Reflective Blog Post

In the Fall of 2015, I decided to take my first step towards becoming a teacher. I knew that this was a big step, and the first step into my ultimate future. I spent hours on finding the best professor and choosing which class to start with, and I am now 100% confident that I made the right choice. EME2040 was the absolute perfect way to begin my teaching experience. Though it is a technology focused class, I learned so much valuable information about teaching. Though it was an online class, I managed to gain many new friendships along the way. Though I never got to see or speak to my professor in person, I still felt that she genuinely and deeply cared about each and every one of her students. And though classes come and go with each passing semester, this is the first class that I really feel like I am going to miss.

In EME2040, we used a textbook called "Transforming Learning with New Technologies" by Robert W. Maloy, Ruth-Ellen Verock-O'Loughlin, Sharon A. Edwards, and Beverly P. Woolf. This has been one of the only textbooks that I've ever actually liked. This book greatly aided me in learning about numerous teaching methods, as well as how to incorporate technology into all of them. I found that the text gave really great examples and didn't ever beat around the bush. I only rented this book, but I'm wishing now that I could buy it because I feel it would definitely help me in my career, especially in the early stages, to be extremely successful.

Even though I won't have the textbook with me to use for reference in my career, I will have every single assignment, activity, and discussion done in this class, which could be even more useful. Throughout this course, I have accomplished more than I ever thought I could in a class. I kept a weekly blog, created a lesson plan, a Webquest, and a Teacher Web Page, I collaborated with other future educators to create a Wiki page, and I discussed real and important issues that I will have to deal with in my career. As for the learning objectives for this class, I feel that I hit the mark on most of them. I did struggle somewhat with the teacher web page and the webquest, but overall I think that I mastered all of the objectives.

My only suggestion I can think of to improve this class would be to make it a bit more challenging. While I think that the workload was the perfect amount and I learned more than I ever could've hoped to, I do wish it were just a bit more difficult with more chances for constructive feedback so that I can always be improving.

As I said before, this will be a class that I will always remember and look back on throughout my life and career. I thank everyone who was and will be involved in my learning process. To teach is to touch a life forever.


Resources: Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Weston, D. (2015, June 19). Unleashing Greatness in Teachers | David Weston | TEDxGrandRapids. Retrieved December 10, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebh7PkuWUe8

Digital Blog Post #L- Chapter 12

 This chapter in the text is all about integrating technology and creating change as teachers. The first topic in the chapter that struck a chord with me was the stages of technology integration. The stages of technological integration include entry, adoption, adaption, appropriation, and invention. In the entry stage, a teacher is learning about information technologies and needs to gain specific skills in computers and technologies before they can think about how to apply new knowledge to classroom situations. In the adoption stage, teachers are working on blending technology into their classroom practices without making any significant changes to those practices and is essentially at a basic level. In the adaption phase, teachers are fully integrating new technologies into traditional classroom practices and is using technology regularly. In the appropriation stage, teachers can easily and confidently use technology both in the classroom and for their own professional work. In the final stages, invention, teachers are beginning to experiment with many instructional patterns and ways of relating to students. They are also exploring new ways to creatively use technology in and out of the classroom and adding emerging technologies to a personal collection of professional skills and practices. I would say that I am currently in between the entry and adoption stages. I have learned about many technological properties throughout this course, but have not yet had the opportunity to apply them.

 The second topic in this chapter that I chose to address is technology integration issues. There are six issues that occur for classroom teachers that directly affect their efforts to integrate technology into teaching. These issues include administrative support and teaching style, unwillingness to change favorite lesson plans, reluctance to use technology in new lesson plans, use of technology as a reward or punishment, use of technology as an add-on to other activities, and use of technology to separate students by ability groups. The issue I am currently experiencing in my classroom is lack of administrative support, specifically lack of sufficient resources. My classroom consists of ten students. There are only six computers in the school and they can only be used by my class on Mondays. My classroom resources are restricted to a dry erase board. Though this is challenging, I am considering creating a WebQuest for my students and having them complete it on the computers. There are many walls we can run into as educators and it can seem like there is nothing we can do about it, but there is always a solution. I believe that creativity is one of the main keys to a successful classroom.

The third and final topic I will be writing about is becoming a technology-leading teacher. There are a few key strategies outlined in the text for becoming a technology-leading teacher. The first of these is writing grants, working with computer-using colleagues, joining professional organizations, celebrating digital learning day, involving students in technology and change, and developing a technology-leading mindset. I believe that the technology-leading mindset is the most important of all. Throughout this entire course, to accomplish any of the things that we are learning about and hoping to accomplish, we have to actually be willing and ready to persevere through all of the challenges that we will soon face. It can be very easy to fall into a routine and just throw something easy and simple together because it can take too much time to learn about something new and integrate it into your classroom, but I believe the most important thing you can do as a teacher is evolve. I, and most of my peers, plan to be in the teaching profession until retirement. That could be up to 50 years. So much can change in 50 years. Because of this obvious fact, we must continually evolve to keep up with our students. Imagine if they were teaching today the same way they were teaching in 1965. We, as humans, are always changing, always advancing. So it is of vital importance that we keep that in mind when we are teaching.

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Morrison, T. (2015, November 28). Chapter 12 Wordle. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from http://www.wordle.net/create 

Digital Blog Post #K- Chapter 6

The first topic I chose to address within this chapter is social bookmarking. Social bookmarking expands the concept of bookmarking from one user at one computer to a community of users on many computers. Basically, instead of a private resource library seen by one person, social bookmarks create a public list that can be viewed and added to by many readers. An example of social bookmarking is a website called Delicious. I have some experience with Delicious because of this course. In the beginning of the semester, I was required to create an account and put links that I've used for assignments on the account. Personally, I think that Delicious has been an extremely helpful resource. I also took the liberty of adding any links to my account that I thought might be helpful to me in my future teaching career. Little did I know, I would be starting a new job as a teacher last week and while I was stressing out about how unprepared I really was, I thought about all of the resources that I've learned about during this course. Delicious was one of the ones that assisted me the most when creating my lesson plans. Especially because I only had two days before I had to start and I was losing my mind and completely blanking. Thankfully, I had saved tons of resources beforehand for this exact situation. I think that some of the most important parts of being a teacher are being organized and prepared. Delicious and other social bookmarking websites are something that I would recommend to any potential educator.

Secondly, I have decided to write about WebQuests, since it was the most heavily covered topic in this chapter. A WebQuest is an online inquiry by students that are designed and guided by teachers. In a WebQuest, students follow an electronic map or take an online tour, moving from one web resource to the next to gather information and learn about a particular topic. The steps of a WebQuest include the introduction, task, process, evaluation, and the conclusion. During this lesson, I was required to create a WebQuest of my own. WebQuests are a very creative way to integrate technology into any thorough lesson. Unfortunately, I seemed to struggle with the WebQuest assignment. It seemed like a simple enough task, but for some reason I just couldn't really get a good grasp on it. Despite this, I do think WebQuests would be a very fun activity and a very valuable resource for some teachers. I personally do not think that WebQuests would be something that I would use in the classroom, but that could very well be because of the fact that I am still trying to adjust to using so much technology and I admittedly am still slightly biased in favor of traditional methods. WebQuests may have been a little too technologically advanced for me now, but I will definitely put one into my Delicious account and look into it again in the future.

The last topic that sparked my interest was online learning and virtual schools. Online learning and virtual schools refers to the delivery of educational experiences through computer and other technologies. The subject of online learning and virtual schools is highly debated and discussed. The ones in favor of online learning in virtual schools appeal to technology and the constraints of school budgets. Students are freed from a fixed schedule and more open to do other things. Critics of virtual schools state that online schools have a huge lack of social interaction with peers, have fewer opportunities to learn together collectively and receive less individual attention from instruction. During my educational journey, I have done both online/virtual school and on campus. I struggled with online schooling in high school but excel at it in college. I grew up with an autoimmune disease and online learning/virtual school was one of the absolute best things that I used. It's not for everyone, but I would definitely recommend giving it a try if you're interested.

Resources: Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Morrison, T. (2015, November 15). Chapter 6 By: Taylormorrison90. Retrieved November 15, 2015, from http://flipquiz.me/u/taylormorrison90/chapter-6

Digital Blog Post #J- Chapter 11

The first topic in this chapter that caught my attention was digital teaching portfolios, particularly because I know that I will soon be completing my own teaching portfolio. A digital teaching portfolio is a collection of education and professional materials stored in an electronic format. It serves as an organized collection of materials that show a teacher’s growth and development overtime. It may include copies of materials, videos, audio, PowerPoints, photographs, and other multimedia. The text states that beginning to build your teaching portfolio as soon as you start taking courses toward a teaching license is a way to use all the activities and ideas from classes, field experiences, summer work, and community volunteering as sources. I have completed many assignments and gotten tons of ideas for my future in teaching from this course alone. I also feel that I have managed to uncover parts of my teaching philosophy that I could not pinpoint before. I intend to use the portfolio as a guide to exploring my teaching and think critically and creatively about how to teach students the best that I can. I think creating a digital teaching portfolio will be very useful for me and I am very excited to complete it.

The second topic I decided to include in my blog is democratic schools and classrooms. The goal of democratic schools and classroom is to increase the involvement of students in educational decision-making and academic learning. Democratic schools and classrooms are places where students and teachers make decisions about important aspects of educational operations together. This can include academic curriculum to school climate and rules. Critics like to dismiss this method by saying that when given the opportunity, students will make immature decisions that will not benefit their learning. I disagree. I feel that students should be able to give their input and be involved in their own learning. I think that when given the opportunity, students will choose academic methods or rules that are fair and also benefit them. In my classroom, before beginning a lesson, I would always like to discuss with students how they would like to go about learning it. For example, I would ask if they would like to have a debate, complete a research project, or do a role playing activity and then put it to a vote. I can remember a time when I was in high school and the administrators changed a rule. The students didn’t like the new change and protested, which led to the students and the school administrators to have a discussion about the policy and make a decision together. This allowed for everyone’s voices to be heard and point of views understood. I feel that allowing a school or classroom to take the shape of a democratic environment allows students to feel like their voices and opinions are actually valued and they’re not being treated like children, which I believe leads them to behave more maturely due to being treated more maturely.

 The last topic that caught my eye when reading through the text was entitled, “reasons for teaching with clickers”. This refers to students submitting individual responses to questions by pressing a button on a clicker device slightly smaller than a TV remote. Depending on the clicker model, students can answer multiple choice, yes/no, true/false, ranking, numeric, and even short answer questions. Once all of the students have submitted their answers, the system displays the correct answer to the question as well as the percentage of students in the class choosing each response. Student participation with clickers has many instructional advantages, including active learning, student involvement, real-time feedback, and question-centered instruction. I have personally used this technology before in a college level Biology class. I am not very interested in or very good at Biology, but the clicker system sort forced me to pay attention in class and therefore, succeed. The clicker questions were used as a participation grade, so that while we were being lectured or taking notes on a PowerPoint, a question would pop up every now and then. If you weren’t paying attention, you would lose precious points. It also gives more shy students a chance to answer questions anonymously and not hold back for fear of being wrong or appearing foolish. I would love to use this type of technology in my classroom.

Resources:

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

 Morrison, T. (2015, November 9). Benefits of using Clicker Technology. Retrieved November 9, 2015. 

Digital Blog Post #I- Chapter 4

The first topic I chose to write about in this blog is using technology for lesson planning. So far in this course, we've learned a lot about technologies specifically for student use. This relates to students because it directly helps them, but is more so directed to making teachers jobs easier. The Internet is home to many resources for supporting lesson development using the student learning objectives and Understanding by Design (UBD) approaches. There are hundreds of already-assembled lesson plans on almost every subject. This resource has the potential to save hours upon hours of teacher's time. By doing a simple search on google, I found hundreds of extremely in-depth lesson plans for secondary social studies on a huge variety of subjects. There are also a number of lesson plan templates online available for teachers to create their own lessons without the hassle of having to create the whole chart to go along with it. When I become a teacher, I'm sure there will be more advanced technology than this, but I intend to utilize these types of technologies in order to be the most time efficient that I can be.

The second topic I will address is assessing and evaluating students. As teachers plan and deliver lessons, they are simultaneously designing ways to assess what students are learning. There are three factors that strongly influence how teachers think about assessment. These three factors are personal experience, standardized testing, and teacher tests. Personal experiences deals with the fact that teachers tend to teach how they were taught and assess the way they were assessed. This creates an endless cycle, and it leads to many teachers not utilizing new technologies that will indefinitely help their students to learn. Standardized testing is a method of assessment used all over the country. The 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation led to the dramatic rise of standardized testing. Standardized testing is a huge enterprise in the United States. A testing industry watchdog group estimates that 100 million standardized tests are issued to students K-12 in the United States every year. This method of attention is gaining a lot of attention lately, and not necessarily good attention. Many people, including myself, believe that standardized testing is not a very fair or effective assessment method. Lastly, teacher tests. Tests for teachers really affect how teachers think about assessment. Most states require teachers to pass a test before they can earn their teaching license. Assessing students is a complicated business. Some educators believe that test assessments best determine what a student know or is able to do in an academic area, while some believe that performance assessments more truly measure student learning. It is of vital importance for new educators to utilize both test and performance assessments in order to most accurately measure student learning progress.
The third topic that I found to actually be the most interesting is creating student performance rubrics. Student performance establish known-in-advance criteria to assess student performance, describe in concrete terms what students need to do to meet those criteria, and allow students and teachers to discuss areas in which the best work has been done or improvement is needed. I've found that I tend to do my best work when given a rubric to go along with the assignment. I think this is because rubrics provide me with very clear instruction about what is expected from me to succeed. I'm the type of person who prefers very direct instructions for things rather than my own free reign on an assignment. For this very reason, I am a huge believer in grading rubrics, but making an assignment clear, in your own mind and in the minds of your students, is not as easy as it seems. The usefulness of a rubric lies in its concreteness and how criteria are explained to students. The whole purpose of a rubric is to provide students with an idea of what is amazing, good, poor, or unacceptable work is. Therefore, it is imperative that we as educators know first exactly what we want from students and then pass that information onto them.

Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

 Morrison, T. (2015, November 1). Types of Assessments. Retrieved November 1, 2015. 

Digital Blog Post #H- Chapter 9

The first topic in this chapter to catch my attention was about using PowerPoint and other presentation tools in the classroom to express creativity. PowerPoint is a multimedia presentation software package that is a standard feature on many of today's computers. It is commonly used among teachers who must continually present students with information. It is vital to these teachers that they know the pros and cons of using this technology in the classroom. PowerPoint revolutionizes the older technology of using transparencies on an overhead projector. The software is much more effective than a projector because of its ease of use, time saving qualities, and ability to use more multimedia, such as pictures, voice recordings, and videos. PowerPoint and similar technologies can be very useful when used productively. Growing up in the emerging digital age, I was able to witness the transition between using chalkboards, to using projectors, and then PowerPoint. Almost all of my teachers have utilized PowerPoint in their classrooms, yet only some of them have been effective. I find that more often than not, PowerPoint is used solely for delivering notes, meaning that slides usually only display bullet points of information and other methods of multimedia are not used. This can easily lead to the majority of students tuning out during a presentation. Some other disadvantages are that PowerPoints cannot take the place of in-depth discussion and analysis and that slides may contain so much information that students become distracted from the main ideas.

The second topic that really interested me was the use of video in the classroom. Videos are often used for classroom instruction because they offer ways to present information while redirecting the method of instruction from teacher to screen for part of the class time. Most teachers will use video segments lasting from around 5 to 10 minutes rather than entire programs or films. Videos are great for student learning because they spark student interest, there is a great abundance of resources, and it can offer very unique learning experiences. But none of these reasons are the reason that I love the idea of using videos for instructional reasons. I am a firm believer in Multiple Intelligences and diverse learning styles. The three learning styles we all know about are kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. Though I am not a visual learner, I know someone who is basically the poster child for visual learning. He uses video resources, such as Khan Academy, to assist him in learning difficult subject matter. It's extremely exciting for me to think that students whose learning style is different from their peers can now be more easily catered to, giving every student the same opportunity to learn.

The last topic I chose to write about ties directly into the previous one. This topic focuses on another learning style, auditory learning. Auditory learners can use a relatively new technology called Podcasts. Podcast, a term that comes from the words iPod and broadcast, is an audio recording distributed online and accessed on computers or portable media player using free software such as iTunes. There are tons of educational podcasts on the Web available for download. Teachers and students can also record their own podcasts and listen to them on their iPods or share them. Students can listen to a teacher and other students discuss important academic material as a way to review and remember what has been presented in class, teachers can listen to themselves as a way to reflect on and improve how information and discussions are presented orally in class, and students and teachers can also develop exciting learning projects together, such as assembling oral history interviews into a podcast-based report or reading the texts of books aloud to produce a collection of audiobooks. The future is bright for students of all learning styles with the help of these advanced technologies that we must utilize in our future classrooms.

Digital Blog Post #G- Chapter 10

     The first topic to catch my attention was multicultural education in 21^st century schools. Multicultural education is defined as the way teachers go about “affirming” the expansive diversity of student interests, needs, and talents present in every school classroom. Multicultural education is based on the idea that all students should have an equal opportunity to learn. The idea is that we must provide majority students with information about people who are different from them, and diverse students with opportunities to locate themselves, their histories, and their cultures in the curriculum. Students tend to be more engaged when they can connect to the subject matter. This begins with creating culturally relevant curriculum and instruction. As an educator, you must find a way to connect the subject matter to student’s experiences. For example, using mathematics to calculate the distance between subway stops. You must also expand teaching methods to include small group learning opportunities rather than just whole-class or large group instruction. Small group learning gives students the opportunity to get to know other students and improve their cross-cultural understanding. Promoting group work among diverse groups of students can expand appreciation and understanding among students. There are also ways we can use technology to make learning easier and more interesting for diverse students. Resources such as online translators and international news and interactive maps can be helpful for those students who are linguistically or racially diverse and also those who are the majority and are eager to learn.

     Another topic I felt was important to address was differentiated instruction and universal design for learning. Differentiated instruction is an instructional approach in which teachers create different educational experiences as ways to meet the learning needs of individual students. To achieve this, you should think of multiple ways to achieve the same end result, then let students choose the way that makes the most sense to them. For example, letting students choose between writing and acting out skits or playing a series of games. A lesser example of this is in mathematics, when there are multiple ways or formulas to solve an equation, you teach all of the methods instead of just one so that if one way doesn’t make sense to a particular student, perhaps another will. This method of instruction allows for multiple learning styles to be addressed in the space of one class period. Universal design for learning is the application of universal design principles to educational settings. This method applies recent advances in understanding how the brain processes information to the design of a curriculum that can accommodate broad student needs. The idea is to create teaching and learning situations that serve the needs of the widest range of students without diminishing or reducing opportunities for anyone. I think that both of these methods are extremely important. It’s a fact that not one student is identical to the next. Everyone has different learning styles and different things that make sense to them, and this cannot be ignored, especially in the classroom. This is the first that I’ve heard about this concept, but I know that I definitely want to include it in my teaching methods when the time comes.

     The last topic I chose to address is assistive technology to reach diverse learners. Assistive technologies apply the concept of technological convergence to the ways that information technologies enable teachers to differentiate instruction and pursue universal design. These tools allow individuals with disabilities to do things they might otherwise not be able to do. Assistive technologies can help students with hearing, sight, mobility, cognitive, or other disabilities/challenges. These assistive technologies are relatively new, and I can only imagine how discouraging it must be to have a disability when trying to learn, but individuals with disabilities are finally getting more attention now and more and more assistive technologies are being produced every day. Some important technologies that may be avidly used in the classroom include speech recognition software, text reading software (or text-to-speech software), and interactive electronic storybooks or storybook applications. Our society is making leaps and bounds in promoting the success of diverse students and I am excited to see what other advances we’ll make and I will be able to utilize in the years to come.

Resources:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.


Morrison, T. (2015, October 18). Student Diversity Word Cloud. Created with Tagxedo http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html