Best & Worst of Tech & Topics

I really enjoyed this class! My favorite part was learning about all the different presentation tools and fun technology we could utilize in the classroom. Though I don't know if I would use most of it, the ideas were really cool and I realized there was a lot more technology available to teachers than I originally realized. Since I'll be teaching high school in the future, I really think a lot of the technology we learned about would make it more fun for my future students, not to mention it's probably something they'd be more familiar with.

There wasn't really anything I didn't like about the course itself....everything we learned was useful information and was relevant to the course and my future career in teaching. I thought it was a perfect balance of fun and work, and also important, relevant teaching topics with fun technology (hence the name of the course). However, I did find the portfolio to be extremely tedious and very difficult for me especially, because I haven't even done my student teaching yet. I felt like I was kind of BSing a lot, which isn't how it should be. I would have rather done this when I could actually offer first-hand experience and ideas. Overall though, loved the class and I'm sad to see it end!

My Web 2.0 Tool: Webspiration

 For my Web 2.0 tool, I chose Webspiration, which is a secure and safe way for students to create fun and professional-looking webs and graphic organizers as a way of brainstorming for their papers.

1. How does this advance my curriculum and apply to my content area?

Since I will be an English teacher, I think this tool will greatly help students improve their writing by brainstorming in a fun way. This helps students get their ideas on paper in a visual and more enhanced format that allows them to see all their ideas that they will use in their essays. This gives them the chance to see how they all connect and relate to each other, which will help them ultimately enhance their writing and overall content.


2. Is it secure?

It is secure and requires a username and password to log in, which is nice because I won't have to worry about my students' ideas or mine escaping into the web. However, you can still collaborate with others and share your webs and organizers with other students, which will come in handy in the classroom for students to share ideas with one another.

3. Does it enable students to gain a deeper understanding of the content in a critical, creative manner?

I think it does enable students to gain a deeper understandings of the content, and most especially their own personal content of their essays. Rather than just writing it on their own without even planning out their ideas, they can draw it out in a fun format and visually see it and think critically about how their ideas all relate to one another, and figure out the best way to make their essays flow.

PLN

For my PLN, I chose to join English Companion! 

(click link to go to site)

I really loved this PLN because it had some great ideas from other English teachers who share my same problems or can offer advice for whatever lesson I may have planned. It has so much to offer, and I love that people can contribute their very own lesson plans to help others out! This will be so helpful for me!! Though I'm not a teacher yet, I will most definitely be using this very frequently when I teach high school English in a couple years!

Other blogs!

I commented on a couple other blogs, and I really enjoyed it! I think if this were a more active thing amongst teachers, we could all bounce some really great ideas off each other, and even critique or help one another out when necessary! A blog is a great way to instantly receive some feedback from other friends, co-workers, or colleagues who can simply just comment on your entries and give you some food for thought. I used to blog with my friends a lot, comment back and forth on each others' entries, etc, and it was always so nice to receive feedback for the things I wrote about. Not only is it fun, but hearing from others only helps you improve, especially in the world of teaching!

Portfolios as Valid Assessment Tools

I think portfolios are fairly valid assessment tools, but should not be the only assessment tool used. I see it as more of a preliminary stage, like a resume is used as a preliminary for an interview. Still, I think it's also possible for a wonderful teacher to have a portfolio that is somewhat lacking. Sometimes people aren't good at putting their ideas on paper in a way that sounds professional, and I think that's a big part of a portfolio. Also, sometimes an advantage for a portfolio could be your familiarity with technology, which would make yours appear better, when it reality it is not. So yes, I do believe it can be a valid assessment tool, but I also believe that it's very possible for good teachers to have bad portfolios, though I would say that is probably a rare situation.

I am kind of a 21st Century Teacher?

Since I guess I am technically part of the "younger generation," I do think I utilize a bit more technology than some older teachers would possibly use, but at the same time I do not claim to be tech-savvy with all the newest technology available for teachers, nor do I think I would try and use much of what we have available to us. For example, I hate the idea of e-books. Even though it might be a pain to drag school books from one place to another, I feel that the concrete presence of a book is so much better than a mere screen. In many ways, I would even argue that regular textbooks are actually MORE convenient than e-books. It is very easy to navigate through a textbook, flip through pages, feel them, and see the content on a bigger area of space than you would see if you were merely looking at a computer screen. On the screen there are so many technicalities that I just feel are so unnecessary, such as zooming in/out to see everything more clearly. Plus, in an actual textbook it is much easier for the students to annotate, highlight, mark it up however they want. Though this is possible in an e-book, I just feel that it's much more time consuming and once again, unnecessary.

I also just can't see myself going crazy with the technology. There's been a lot of discussion about bringing iPads into schools, and I just think that's ridiculous and such a waste of money! I didn't have an iPad for my 12 years of grade school, and I still got an excellent education. Sometimes I think people go way overboard with the technology, simply because they think it will assist in a lesson but in reality, it could take away from the lesson. In my opinion, an abuse of technology only distances the student from the teacher, which results in neither benefiting. The student will not learn, and the teacher will not accomplish his/her task. Because of this, I don't have any desire to be a crazy techy teacher, and find a lot of the most recent phenomenons unnecessary and just another obstacle to overcome.

However, I do think certain things are very helpful, such as Powerpoint or Prezi for the younger student audiences we'll be teaching. Though I'm not a teacher yet, I could see myself using Prezi in order to help keep my kids engaged and interested in what they're watching/learning about. Then there's also many sites on the web that could assist teachers in lessons, with Youtube being a major one. The educational channel could be very helpful and I think there are many videos that could useful during a lesson.

I also like the idea of Google Docs, which allows the students to edit files themselves etc. As an English teacher, this could be good for proofreading others' papers or maybe for them to see/download files I post myself, it's easy and accessible to students which I find appealing.

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

 I came across a blog that had an entry titled "15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy" and I was instantly intrigued. Here's the list in a nutshell, but I encourage everyone to read the original blog entry (provided in the link below.) It has a bunch of little quotes and whatnot, most of which I thought could definitely apply to teaching and students in general!! For the full entry click here.

1. Give up your need to always be right
2. Give up your need for control
3. Give up on blame
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
6. Give up complaining
7. Give up the luxury of criticism
8. Give up your need to impress others
9. Give up your resistance to change
10. Give up labels
11. Give up on your fears
12. Give up your excuses
13. Give up the past
14. Give up attachment
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations

Seeing/Hearing Myself Teach

is soooooo weird! Granted, I'm only a Sophomore undergrad, but making this video made my career seem that much closer to a reality. I've had a good amount of experience working with kids and instructing them to a degree through various observations and whatnot, but nothing like teaching my own mini-lesson and having to watch it and hear it for myself afterward. There's always a certain degree of discomfort that causes people to ask themselves, "Do I really sound like that?!" Hah. I suppose that's along the same lines of what was going through my mind as I watched myself teach a fabricated lesson, but most of all I was just impressed with how real it felt. It got me more excited about my future career as a teacher, and helped me familiarize with the field a little better.

Video Lesson

For my video lesson, I plan on introducing a lesson about basic grammar and spelling rules. I am learning to become a high school English teacher, and it drives me absolutely insane when people (even adults!!!!) don't know the difference between "your" and "you're", "there" "their" and "they're", or even "then" and "than." To me, these are all very easy concepts to understand, and we learned them in elementary school, so why are people still mixing them up?! Though there are many other things I could include in this lesson, I am only doing an intro so it will only be a few minutes. Still, it should be fun!

Legal Concerns

I don't really feel informed enough about all the legal concerns teachers have to deal with yet, which actually worries me quite a bit! Just hearing all the different presentations of people speaking about the various court cases made me realize that there are so many legal issues out there for the world of teaching, many of which I'm not even aware of. My biggest concern at the moment is dealing with Special Education children, who have many requirements as far as their learning plans. Working with these children can quickly turn into a big legal mess if their parent feels like I am not providing the most appropriate learning environment for their child, or if they feel the school is not following the IEP or other learning plans made for the child. Aside from that, I know there are a lot of issues with tenure, salary, cutbacks and other various duties as a teacher, which worries me at times, but that constant battle for teachers' rights is just something that comes with the job I believe.

Presentation tool: Prezi

Though I am still pretty old-school and will always favor PowerPoint, I have to admit that Prezi has many advantages and I can see why it would be appealing to teachers. I would probably use Prezi a lot in my own class, simply because I will be teaching high school, and I think that age group would be a lot more engaged if I were giving a lesson on Prezi as opposed to the standard PowerPoint. Prezi makes it a bit more fun, and I think that's the main thing kids look for, and teachers should be trying to look for as well in order to keep their students interactive and engaged. I could easily post this up for my students to look at on their own time, and the videos/pictures/map of Prezi seems a lot easier/more interesting to look at on your own than a boring Powerpoint, where the setup is very standard and doesn't allow a whole lot of creative license.

Article

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/06/28/teachers-report-educational-benefits-of-frequent-technology-use.aspx


This article discusses the benefits of technology within the classroom. The article justifies this by explaining that sometimes the kids can actually learn more from the modern-day technologies because they can identify it more than even the teachers themselves at times. I actually agree with this just because I think it's easy for kids to identify with the technologies that are being utilized during their generation, and helps them integrate their own interests with the lessons within the classroom.

Philosophy on Teaching

My reason for wanting to be a teacher is fairly simple: I want there to be one less bad one in the world. Over the past 15 years of being a student, I have had my fair share of both wonderful and pitiful teachers. Good or bad, I have taken something from each of them that has inspired me to become what I am currently working towards. I have found that one of my greatest passions is to someday have the opportunity to share what I have learned with others who are in need of my knowledge, both academically and not. That passion entails everything the world of education does, and that's how I know I need to be a part of it. I want to be everything my good teachers were, and everything my bad teachers weren't. The most important thing to me is making kids feel like they matter, not only in the classroom, but in the world at large. It's important to acknowledge each and every one of their talents and help them flourish as individuals through those talents. In my eyes, teachers should do so much more than teach a basic curriculum. Because of my personal experiences with teachers in the past, I know that they are capable of so much more. Aside from my parents, it was those few good teachers who have inspired me to become the person I am today. I believe everyone has something different to offer, and I think it's a teacher's job to discover that and help the student utilize it in the best way possible, both in and outside of the school atmosphere. I can only hope that one day I will be able to grant that motivation to my own students. I want to educate them, help them, inspire them, and be a person they know they can trust has their best interest at heart.

1st Post

I'm not really sure what we're supposed to write about...hopefully it won't always be this awkwardly difficult :)