What I Learned Technology has never been more important in the classroom than at this present movement in the history of American education. Educators must teach students how to be technologically literate, and they must also be literate themselves. This class opened up my eyes to new ways to integrate technology into the classroom. Firstly, I was exposed to brand-new learning tools, such as the blogfolio, that allowed me to understand the assignment from the student’s point of view. Secondly, I was made to think about new ways to use tools I already was familiar with, such as the website. Additionally, it gave me the opportunity to correspond and work with some new colleagues, outside my field of study, as well as familiar colleagues. Learning Tools Evaluation
Reflection of My Strengths & Weaknesses
Future Learning Goals My future long-term, learning goals includes finishing my Master of Art in Teaching degree and possibly a doctorate. My short-term learning goal is to construct virtual Human anatomy & physiology and zoology classrooms that successfully engage my students, and they enjoy the class.
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Chapter 10 Prompt: This chapter suggests your role is to become a technology advocate and change agent within the education profession. Do you agree that this is indeed a responsibility of 21st century educators? Why or why not. I absolutely believe that it is the responsibility of today’s educators to be a technology advocate and agent of change. As stated in chapter 10, “schools are reflections of the society they serve and ultimately represent its values, culture, and technologies” (Lever-Duffy & McDonald 332). Our society is nearly 100% reliant on some form or fashion of technology, and it is not going away, which can be a bit scary. I was recently watching a documentary ‘Naked Science: The Big Freeze’ where the 1998 ice storm that hit Canada was discussed. Survivors talked about how they didn’t have electricity for a week or more and could have been months if they had lost their lone power grid that survived. This means that Canadians went without communication and heating; they couldn’t get supplies, and this was in 1998! Think about if a major city in the US was hit with a similar storm today? It would be an even worse catastrophe given how we are much more reliant on technology. We would lose not just the essentials, such as heat and power, but no more internet, no more cell phones; hospitals would be affected (remember electronic medical records are only good if you can access the technology!). But I digress, we, as educators, need to be technologically literate and advocates because our students need to be successfully today, which means they need to be technologically literate. You can’t even apply for most jobs now a days without being able to transverse electronic searches, electronic filing, digital resumes, etc. And even more importantly, in this pandemic, our students and fellow educators must use technology. Virtual learning is no longer a possibility for a few select students; it is mandatory for a large majority. Teachers are at the forefront of figuring out what pandemic virtual learning is developing into. While administrators can offer their support, it has fallen on teachers to be the agents of change whether we want to or not. So, as it is no longer a question of if a teacher will be an advocate for technology, but how they will utilize it. This week we learned about the creation of rubrics, quizizz, thinglink, and scoop.it. I personally took charge of creating the rubric on Rubistar, and can I say what an awesome tool this is!! It was very user friendly and very customizable. You can use the ‘stock’ phrases and categories but can also add your own or tweak what they provide. This is much better than using another person’s rubric that you just found online. I have already bookmarked this website and have a couple of rubrics ready for class this fall for a cryptozoology project I assign for bonus work.
Regarding Kahoot vs. Quizizz, I have personally only used Kahoot before as both student and teacher. I used it in my class prior to a test to review and decrease student text anxiety. I actually got feedback from my students that they preferred Quizizz and Gimkit to Kahoot. After this project, I have to say that they are correct. I think that (at least) Quizizz is more interactive with power-ups and has better formatting. This coming year, I plan to use Quizizz for review as well as a pre-unit assessment to poll pre-existing knowledge. Chapter 9 Prompt: Imagine that you are a high school social science teacher. You have assigned students a ten-page research paper. How do you set-up the assignment to make it clear that plagiarism will not be tolerated and what tools would you use to check for plagiarism? What steps would you take if a student’s paper is found to have been copied in parts from the Internet? This prompt is definitely ironic considering that I dealt with this very issue in my Zoology class back in the spring. As a new teacher, I was trying to be considerate of different learning styles and gave my students a choice of end-of-unit assessments. They could take a traditional test, write a 2-page essay on the topic of my choosing, or record a 10-minute presentation on the topic of my choosing. To say this experiment failed was an understatement, largely because I was not clear enough in my intent/instructions/rubric. In my second unit, I had 10 students choose to write the essay. When I started to read/grade the first one, some of the wording (without quotation marks or citation) seemed odd. It didn’t take me much research to find the source the student plagiarized. A little frustrated, I went on to the next paper, and found that the student had plagiarized the entire 2-page essay verbatim without citation or quotations. After reading all 10 essays and having only 1 written without plagiarism, I was pulling my hair out to say the least. As I previously mentioned, I do take partial blame for not being clear enough, so I came up with a solution. My solution was that the students that had plagiarized their essay had three choices: 1) re-write/ re-submit their essay within a week, 2) take the zero as their grade or 3) attend a plagiarism workshop that I would conduct after school. Well all of them picked choice #3, which ultimately ended up as a packet on plagiarism due to the fact that the school kept canceling tutoring for the day I choose for the workshop (Tutoring= a late bus to take students home). You would not believe the flak and push-back I had from both the students AND their parents for how I decided to handle the issue. Most thought that as a science teacher, it was outside my purview to be concerned with issues of academic plagiarism and let their opinions be known to my principle and district-level administrators. Needless to say, I have learned from this experience. In the future, if I assign an essay for the students to complete, I plan to first devote a significant portion of instruction towards essay construction/ planning and what plagiarism is in addition to building multiple steps where students have to submit their thesis statement, an outline, and at least 1 rough draft to ensure that they are on the correct path. Additionally, I am going to have the students turn it in electronically via Turnitin, and time will be provided to students to have access to a computer or Chromebook during class time or after school if they do not have access at home to technology. I believe that it is definitely part of my purpose as an educator to ensure that my students know how to write an essay correctly even as a science teacher and will not shrink from that manifest despite the opinions of others. For those students advancing to higher education, academic plagiarism is a huge deal, and most colleges/universities have very strict, no tolerance policies regarding it. Better students learn about it and take it seriously in high school before they stake their entire college career on a mishap, in my opinion. This week we have the most diverse set of projects yet. We had to create a course website for our unit with all our previous and future projects. I took on the bulk of creating the website. It was more than I originally thought, not hard just time consuming. I like doing such projects because it gets my creative juices flowing; however, I can also get too consumed with creating and perfecting the craft. Weebly is easy to use but I did like how some of the formatting and apps worked. My biggest pet peeve of the project was that I personally would lay out my website differently. I can see where having a course website is helpful and beneficial; however, with all the learning management platforms, I don’t know how helpful and/or relevant a course website is, especially if your school requires you to use Canvas or Google Classroom.
Chapter 8 Prompt: Reflecting on your experience with the following subjects, (language arts, mathematics, history, science, music), which ones do you think would be adaptable for distance education and which ones would not? Why? Would there be a difference in adaptability depending on grade level? While I think that all subjects independent of grade level can be adapted for distance education, the larger question is SHOULD all subjects and grade levels be adapted for mass distance education. When I say, “mass distance education”, I am referring to distance education for the majority of school age children. Additionally, I should quantify normal distance education to a non-pandemic era. Socialization is a key component of school, especially for younger school-age children, and education should take place in-person as much as possible. All subjects and grade levels need to have a distance education component on an as-need basis for individual students, such for students with health issues, so that these students can keep up with their education and connect with others as much as possible. The COVID-19 Pandemic is not a normal time nor place, and educators are trying to construct a new version of distance learning that is unprecedented and in constant flux. There is no right or easy answer to address the challenges that educators have faced since March. In terms of subjects and adaptability, there are subjects that are easier and more inclined for distance learning than others. The social sciences are more easily adaptable than math and the arts (Visual art and music), in my opinion. I have taken many online classes in higher education (both undergraduate and graduate), and the most difficult online class I have ever taken was Statistics. I have to preface my difficulty with the fact that I am not mathematically inclined in the first place. It was an asynchronous class with no direct interaction with my classmates nor teacher. We taught ourselves through an online-statistics, interactive platform and a textbook. I just did not digest the same amount of information in this online class as I have in non-distance education math classes. The only reason that I took it in this format was because it was the only means offered. Distance education may be more reliant on the students rather than how adaptable the subject is, which harkens back to the issue of multiple intelligence and methods of learning individual to students, in my opinion. Project #2-5 Reflections:
This week the group projects involved creating a lesson plan utilizing and incorporating technology, an online survey, a Google document & slide presentation, and a podcast. And I may be biased, but my group is awesome! I must commend both Jana and Jon because they both chose unfamiliar technology to tackle all while dealing with unfamiliar content! Terry did a great job too in keeping us all on track and making sure everything was covered and completed in a timely fashion. I cannot wait for our next round of projects to work with even cooler Web resources! 😊 Project #2- Lesson Plan Project #3- Technology Survey Project #4 - Google Document Project #4- Google Slides Project #5- Podcast Chapter 7 Prompt: What are the challenges you faced with when integrating Web resources into classroom teaching and learning? Any resolution suggestions? Integrating Web resources into the classroom at times is easy, and other times it is challenging. There are 2 challenges that are particularly irritating to me. First, the big challenge that I encountered in the classroom was keeping students on-task. It seems that whenever I allow students to use the Chromebook in my classroom, they want to do check their grades on ActiveStudent or watch videos on YouTube. Thankfully, I have access to FamilyZone that allows me to ‘see’ what all the students are doing on while online and can block their access. However, students are smart and constantly try to get around my blocks. Students will get very upset when I completely block their internet access if they get repeatedly warned to do their assignments. I try to emphasize and teach them how to use both their time and resources wisely otherwise I cannot use the technology and all the benefits of technology in the classroom. One rule that I plan on trying out this fall is that students will have to appeal to get internet access reinstated if they fail to stay on task and lose my trust. The second challenge with teenagers is more general in teaching students to be responsible while using the internet, in particular social networking websites. I would have informal discussions occasionally when we used Chromebooks regarding the permanence of their content they share on the internet. For instance, I talked about how Facebook posts could influence future employers during the hiring process. I would give the example of a college professor I knew that was denied a position at another college because he had “I dig dead people” on his MySpace site. While it was an ironic statement because he was an osteologist/bioarcheologist who recovered and studied the skeletal remains of prehistoric and historic people, it was also of poor choice that could reflect negatively on his level of respect for the deceased, which could be reflected negatively on the college. I personally use Facebook to keep in touch with family and close friends and only post about 4 things: running/races, my artwork, my dog & cat, and my nephews. I also occasionally will do a google search with my name to see what pops up, and it really is limited to race results and academic endeavors I have participated in. Students do not think about such things, and it is our job as educators to introduce them to such in order to get them ready for the world outside of school. Project #1 Reflection:
While group work is not my forte, I truly appreciate and enjoy collaborating with my group members! Just a quick shout out to Terry for keeping on top of the assignments and corralling us; it always helps for someone to look ahead and plan. Jana is great at rephrasing ideas (especially from me 😊) so they make more sense, and Jon brings a novel outlook to our group that I appreciate. In terms of Project #1- Ideal Classroom Environment”, I am just jealous that I cannot have it in real life! One of my favorite features is having multiple TV screens set up around the classroom. As a teacher, I can use this to present material via PowerPoint or other method so that everyone can see the screen easily. Additionally, multiple screens mean that I can set up different learning stations or separate the class into groups and let them work on a slide show to present. In my classroom, I have just one TV screen I use an Apple TV for connectivity, but come this fall, I plan on trying to think about how I can use it in different ways than just presenting content material. Project #1- Grant Proposal Chapter 6 Prompt: Gifted students have special needs just as other students with unique needs. Imagine yourself the teacher of a gifted class. Select a lesson you are familiar with teaching and reflect on how it would need to be changed to address the needs of gifted students. What technologies would you employ to support this change? Gifted students pose their own unique challenges for teachers, especially general education students who must remember that each student is individually gifted. It doesn’t mean that teachers should speed up their instruction for these students or skip over material thinking they’ll pick it up on their own; it means that teachers should engage their gifted students. Both my brother and I were in the gifted program in elementary and middle school; however, we are gifted in different ways. My brother is incredibly smart. I’ll never forget how my brother got in trouble for reading during class because the teacher mistook this as he wasn’t paying attention while he really was bored. He does well on standardized tests and multiple-choice tests whereas I excel at essay-type assessments and do dreadfully on standardized and multiple-choice tests. He is very musically inclined, and I am artistically inclined. In my Zoology class, I teach a unit on the phylum porifera and cnidaria (sea sponges, jellyfish, anemones, etc.). One activity that I had the class do was to create a poridarian, a new creature that fits both phyla. For gifted students, I would have them not just choose the characteristics that match both phyla but rationalize why those characteristics fit into their make-believe environment. Additionally, I would have them present their new creature as a new scientific finding as seen at a scientific conference, which would involve a presentation using Google slides, PowerPoint, or Prezi. |
AuthorHi! My name is Nicole, and I am a high school science teacher. Blog Roll
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