Monday, September 3, 2012

Tool 11 Reflection

My favorite tool would probably have to be Skype. Its ability to connect people from thousands of miles away together enables it to take on many uses in my classroom. I will be giving students in my theater classes the opportunity to connect face to face with professional actors and directors in the Little Rock area so they can answer their questions about theater and its vocational opportunities.

My brain has certainly expanding to incorporate many new ways of infusing technology into my classroom. The possibilities are truly endless to foster a sense of student power and choice and to appeal to many different varieties of learners simultaneously. The big first change I'll need to make is becoming familiar with and utilizing my devices!

I was surprised by just how much I had to learn. As someone who loves being online, I realized through this course that my toolkit had the potential to expand infinitely. And being an appreciator of technology is much different than being an technological educator!

Lots left to learn and I'm excited to continue the journey!

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Tool 10 Reflection

It is important to cultivate proper digital citizenship in the classroom for success in my student's futures.

The three most important parts of digital citizenship in my opinion are the use of SBID email, and digital etiquette (formal typing rules and beware of internet bullies and bullying), learning fair use and accurate copyright rules. Be as congenial on the internet as you are in the classroom.

The post on Wes Fryer's blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, is an excellent resource for teaching students about proper use of the Internet. I could actually share this with my students as a teaching tool.

Teaching digital citizenship should be done by example. Showing examples and non-examples in class would really ingrain in them what proper internet behavior is.

Sharing the idea of digital citizenship would happen most effectively on a Parent Night. Likewise, I could share with them non-examples and examples.

Yay digital citizenship!!

Tool 9 Reflection

It gives students real world experience with technology that they might need in the future, but most importantly, the use of technology MUST be aligned to the content of the objective. Otherwise, it's just a fun distraction.

Students must be held accountable for the stations/centers because it is a privilege to use these devices. If they use the devices haphazardly or do not respect them, they must understand that this privilege can be taken away.

Two of the sites I found that seemed like great interactive opportunities for my content were TESiBoard and Learning Games for Kids. TESiBoard is a fabulous reteaching tool for absent or inattentive students. And Learning Games for Kids has myriad options for each content area I will be teaching.

Two of the iPad/iPod apps which are usable in class are TED and Skype. The TED app is a great research tool for students to explore specific cultural or historical topics through the experience of TED talks. Skype could be used as a station where student interview other people and classrooms about a topic. The interview setting encourages interaction and interpersonal communicative growth as well as a gain in general knowledge.

These websites could be used as incentives at the end of the unit for students who finish objectives well.

Tool 8 Reflection

I love the ideas of all the exciting new electronics that will be in my classroom.

I am new to the world of mac so even the basics have been worth taking in. I  learned how to turn on the Wifi on my iPad. I learned also how to video record and take notes on my iPad.

I will be using the iPads in my classroom to record student performances and allow them to reflect back on their own work to accurately reflect upon areas in need of improvement.

The most successful way to manage these devices is to be a careful and constant supervisor during student use. I will take them through a lesson on proper use of devices, have a student counter at each table to make sure the right number are being collected. I will be careful, careful, careful.

Tool 7 Reflection

Tool 7 is all about creating digital projects for the classrooom.

I think one of the most exciting ways to take learning beyond the walls of the classroom is to use it to connect with other people around the world, so my class will be using Skype.

The objective: Given their study of Latin America and planned Skype time with a high school classroom in Ecuador, TLW will demonstrate an understanding of cross cultural communication by analyzing Skype chats for the major similarities and differences between life in America and Ecuador.

This project will be implemented during our discussion of the culture of Latin America, in Unit 3. It would need to be scheduled on a day when both classrooms were available.

The tool I need to use for this project is Skype.

Students will present personal reflection papers on what they found to be the main differences between life in Latin America and America. This will foster discussion on various themes of culture.

I will not need to find additional classrooms.

Tool 6 Reflection

Web Tools to Promote Discussion are very exciting tools that I am still getting the feel for. This tools seems to have the ability to capture student's attention and make learning escape the boundaries of the classroom a bit.

PollEverywhere, a tool that asks to students to use their cell phones to respond to posed questions, seems like an exciting way to make questions jump off the screen with live results. I made a poll that asks students about the most exciting type of conflict in drama:


Skype is an awesome potential tool to further discussion and engage students with real life possibilities. It's impossible to post an example here because they must occur live, I want to use skype in my theater classes this year to have my students talk to a professional actor or director. 

Tool 5 Reflection

Hooray for Web 2.0 products! They seem like a great way to engage students and make learning interactive.

Xtranormal.com seems like a tool I will use often in my theater classes. For free, students can make movies wherein two animated characters interact with one another. This will be a great way to talk about different cultures in social studies or work on dialogue construction in drama.

Prezi is like Powerpoint 2.0. More fun, more zoomy, more full of life. A little more complicated though, so I gotta be careful about overstimulation in the classroom with Prezi. Used carefully, it can be awesome.

Tool 4 Reflection

Google Docs is an awesome tool for student workshopping. Students can edit one another's work and make comments critiquing and praising in turn.

I also love Google Docs as a medium of long term communication. I have used it for years now as a means of staying connected with my best girl friends from college during times apart. With this thought it mind, my students could engage in a year long discussion tracking their growing knowledge of world geography using Google Docs.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Tool 3 Reflection



Youtube, USA Today, Teachertube, PBS, and CNN all provide good video resources for my classroom. The key here is mixing the engaging with the appropriate. Youtube in particular has a host of videos with a slightly funny or zany spin on topics, a spin that students love. I like this quick video on longitude and latitude:



And here’s a good one I found for the Discovery Channel that I think will just my kids' interest about the world as a topic of study:






 I enjoyed the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education video and I think kids in my class would as well. There are so many ways to exchange and share resources online, and it's good for everybody to be versed in the best practices. I for one love photopin and flickr creative commons.

Dropbox will be great in my classroom this coming year. I have used it as a resource exchange site for a couple of months now and am addicted. I’m excited to see the way this will make turning in and sharing material in my classroom more fun!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Tool 2 Reflection

Hearing and sharing information publicly in a PLN setting is a little difficult for me to feel immediately comfortable with, as I am the kind of person who thrives on in-person contact. However, that said, I did find a certain power and instantaneous excitement in being a part of an ongoing conversation where feedback and advice could take a dozen different shapes. Simply put, I really felt part of the digital community more so than ever before.

I found a great blog site while browsing, and I just had to share it with any fellow teachers reading this.
The blog’s called Learning is Messy and can be reached here: http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=1197. I’m linking you here to a particularly exciting post entitled Innovation Starts with Autonomy. I think it gets to the heart of an educational passion of mine: how each instructional day should be infused with opportunities for student enrichment.

This link http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2012/08/myths-in-history-from-colonial.html will take you to the great blog, The History Teacher’s Attic, specifically a page entitled Boston 1775 on the Myths in Colonial History. Fascinating stuff.

Visit these blogs when you get the chance! 

Tool 1 Reflection

I found myself a little uncertain of whether or not my avatar had taken to my profile. I found the how to videos massively helpful and enjoyed creating my monkey avatar.

I'm excited to learn more about how to make my classroom excel in the 21st century.