Final Reflection:

Cool Tools for me was a very difficult PD for me to set-up and complete because I am not very tech savvy.  Once I was able to set up the Blog and start reading the different articles and participate in the different activities, I was amazed at how much technology students and teachers have at their finger-tips today.  One of the things I struggle with is the layers of steps I have to navigate through to successfully complete some of the technology I have in my classroom and my fear is always the amount of time I waste trying to successfully implement technology and how sometimes the “New Programs” our district rolls out every year become more user unfriendly and complicated for me to implement and I just don’t find the value is some of it personally.

Cool Tools did help me understand that technology is here to stay and I need to pick and choose technology that is simple for me to operate and understand first and then implement that technology with my students when they are ready.  Cool Tools has many helpful programs for students, teachers and parents and I believe the best technology programs are the ones that allow parents to view student work, assignments and classroom projects that students need to complete.

Thanks Cool Tools and I look forward to viewing your new programs next year!!

SH

Thing 27:

My current note taking system is using folders (actual folders) to organize the different activities I need to look at or complete.  Professional school items are in different folders labeled with marker and papers, notes and copies are inserted in the folder pockets.  For PDs and courses I have another folder designated for the presentations I have attended over the school year.  I keep the name and date of the event on the outside cover with the contents inside.  It is pretty easy to manage but I have a collection of folders at the end of the school year that I end up reusing for the following year.  I wanted to explore a new way to do things and I came across google Keep in this section and looked into it.

The tutorial about Keep was interesting because the things that I am doing with folders could be kept on lists on my phone.  It can be more convenient because I have also have access to Keep on my lap top too.  The items and notes are easy to organize and easy to find with Keep. 

Another advantage to using Keep is that collaborators can be added and information can be shared between different teams, committees and possibly parent groups if necessary.  I am on a Tenet team and we have meetings that get moved around almost every 2 months. Keep allows us to share ideas on a format and we can change times with reminders even if you don’t check your school email every day.  I will be inviting some of my colleagues onto Keep and try present our co-teaching assignments in a more organized way every week.

Keep can help us make lists of what content we will be teaching and assign different activities we can come up with and share them with each other.  Using Keep we can go in and add to the list, or mark things that are finished and it’s easy to convert it into documents for people who are more comfortable with that format. 

 I think Keep would benefit students because it can become another tool for organizing assignments for class.  Students can Keep homework assignments, projects or upcoming events in notes and share with teachers or their parents and it would be an easy way to get information home and students won’t have the excuse for not “getting the assignment” or “leaving the assignment” in class.  I also thought that if parents were interested I could share my notes with them in case their child was sick or out of town.  J

Thing 16:                               Glossary of Education Reform: Portfolio

E-portfolio are a great way to collect student work and share it with others.  These portfolios allow teachers to view student work and allow students to organize and manage their activities better.  In the past, students in my class were given folders to organize their assignments but folders required more organization, space and a delivery system for every class which takes time away from instruction.  All student work can be kept in an e-file and this allows for more activities to be accessed and managed way better than folders.  E-portfolios are safe for students because paper assignments can get lost or unidentified if students did not complete their class heading.  E-portfolios are backed up every time the student uses their chrome book so there are no accidental deletions. 

Student progress is the best way to keep student work rather than only keeping the student’s best work.  Keeping a series of essay draft copies can show the process the student is comfortable with instead of looking at a finished essay that has been edited and spell checked by the program or teacher.  When students only see the final essay product, they tend to forget all the hard work it took them to get to their finished product. 

Whenever we begin a new DBQ project, students need to organize what they will write in their final essay and they will create a strategy that will follow the directions for the essay.  A portfolio provides students with their work in process and they have a sense of accomplishment and pride because they are not trying to write a 4-5 paragraph essay the night before their project is due.  Students in my classes can keep their essay work on their portfolios and I can have access their portfolios whenever I need to view them for their content or progress.  

As we are using more google classroom activities, student files could be shared with other students and they could access it as well.  The parent connection can also be very important because the files could be shared with parents on-line or if the parent happens to be in for a conference, teachers could easily bring up work samples to share with student parents or guardians.

Digital Student Portfolios

Since portfolios should be more than just a teaching tool, students should be encouraged to use photos or work samples to help them bring back positive memories they had in school.  School or personal photos would enhance that type of experience and give the student a basis to show off their portfolio with other individuals.

After reading this article I did some research regarding the Evernote app.  It is an amazing tool and it’s amazing how much stuff is available to the user.  Although it was a great tool the down side to me was my inability to hand over complete control of decision making on what to archive to the kids.  I understand sharing the control, but not having physical control would be difficult for me.  I don’t think my students would always make good decisions when it comes to archiving items and my fear would be for them to keep something insignificant and delete something I thought would be important.

After looking at a couple other tools, I will set up portfolios for my struggling students and allow these students the option of completing their activities partially in class and at home.   I like the bulb app because it is teacher controlled, and students have the choices over what goes into it and who can see it.  I also like the security of the tool as well as the compatibility.  This tool seems to work with any operating system that we have access to such as Microsoft products or those that want to work with google can utilize it.

Thing 2

Tips For Student Blogging (guest post by @mrodz308)

This post in thing 2 was interesting because it shows that when students have independence with their knowledge base they can achieve more motivation to keep exploring.  The key elements for the 10 tips seem to be: student ownership of the work, trust and independence.  Getting students to take control of their education and allow them to get their work viewed for in a larger audience.  Students seemed to be expressing pride in how their work is being viewed beyond the classroom.  In my classes, I have been using DOJO to connect with parents but in the future, blogging seems to be a much more effective way to share student work with parents and relatives.

Huzzah class blog

This link gave me a number of great ideas.  At our school, we have many activities going on during the day such as assemblies, guest speakers and recognition.  This would be a great way to share these events with the public and beyond.  Implementation of the blog could be done in my Social Studies class or in our ELA classes.  This would help students and parents with the events our school has on a daily basis and the students can share what they are excited about.

With some other teachers and myself, we run an after school club for archery and another club for Lego building.  School blogging would let us share what activities we will accomplish and the blog will allow students to communicate with others that are doing similar activities in their schools.  Blogging will help students become better writers and communicators which are some of the goals we have for the after school programs.

Looking through a number of tabs, there are many strategies that seem to be very beneficial for student work.  In one of the tabs a school uses blogs and they follow students through their grade levels.  This allows the school to build a running record of student work that teachers could go back and review.  This type of blogging can show progress students have made over their years and it can be transferred to a different school if necessary.  It would be a common tool that the whole school can work with

thing 7 presentation

Thing 7:

Many presentation tools weren't available when i was in college.  While circumnavigating through these electronic pd opportunities I still uncomfortable with discovering how to work thru things.  For Thing 7 I upgraded my power point presentation in Social Studies. We had used this old template all year long and it was boring presentation with few bells and whistles.  I used a slide show with narrations trying to make them more interesting and interactive.  Using the Microsoft program, .  I was able to add animation and give the audience a more interesting product.  Unfortunately, I was not able to communicate the presentation to my class because we use google.

The presentation can be reformatted into google slides.  Students that want to create a presentation seem to think it is easier to navigate.  As a Social Studies teacher, we do several DBQ's in our class as activities.  In Thing 7 there is a timeline section called screencast.  Screencast has an interesting way of explaining timelines.  Students were given the opportunity to explore ways to develop a timeline in google slides with the documents from the DBQ.  Students could scrambled the slides in the slide show and then had to analyze them to figure out the chronicle order of the slides.  Screencast takes patience and effort for the students to get comfortable and  they are analyzing, restating and organizing all at once.

thing 5 audio tools

Thing 5: Audio Tools

We have used audio tools throughout the year in social studies. Each lesson is recorded and shared with students in their google classroom. The note sheets are printed and left blank for students to complete.  We began w unit 1 lesson 1.  Students have completed several units and the students are at different places.  We have a group that is starting in unit 7 and some lower level groups that are finishing up unit 3.  The students must complete a note section, work on practice problems that are recorded and then a show me section.  Another teacher and I ask students to review the video before asking teachers for assistance.  Once they earn a passing score on an exit ticket, they continue with practice problems before moving on.

Students have learned to pace themselves.  We have discovered that self-pacing has been beneficial to a majority of the students by causing positive conflict.  The students recognize where their peers are and want to get ahead.

One thing I thought would be helpful to our students was an audio app the students could use outside of class. Looking through the different audio tools it appears google keeps the best program in order to take their pic and add a audio question for the teacher.  We had some students the wanted to complete the activities or some that were absent and needed to complete the activities on their own time.  It would be helpful if students could post questions right in the lesson.

Chatterpix is message sending application which is new to me.  I wound be able to send a message to my family members.  I made a picture of our grand daughter yawning in her crib and showed my daughter in law and she thought it was hilarious.  What a great new way to send messages.