Chapter 7: When using the Internet with children, there are privacy and acceptable use issues. Describe the issues you are most concerned with and how you plan to address them when you become a teacher. It is interesting that I am answering this question this week because there was actually an incident in my school this past school year. Our district uses Google Suites and all students have access to all of the Google Applications that come along with it. This of course includes Google Hangout, which is a chat room type function of Gmail. Students are able to chat with each other, their teachers, or anyone else that Gmail gives them access to chat with. During the regular school year, there was a problem with students cheating on assignments or chatting during lessons through Google Hangout. They also were sending inappropriate links and messages. Unfortunately, when the technology department tried to disable it, it causes a lot of other vital applications to malfunction, so it had to be re-enabled. The issues that I am most concerned with other than cheating or disruption of class time have to do with student safety. I do my best to monitor student internet activity in my classroom and make sure that they are not navigating to dangerous or inappropriate sites. It is not always easy, but I learned quickly that if I set a tone and procedure for the class, students will follow it 90% of the time. With that being said, however, students test the boundaries all the time. In my classroom and at the school I teach at, using technology is a privilege. When students compromise that privilege with inappropriate behavior, they lose their privilege to use the technology. If I feel as of a student is misusing their privilege, I have no problem immediately referring them to the school administrator and calling their parent. My students know that I have no problem calling home, and they rarely allow that to happen by misbehaving or misusing their privileges. My Learning Experiences This week our group worked together to create 3 group projects. We also all individually completed a podcast project that related back to the group projects. On Monday, we had another group Zoom meeting to devise our strategy for the week. We decided to use a divide and conquer approach, and split the 3 projects amongst ourselves. Eli worked on Project 2 and created the lesson plan that will serve as our base line for all of the remaining projects this semester. The lesson that we chose is a 6th grade English lesson on MLA Format. Kimberly and Carletta worked together to create a survey to assess students' technology use for Project 3. Michaelah and I split the work on Project 4. On project 4, Michaelah and I created instructional materials to go along with Eli's lesson plan from Project 2. I created a Google Doc that is meant to serve as a reference guide on MLA format for students as they complete their own essays. Michaelah created a Google Slides presentation that demonstrates how to set up MLA format in Google Docs, complete with both text and images. As a group we decided to have our drafts completed by Wednesday evening so that we could spend Thursday and Friday providing comments and suggestions to each other and making edits. By Friday evening we had everything completed and ready to submit. Overall, our group once again worked very well together. There were a few moments of confusion, but we all asked questions and clarified when it was needed. Project 5 was an individual assignment that each of us had to complete on our own. For my podcast, I chose to create an instructional material meant for students to listen to prior to coming to the lesson. In this podcast, I go over the instructional Google Slides presentation from project 4. At the end of the podcast, I asked students to come to class prepared to ask questions and complete practice assignments. I created the podcast using Vocaroo.com. I found this website very easy to use! ![]()
Project 3: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hI2zYT2ILu-SLsKLT581nqwozxglj9hyD964BmsEbPE/viewform?edit_requested=true Project 4- Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzYPdjlXgkaMifITnjqi8z6mEh2ife2pFYVuBTjggTI/edit?usp=sharing Project 4- Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vYTmoKl-bLohpmveRHwJ0F-UoeBQUKuecAihEFBC8bU/edit?usp=sharing ![]()
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This week's objective was to collaborate with our group to create an ideal classroom. The goal was to produce a grant proposal justifying the use of $20,000 for technology integration in the classroom. On Monday, Elijah set up a group meeting on Zoom and we narrowed down who would focus on each part of the project and what subject we would like to use for the lesson plan. During our group discussion, we talked a lot about how we could utilize virtual reality technology to produce a lesson. A science course seemed to be provide the most to offer for the use of virtual reality technology. Throughout the week, we set goals for our group to complete the project efficiently and in a timely manner. We set up a group Google Doc for everyone to see the entire project at all times. We also set up a group Google Sheet to add technology that we felt would be beneficial in our ideal classroom. By Wednesday we all knew our roles and had a mostly final list of technology to ask for in the grant. My role on the grant proposal was to create the lesson plan. Our group chose to create an ideal science classroom, and I already teach three science courses. After doing a little research, I found a virtual reality frog dissection software for the Oculus VR headsets, which was perfect for our goals! I already teach Zoology and have a frog dissection lesson. However, my frog dissection lesson is performed on actual frogs, so I had to adapt the lesson plan to utilize technology. Utilizing technology in my classroom is difficult for me because my students only have student issued laptops. So I found my self relying on my group members to help me decide on what would be the best ways to incorporate more technology in the learning process. Carletta helped me a lot to add more to the DPA model section of the lesson plan. By putting our thoughts together, we actually were able to create a two day lesson plan that utilized quite a bit of technology! The first day students are learning everything they need to know about a frog and how to dissect it. The second day, students actually complete the dissection. During this project, I learned a lot about all of the different types of technology that can be used in the classroom. I also learned how to effectively complete a group project with people I am not actually working with in person! I can honestly say that our group really did a great job dividing and conquering in such a way that we were finished with our project by Friday night. ![]()
![]() Chapter 4: You will no doubt have a variety of technologies to use in your school and in your classroom. Do you feel you are ready to make the most of these technologies to help you teach and help your students learn? What can you do to further prepare yourself? After completing my first year in the classroom, I think I came to the same conclusion that every first year teacher comes to at the end: I could have done more. In particular, one thing I could have done more of was utilizing technology for instruction. At the beginning of the year, everything was new. I, along with all of the other teachers, was faced with the new challenge of teaching virtually. The technology that I chose to utilize at the very beginning of the year was Google Classroom and Loom. Loom is a screen recording extension available for recording lectures. I found it extremely useful for recording lectures in my classes for me to post for my asynchronous learners at home. The main challenge I faced with virtual learning was having virtual ways for students to do laboratory experiments. Many of the available softwares are expensive or require additional resources that were unavailable to my students, which presented a real challenge. I was completely unprepared for this type of technology in my classroom. Throughout the year, I found a few free websites that were available to use in some of my classes. The best of these was the PhET simulations produced by The University of Colorado Boulder. Using this website, I was able to provide simulations for Chemistry that students could learn from at home! Going forward into the next school year, I am planning to better prepare myself by doing better at paying attention and participating in the professional development opportunities for technology at work. I also intend on talking with veteran teachers to get ideas for more technology to incorporate. I want to find a workshop that will teach me more ways to utilize my Newline Interactive Board with my students as well. Chapter 5: Recall a class where presentation software, such as PowerPoint, was used. Did you enjoy the experience? Was it easy to take notes? Did you stay focused on the presentation, or did your attention drift into other thoughts? Could the presentation have been modified to make it more interactive, more interesting? How? Select a grade level and subject matter that you would most want to teach. How you would use three different types of academic software to teach a specific topic. Explain why you selected these three academic software packages. I can remember many different teachers using presentation softwares throughout my academic career. Whether or not I felt like I was learning from the presentation largely depended on the presenter or teacher. The teachers who created presentations that were interactive were always more beneficial. For example, when they had built in elements for students to participate, such as drag and drops, I was much for engaged. However, when the presentation was just being read to me by a monotone presenter, I found myself losing focus and not gaining anything from the lesson. In my classroom, I create a powerpoint presentation for every unit. Because I teach different classes, these presentations are highly varied from class to class. For example, my chemistry presentations have built in practice problems that I require students to come to the interactive board and solve for the class. In contrast, my Human Anatomy and Physiology and Zoology presentations have built in lesson checkpoints that ask students to recall what they have just been taught. This keeps students engaged because they must pay attention to pass the checkpoint. Since I am already teaching, the subject I will discuss right now is chemistry. My chemistry class contains grade levels 10 through 12. A "dreaming big" technology that I would love to utilize in this class (and all of my classes for that matter) is a large paper printer to print student posters on. I have inserted a picture of an Epson SureColor P8000 to make it clear what I am talking about. Having this technology would allow me to have students develop large scale projects to present in a formal manner. Being about to do this would allow students to become very familiar with the instructional material and prepare them for college level presentations. Another technology I would like to use is Science2Go by Flinn Scientific. This digital media provides over 20 national standards based chemistry labs that students can complete virtually. It would make teaching virtually so much easier because students at home would still be able to have some hands on learning with the units. Chapter 6: Consider how technology has helped you to be productive and complete tasks. Examine the physical requirements for using your favorite technologies. How might physical disabilities hamper your use of those preferred technologies and impact your personal productivity. As a teacher, what can you do to mitigate these challenges for students with special needs? My favorite technologies that I use are my laptop, my iPad, and my Newline Interactive board in my classroom. However, all three of these technologies require certain abilities, such as sight, hearing, and touch. Someone who is deaf and/or blind would be unable to hear and/or see a video that I have assigned for a lesson. Someone which a physical disability that limits their range of motion or use of their hands and/or arms would be unable to navigate a computer or other technology on their own. Mitigating these challenges for a student in the classroom can be accomplished as long as the effort is put forth to do so. For example, a deaf students can use subtitles to still be able to know what is occurring in a video. A blind students can be provided additional resources or alternative resources to ensure they are still receiving the same educational opportunities. Physical disabilities can be accommodated by providing the students with a guide or mentor to help them accomplish tasks of movement. Accommodating students with disabilities is a vital part of education, in my opinion. We cannot be effective educators if we do not try to serve every single student in our classroom! Chapter 1: What standards do you feel are most relevant to your teaching and to your content area and that will challenge you the most? What strategies will you employ to become familiar with these standards so that you can more easily address them in your classroom?
Prior to reading this week, I had no idea there were so many standards available to helping teachers implement technology into instruction. After reading and doing my own research, I realize that the most relevant standards to my teaching and content area are the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Standards. P21 standards rely heavily on preparing students for the real world, which is something that I work very hard to teach my students in tandem with the subject area curriculum. This set of standards finds its basis in teaching students critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, otherwise known as the 4 Cs. It also promotes learning life and career skills and technology skills. As a science teacher in a rural community, I find this set of standards so relevant because many of my students will be going into trade work rather than going to college. I believe that for them to be successful, it is my job to show them what science knowledge they will need in their trade. For instance, students that go to the pipeline or oil field industry need to understand the chemistry of oil and what a combustion reaction is. The P21 standards can help me teach this to students because it applies to life and career skills. The AECT standards can be beneficially to my science classroom because of its reliance on inquiry. Science has its foundation in inquiry, and students are taught how to inquire using the scientific method. The AECT standards not only require the teacher to have content knowledge and pedagogy, but require the teacher to provide a safe and productive learning environment conduct research to further improve instruction. This final standards is precisely what I will do to address these standards in my own classroom. I will conduct research and apply inquiry based knowledge to better instruct my students. Chapter 2: Using Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, describe three intelligences in which you excel and give an example of each. How could these intelligences be useful when you become a teacher? While reading this section of the chapter, I decided in my mind that my three intelligences are logical-mathematical, musical, and interpersonal. However, I found a quiz on literacynet.org, and it states that my 3 highest intelligences are musical, interpersonal, and naturalistic, in that order. I find this very interesting because although I do feel as if I identify with these three, I did not think they would be that significant. Of course, this was just an online quiz, and I find my personal view point and understanding more reliable than a fun online quiz! The reason I have chosen logical-mathematical is because I can see the logical reason behind most situations and I address problems with critical thinking. I can remember being a young child in elementary school and adding numbers on mailboxes and finding numerical patterns between street addresses. I have had the pleasure of already teaching this past school year, and say with confidence that I use my logical-mathematical intelligence in my teaching style. For example, when teaching chemistry, I always tell students the simplest and most logical explanation for why something is the way it is. The best example I have for this is when we learn stoichiometry. The logical way to tackle the problem is to start with what we are given in order to get to what we want when using mathematical conversions to solve a stoichiometry problem. I push my students to not just memorize steps, but to use logic to guide them from one step to the next. The second intelligence that I find I have is certainly musical intelligence. I have always loved music. I listen to all genres, from the old school country of Patsy Cline to the modern music we listen to today. The way that I use my musical intelligence in my classroom is by relating it to the content. This may be through changing the words of a catchy song to fit the curriculum, or having students complete a project where they do this themselves! I also sing to my students regularly to get their attention and keep them engaged. At times I also play music during independent work time. I find music to be very beneficial in education. It allows me as the teacher to connect to my students, which leads me to my third intelligence. My third Intelligence is interpersonal, or responsiveness to others. I like to consider myself to be a very empathetic person. I can tell when someone is upset or struggling. As a teacher I find this intelligence to be extremely useful when gauging student understanding. I can see in a student's face when they are struggling or do not understand, but are afraid to speak up. It is at that point that I make a note in my mind, and make sure I approach that student privately to give them independent help. Chapter 3: Think back on a classroom environment in which you were not as successful as you might have wanted to be. What were the factors that you encountered from the teacher and/or other students that may have hindered your learning? How will you mitigate such factors in your own classroom? When I think back on my own education, I can recall one specific classroom where I was not as successful as I wanted to be, which was my 10th grade history class. In this class, the teacher took on an authoritative role. She allowed her favorite students to rule the room, and she often took on a bullying mentality to students. She did not put much focus on differentiation, and expected all students to perform tasks with the same ability. In my classroom, I make it a point to treat all students with the same manner. They are all there for the same reason, and it is important that I give them all the same respect and attention to teach them. However, I do not tolerate disrespect or bullying of any kind in my classroom. I require all students to participate, and if they fail to do so, I conference with them individually to figure out what problem they are facing in regards to their learning. It Is my belief that all students can learn. They just need to be given the guidance and support to do so. Not all students learn the same and respond to the same form of instruction, so differentiation is something I strive to improve on and encourage in my classroom. |
Sarah HolderA quirky science teacher with English teacher handwriting. ArchivesBlog Reels
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