Course Reflection

I am excited to start using the projects that we created in this class with my own students!

The digital story was one of my favorite projects that I have done so far with the MET program. It was a long process, but the end product was worth it.  I am planning on creating digital stories as a second quarter project with my students’ narrative essays.  They will be doing the same writing process that we used with this class to help develop their ideas and stories.

The infographic was a challenge for me. I wasn’t sure where to create it and I wanted to use something that my students would also have access to.  I felt like I needed more time, but it may have just been that I wasn’t familiar with it and wasn’t sure how or where to create it. My students started on their own infographics this week on Native Americas, so I am excited to walk them through the process and see how they turn out. I am having them do a rough draft of their infographic before they go to the computer to create it. (Here are the guidelines that I gave my 5^th graders. I will link the rubric if I get it done this week.)

Infographic

Wow, this project was a challenge for me! I often tell my students they are "thinking too hard" and this was a perfect example of that. I was not familiar with this type of information graph and had a hard time figuring out where to create it. In the end I decided to go with MS Word since I was familiar with the program. After I got started, it really wasn't as hard as I was making it. I chose to do my infographic on Native People of North America because that is what we are studying in social studies. I think this would be a great end of unit project for them to complete on a tribe or to have them use the infographic to compare two tribe.

Digital Storybook

This project was so much fun! All of the hard work paid off with the final product, but I'm glad we did it in steps. It seemed to come together a little easier since I already knew what I wanted to do and had a script. I can't wait to share it with my students and to teach them how to create digital stories with their personal narratives.

Plagiarism

I do not often come across plagiarism, but the more technology I integrate into my classroom the more I am sure I will come across it. When I do collaborative or individual research projects in social studies I can model the correct way to cite writing and sources when I share examples with them. In searching for lessons on plagiarism, I came across a children’s book written by Brook Berg called When Marion Copied: Learning About Plagiarism. It covers the topics of plagiarism and the proper ways to cite writings and summarize correctly. This book is written for upper elementary so it will make a great addition to my teacher resource library.

Digital Storytelling

I created a digital story telling kit in Emerging Technology Trends with resources for the students to create their own; the resources that Mrs. Blanco gave us will definitely be added to my digital story kit! I have wanted to make a sample digital story to use with my students but I hadn’t gotten around to it, so I was excited to make one in this class.  Trying to come up with a topic for my digital story was challenging because I had so many ideas for projects that I do with my students. I look forward to completing this project and sharing it with my students when we start writing personal narratives!
It was a little daunting to come up with 3-5 minutes of something and after creating my graphic organizer I realized that it wouldn’t be enough information for a 3-5 minute story, so I ended up recreating a personal narrative project that I do with my students. I’m sure this is how my students feel when I tell them they have to write a certain amount to meet the criteria.  Changing topics after starting the writing process is something that my students often do; after processing the assignment or sitting on it for a few days they come up with something even better than their original idea. I’m not sure how I’ve handled it in the past, but I am definitely going to be more encouraging when they want to change their story topic in the future; my second idea was a lot better than the first one.  

Computer and Communication Technology

Sometimes I feel like my district is so far behind when it comes to advanced technology! Most of my experiences with producing information with computers and communication technologies have been through the MET classes. There were a couple of things I had to do in my undergrad and in the first masters program I went through but nothing that I use consistently in the classroom.  This summer I created a class webpage, but I haven’t been able to use it yet (one unblocked website at a time). I have also created a podcast for an article review and a screencast lesson for a flipped classroom project. I enjoyed creating them and I can’t wait to teach my students how to make their own! I have a very wide range of learners this year and it will be a great way to differentiate.   

Cross-Curricular Literacy

“…all teachers have to teach all kinds of reading. You give out instructions for homework, type questions on the computer screen in the classroom, explain the comments you write on your students tests… [and] students use word processing to write explanations of how they worked a problem.” (Pearson, p.56). Reading is in everything we do all day long.

I have tried to start integrating other types of literacy assessments into science and social studies through writing projects in place of paper and pencil tests. For one of my units in social studies I have the student write a letter from Christopher Columbus, Queen Isabella, or King Ferdinand to one of the others about the voyages that the King and Queen funded. I have a couple vocabulary activities that I like to do for science and social studies to help the kids better understand the words. One is a vocabulary tournament bracket where all of the words for the unit/chapter are listed  on left and the students have to debate which word is better until they get down to one word on the bracket. It's interesting to hear why they think some words are more important than others.

Sometimes I feel like I am teaching communication arts for most of the school day. Literacy is integrated into science and social studies through the non-fiction text that the students are reading to gain information. At the beginning of the year I teach non-fiction text features so that the students can get the most out of their text books. It always surprises me how many of them don’t know that the captions, charts, and pictures are supporting details to the text with a lot of information.  Is this something we are not teaching well at the lower grades or are they just starting to get introduced to a lot of non-fiction text in fifth grade?  

Kidspiration

“Using visual thinking methodologies, Kidspiration provides a cross-curricular visual workspace for K-5 learners. Students combine pictures, text, numbers and spoken words to develop vocabulary, word recognition, reading for comprehension, writing and critical thinking skills.” (http://www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration).

Students can make graphic organizers like Venn diagrams, webs, and concept maps to brain storm, organize, and create their ideas. They can add symbols or create their own to enhance their graphic organizers. Lower level students could use just symbols instead of text to make an organizer. The organizers that they create can be used to create stories or help them organize their research. When they are finished with their graphic organizers students can switch to the word processing tool to complete their writing projects.

The math tools in Kidspiration include color tiles, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, fraction times, and fraction boxes. These visual manipulatives help the students grasp important math concepts.  This part of the program uses visual tools for focus on counting, place value, computation, and geometric thinking.

Kidspiration is truly a cross curricular tool. It can be used in science to explore relationships and illustrate processes. In social studies students can make connections between historical events or to explore the similarities and differences of different places. These are just a few of the possibilities

We have this tool on our school computers, but I did not know what it was until after I learned about it in a class this summer. I look forward to using it with my students this year to create graphic organizers for writing stories and for organizing research project information.  A disadvantage of this tool is that you can try it free for 30 days but after that you have to pay to use the program. Another drawback is that Kidspiration is geared towards elementary students (K-5). The program Inspiration is for students in grades 6-12.

Wikis

“Wikis easily support collaborative writing. All contributors are seen as equals in the process, and all previous versions of the text are archived and accessible.” (Pearson, p. 45). This past summer I created a Digital Storytelling Kit wiki and I also created a wiki to use for a Constitution Day activity.  I have not yet been able to implement them in my classroom, but I look forward to showing my students how to collaborate using the wiki and seeing where they can go with them.

1001 Flat World Tales is a wiki that recognizes student writing in the classroom from around the world. Students can publish a story of their own and are also asked to peer review each other’s work. It hasn’t had any revisions in a couple of years, which is a shame because it is a really neat idea. Visually the wiki is pretty simple in its design and graphics. The wiki is organized by navigation tools, tools for teachers, and tools for students and includes hyperlinks to sources inside the wiki. I can tell by clicking around on the different links that it is meant to be a collaborative effort, but even though there is several participating school there are only a few revisions.

Ponderous Pandas is a wiki created by Jan Abernathy to showcase the work of her 5^th grade students in Greenville, PA. This wiki is definitely a collaborative effort by her and her students. This wiki has not had any revisions since September 2011, but it looks like she creates a new wiki each year.  The sidebar has links to wikis and blogs that they have created to collaborate on a variety of topics along with hyperlinked resources for students and teachers. Mrs. Abernathy and her students use multi-sensory tools, videos, and podcasts throughout the wiki to collaborate, contribute, and create. This is one of those examples that makes you want to drop everything and start creating your own page!

Chapter 2

Throughout the classes that I have taken in the MET program I have read the assigned text, lectures, and links and have gotten excited about new ideas that I could implement in my classroom. Then reality hits and I remember that everything that is in any way related to a blog or forum is blocked on all school computers. This was especially frustrating when going back to school this fall and finding that every project, wiki, blog, etc. that I created over the last 3 months is not accessible to me and my students. Darn those firewalls!

Chapter two gave me a lot of new ideas and inspiration to creating new projects and recreating some of the projects or activities that I already do with my students. The bonus is that most of the productivity tools are "the software applications that are commonly found in an office suite" (Pearson, p.30), visualization and multimedia tools, and educational software will not be blocked by the firewall. Yay! I cannot wait to help my students create their stories with PowerPoint this year. Now to find a way to use some of those Internet and communication tools!

Expectations

I hope to never be accused of being “set in my ways” or to have a teaching style that is “old fashioned.” Technology is the future of education and it is important to stay ahead of the game. I have always been interested in technology and I am always trying to find new ways to use it in my classroom. It helps to keep the iGeneration learners, who are always plugged into something, engaged and interested in what they are learning.

I feel that I do a pretty good job of using the resources that I have to integrate technology into my classroom, but I am hoping to learn new ways to make what I have even more valuable and to be able to use it more effectively in reading and writing. I’m the go-to technology person in my building and usually the first teacher to “try” something new. Being the first to learn how to use something gives my students an advantage over students in the other classes. The knowledge and skills that I obtain in this course will help me and my students to stay ahead of the game in reading and writing through technology.

I am excited about the tools we are going to learn to use through this class. I look forward to digging deeper into the resources that the Pearson book has to support reading and writing and learning how to use them. "The most profound technologies are those that disappear-they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" (Solution Tree). I found this interesting because some of the technologies that the students don't even notice are the "profound" technologies that weren't always around. Some of our students, as well as some of us, could never imagine life without them!