Reflection Day 3

As I reflect on the work today I feel that sometimes it can seem a lot more work than it is and other times more work than I think it is. I found some new sites to use in working with my students this year. One would be plicker. It is a great source for a quick quiz and fun to use. I was able to add some things from pinterest to my board.

I used the application on my computer to create my flipped video and then put it on you-tube. I am going to be honest and say I was not crazy about putting it out there, but for the first one I have ever completed I will say it went okay. I think I will use it as a reteach tool in my classroom.

My lesson and student sample targets create. The students have to evaluate the details in the story they pick and then support the main idea. They are having to decide what the main idea is and why. I wanted the students to be able to take some ownership in what they were creating and I think that being able to pick their own story and use technology to show their understanding of the main idea is important. It shows the students that using technology can move their thinking to the next level.

Day 2 Reflection Post

 Reflection Post Day 2

I spent some time on my PLN today I created a board on pinterest to help keep my technology ideas in one place. I spent some time reading different ideas on some different teacher’s blog posts. It was really eye opening to see all the different ideas out there. I feel more secure in using technology with the support of all the different bloggers out there. I want to try to use the idea of asking for old phones/ipads like I found so that I can have more technology in the classroom without having to put in for the carts.

I think a flipped classroom is a great idea to help students who maybe are missing a step in the learning. It is a great tool for them to be able to go back and review/relearn what they missed out on. The flipped classroom also helps the students to stay more connected with their learning at home and take more ownership.

I am planning to do my lesson on main idea in reading. It’s a topic that students sometimes need a little more support in. There are lots of ways to use technology in teaching it. I want to do a flipped lesson on how main idea is like a table and the legs are the support. There are lots of tools out there that can help bring this flipped lesson to life. I think it will be very helpful to have this lesson to use with some of my students who may need to have it reinforced during the school year.

Crushing the Barriers!

Crushing the Barriers

Our classrooms and our students are changing. One barrier is  all of the new technology available to us on a daily basis it is no surprise that we as teachers have trouble keeping up. The I can statements I found on pinterest help to guide the students to keep “playing” with the devices so they can become fluent with them and be up to date with the technology.  As educators, we need to keep up through research and playing with these devices ourselves! I know we don't have the time to become fluent in everything technology, so I created a product to help us out. I am very excited to introduce "Technology I Can Statements" 

Another barrier that I face is  not having enough devices for everyone to work at the same time. I found several ideas to help break through this barrier. The website below was a spot to find different ideas on what to do and how to manage the real world fact of not enough to go around. Another idea that I found on was to ask parents for old devices that could be used in the classroom. The teacher set up buckets with the ipods numbered so part of the class could use them while the other half worked with the teacher. It gave the students the chance to each get to use the device themselves.

Found on eskymaclj.blogspot.com.au-ideas for what to do when you don’t have enough devices

Another barrier that I want to be able to break through is the idea of not having enough time to find all the sites and be fluent with them. I found different web sites to visit to try and help overcome the issue. I have started a board on pinterest to place ideas to break through this.

The final barrier is the students not being able to get finished with the digital product we are trying to create. One way to solve this is to have the students be able to work across the subjects so that the digital creation would cover more than one subject area.

Four Barriers Post

For your first blog entry, what do you feel are the four top barriers you face that make the infusion of technology more difficult?

The first barrier I feel that I face in using technology in the classroom, is having enough devices for the students to be able to work on their own. The students each want to be able to create the digital product. When I have a lesson when the students are using technology in their learning, they each want to be able to "use " the  device, even when they are working in groups. I like to be able to have the students work together but each have their own ipad/netbook so each student feels a sense of ownership in what they are doing.

The second barrier in using technology in the classroom is that it is ever changing. It seems that as soon as one website or app is used and the students become "experts" at it the site/app is no longer as good as the new one that has come out. The students can become frustrated because the site is not as fast or new as what has just come out. 

The third barrier would be time. As a teacher we have deadlines to meet during the day. It can be difficult to come up with enough time to become educated on using a new site or app. It can be frustrating when the sites do no work the way they did when, say you worked with the web site at home, and then you get to school to use with your class and it does not perform,the way it did when you last used it.

The fourth barrier I would say for me is having enough time to allow the students to fully explore the technology they are using. It can be not having enough time to create the digital product, or just finishing a word document the students are working on.