to teach them the proper uses of these tools and how to be a good digital citizen. They need to learn more about how to critic the information for validity.
This is a great lead in to how social bookmarking is going to work. I have found that as I was writing the first paragraph I was answering my own questions. Social bookmarking with diigo. With the idea of sharing resources through social bookmarking is a great concept. Students could really use this idea when working in a group on a project or even using it from grade to grade. This would give them a place to reference back when they were working on something and then a few years later they could go back and reference it again for a different class or to refresh their memory.
All of these tools are great to have and use but our job now as educators is to educate our students on the hows of each tool. We also need to educate our students on the drive to be "Do-it-yourself" learners. We need to teach them the proper uses of these tools and how to be a good digital citizen. They need to learn more about how to critic the information for validity.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)