Looking Back

Looking back on this course I wasn't sure what I was expecting in terms of what I was going to learn, and what was expected of us. In all honesty I was a little terrified this class was going to go over my head and I would be dreading going to class every week. Having experience in a classroom and working in a school environment, I have learned the importance of technology in the classroom. I wasn't sure how this class was going to expand my knowledge about that topic. This class has turned out to be the exact opposite. I looked forward to coming to class, and looking ahead to see what new things were going to be covered that night. I have learned how technology has a great impact on how students can learn and grow, especially in ways that can be confidence builders. There are many aspects of this course that I hope to take on into my future classroom. From learning about the different educational websites out there for students and teachers to use for instruction to how to set up a google site in order to get your name and image out in the educational field.

With so many different skills that I have learned in the last 6 weeks it is hard to focus on just one, but the three that I find I have gained the most knowledge from are Twitter, google forms, and TED-Ed. When I was first told that we had to create a twitter account I was not to thrilled with the idea. I have always had the notion that twitter was filled with useless content that anyone could through up there some what like Wikipedia. It was always a social media that I tried to avoid if I could. Once I started writing my twits and following educational organizations I found that twitter is a great resource in getting new or improved ideas from millions of people around the world. A teacher in Hawaii can post about a lesson that they did on History in their classroom and you can take the same concept that you never thought about and us it yours. It is also a great tool to answer questions about how to implement a topic or getting new ideas for a student who may be struggling. Another great aspect that I love about twitter are twitter chats. Twitter chat is another forum that allows me to learn more about a topic that I am interested in by the use of questions asked by fellow teachers.

The second tool that I found very useful are google forms. In google forms you can make everything from a get to know you form to a check in quiz about a reading that was assigned in class. This is a great tool for teachers to use with students that limits the use of paper and keeps in one place that can be referenced at any time by the teacher. The tool also allows you to see who has done it and who has not. This is a great way to know who has been on task and may need some help focusing as well as those who may be out of the class and missed the information.

The final tool that I found useful is TED-Ed. TED-Ed is a website that has hundreds of ready to use lesson plans about different topics. Some can be used as fun brain breaks as well as getting more information about topics that they are interested in or reiterated what has already been taught.  https://ed.ted.com/lessons?content_type=animations&direction=desc&sort=publish-date&user_by_click=educator

Inclusion in Schools

Today I want to talk about inclusion in the classroom. We live in a day and age with many different opportunities given to us, but it seems that one thing that we are having trouble achieving is inclusion in the classroom. I worked in a multi-needs classroom for a couple of years and though many of my students, who were able too, were included in a general education classroom. When there you were able to see interactions between the student and his peers. It was a wonderful sight to see. Even though these students were included in the classroom there were many times that it didn't seem like they were. Take my student I worked with, let's say his name is Mike. Mike loved food and so we as a team decided that a foods course would be great for him, and it was but only on days that we were cooking. It seemed that there wasn't much effort being done to involve him in other aspects of the class. I don't want it to seem that I am putting blame on the classroom teacher or the student's teacher because I do understand how much teachers have to do in order to get a lesson prepared. I just feel like there could and should be some way to make sure these students get the best education and feel like they are included throughout their student careers.

This brings me to the benefits that inclusion can have for students and the school. One thing that I had the opportunity to be apart of is "Coffee Shop". "Coffee Shop" was a student/staff run coffee shop that was available for staff to take part in. Staff would place orders through their email using a google form, that a staff member that was working with the students would send out, and then the students would have to record the orders, get them ready, and deliver them. This allowed students to learn to take responsibility, learn how to interact with peers and adults, and learn how to manage money. This gave our students a sense of inclusion as well as a sense of belonging.

My alma mater Lemont Township High School is doing just that but they have set up an actual store that the students stock, clean, and serve beverages from during specific times during the day.  This video is their marking tool.  This three-minute video shows just want the students are doing and what they love most about being a part of this community.

Lemont High School Coffee Grounds

After watching this video and recalling my previous experience it just further illustrates why projects like these and inclusion classrooms are necessary for all our students.

Getting to Know Your Students

As I was scrolling through my Instagram feed earlier this week I found this post from teacher 2 teacher (tchr2tchr). The post is of an image of a giant post-it note with the question What do I want My Teachers to Understand about ME? The students then write their responses on a separate post-it note and stick it to the giant one. Having an activity like this at the beginning of the year is a great way to know your students. Students can tell you things that might not be in their personal files or things that they don't want to talk about out loud in front of their classmates. Students do not have to write something serious down on their post-it note and can give more than one answer. If a teacher wanted to give limits, you could say that you would like them to write one that is fun and one that is about school.

This allows teachers to get to know their students in a different manner than filling out a questionnaire or asking them directly.  My initial reaction to this post was I would love to implement this in my classroom someday. One note I do have is that I would want to put some ground rules into place. I would make sure that students knew that what they wrote would only be read by my eyes unless they wanted to volunteer to share what they had written, and they would have to write two things down. One that was something interesting or fun about them. This could be a hobby they like to take part in or their favorite sport. Students would also have to write something serious down to. For instance, what they are nervous about this school year or what they want to work on. As a teacher, you can collect this data and have it on file, and it can help you when making small groups or lesson plans.

Not only is this a great idea for the beginning of a school activity.  This activity can also be used for other subjects as well. This tool can be a great way to get a discussion started in the classroom. Students can read about something whether for history or reading. You could have made up questions to be answered that the students have to go around the room to answer at least 3 questions, and then talk about the responses. This can also be used to summarize passages and then the students have to talk about it to the class and "be the teacher". 

I have seen many other good ideas from teacher 2 teacher and hope that I can implement them in my classroom someday.

My Learning Style and Flipped Learning

When I think about learning styles I start to think about how would I want to have learned the material that I am covering. My learning style is very much a combination of visual, hands-on, and audio learning. It really all depended on the subject that was being taught at the time. If the teacher was teaching material about math I needed a hands-on and visual style to make sure I understood what the material was. If the teacher was teaching material on reading or writing I thrived when I was instructed using visual and audio learning styles of instruction. Growing up I definitely had to learn ways that would help me grasp concepts that came easily for my classroom peers. Being dyslexic I had to find other ways to learn materials that teachers weren't doing in the classroom. One way that I made reading textbook materials easier on me was receiving an audiobook of the textbook that was being used in the classroom. This allowed me to listen while I read along to the material. Being able to listen to the textbook while I read along allowed to me get information that I may have missed just reading it to myself.

Being new in the teaching field I am starting to find myself thinking about how I want to present information and material to my students. I know that once I get into the real world of teaching I am going to have many different learning styles in the classroom. There are going to be students who are auditory learners, students who are hands-on learners, and students who are visual learners. The challenge is how does one construct a lesson plan that allows all students to use their prefered learning style. This is where flipped learning came come into play. Flipped learning is when instead of students getting assignments or worksheets to do at home, the students learn the lesson at home and are able to come to school with questions about what they have learned. The students also are given materials or worksheets to do in class that would have traditionally been given as homework. Flipped learning has its own pros and cons. The time used in teaching the material has now been cut out of the classroom completely. Teachers can now focus on the application of the materials then spending a good portion of the week teaching the material. One thing that could be a con on flipped learning is we know rely on the students to watch a video on the material that they are to be learning and have to now figure out what to do if a student doesn't do the "homework" for the day before. If you allow the student to watch the material that was missed you then run into that student missing out on getting the experience of applying the material. A solution to this could be that a teacher could have a small group with students who have missed watching the material for "homework" and work with them using the materials that other students are working on. This way students can learn the information and be caught up with the rest of the class.

My personal opinion of flipped learning is very much mixed. If I were in a flipped learning classroom growing up. I believe I would have liked it for subjects such as math, science, and possibly even social studies. Those subjects, in my opinion, would be ones that a teacher could break out into groups and have students work on materials that pertained to what was learned from the video. For reading and writing, I am not sure how flipped learning could be used. Those subjects I think are better taught in person. I would be able to ask questions that I had right at the moment than waiting until class the next day. In theory, I believe that flipped learning could be very useful for students who really benefit from multiple learning styles.

Using technology as an Instructive Tool

In the world today there are many different ways that technology can be used in the classroom. Teachers can use it as a means to reenforce material that has been covered in a subject area or some can use it as a means to allow students to be able to participate in a classroom. If you were to take a look at a traditional classroom setting, you would see the teacher at the front of the classroom teaching his or her lesson to the class but today we have a greater access to the internet that the traditional classroom setting is almost completely disappearing. Teachers have this amazing opportunity to allow students to explore different ways of accessing information that can reenforce material that they are covering in the classroom. One such technology program or app that the students that I work with use is a program called Xtra Math. Xtra Math is a website that allows students to push up on skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and dividing in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom. I must clarify that I work in a 4th grade classroom setting at an Elementary School in Downers Grove, IL.

When students are using this program they are timed on how many problems they can do in a row without getting any wrong. The program will keep the student on that same skill level until it feels like he or she has mastered the level completely to pass to the next level. Teachers have so much information and material to get through in the day that they cannot always to a chunk of time out in order to review simple math skills such as addition and multiplication. This program is a great tool to use as a warmup to start a math class, as is done with the students I work with, and get their brains to start thinking more rapidly. Another tool that is implemented in the classroom is Notability. Notability is a note taking tool for adults and students alike. With notability students are able to make notes their own by adding pictures and video/voice recordings about what they have been learning about. Notability is also a great tool for presentation and collecting the information you have read in one central area. With notability, we teach our students to take detailed notes using only a few sentences and then add illustrations that will help them remember the information that they have read. For instance, the 4th grade class is learning about the early settlers of North America. They read that the first people to settle in North America were the Native Americans by the means of walking over the Land Bridge. In notability students write down who, where they came from, and why they came as well as use illustrations that can help them remember the information such as a picture of mammoths (their food force), the continent of where they came from as well as the continent of where they were going, and the people. By having the illustration it is reenforcing the information that is also written on the page.

Before I started working in the 4th grade classroom, I worked for 4 years in a self-contained multi needs classroom at a middle school. Many of the students that I worked with did not have the mental and or physical capabilities to write out what they wanted to say. A lot of the time it was because it was harder for them to write down what they were thinking on a piece of paper or type it on a document on a computer. This is were technology became a great tool for those students that I worked with. Students who were having a hard time writing or typing what they wanted to say were able to speak it write to the computer, and the computer would do the work for them. This became a great confidence booster for many students in the classroom. For the longest time they didn't see themselves as being able to participate in a classroom discussion because they didn't know how to write it down or even know how to speak. Technology gave them that voice and allowed them to become more of a confident student and individual. Another aspect of technology that helped the students that I worked with was the use of smart boards and touch screens. Students were then able to use many apps and programs that reenforced material that was being taught to them in the classroom. One program that we used was ABCYA. AbcYa is a website that involves games that allow students to learn put in a way that makes it fun. Students can practice skills from the very basic such as tracing letters to something more complicated such as multiplying numbers. The website also allowed to be used on smart boards and touch screens so those students who had trouble using a keyboard and mouse could just touch the screen for the first answer.

When we use technology as an instructive tool we allow students to widen their knowledge of materials in a way that gets them thinking as well as can be fun. Students are more willing to work on an iPad program for 20 minutes than do a couple of worksheets for the same amount of time. One thing teachers do have to be wary about is making sure that they are using these instructive tools in the correct manner and not as a replacement of them teaching the materials. If technology is used in thee correct manner, we can do amazing things for students and education as a whole.

Positives and Negatives of Technology in Education

Technology has always been one of those things that will be changing rapidly as time goes on. There is no way to stop it, and for many professions it is a life line. In the field of education, technology has been one of those things that individuals either embrace or deny it is even happening. Using technology in the classroom has both positive and negative affects on students.
Technology can be a big help in the classroom. It can be used as an extra tool for students to understand materials that are being covered in the classroom, and also as a reenforcement for more complicated materials. Using technology in the classroom can also assist those who have trouble getting thoughts down on paper, they can speak into a tablet or iPad to express what they are thinking. Technology gives students other tools to use than just writing on a piece of paper. Not only is it a great tool for students, but a great tool for teachers as well. With access to the internet, teachers are able to communicate with other teachers around the country and internationally to get more ideas of how to teach different materials. Teachers are also able to find different materials to use in the classroom whether it be a video or online assessment for the students.
Technology also comes with some negative aspects to it as well. With the use of technology comes the problem of how to regulate it in the classroom. Students are so willing to use it that they can easily get sidetracked on what they are to be working on. Another aspect about technology and having it readily available is how much responsibility do teachers give the students whether it be completing assignment or allowing them to take iPads or chromebooks home (giving students the responsibility of keeping things charged). Though students are usually a reason for having negative points of view on technology, teachers can also an equal negative point of view of technology. Some teachers can abuse this use of technology. Teachers can not use in the right way, meaning that they don't take the time to mind whether it be a video or materials that are relevant to the material that is being learned in class. Teachers can also rely on technology as the only teaching tool, and have no other materials as reenforcement to help students understand more.