7430 ITEC: Tools in the Classroom Blog PostingsITEC 7430: Lesson Plan on Pablo Picasso

11/17/2017

Screencast of ISTE Lesson Plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVJDvtJAm4c  

In the gifted program, we are provided with a curriculum, and we are encouraged to enhance the student's learning by extending the lessons to reach the student's multiple intelligence. By doing this my goal is to use technology to help make the learning experience authentic and engaging. My  ISTE lesson plan on Pablo Picasso captivated my students interest and encouraged them to further explore their interest with modern artists and their contributions to our history. 

ITEC 7430: Internet Safety

11/10/2017

Part 1: It Can Take a Village to Keep a Child Safe on the InternetI use to think it’s the parents’ job to educate their child with the appropriate and not appropriate online behavior, until a negative situation occurred in my very own classroom. Many years ago, I opened an Edmodo account with my fourth graders and had the parents and students sign a contract outlining all the guidelines for positive online behavior. My goal was once all the contracts came back we will jump right into this communication and collaboration platform. I didn’t feel a need to develop lesson plans to further discuss appropriate online behavior after I received everyone’s contract. As we were exploring the collaborating resources through Edmodo, I had the students reply to one of their peer’s online assignment. By the next day, all it took was one negative posting before I was called into the principal’s office. I learned quickly the importance of taking the time to properly teach digital citizenship.I have learned teachers play a crucial role in setting high expectations for online behavior, and I KNOW it is our responsibility to teach these high expectations, not just the parents. As an advanced learning specialist with four different grade level classes, I am always looking for a way to integrate technology into my lessons, so I make lesson plans for teaching digital citizenship a priority.  One great resource I like to use as a hook into digital citizenship is the video for Digital Footprint.  The video is visually appealing to elementary school aged students, and it clearly explains how the trail of information you put on the internet never goes away.  Your digital footprint is simply a collection of everything, good and bad, you have done online, so choices made now may affect you in the future.  The Cobb County technology webpage provides a plethora of resources for parents and teachers to education their children/students about internet safety. I have spent a good amount of time researching this webpage and discovered numerous interactive videos, through Common Sense Education, to help my students better understand digital citizenship. One of the links Common Sense provides is Digital Passport which has videos that teach the basic skills for making healthy choices on the internet. The interactive videos consist of teaching students about cyberbullying, research with keywords, providing personal information online, and proper netiquette. As a formative assessment on digital citizenship, I had my students post a “Learned Wow” from one of the videos on our Edmodo account, and their replies were great reflections of safe internet usage.Students are exposed to so much on the internet and unfortunately, some of the sites students visit is not age appropriate. A great resource for parents and teachers is the Teacher’s Guide to Keeping Students Safe Online. This guide provides excellent tips for promoting the communication gap between students and adults.  It also addresses a variety of negative situations students can get themselves in while being active on the internet. This

article breaks down each negative situation and provides several strategies teachers or adults can do to support their child or student.

Part 2: Is your class “Flipped”? I discovered a new Web 2.0 tool called Flipgrid. It’s a great educational video tool for active and social learning. I found it gives student a voice to be heard, even your shy students who are hesitant to share their knowledge. It is a great tool for my students with diverse learning needs. Often my ELL students will not participate willingly to classroom discussion, but when I take out the iPads and use Flipgrid, they are excited to go out in the hall and demonstrate their knowledge. I have used Recap before which is another communication tool to simple show and tell the understanding of knowledge. Flipgrid allows a teacher to differentiate her lessons. You have students respond to different topics according to their level. I have three reading groups and different inferencing and drawing conclusion questions posted on my Flipgrid. Students receive the code to the grid they will respond to, and video themselves explaining their responses. The video option also allows students to show the tools they used to present their answers. It’s like a Social Media tool, because students can respond to each other’s responses. Simply said, it’s a communication device that has the potential to turn your classroom into a “Flip” model.

Part 3: What’s the future of Web 2.0 technology in our educational world? Melissa Delaney, a journalist for EdTech Focus on K-12, interviewed three very successful IT professionals on their viewpoints of the ever changing Web 2.0 tools. First, they all agree Web 3.0 is evolving from Web 2.0, and this change will make a profound impact on education and student learning. The educational world may change from teachers lecturing in the classrooms, to students watching the lectures at the convenience of their own home and completing the work in class. This flipped classroom model may become more prevalent. Because of this digital growth, teachers will definitely need to be more knowledgeable with innovative technology.With the aggressive changes in technology, the school district may have some challenges to face. First, professional development of digital resources will need to be a priority for teachers, the foot soldiers for education. Currently, many teachers avoid using Web 2.O tools in fear of the unknown. They are hesitant to try new methodology for teaching while they are comfortable with their traditional strategies. Often they lack the knowledge for digital troubleshooting and look at technical problems as a waste of their time.  Also, the internet at school is not very dependable, especially for the BYOD devices. We will often lose internet access while actively using our devices. With more technology being pushed into the educational world, the county will need to address this connectivity problem.  Lastly, students may begin taking more online classes in high school instead of attending their designated school. With Online classes, students can go at their own pace as opposed to a teacher’s calendar for the curriculum.  Because of this, students’ attendance will be low and can cause schools to redistrict and possibly close.An advantage for adding more technology in the classroom is it will promote a more authentic learning experience for students. Students will be more engaged and more excited to learn the content. Also, and they can make their learning experience more personalized. With the use of digital communication tools, students can have the opportunity collaborate with peers beyond the four walls of the classroom and go nationwide. As we all know, the internet provides students with instant access to answers beyond their textbooks, so I say… “Bring on the technology!”

ITEC 7430: Tools that Make a Difference and Assessing Student Learning

10/22/2017  

Walking down the halls in my school, you will see teacher’s names nestled in a cutesy frame surrounded by a variety of descriptive adjectives. I thought of this as a unique art tool using different size fonts and colors to describe the teacher in the classroom. A decorator’s creative art is how I initially perceived these name plates, not as an educational resource. After playing with this Wordle software, I realized this can be a valuable resource in my instructional toolbox. It is much more than a pretty way to display a teacher’s name in the hallway. It's a visually appealing word cloud displaying a valuable source of information. The important words are immediately noticeable because they are displayed in a larger font than the less important words (Solomon & Schrum, 2014). It lends a hand to the development of a simple paragraph. The main idea states the foundation for the message and the supporting details enhance the knowledge of the main idea.  With Wordle, the supporting details are the smaller words surrounding the main idea (larger words). This tool can be very useful with my lessons on famous historical people. As we are studying Pablo Picasso and Amelia Earhart, my students can create a Wordle using the character traits and accomplishments for each historian. This website is very easy to use. I feel confident, I can post the website to my Edmodo account and students can create a Wordle for homework or during their “Lunch & Learn.” My ELL (English Language Learners) can use this tool to express their understanding of a specific topic they studied and help expand their vocabulary.  On the other hand, a Wordle displayed in the “Any which way” format may be confusing for some beginning level readers/writers. With this format, it would be advantageous for the main idea to be in one color font and the smaller words in a different color font. This would help apply the information into a paragraph. I’m glad I experimented with this tool, because this tool will end up in my plan book.

Let’s go pin some lessons! Pinterest is a wonderful tool providing teachers with a variety of detailed lesson plans, engaging activities, and authentic learning experiences for their students. It reminds me of a search engine because it identifies specific search topics not just on the Pinterest website but hyperlinks to other places on the World Wide Web. It is very user friendly. I just type the topic, in the search box, I am interested in teaching and more than a handful of lessons will appear on the screen for me to start pinning. Here is a great example of a chemical change lesson I can teach my students. I started my search on the Pinterest website, but when I clicked on the picture/lesson for chemical change lesson and it lead me to the National Agricultural Literacy Curriculum site where it provided me with this hands-on experiment shown below.  Pinterest also provides differentiated lessons for my diverse learners by presenting lessons reaching many different learning styles.

This tool is a great resource for teachers as well as substitutes to provide them with quick, free, and standards based lessons. Some of the challenges presented through Pinterest is working through the many hyperlinks to get to one specific lesson.  Unfortunately, the pins on Pinterest does not advertise if the website is free or opening an account is necessary before they are opened. These are immediate road blocks for teachers because it can be very time consuming and frustrating having to create an account, developing another username and password, and in the long run end up forgetting the account information. To overcome these challenges, be sure to have plenty of time set aside to peruse through the numerous pins on Pinterest and its’ hyperlinks.Lights, camera, action…record! With the help of iMovie, teachers can turn a simple lesson into an engaging and authentic lessons for students to video themselves and playback to their peers.  This tool gives students the opportunity to organize their learning experiences into a movie or Hollywood trailer. When students are using iMovie in the classroom, they can reach all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. They can construct video reports, evaluate and defend a position on an historical figure such as Martin Luther King Jr., and even analyze their own experiences in early adulthood with the experiences of Anne Frank. Diverse learning needs can be addressed through flexible grouping of students with the project the movie will be developed from. I have used iMovie with my students during our study of Rube Goldberg. They had a project to construct a machine of complicated gadgets to perform a simple task, such as turning off the lights. The project took many days to build their concoction, several hours to write the script, and numerous rehearsals before they were ready to record. A challenge my students encountered is we didn’t have enough iPads for each group to create their own iMove. Digital equity has been an existing problem at my school. I share four iPads with six other support staff teachers, and having all four on one day is very rare. To work through this challenge, we have the BYOD. I have taught digital citizenship with my students through Common Sense Media’s Digital Passport, so I was comfortable with them using their devices. In the outcome, the iMovies were shared in the gymnasium with all their grade level peers, and it was a celebration Hollywood style!

My initial experience with screencasting was a bit overwhelming. I must have re-recorded over my work at least four times, before I realized there are pauses I can go back to instead of starting completely over. The more I practice with Screencast-o-matic, the more confident I will become.  The ideas for using screencasts in the classroom are endless. It’s not just beneficial for the students but for the teacher as well.  Students can use screencasting for digital storytelling. They can share their novels and book reports to other students in the school. It can be a great way to promote a specific author, especially when an author is making a visit to your school. The digital storytelling can also be a collaborative effort with literature groups or completed individually. This is a great tool to promote literacy beyond the four walls of a classroom!  This tool could also be a great addition to a blended classroom. Teachers can post screencasts on their blog for future math lessons, and students who are progressing quickly will be able to engage in the next skill. Another suggestion for screencasting is for the benefit of absent students.  When a student misses important instruction or multiple-step processes, such as Hands-On-Equations, a screencast can clearly explain the vital components to solve for “X”. This tool is also great for addressing diverse learning needs. Some students may need a visual explanation of the content presented to develop a better understanding of the skill. Below is an example of my personal screencast tutorial for Recap.My Screencast for Recap

Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education. 

7430 ITECH: Podcasts/Vodcasts, Visual Tools, & Diverse Learners

Part 1: Podcasts CAN help students & teachers work SMARTER not HARDER!

10/9/2017

According to Solomon and Schrum (2014), the use of podcasts in the classroom is not limited to entertainment but supports many standards and lessons being taught in the classroom. NPR podcast and TED Talks are popular podcasts we use in the gifted program. Many of the videos become hooks to activate our student’s thinking about the lesson’s topic. One of the most powerful TED Talks videos I have shown my fifth grade students was about Diana Nyad’s extreme swimming with the world’s most dangerous jellyfish. Her ocean adventures spoke directly to my students and addressed our gifted affective standards. My students were communicating about her personal experiences many weeks afterward they watched the video. It was a great tie into our Dream Big lesson.  I have used NPR podcasts of Wow in the World in my own vehicle as I drive to school with my kids. My kids enjoyed the episodes so much, there was no arguing and they didn’t pay attention to the invisible line between them.  Silence was golden! Guy and Mindy were the host and they talked about the curious wonders in the world around them. I remember the one podcast Mindy and Guy were discussing the value of recess on the brain and both my children had to write a persuasive paper in their literature class. They both chose the topic of recess being beneficial for the brain and did very well quoting the research Mindy and Guy presented on the podcast. Wow in the World has great podcasts for science, language arts, and social studies standards across all the elementary grades.

I presented a technology workshop in April at my school and shared the iPad app of Recap. After exploring the various kinds of podcasts, this tool reminds me of a podcast. It can be used in a variety of ways. I demonstrated to my teachers how it can be used to record a student’s understanding of a specific skill thorough the audio and video features.  The recorded videos may be used as a formative or summative assessment of the student’s knowledge. Teachers can create teaching videos through Recap and provide supporting online resources for the students to assist with their learning. This is definitely a tool that would be beneficial for all teachers to help implement new teaching strategies and differentiation in their classroom.

Podcastomatic can also be very beneficial for teachers by helping them work smarter not harder. The videos are great lesson activators and can captivate their student’s interests. Also, students can create their own podcast to demonstrate their understanding of a skill or concept (Solomon & Schrum, 2014). I have discovered a way to I use a podcast to provide detailed instruction with the day’s assignments my absent students have missed. I can type each assignment out, which will take a very long time and then email it to my absent student’s parent.

Instead, I can provide an in-depth explanation for each lesson through a podcast and email it to the parent. My podcast below is an excellent example of this.

D.J.

D.J.

by sherreen bahr's Podcast

3:27|3:36

Part 2: Visual Learning Tools are great resources for Diversity and Cultural UnderstandingThe internet and Web 2.0 tools provide students the understanding of cultural differences much better than our classroom textbooks. I am a semester late learning about the value of Flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing tool allowing people to use their photos freely. To give an example of the abundant number of photos available on FLICKR, there are over a million pictures geotagged through World Map. Copying and sharing the images from Google is not legal without the permission of the actual producer.  My mind was racing with a variety of way to incorporate this tool into my lessons. The diversity shown in the photos provides an authentic visual for students to process and compare the differences amongst different cultures. This visual tool is much more effective with students than reading about different cultures it in a book. My second-graders would have loved to include these photos to their studies of Cinderella around the World. The photos displaying the wide range of cultures are clearly emphasis the quote “a picture speaks a thousand words”.

A great learning tool I used in my classroom to help students gain an understanding and respect for diversity is Storybird. Storybird is a writing platform that motivates students to write stories to an authentic audience. Students become published authors for readers outside the four walls of your classroom. The vast amount of creative and whimsical illustrations inspires and motivates the writers to produce longer stories.  A bonus about this tool it has a safe way to teach students how to be digital citizens because they can comment online and send emoticons to their classmates' stories.  This was a great way to lead into the mini lessons on digital citizenship. We used Storybird last school year with my second graders and they could not wait to work on their digital masterpieces. I had a very diverse classroom and the students were always anxious to talk about their cultural differences and Storybird was a great gateway into this sharing experience. They created a story

about Cinderella in their country and the traditions experienced were demonstrated throughout their story. The top two Cinderella stories, per the students’ online comments, were purchased by our librarian and placed in the media center for all the students in the school to enjoy.

Skype and Mystery Skype, Google Hangout, and Mystery Location Calls brings collaboration and conversation to life. I have used Skype in my classroom to meet and greet another class who was joining us on a school field trip. We began this process by having the students develop a written autobiography of themselves sharing their interests and hobbies. Then, we partnered the students together according to their similarities. After a couple weeks of mailing letters back and forth, the students could converse and interact with their new field trip buddy through Skype. They were so excited!  We realized the gap we have in diversity amongst the two classes and my students were anxious to share their uniqueness. So, my students brought their new friend a snack from their culture to share on the field trip. It was a special occasion my students will not forget. This is a great example of how the internet can flatten the walls in your classroom and collaborate with different cultures around the world.

According to Hopgood & Ormsby, technology can be the key to overcoming the obstacles to differentiation instruction.  With technology, teachers can cover more standards in a short amount of time by weaving the standards and skills together. Nowadays, Teachers are well prepared with a variety of available technology to address students’ individual needs through learning activities, content input, and a variety of ways to demonstrate comprehension. Also, technology may benefit students with special needs allowing them to keep

pace with their friends in the classroom.We are in the 21st century and our classrooms are populated with students with a variety of learning needs, such as challenging the gifted and advanced learners, accommodations for special education, and technology assistance for our ELL students (English Language Learners).  As teachers we know, differentiating our lessons and personalizing the student’s learning experience is expected. Technology enables this to happen. The internet offers tools and supports of teachers to customize the content we are teaching and tailor our instruction to ensure our students a successful future. It provides repetition for mastery of concepts, allows students to work at their own pace, and has tutorials to assist students with their concerns. In a nutshell, technology provides support for student’s diversity in learning (Smith & Throne, 2009).  Smith, G.E., & Throne, S. (2009). Differentiating Instruction with Technology in Middle School Classrooms, 29-39. ISTE, Retrieved from www.iste.org/docs/excerpts/DIFF68-excerpt.pdf

Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To For Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education. 

7430: Collaboration Tools that Decrease a Teacher’s Workload

9/16/2017

 Wiki can be an educator's friend for keeping her students engaged in the learning process. It allows users to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others. Wiki pages can be viewed publicly but only the members of the website can edit the pages. It is a great classroom tool incorporating cooperative learning. Through a case study performed on the effective usage of Wikis, it discovered there is a richer collaboration amongst students when wiki is implemented into the teacher’s lessons (Reich Et Al (2012). When demonstrating to students the usage of Wiki, I have learned through my personal teaching experience, it would be beneficial to address three specific criteria for student’s posting of discussions. Here are few of my guidelines to successful student postings:

1. Be sure to make your posting meaningful and relevant.

2. It’s acceptable to post findings from other websites, just be sure to give the website credit.

3. Avoid deleting information of another user unless it is redundant or edited to improve.

I have learned in the past not expect students to be knowledge of these guidelines, so I include them in my lesson plans before I share our web tool of “Bahrville Wiki”. The "Bahrville Wiki" will be used for my fifth-grade students to assist with our In-Venture Curriculum. We have been learning about the emotional intelligence of empathy and how it is applied to the discoveries of new inventions that have made changes to our everyday living. Later this semester, my students will be learning the elements of the design process and the sequential thinking steps involved for a successful outcome. I will be using the example of Mrs. Casey and her prosthetic arm as an application lesson for the empathy and design process.Our school’s computer lab is open to students with diverse learning needs in the morning.  The ESOL teacher and a paraprofessional is there to help the students achieve success with their assignments.

As I continued to explore several wikis, I realized wikis can serve as interactive lessons for specific standards and grades and a professional develop web tool. The wiki Lets go West provides engaging lessons on the Westward Expansion for the third-grade curriculum. The pages are well developed by a variety of students, showcasing the standards of the westward expansion through their research. Students attached additional learning tools as personal drawings, online images depicting their explanation of the content, and even a power point of photos demonstrating their understanding of the actual size of the wagons used back in the day. The teacher did very well engaging her students with the development of this wiki. I would use this wiki as a hook to introduce my students to the Westward Expansion and challenge them to extend their learning by sharing how this historical experience has contributed to our way of living in the 21st century.  With my extension lesson and this wiki, my students would be working at the create level, the highest level of thinking, on the Bloom’s Taxonomy wheel.

 

Grazing for Digital Natives is an excellent resource to use as a professional development. As a teacher, I would use this wiki to teach myself about the educational applications of a wiki and how to turn it into a learning tool for my students. The directions and explanations are very easy to follow. With further exploration, I discovered instructional strategies for a variety of Google tools and navigational steps for the helpful usage of Google Docs. It occurred to me, this is a great resource to share with my co-teachers to

provide them answers to their Google tools questions. It’s a one-stop shop for technical educational resources.

Navigating through Digital Research Tools (DIRT) brought me to a fun interactive online tool known as a Glogster. In the past, I have seen a variety of educator’s Glogsters and have always been intrigued in the creativity and flexible uses of web tools. Glogster is a digital storytelling tool that combines text, videos, images and audio with the drag-and-drop Glogster tool, then instantly shares the output with others online. With the endless creativity this tool has, I can easily see how it would be a divergent thinking teacher’s paradise. I am very interested to include a Bahrville Glogster in my professional blog, but I am actively researching a free Glogster account. With teachers trying to reach the highest level of thinking from their students, they can use this tool for their students to create their own personal life story into a digital format.

Google DriveI have discovered technology has a positive way of helping to decrease the number of daily tasks teachers must complete.  Between updating lesson plans, replying to parent emails, teaching all the standards within a short amount of time, and correcting the endless numbers of papers, teacher can easily work 12 hour days. Finding just the right technical tool to help decrease the workload is a gold mine.In the past, I would send home student directory forms for the parents to complete requesting parent contact information, student’s allergies, academic strengths and weakness, and much more.  Unfortunately, not all the students returned the papers and I would have to keep track of who needed a second, third, and even fourth duplicate copy of the directory paper. Then I would spend hours transferring their information onto a spreadsheet. Many times, their writing was illegible, and this lead to many blanks on my classroom directory.

The process was exhausting! This year I have discovered the advantages of using  Google, a web 2.0 tool. With Google Drive, I can create a presentation, spreadsheet, and drawing, or a simple document (Soloman & Schrum, 2014). This tool is like a huge supermarket of technology time savers! This tool does all the work for me! At the beginning of this school year, I used Google Survey to collect pertinent student information and compile it into a Bahrville Classroom Directory. For my students with diverse learning needs, I reached out to the ESOL teacher for assistance with the interpretation and translation to Spanish. She also provided a time for them to use the computer lab in the morning during breakfast time. It saved me a huge amount of time.Currently, I used the Google survey to collect my peer educators’ opinion regarding our technology usage in the building. The survey converted their responses into an excel bar chart, which made it very easy to read. It was a huge time saver! Here is an example of my Google Survey and the results.

References:Justin Reich, Richard Murnane, John Willett (2012). The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K–12 Schools. Educational Researcher 41, Issue 1. DOI 10.3102/0013189X11427083Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To For Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

7430 ITEC: Social Networking, Virtual Environments, &   Digital Divide 9/13/2017

Twitter is a great social networking tool I use to collect learning activities for my gifted students. I learned about free4teachers website through twitter, and this website has provided me convergent and divergent activities to enhance my lessons. Since Twitter has an app on the iPhone, it is easily accessible throughout my

day. Twitter also introduced me to Kahoot, and this was a valuable to tool to use during my Open House in August. Through Twitter, I can follow other Gifted teachers and share technology activities that work in my classroom, and in return I can find technology to enhance my diverse learning need students. Twitter has provided many resources for my students and opened a world of technology I was not aware of.

This year, a social networking tool I have become interested in using is Edmodo. It is a social networking tool that enables students to post their homework, classwork, quizzes, and peer responses directly online. As of August, I have created two groups in my classroom and it was by invitation only with the use of a group code. One of my groups is only for my fifth-grade students and I have another group for my two second grade classes. Before allowing my students to use this social networking tool, I shared a lesson I created for teaching digital citizenship. My students were very eager to apply their digital knowledge to our online assignments as compared to paper pencil work.  With Edmodo, I can create lessons ahead of time, save them in my library, and post on a later date. This is extremely helpful to me, since I like to have my lesson plans completed weeks ahead.  Edmodo also has the added feature of downloading videos to assignments. Just last week, I researched a video on Discovery Education about Pablo Picasso and was successful downloading it onto my Edmodo account for my second-grade students to view at home and apply it their homework assignment. It has been a very successful tool with my students with diverse learning needs. To complete the online homework, they may not have access to a computer at home, but they can use my desktops and library computers anytime throughout the week. I can also use this tool with teachers. Edmodo provides discussion forums for teachers to share lessons and ideas to digitally enhance the curriculum.  I completely agree with Soloman & Schrum (2014), social networking can improve student learning especially since they are completely engaged with my lessons posted on Edmodo.

Because students greatly enjoy the 3D technology and interaction with virtual environments (Soloman & Schrum, 2014), it encourages me to discover ways to bring these tools into my classroom. Google Tour Builder is an interactive virtual website allowing students to share a story as they travel around the world using Google Earth. Since my second-grade curriculum is focused on the artist Pablo Picasso, I used this virtual builder to create a timeline of his lifetime adventures. My tour builder showed my students the exact location of Pablo’s birth place, art school, and his traveling adventures. It was a great virtual enhancement to our studies. Not only is this a great educational tool for my students, it is also very helpful for teachers. I can share my tour builder with other Target teachers to help bring their studies on Pablo Picasso to life. Tour builder can support students with diverse learning needs, since it can provide students the opportunity to see the world without the financial restraints.Mission US  is an excellent virtual environment taking you back to important historical events. This web tool enhances the social studies curriculum found in our textbooks by bringing the sounds, choices, and exploration to life. I was fully engaged with the interactive video of Flight to Freedom while I played the role of Lucy, a black child enslaved on Mr. Otis’ plantation. Lucy’s family lives on the plantation too, and are busy all day with chores in the field. During my video interaction, Lucy’s mother asked her to I bring her a medicinal plant to heal another slave’s bleeding cuts on his back. I had to make the choice of retrieving the herb and possibly getting caught by Mr. Otis, or completing my daily chores and obeying the master. This video shares the daily challenges slaves endured on the plantations. It also has other interactive videos regarding the challenges and choices made by the Cheyenne Indians, immigrants, patriots and the times of depression.  This is a revolutionary way for students to be engaged with the social studies standards in grades four and five.

Addison   and The Digital Divide Digital Divide refers to the inequalities in access to computers and the internet between people with one or more cultural or social identifiers (Gorski, 2002).  At my elementary school, we have two laptop carts with half the computers working and a computer lab with 15 functional computers. Because of the lack of reliable technical devices, bring your own device (BYOD) is encouraged with the students in the upper elementary grades. Unfortunately, not all the students have electronic devices to bring to school. This school year we have acknowledged this digital divide and have taken action to provide equitable access to digital resources and tools. With the help from our After-School Program funds, we have purchased five iPads to be housed in each classroom. We have also opened the computer lab in the mornings to students who may need use of

electronic devices to complete or work on class and homework. It’s reassuring to know my school is being proactive addressing equitable access to technology. ReferencesGorski, P. (2005). Education equity and the digital divide. AACE Journal, 13(1), 3-45.Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To for Educators.  (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

7430 ITEC: Blogging Improves Student’s Communication Skills

8/27/2017

I wonder why more teachers not using blogs with their students? After reading about the many benefits students gain from blogging, it’s a wonder why more teachers are not implementing this into their daily lessons plans. According to Soloman & Schrum (2014), blogging changes the audience for student’s writing samples. Instead of simply writing a narrative for a teacher to evaluate, they are writing to people of different ages all over the world. Their audience goes from a single teacher to a global audience. Finally, blogging can offer students immediate feedback from people from various perspectives in addition to the teacher in the classroom.Blogs can also become a student’s portfolio for many types of writing (descriptive, narrative, and expository). From my teaching experience, writing can be a dreadful task for some students, though with blogging this may spark a student’s interest. Blogging is more like free writing and allow can students to write about their interests, thoughts, and creativity. It opens an ongoing discussion with a variety of people. Students can receive immediate feedback when blogging, instead of a solitary feedback from a teacher’s perspective. Blogging is writing, 21st-century style!Getting Smart by Susan Lucille Davis shares the benefits of real writing versus pretend writing. Real writing is purposeful and authentic writing for the students. Pretend writing is writing completed in the classroom through the five writing processes (brainstorming, rough draft, editing and revising, and finally publishing) for achieving a grade. Davis shares the benefits of blogging helps developing crucial skills with language development, understanding word relationships, and even creating opportunities for a positive change in this world. Not only is blogging beneficial for students, but teachers reap the benefits as well. According to Edutopia, blogging allows teachers to reflect on their learning and progress, showcase their own student’s projects, ask for help from peers around the world, and share resources and “aha” moments. There are only positive effects that come from students blogging.I found  Mrs. Carroll’s classroom blog is very interesting and highly tech savvy. She demonstrates a strong understanding of technical knowledge. Her blog has interactive hyperlinks for her students and parents to learn more about her personal life and ways submit information through glogster. Her glogster is an interactive tool, I would like to learn more about, so I can add it to my own personal teaching blog.Another interesting blog I came across was  Sue Water’s blog. This blog provides simple instructions how to teach students the correct techniques for posting a blog and replying to a peer’s blog. Her instructions are simple yet exact. She suggests using a letter format when replying to a peer’s blog, and the importance of correct grammar and spelling usage (no texting language). Making a connection to a friend’s blog is essential. This can be accomplished through stating a simple compliment or personal connection to the writer of the blog. I have included her tips in my rubric below.  I have bookmarked both teacher’s blogs to help improve my own professional blog.Here is an example of a rubric I would implement with my students to guide them through successful blogging.

References:Davis, S (2012, October 22). 10 reasons Why I Want My Students to Blog. Getting Smart. Retrieved September 5, 2017 from http://www.gettingsmart.com/2012/10/10-reasons-why-i-want-my-students-blog/

Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To For Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

7430 ITEC: Web 2.0 & Education Go Hand-In-Hand

8/27/2017

Blog Posting Task 1: Web 2.0 & Education Go Hand-In-HandMany students have a better understanding of technology usage than teachers, because they were fortunate to have been born with an electronic devise in their hand (Solomon & Schrum, 2014). Because of their vast technical knowledge students have and their eagerness to always be active with an electrical devise, makes integrating technical lessons into the classroom essential.  I have discovered by implementing many Web 2.0 tools in my own lesson plans, students can communicate and collaborate with peers outside the four walls in my classroom. Solomon and Schrum (2014) share, Web 2.0 tools can spark students’ creativity, engages their curiosity, and makes learning an adventure instead of a task. We are in a digitally driven world causing education to become more digitalized. Technology is an essential force changing much of our teaching and

pedagogy (“9 Essential Digitals,” 2017). Daily utilization of technology in the classroom is not consistent but should be. Many teachers are not very tech savvy and are apprehensive to implement any Web 2.0 tools into their lesson plans due to the fear of failure. More professional development regarding the ways to effectively implement technology tools into the classroom needs be accessible for teachers.I am looking forward to implementing more technology tools into my own classroom this school year. Edmodo and Padlet are just two Web 2.0 tools I hope to become more confident utilizing with my students in grades first through fifth.  With Edmodo, I hope to teach my digital learners correct and safe social networking skills through digital citizenship. My goal is for my students to understand the importance of digital citizenship and carry these skills into other Web 2.0 tools such as Padlet or Recap. Padlet and Recap are also great social networking tools, where my students can respond to their peer’s posts and opinions. By keeping my students engaged with my digital lessons, I hope to maximize their learning.Through my 18 years of professional teaching, I’ve grown to believe Web 2.0 tools are essential to my 21st century learners. They allow students to learn new material with their own specific learning style.  For example, my verbal/linguistic students learn best through language development including speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Storybird is a great tool to help my students excel. With my musical/rhythmic students, they learn best through a variety of sounds. These include listening and making sounds such as songs, patterns, rhythms, and other types of auditory expressions. GarageBand would allow them to transfer their new knowledge into a song using a variety of musical instruments. A classroom integrated with modern technology may allow students to become more engaged in their learning and help learning come to life.References:9 Essential Digital Skills for 21st Century Teachers (2017, August).  Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. Retrieved from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To For Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.