Practicum Week 6

February 18th - 7 hrs.
Today I spent our district professional learning day with the media specialists and instructional technology specialists of Clarke County. The PL was lead by one of the two instructional technology specialists. Topics included creating plans and protocols for next year, creating a media specialist handbook, budgets, discussing needs at each level, "refreshing" 7-12 Chromebooks, book challenges, and the best ways to get ready for the upcoming statewide assessments. I spent downtime talking to the middle school media specialist team regarding their use of technology, their role as a technology leader in their schools, challenges they face, and how they are involved with different initiatives within their schools. My greatest take away from the meeting is the lack of focus our county has in regards to technology. Many media specialist voiced concern that they don't know who they can approach with their problems. One media specialists shared that she is frustrated with the regression our county has taken over the last two year. One way her school has compensated for a loss of instructional technology support is to form grade level teacher technology teams.

February 20, 2019 - 8 hrs.
What a great experience! I spent the day at Whit Davis Elementary School with Clarke County's Instructional Technology Specialist Dana Siegmund and his wife Carrie Siegmund, Director of Instructional Technology for Northeast Georgia RESA assisting in the management of a Breakout EDU experience for 3rd graders. (Prior to two weeks ago, I had no idea what a "breakout" involved.) Back in December, the third-grade classes at Whit Davis began a cross-content unit focusing on the impact of cell phones on gorilla habitats. Today was the Gorilla Breakout. It began by getting each of the four "zones" set up with the same four clues and supplies. At the beginning of each session, students were put into four groups of four or five, an overview of the task was presented, norms for the session were established, and directions were given. The students were given 30 minutes to solve the clues to find the combinations to the locks.
Overall, the students worked very well together to solve the clues. Most groups were finished with about 3 minutes to spare. However, no group solved the breakout without using their two hints. In order to use a hint, all members of the group needed to agree on its usage.
It was a great experience to see two technology specialist run this session.

 

Practicum Week 5

February 11, 2019 - 2hrs.
This afternoon I scooted over to Barrow Elementary School for another day of planning with Mr. Keith Weaver (4th-grade teacher) and Mr. Dana Siegmund (Clarke County Instructional Technology Specialist). Today we continued our planning of the upcoming Westward Expansion Unit for social studies. Today much of our collaborative planning involved a discussion of how to improve the hyperlink doc and what would be the best method to get students to create content related to the educational goals. To improve the document, we decide to have all the fourth-grade team members review the links and add any that they believed would enhance the learning opportunities for the students. In regards to student-created content, we decided that giving the students the options to use Flipgrid or SeeSaw to produce a video showcasing their work would be best. Mr. Siegmund has agreed to return to Barrow and provide some instruction to the students on how to use these tools.

Once again it was great to see how collaboration can take place. I have yet to see teachers in my school take advantage of Mr. Siegmund and what he can offer their students. My hope is that I can influence some teachers to reach out to Mr. Siegmund and utilize his wealth of knowledge.

Practicum Week 4

February 6, 2019 - 8 hrs.
Today I took a one-day "sabbatical" from my duties at Chase Street Elementary and spent the day at Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School here in Clarke County. An interesting sidenote is that I taught at BHL for five years when I first moved to Athens. The school has changed dramatically. Over the past two years, the building has been renovated. Even though the exterior looked the same, the interior was completely new. This includes the media center which is run by Ms. Shonda Foster. The media center no longer looked like just a library as I had remembered. Now, besides having books, there is a maker space, a study section, and an open classroom. Within the library, there are movable pieces of furniture allowing for flexible learning spaces. Despite these more modern elements, I was surprised by what I didn't see, computers or technology for students to access. This became more of a shock when I learned that there was not a computer lab in the building. For the record, there was one during my time teaching at the school 10 years ago.
I spent my time with Ms. Foster talking about technology between seeing every 6th grade ELA class throughout the day. I spent time talking to the SST (Student Support Teacher) about her role in the building. Most schools have an SST and their job is to assist in managing the student devices as technology issues arise. Clarke County began a one-to-one initiative about five years ago under the former superintendent who placed an importance on technology.
It is evident that Ms. Foster loves her job and is passionate about what she does. I left BHL with a smile on my face knowing how fortunate these students are to have such an amazing role model, teacher, and resource at their disposal.

February 8, 2019 - 3 hrs.
Today I got to see first hand how our Instructional Technology Specialist teaches lessons. Today's observation took place at Whit Davis Elementary School here in Clarke County. Over the week, the students in third grade have been learning about gorilla habitats. Their assignment was to create a habitat using paper, cardboard, natural elements such as leaves and sticks, etc. They also were required to complete a worksheet that outlined the key elements. Today was their day to present. After each group presented their habitat, Mr. Siegmund led the students through slides on Pear Deck. Each student logged into Pear Deck and answered 5 responses on the habitat presented. They included, "Will this be a safe habitat for gorillas?", "Will this habitat be healthy for gorillas?", and "Will gorilla be happy in this habitat?" Once all the students responded to a question, Mr. Siegmund had students share which elements they believe supported their selection. The last slide required the students to finish the statement, "I liked ...." in a text box. This gave the students the opportunity to reflect on the unique elements of the habitat created. These responses were projected onto the board and Mr. Siegmund randomly highlighted responses. However, he was constantly reminding students to provide specific details by drawing attention to those responses that provided supporting evidence. This was repeated after each presentation. The students became more efficient with answering the questions and they improved their written responses as more presentations occurred. Mr. Siegmund's use of technology to engage students and strengthen their understanding of habitats was fantastic.

Gorilla Habitat

Practicum Week 3

January 28, 2019 - 2 hrs.
This week is off to a wonderful start. Today I participated in my first collaborative planning discussion with Mr. Siegmund (Clarke County Instructional Technology Specialist) and Mr. Weaver (4th-grade teacher). This meeting took place at Barrow Elementary here in Athens. Mr. Weaver had reached out to Mr. Siegmund requesting assistance with adding technology into his social studies lessons. Together we discussed the curriculum, analyzed the overall goals for the unit on Western Expansion, and shared ideas that could be incorporated. The team settled on using a hyperdoc template that will be completed in the coming weeks. The team also discussed how to incorporate Flipgrid as a means of students sharing their work. The team will be getting together in the near future to continue the planning. Once the doc is completed and Mr. Weaver is ready to start the unit, the document will be pushed out through Google Classroom.

January 30, 2019 - 3 hrs.
Today I was fortunate to have been given a gift. The gift was a field trip by all fourth grade and fifth-grade students and this equated into the precious gift of TIME. This freed me and my site supervisor up for 3 hours to discuss the needs analysis for my professional development. We used this time to discuss the best approach to collect the necessary data. We settled on creating a Google Form that targets a variety of elements. The form was created and it will be sent out in the coming days.

February 1, 2019 - 2 hrs.
Ms. Hudson and I met up after school to complete the interview requirement of this practicum semester. We had a great discussion which began with the given questions but quickly encompassed a variety of other topics, concerns, and wishes. She shared her personal desires for our school and county. One such desire is the need for Clarke County to provide each school an Instructional Technology Specialist. She feels that the time for an increase in personnel is now. What's the purpose of having a one-to-one initiative when teachers are left on their own to implement strategies. This was a well-spent couple of hours.

Practicum week 2

January 23, 2019 - 2 hrs.
I sat down with Tanya Hudson, my site supervisor, and discussed the technology being used in the different grades. She shared that many of the iPads in the school are currently outdated, also, many of the iPad mini’s are currently not been used by homeroom teachers. This led to a long discussion about the lack of a technology initiative in our county. We discussed the need to conduct an inventory of devices that are becoming antiquated. The majority of time was spent sharing ideas for upcoming assignments.

Practicum Week 1

January 16, 2019 -2 hrs.
This week has been a whirlwind, but my practicum semester is now underway. On January 16th, I conducted my first observation with my site supervisor. We took the time to talk about the semester and the various projects that I will be completing and her role. I was also able to observe her teaching a fourth-grade class on the topic of westward expansion and how it affected the slavery discussion.

January 17, 2019 - 1hr.
On January 17th, our school held it's annual spelling bee competition. At the request of our principal, one of the counties two instructional technology came and set up a live stream of the event. I was able to assist in the process of setting up the live stream and had the opportunity to ask a few questions regarding the process and procedures. Mr. Siegmund shared that he has learned that the best method for streaming events is to create a landing page (a google slide or doc) that has a bit.ly link to the youtube live event. He is then able to share the document with those who would like access. In this case, the document was shared with Chase Street Elementary teachers.
In addition to the landing page link, I found his use of a second computer displaying the live stream to be brilliant. This allowed him to monitor the visual and audio components which were connected to a different laptop.

Mini-lessons

After much thought and struggle, I completely changed my topic for my mini-lessons. Originally, I was thinking about targeting something in the area of reading fluency. I struggled with attempting to find creative strategies. I then thought about creating my lessons on simple machines. Again, even though I could think of creative ways to extend the learning, I was struggling to come up with a solid approach. I then settled on European Explorers. I think I have my ideas worked out. However, I'm struggling to find ways to extend learning on this topic. Too late now!