Professional Development

                I believe professional development is essential to my career as an educator. I think the implementation of Professional Learning Communities in schools is a very effective approach to professional development if it is done correctly. This opportunity allows for an open discussion and teachers are able to ask questions and collaborate about technology and other topics of interest in their particular school district.

                To keep up to date in my personal knowledge of technology I think it is important to: attend conferences, collaborate with other teachers, be aware of new technology and be willing to explore it, and to read professional blogs. Conferences are vital to my growth as an educator. They will broaden my knowledge over specific topics regarding technology in education. Conferences are a very practical way of “getting my hands dirty” while learning about technology and education. I also believe collaboration with other teachers is essential. There are many effective teachers out in schools that are reaching kids because of their use of technology in the classroom. This class has taught me to try new things in technology and to find new ways to implement them into my classroom. I will continue to explore the state of the art technology in order to reach all of the students in my classroom.

                I have found several websites to help stay current in my own professional development. Educator Resources http://www.refseek.com/directory/teacher_resources.html is a fantastic website with resources for teachers for use in the classroom and for professional development.

 I have a passion for educating students with special needs 4teachers has some very up to date technological resources to aide students with special needs. http://4teachers.org/profdev/.

Staff Development for Educators has some great resources for schools and for individual teachers. SDE also has customized webinars for teachers to attend online. I feel like this website will be extremely beneficial for me in the near future. http://www.sde.com/index.asp.

I have included several other sites that I hope to utilize more this summer. There are many resources for professional development once you start looking!

http://webserver3.ascd.org/ossd/planning_definitions.html

http://www.learningforward.org/index.cfm

http://www.360-edu.com/professional_development.php

http://www.learner.org/

Chapter 5 and 6 Reflection

Chapters 5 and 6

I can directly relate to the quote in the text that says technology can “engage, motivate, and extend the way we think, act, and feel” (Roblyer, Doering p. 140).When I use technology in any way in my classroom my students seem much more interested in the material. I have found worksheet generators and puzzle generators very effective as well! If more teachers used statistical analysis in the classroom their teaching would be more effective. I have found when I administer a pre and post test my teaching is laid out in front of me very clearly. I have seen student response systems in use in the classroom, while watching that I was able to see students that would of otherwise been inattentive actually enjoying their learning experience. I would love to incorporate virtual writing outlines into my teaching. I have found that writing is very challenging to teach and would love to be equipped with other techniques. I think readability analysis tool would be helpful in identifying books in my own personal library so that I knew my kids were reading books appropriate for their own reading levels. I have used interactive books in my classroom such as tumblebooks and the kids seem to really enjoy them. It teaches good skills: guiding and reading text left to right. I really like the idea of having student’s virtual work displayed as well as their written work. Students are more motivated to perform when they know their work is valued! I also think self assessment is something students and teachers both need to improve on. If we are able to assess ourselves it makes the assessment from others easier to take. I would love to teach kids how to use PowerPoint to create book reports, its where our world is going why not allow the students to embrace it as well. Having students design games and websites sounds very challenging but also something that I think could be very effective and engaging. I would also love to incorporate virtual reality into my classroom later on down the road. These chapters have wonderful ideas of technology integration. I would love to start small and one day be able to do many of these with my students.

Resource Used

Roblyer, M.D, & Doering, A.H. (2010). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Boston: Pearson Education Inc.

Glogster

Using Contemperary Instruction to Teach "Digital Natives"

The world is becoming very technology driven. According to Schools Use of Games for Learning and Assessment, schools should not ban cell phones and computers from kids. (Ellis, 2007) This statement is a hard fact for teachers to come to terms with that have been in the career for many years. The use of games for learning and assessment in the classroom is highly effective in channeling positive energy in elementary aged boys.

The use of technology in learning forces students to make decisions. Instead of the teacher providing all the answers students are required to think outside the box and come up with an answer on their own. When students are able to be directly involved in the creating of their learning it makes school more exciting for them. For example, in “Digital Youth Portrait: Sam” Sam plays World War Craft. This game allows her to work with other people and strategize to figure out how to solve problems. (Bidleman, 2009) All of these skills are under the “Evaluation” heading on Bloom’s Higher Level Thinking Model.

Incorporating the use of games for learning and assessment caters to the students preferred mode of learning. When a teacher allows their students to work in their preferred modality the student is able to produce the highest quality of work possible. The teacher is also able to group the students into different ability and interest groups. This will make differentiation very effective while also engaging the students.

I believe the benefits of technological integration far out way the pitfalls. Students are very technologically savvy and when we cater to that desire we will have tremendous success. As a teacher I think project assessment is very important and if all of my students were able to work from their own personal laptop and produce a game on their own, their products would be incredible. However, there are also pitfalls to this integration. One pitfall being the training that goes behind integrating technology in the classroom. Another pitfall of technology in the classroom is students viewing information that is unnecessary. For example, when doing a research project a teacher would have to pre-select websites that their student could use, which is very time consuming. Finally, a third pitfall of using technology in the classroom is the threat of cyber bullying and inappropriate materials are at the student’s fingertips. This makes the teacher liable for all the content the students see.

Resources Used

Bidleman, C. (Producer). (2009). Digital youth portrait: sam. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-profile-sam-video .

Ellis, K. (Producer). (2007). Schools use of games for learning and assessment. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/computer-simulations-games-virtual-learning-video.

Roblyer, M.D, & Doering, A.H. (2010). Integrating educational technology into teaching. Boston: Pearson Education Inc.

Chapter 2 Reflection

Teachers have different philosophies of what works and does not work in education. I personally believe that differentiation is an effective way to teach children. I do not think that lecturing is conducive for all students. I completely agree with what the text said about prior learning: direct instruction is more effective for students with less prior knowledge. Primary grades tend to lean more towards direct instruction and then follow up with discovery learning. I also enjoyed what the book said about using technology to remove deficits in the classroom. I use games and activities on the computer to help students learn particular topics that they are having trouble understanding. Although group work with computers is difficult with primary age students I have found in my experience that the students enjoy the research and are more motivated when I involve technology in their learning.

TPACK- provides knowledge to the teachers in order to incorporate technology into their classroom. TPACK blends content, pedagogy and technology and incorporates them all into instruction rather than technology taking up extra time it enhances the time a teacher is already using. TPACK helps the teacher have a better understanding of the student’s prior knowledge and how to build on existing knowledge with the use of technology.

TIP Model- Is a model to make sure that teachers have a plan on how they will integrate technology into their classroom. Without a plan technology can become overwhelming and teachers tend to regress back to the familiar. By following the six steps the teacher is able to: understand more about incorporating technology, determine advantages of technology in the classroom, decide how to integrate online assessments, and revise their teaching after implementation of technology.

The “muddiest point” for me in this chapter is the section about a shared vision of technology. I taught last year in a very remote village in Alaska. I loved to incorporate technology in my lessons and my students seemed to be much more engaged. The district was very supportive of doing anything they could to make sure we had exactly what we needed. However, this became very difficult because the district was spread out over 200 miles of Alaska. My principal was not very supportive of continued education that he had to be involved in, which was very discouraging and made implementing technology very challenging.

Teaching Interests/Instructional Topics

I am very interested in learning more about how to incoorporate differentiation with technology. I believe both of these things are vital to the success of my students. I have a really hard time teaching writing in my classroom and feel like technology might be helpful. It is very difficult for me to teach writing without telling the students want to write. I want to use technology to help expand their imagination and motivation to write.