Week Seven -- NETS

I've been working on my final assignment this week.  It's always nice to have a culminating activity at the end of a class that brings all of my learning back to the front of my mind -- it's shocking how much has been accomplished in seven weeks.  I'm also thankful because school starts on Tuesday, and I have been able to go over the tools from the course and think of how I can incorporate them into my class in a more tangible way.

Week Six

The weeks are flying by in this course!  I have been impressed and sometimes overwhelmed by all of the new forms of technology that are available to me.  I think my view coming into this class was that technology is nice -- bells and whistles always are; however, I can see my connotation of technology changing over the course of this class.  While it is easy to make technology about fun instead of learning, it is also a sneaky way to engage students in learning.  It is always fulfilling when students get lost in learning, and I honestly think that the tools I've been exposed to in this class will offer them the opportunity to experience that feeling on a regular basis while also managing to incorporate more content.  Not bad.

Week Five: The Eternal WebQuest

This week is webquest week.  I have been working on my Outsiders webquest with every spare minute I can wrangle.  Is it sad that I get frustrated that I can't change more of the color scheme?  I keep thinking about all the times I've told my students to focus on content over bells and whistles as I spend an hour trying to change the clipart next to the titles.

Right now I am still trying to find reliable websites to help my students understand the 1960s.  It is a challenge because everything is hippie trippy love and peace, while that isn't necessarily the feel of the novel.  I'm trying to find information that shows more than just the Woodstock aspect of the time period for the students.  However, I am excited to see how the students will react to this assignment.  I've paired the research with a comic strip that students will have to create through Pixton.  I'm also interested to see how long it will take students to work through the webquest as I do not like spending more than a day or two on information acquisition before reading a novel.  I guess the first step is the peer review and we'll figure things out from there!

Week Four -- Pixton

This week I have been working on my addition to our class wiki page and researching different sites that use Web 2.0.  Along the way I ran into Pixton, and online comic creation website.  At first I thought this would be a waste of time in the classroom.  Certainly students would have a good time creating a comic strip and soliciting a few laughs from their peers -- I even created a few to tease my family over the weekend -- but it turned out to be much more.

The site is easy to figure out and allows users to create characters, advance plot, and bring a story to life.  I even emailed my curriculum leader to see if I can sneak some funding so I can experiment with it during the upcoming school year.  It would be an incredible way for them to create an online book review for our classroom library.  Instead of writing a couple of paragraphs that their peers won't read, they can create a comic strip that will act as a hook to a potential reader.   I'm also flirting with the idea of using it as a comprehension and interpretation assessment of literature later in the year.  It's always exciting to find new forms of technology that will be fun and effective in my classroom!

Week Three -- Web 2.0

We have started our study in Web 2.0.  My husband is a graphic designer, so his life revolves around the computer.  I've started talking to him about our studies, and it's fun to know his jargon!  I've also had a boost in confidence after completing this week's post.  I was intimidated by all of the research I would have to do to complete it, but I found myself lost in the search.  I really enjoyed all of the websites I found and plan on using them in my future -- especially the online comics and story telling sites.  This would be such an incredible way to make reading and writing real for the students. 

Week Two

This week we spent time evaluating ourselves according to how we implement technology in the classroom.  While I am not a dinosaur behind a computer, I also have a long way to go to truly implement technology in its best possible way.  I'm excited to see how this class changes my mindset about technology, but I also feel a little overwhelmed.  With all of the different tools we are learning about over the course of this session, it seems like it will be hard to learn them well.  I need to be patient with my learning, take my time each week, and determine which tool clicks best with me.  I don't want to let myself finish this course an walk away from the information without any change.  My goal is to bring one new tool into next year that will benefit my students. 

Week One

While I am feeling a little overwhelmed by this course, I am also excited for what I will learn over the next seven weeks.  Now that I have been teaching for three years, it is time to start incorporating more technology into my classroom.  I used the excuse that I was getting used to the classroom and developing curriculum to ignore the fact that I don't utilize as much technology in my lessons as I would like.  While I use the document camera, flip videos and SmartBoard on a regular basis, I have never been brave enough for a blog with my students.  This will be an interesting trial as I practice it as a student!