EDUC 6712 Reflection

The most striking revelation I had about teaching new literacy skills to my students is that there are actually a lot of resources on the web and in books to help teachers with these skills. I think there are teachers who feel that nobody wants to help them teach the new literacy skills so they don't even try to give this experience to their students. Our class resource book, Reading the Web, gave tons of ideas to help teachers give their students great literacy skills lessons. I especially liked the handouts at the back of each chapter because it makes my life even easier since the handouts are already made for me. The knowledge that I have gained from this course will really help me teach the new literacy skills to my students. I have learned how to help my students safely and efficiently search the Internet for information. I have found useful techniques in our resource book that allows the students to develop integral skills for the rest of their educational career. I plan on teaching my inquiry based unit to my students after Christmas. I really feel that the knowledge I have gained on how to teach internet inquiry will help my students gain knowledge on using the strategies to help them with their internet inquiry. One professional development goal that I have is I would like to use more 21st century skills, like wikis, blogs, and podcasts, with my students. I have already started using the blogs in my classroom. I made sure that I used a website that was specifically for my students and no other person on the Internet could access their writings. I feel that the mistakes made with not having the students and parents sign a separate permission form to use the blog and by letting the students chat about non-subject material have helped me understand the things that can go wrong with 21st century inquiry projects. I have fixed these mistakes and now the blog is running more smoothly. Next, I would like to attend a conference on how to incorporate wikis and podcasts into the classroom. It's hard for a teacher who has limited access to technology to incorporate these tools into their lessons, but I am determined to try and succeed. I am planning to incorporate my inquiry based famous Missourian wiki into the classroom. If that succeeds, I would like to use more wikis and have the students have partners with other children in a different classroom as them. This would allow for the true use of the wiki, which is group projects with people who are not located in your vicinity. Podcasts are a bit harder for me to implement because my school does not carry headphones with attached microphones. In order to fix this problem, I would like to requisition for a class set of headphone/microphone combinations for next year. I feel that this start can really expand the possibilities of 21st century skills that can be taught in my classroom next year.

Reflection

I have to say that this has been my favorite course so far at Walden. I have learned a lot about different kinds of Web 2.0 technology that I can use in my classroom. Before this course, I had heard of blogging, but did not know its impact in the classroom. I had never heard of a wiki or a podcast, much less know what a useful tool it could be in the classroom. Before this course, I felt like I was technologically sound as an everyday person. As a teacher, I rarely used technology to enhance my curriculum. I was using technology for doing something differently, as Dr. Thornburg would say. Now that this course is at its end, I feel that I have learned how to effectively integrate Web 2.0 applications into my curriculum for next year. I have learned what a valuable asset blogs and wikis can be for the classroom and for my students. I realized that my students are different from my generation. They have grown up in a completely digitalized age with technology around every corner. My students learn differently than I did. They need constant stimuli and entertainment to learn. Education truly has to be fun for them or they will shut down when entering the school property. Instead of lecturing and giving textbook-based tests, I am now required to teach curriculum using student-centered questions, research, and several forms of technology. My students are capable of creating questions they would like to know the answer of, researching the question using a search engine on the Internet, and then creating a wiki explaining the answer to the question or blogging about the question in the class blog. Teachers are now the motivator for their students' success in learning instead of being the main knowledge bank. After I receive my degree from Walden, I plan to continue taking technology courses so that I can stay abreast of the current forms of technology taking place in the classroom. Technology does not take a break from expanding and developing, so I, as a teacher, should not take a break from learning about the new forms of technology being produced. I would love to take a technology director or specialist role for a district and help teachers integrate technology into their classroom to help their students learn and achieve greater success from the traditional ways of teaching. Two long-term goals that I have for my classroom are to at least have a 1:2 ratio of computers to students in my room and to have a curriculum where 90% of it involves the latest technology methods to help my students learn. My district does not have enough money to supply computers for every student in each classroom. My room only has 2 computers, one of which runs on Windows 98. I would love to have a 1:1 classroom, but reality does not allow for that. To compensate for the inadequate funding, my district likes to apply for our state's EMINTS grant every year. This year, if the district is accepted, all the fifth grade rooms will have 1 computer for every 2 students, a Smartboard, projector, and teacher laptop. Our state government was talking about cutting funding from the EMINTS program and I'm not quite sure if that was actually done. If it wasn't, then the district will apply for the EMINTS grant for the 2010-2011 school year for a 1:2 computer ratio and all the added bonus for all fourth grade classrooms. This would mean that I would get a classroom that would have access to new technology and my students would not have to go to the computer lab to work on projects. They could be done in the classroom with my supervision in a friendlier environment than the hot, crowded lab. My other goal involves creating a curriculum where at least 90% of the material learned and created by students is done using technology. Next year, I will be integrating blogs and wikis into my social studies curriculum. I have also convinced the science teacher to incorporate blogging into her curriculum so that the students have to use it for 2 different subjects. If this is a success like I think it will be, then for the year after that, I will try and incorporate podcasting and other Web 2.0 applications that I learn about. I want my curriculum to be student-centered and project-based learning. I don't want to use the textbook as the main material, but as a reference only that the students can look in to find answers that may help them solve their problem. Most textbooks are not current and only tell one side of a story. I want my students to be well-rounded in learning the material and being able to find information using technological tools. My answers to the self-assessment checklist from Week 1 have definitely changed. I am now proud to move the checks to the "often" category. Next year, I will be a teacher who develops curriculum to support 21st century skills. I will be the teacher who uses Web 2.0 technology to enhance the curriculum to support my "digital natives." I will be the teacher who takes her knowledge of these new technologies and incorporates them into her classroom, but also encourages other teachers to incorporate them into their classroom. Finally, I will be the teacher who seeks out other teachers to help her lobby the district for more technology funding.

Technology podcast

This podcast was created for my technology course. I created a questionnaire for my fourth grade students about what kinds of technology they have been exposed to at home and at school. I also asked them to tell me what kinds of technology they were interested in and had experience using at school. The title will take you directly to my podcast link, but here is the actual link also. http://podcastmachine.com/podcasts/1140/episodes/4928

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

After visiting the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php, I feel even more compelled to incorporate technology into my curriculum. I was very impressed with how dedicated the board members and staff were to increasing the amount of technology used in classrooms around the United States. What's even more impressive is how there are already states that are using the initiatives set by this website and incorporating them into their educational standards and school buildings. Dr. Thornburg listed all of the 21st century skills and dispositions in the video this week. He also mentioned STEM skills and how students going into the workforce today and in the future will need to have these essential skills. The Partnership further emphasized these skills and stated "all students must have STEM education to acquire 21st century skills." It doesn't matter if a student is going into technical or non-technical occupations; STEM skills help students possess problem solving and analytical thinking skills. Something surprising to me was that there are only ten states that have adopted the site's initiative to incorporate 21st century skills into their educational standards. I would have expected more states to incorporate these skills, especially with NCLB in effect. When your students are supposed to perform on grade level, I would think that getting them any kind of assistance would be the number one priority. This past year, my school was below AYP expectance in regard to the NCLB standards on our state assessment. Now, we are on "probation" for 2 years and the state has given us $40,000 to spend over the 2 years on programs that could help our students achieve AYP and increase their state assessment scores. Why is this money only given when schools fail? It should be given every year, no matter if a school failed or prospered. I was reading some of the articles on the website and found an article about the West Virginia state superintendent and how he "revamped the state's content standards and objectives to emphasize these skills" found on the website. He then created new jobs across the state's school districts so that they had a technology coordinator/instructor for each district who could instruct the teachers in how to use the new technology they were given in the classroom. I wish that every state had a person like him who was dedicated to getting their students the best (technological) education available, no matter what the cost. He is now hoping to put a technology instructor in each school building. I wish that Missouri would adopt the initiative and take action like ten other states have already done. The implication for myself, as a contemporary educator, is to teach my students as many 21st century skills that I can. I will never allow myself to be pulled into teaching only the original way of teaching (worksheets, lectures, and note taking). Granted, there are times when time runs out and we have to use these methods; however, present times call for present and future ways of teaching. Our students are not going to be writing notes in their jobs. They will be typing up PowerPoint presentations and giving speeches to their colleagues over video teleconferencing. If they don't learn how to do this now, then they will never learn how to do it and will end up losing the top job to a person whose school took the time to incorporate these essential skills. The implication for my students is that they get a teacher who wants to incorporate 21st century skills into his/her curriculum so that the students can get a well rounded education that truly does help them develop into model citizens and future employees.

First time

This is my first time blogging and I am doing this for a Master class. This will be very interesting to see how this works. Thanks for visiting my blog. Enjoy!

Blogging in the Classroom

Ever since this class started, I have been very intrigued with the idea of incorporating blogging in my fourth grade classroom. Next year, the three fourth grade teachers are going to departmentalize math, science, and social studies. I am the teacher who will be taking social studies for all the classes. I really want to incorporate blogging into the curriculum so that all three classes can communicate on a specific question or topic that we talk about. I have thought about what I could do and I decided that I would create a blog site for my students. Every two weeks, I would post a question about the topic that we are discussing and the students would be responsible for posting their answer and responding to other's comments. Not all of my students have internet access, so those that have access could do this at home and those that don't could complete this at school in their classrooms when they have free time. Using a blog would enhance my lessons and curriculum by allowing the students to use higher depth of knowledge thinking skills to answer the question and also to learn skills in responding to others in a mature manner. I can't wait to try this out next year. If anyone else has other ideas that I could use for blogging in a social studies curriculum for fourth grade, I would appreciate your input.