Practicum Week 13

April 8, 2019 - 3 hr.
This afternoon I ventured back out  Burney-Harris- Middle School to conduct interviews for the Technology Administrator Report. I met with two students, two teachers, the SST, and the media specialist. I created a list of questions over the weekend and was prepared as I sat down with each. I interview everyone in the media center with the exception of the two teachers. These interviews took place in the hallway as they didn't have much time.

Overall I believe I now have the information I need to complete a thorough report. The information that I gained, was very helpful in understanding the role the media center plays. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend our standing collaborative meeting at Barrow Elementary with Mr. Seigmund and Mr. Weaver.
On a side note, during my daily collaborative teaching with fourth grade, I introduced the students and the general education teacher to Sutori.com. We are currently studying the battles of the Civil War and I located a wonderful timeline on this topic (Civil War timeline by David Stauffer). We have a time when the students come back from specials that we call "Snackivity" since they are eating their snacks. Today's, they needed to examine the timeline and think about what they like about it and what they think should be added to make it better. The students provided some great ideas like including maps and primary source materials. I like the thought of linking the various battles to Google MyMaps.

Practicum Week 12

April 1, 2019 - 2 hrs. 
This afternoon,  Mr. Siegmund and Mr. Weaver had another planning time. This session focused on Mr. Weaver's upcoming social studies unit on the Civil War. Some of the ideas we discussed were using Google MyMaps to create an Underground Railroad map from a location in the southern to Oberlin Ohio and using SeeSaw to have the students do some interactive lessons. We then worked on creating a hyperdoc for this unit.

Practicum Week 11

March 25, 2019 - 45 minutes

We taught the first lesson of our digital citizenship unit on creating a positive digital footprint. Overall, the lesson went well. The students seemed to enjoy the content as they made get connections between the material and things in their own lives. There was a slight issue getting students to access the site through the Google Classroom link. Fortunately, I had created an easy bit.ly link that I wrote demonstrated how to type into the address bar (bit.ly/DFootprint). Other than that initial problem, the lesson was successful.

enjoy the content as they made get connections between the material and things in their own lives.

March 26, 2019 - 45 minutes
Day 2 - This lesson went a little longer than we had anticipated. However, we adjusted on the fly to make it work. We began with Ms. Hull reviewing the content from lesson one. The students did a nice job remembering what a digital footprint is. After the review, we moved into the 5 P's for creating a positive digital footprint. There were no issues during this lesson other than the time factor. The main reason time became an issue was because the students were sharing a lot their personal experiences.
The lesson ended with the students using Flipgrid to create a video response. This was the students' first experiences using Flipgrid and they did a great job. Ms. Hull shared with the class that they will be using Flipgrid more often. the students were very excited about this.

March 28, 2019 - 45 minutes

Day 3 - We wrapped up the Digital Footprint unit this morning. The lesson began with the students watching some of their peers' Flipgrid videos. Ms. Hull and I had viewed the videos yesterday and selected some to show. This was the highlight for the students.
Once again, the lesson went longer than we had anticipated. We had to shorten some of the experiences with the interactive games. However, overall, the lesson and unit were a success.

Practicum Week 10

March 18, 2019 - 2 hrs.

I spent two hours today talking with Ms. Hull, a third-grade teacher at Chase Street, about being my collaborator for my digital citizenship lesson. Two weeks ago, Ms. Hull approached me regarding her desire to begin using Flipgrid with her students. She stated that she is also wanting to start a class blog that students can post to and share their learning experiences. Since we initially talked about these two ideas, I realized that this would be a great opportunity to have a few lessons on a digital footprint.

Today was our first chance to begin planning/discussion these lessons face-to-face. My first question to her pertained to digital citizenship. This was a new concept for her. We spent a good amount of time talking about the different aspects of digital citizenship. We both came to an agreement that a unit on "The Five P's for a Positive Digital Footprint" would be the best element to target. We spent time researching information that we could include in the lessons, the platform we should choose for the lessons, and different web 2.0 tools to include. We did decide to create a hook using social media icons and seeing how many students can identify/name. We also used this time to create some objectives.

Overall, this was a productive use of time. I just hope she does not start feeling overwhelmed with learning a new topic.

March 20, 2019 - 1 hr.
This afternoon I met with Ms. Hull to share with her some of the elements I think we should place into our digital footprint lessons. These included videos, interactive sites, and games. She agreed that they would be very appropriate to tackle the objectives we discussed.

March 22, 2019 - 2hrs.
After school, Ms. Hull and I met to work on the collaborative unit.  We first talked about how to assess the students' learning. We settled on using Google Forms for the pre-assessment, post-assessment, and the assessment after lesson 1.  I showed her Flipgrid and we decide to use it as a way to have students share their thinking with video. We decided that it would work best after lesson 2. I introduced Ms. Hull to Wakelet as a way to curate resources and she thought it would be perfect.

The rest of our time was used to look for resources and begin creating the Google Site.

Practicum Week 9

March 11, 2019 - 8 hrs.

Spring break in Elberton!!! I hope to get some shirts made to celebrate this week.
Today was the first of my five full days of traveling to Elbert County School District to follow Mr. Clint Winter, Instructional Technology Coordinator for the district. Clint is halfway through his second year in this position. Prior to his employment in Elbert County, Clint was an Instructional Technology Specialist in Clarke County for four years. Fortunately, I now get the experience of seeing exactly how a technology coordinator handles the day-to-day requirements of the position.

The day began with a cabinet meeting that included the Superintendent, Director of Instruction, Director of CTAE, and the Instructional Technology Coordinator. The purpose of this meeting was to review the districts testing platform. Much of their discussions focused on how to be proactive regarding upcoming changes within the current platform.

The next meeting involved the Central Office Leadership Team. Here the team prepped for the night's board meeting. The Superintendent requested information pertaining to the districts technology initiatives. He asked for the exact number of Chromebooks at the different instructional buildings, the number of help desk tickets opened, and closure rate. The Technology Director shared that tickets are being closed within a day of them being generated and the Superintendent requested that they praise the technology team at the meeting tonight. The Superintendent also asked that the Technology Director share information pertaining to the network and infrastructure upgrades taking place.

The morning was finished off by attending another meeting to hatch out the details from the morning cabinet meeting. The team, minus the Superintendent, met to discuss how to move forward with the test platform issues. The team attempted to predict questions by building administrators, discusses the concerns of the teachers, and when to contact companies to schedule webinars.

The afternoon began with a call from a concerned parent asking that the district lock his daughter out of her school email account. Apparently, she was sending and receiving inappropriate messages with a male student. This was investigated through Google Admin features and through GoGaudian data. The two students were indeed committing such acts and were placed "in the penalty box." This restriction, for those who violate the code of conduct, limits the websites students can access.

The afternoon involved visiting a teacher and the media specialist at the high school to assist them with WeVideo, a web-based video editing site. The county recently purchased a license for all teachers and students in grades six through twelve. This teacher is excited to have her students begin making content on books they have read.

It was an action-packed day. Can't wait to see what tomorrow hold.

 


March 12, 2019 - 8hrs.

My second day in Elbert County School District with Clint Winter. Today I was tasked with creating an informational Google Site for WeVideo. The school district recently purchased a district-wide license for all teachers and students in grades six through twelve. The purpose of the Google Site is to provide teachers with a tutorial n how to use WeVideo as well as to provide ideas on ways it can be utilized.

I spent the first half of the morning watching tutorials and playing around with on the platform. I then moved to the planning phase of the website. I wrote out some overall objective, mapped out a few of the pages to include, and then began creating. (It's not complete at this point.)
WeVideo Introduction

The creation process continued after a quick lunch and only concluded when Mr. Winter needed to go visit a coding club at the middle school (fifth through eighth grades) This after school coding club consisted of 10 girls who clearly have an interest in coding. I used this time as an opportunity to make some observations around the media center. There was a maker space, 3D printer, a wall dedicated to being a digital learner.

Mr. Winter spent the majority of his morning troubleshooting issues with GoGaurdian. He also took multiple phone calls with technology support staff and answered many e-mails. The rest of his day he worked on a nine choice document we will be using with sixth graders.

March 13, 2019 - 8hrs.

Teaching, teaching, teaching; that was how we spent this day. We began and ended our day teaching sixth grades how to create a map using Google MyMaps. The sixth-grade social studies teachers are currently teaching their students about our northern neighbor, Canada. Yesterday, while I was creating the WeVideo Google Site, Clint was creating a nine choice document for today's lessons. The choices ranged from having students measure distances, label regions, find locations and drop pins, watch videos and make observations regarding the location, etc.

Quick note, Elbert County is One-to-One with Chromebooks in fifth through twelfth grade

After spending about 8-10 minutes introducing the assignment, he released the students to complete the tasks. This lesson reminded me a little of the Breakouts I participated in at Whit Davis Elementary. Part of the lesson is for students to use trial and error, problem-solving skills, and communication skills with peers.

Overall, the assignment went great in all classes. Students were engaged with the content and not one student was observed being inappropriate with their device. The students explored the different features and figured out how they work. The one area of difficulty that needed to be explained was how to capture YouTube URLs and knowing where to paste them on the pin drops. However, once a student was shown, they did a wonderful job of helping peers.

March 14, 2018 - 8hrs.
Mr. Winter and I began the morning at the board office. I spent the morning continuing to work on the WeVideo site. Clint expressed his desire to push that out to all the middle and high school teacher by tomorrow. (No pressure!)

After a few hours of working on the site, we were off to the elementary school (second through fourth) to meet with the school psychologist to talk about read&write. She reached out to Clint yesterday regarding a student who is being tested for special education. The initial results indicate that this student has processing deficits with written language. However, his auditory learning is extremely high. He wanted me to discuss Read&Write with her and how it could benefit the student and the teacher. I shared my face-to-face staff development presentation and the online staff development with Clint in case he wants to use it in the future.

After lunch, we met with the elementary school testing team: building technology specialist, county's technology director, county's technology coordinator, principal, assistant principal, testing coordinator for the building, and special education team leader. Many things were discussed a few are included:

-Discussion about how to login to DRC link,

-Wifi concerns in the mobile units and at the far end of the building

-AP (access points) in the building and the need to borrow two from the high school

-Concerns with student devices (headphones and Chromebooks)

-How the building will be staffed during Milestones to provide tech support

Clint listening to the concerns of the principal.

After the meeting, it was back to the board office to continue the Google site. Ready to sleep by the end of the day.

March 15, 2019 - 8hr.

My last day in Elbert County School District. The plan was to participate/listen to multiple webinars on testing platforms, however, the technician at the high school called in sick, so we were off to the high school to fill in. Things were pretty slow, so I continued to work on the WeVideo site. 

The most interesting part of the day occurred when we met with the administration team and two students who have been making videos for the golf team and track team. Clint expressed his desire to get some students to make a video on innovative teaching in Elbert County. The students and administrators are all on board.  

After lunch, we were back at the BOE to learn Questar, the new online platform that will be used for the first time with LID special education students. Over the years, students with severe and profound disabilities have taken the GAA (Georgia Alternative Assessment). This involved teachers putting together portfolios for these students to show how they worked on various standards. Now, the state is moving to an online assessment and stakeholders are nervous.  

After reading and discussing concerns regarding Questar, we finally got to the webinar on the testing platform. The webinar was on Illuminate Education. Clint and the cabinet team wanted more information regarding how their testing data is presented.

 What a Spring Break!

Practicum Week 8

March 7, 2019 - 2 hrs.

Today was my staff development presentation at Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School. This was my second attempt to present my material on Read&Write. A variety of scheduling conflicts developed last Thursday with the staff members at BHL so it was rescheduled for today. I must say that I was not as nervous as I thought I would be. I have never enjoyed presenting to adults but this felt different. Maybe it was the fact that I spent an hour going over the slides with my site supervisor and her feedback was very constructive.
I got to the school about an hour before the scheduled time. One reason was that I never received a confirmation as to where I would be conducting this presentation. I wanted to make sure I would be able to lock down a location, iron out technical issues, and just be prepared. (I have been to staff developments where those presenting struggled with the details; I did not want that to be me.
Overall, the presentation went well. I did have one issue that I problem solved during the presentation. When I went to model the highlighted elements of Read&Write, the extension icon was not loaded on my taskbar. I had thought that when I logged into the computer as myself, all my extensions would transfer. This was the one technical aspect that I had not anticipated. However, I managed to work through that by observing my participants use the tool on their laptops.
Was the staff development successful? Well, post-assessment data indicate that I achieved my 3 goals with 100% accuracy. All the feedback was great and helpful. In the coming week, I hope to dig down and how I could improve the presentation. It looks like I will getting another opportunity to deliver the content. My assistant principal heard about what I was doing and have requested that I provide the PL for the teachers in my school.

Practicum Week 7

February 25, 2019 - 2hrs.
Today, Dana Siegmund, Keith Weaver, and I continued with our collaborative planning of the hyper doc for social studies. We finished the unit on Louisiana Purchase and continued working on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Our main conversation was around how to incorporate a technology element into the sharing of research information. We discussed using Tour Builder to map the route that Lewis and Clark took to Oregon. The class would be put into groups of two and they would choose from 10 prominent locations on the trail. Their task would be to write a journal entry from that specific location using the information they gathered from curated online sources. Students would locate information regarding the climate for their particular area, different sights they would encounter, and hardships they endured. Time was also devoted to searching for online resources.

On a side note, I introduced my fourth-grade collaborative class to Flipgrid. I used it as a formative assessment to measure the students' understanding of the differences between the northern and southern economies prior to the Civil War. Overall, the students did a great job. They showed a great deal of excitement with creating their own videos.   

March 2, 2019 - 4hrs.
What a fantastic way to end the week. I spent this Saturday morning attending Edcamp GA held on the campus of UGA(#EdcampGA). The morning was broken into four sessions. I attended Virtual Reality in the classroom, Unconventional Google Classroom Ideas, Robots and Elementary Math, and Digital Hoarder. Throughout the morning, I gained great valuable knowledge that I can incorporate into my teaching. The most interesting session was on virtual reality in the classroom lead by Dr. Chris Greer. He spent time explaining where he sees VR as having an impact on public education, provided links to virtual reality videos on YouTube, and let attendees use his Oculus Go. This was my first time experiencing VR and it was pretty amazing.
The other session that I found extremely useful was Digital Hoarding. This session provided different ideas for curating digital content. I found one tool particularly impactful, Wakelet. For me, this is a new curation tool that I can see myself using right away. I envision organizing digital content for a given a math unit or as a digital portfolio for students. I am very excited about the possibilities of this tool.
At the other two sessions, I learned valuable ideas for using Google Drawing, Edpuzzle, Tinkercad, Doctopus, Symbaloo Learning Paths, Classroomscreen, and how Ozobots can be used in a math classroom to teach concepts like area and perimeter.
Another important element of the morning was networking with ed tech specialists from the region and from higher ed (UGA and Georgia College). This was time well spent.

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! 

Blog Reflection

This semester has been my first attempt at blogging for academic purposes. A few years back I attempted to blog for fun as a way to have an online journal. After a few weeks, I struggled to keep it going. The challenge was being motivated to write down my thoughts when I knew no one was reading my posts. The purpose of the blog was for personal reflection on happenings in my life, not for others to read. However, for this class, there was the obvious accountability of having others commenting on my posts. This added “pressure” kept me engaged and thinking about what to write. I continually checked for postings of my group using Feedly, and I enjoyed reading and commenting on those posts. This continual involvement made the process of posting, monitoring, and responding quite efficient and manageable.

I do wonder if the same type of interactions would be achievable by having a group blog. As I think about how to implement this type of activity in my instruction, having multiple locations for students to search seems cumbersome. I believe having all students posting on the same blog/discussion board/platform, similar to the discussion boards used in GoView, would be easiest to manage at the elementary level. I have had success using Padlet as a means of sharing reflections, but with the changes at Padlet, I believe finding an alternative means of sharing discussions will be necessary. These blogging assignments have given me some ideas moving forward.

I found the blogging assignments added an additional level of comprehension. First, I spent additional effort analyzing my responses prior to posting. Peer pressure still works. Second, reading posts by my group members provided greater understandings of the readings. I benefited from reading someone else’s thoughts and interpretations. Third, by responding to posts, I was forced to analyze the opinions of others and find a way to respond either in support or in disagreement.

In regards to the course readings, I found most of them to be informative. The articles that provided me with some of the most practical, as well as insightful, information were those on how to search more effectively with Google and those explaining the Growth Mindset. Prior to the reading on Google searches, I was unaware of the various methods and shortcuts to make searches more effective and efficient. I particularly enjoyed learning about the reverse image search feature. I found the Growth Mindset articles to be inspirational and something that I need to review every so often throughout the school year. The wide range of topics also was enjoyable. Each week there was always a new topic that triggered ideas to improve my instruction.

Inquiry Learning

For the past nine years, I have been a special education collaborative teacher working with third and fourth graders. Over the course of these years, inquiry learning has always been a component of lessons with the use of essential questions in each content area. However, we now have moved beyond just having these lesson-focused questions to where we are constantly encouraging students to be active and engaged learners who ask questions and attempt to find solutions individually or with peers as a community of learners. A few years ago we began implementing Dan Meyer’s Three-Act Tasks during our math class once a week. The majority of the students enjoyed the process of asking any questions they wanted about the first task. My favorite part is always observing and listening to the discussions regarding which questions are the most poignant towards finding an ultimate solution. This year our social studies classes were highly engaged while learning about the siege of Boston in 1775-1776, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and life on the Oregon Trail because they had problems to discuss and attempt to solve, build models, and tried to strategize as if they were participants. I believe inquiry learning goes beyond just the facts that anyone can look up on some website. Inquiry learning requires students and teachers who are willing to ask tough questions and have opportunities to interact with the facts to promote engagement, interest, and understanding of topics.



I have been trying to determine what my lessons will be about. This has actually been a very challenging activity for me this week. At this current moment, I believe I am going to focus my mini-lessons on reading fluency. This is an area that I have been attempting to move from a weakness to a strength, so I’m going to give it a try. There are eight principles of inquiry-based learning that I will attempt to address in my three mini-lessons.

Authenticity - When it comes to the reading fluently, the importance and relevance need to be made clear. Reading is a skill one uses throughout their lives whether within the school walls or beyond. It allows the individual to comprehend ideas, entertain, communicate, and gain greater knowledge. As one becomes more fluent, internal motivation rises, leading to the desire to read more. However, poor fluency leads to poor comprehension and a loss of motivation.

Deep Understanding - In my experiences with reading fluency, many students struggle not because they don’t know their letter-sound correspondence but because they lack strategies to determine the sounds of vowels. Providing students the opportunity to understand that they do have a great base upon which to build, is a way to understand and focus on their weaknesses. Helping students see the flaws in their preconceived ideas pertaining to their reading inability, hopefully, begins the process of building up their confidence and engagement. From this point, developing individual reading goals with the students takes them to that deep understanding of themselves as readers and learners.

Assessment - Using a variety of assessments provides the opportunity to check in on individual growth and progress towards their goals. I’m not quite sure how to address this at this time. Some ideas include using vocaroo.com and rate themselves based on a rubric, providing peer feedback with a glow and a grow, etc.

Appropriate Use of Technology - We are fortunate that all students in our district have access to myon.com which provides thousands of high-interest digital books which are read by a human reader. Students love them. This technology gives students the opportunity to listen to books on their independent and instructional reading level. There are a great number of strategies to use that include listening to a passage and then re-reading it independently, attempting to keep up with the audio reader and highlighted words, etc. Technology motivates students in school or at home. Having access to these sites at home provides an opportunity to continue the learning with parents, siblings, grandparents, whomever. Also, creating individual Google Docs, students can record challenging words but also attempt to determine the meaning of those words using various strategies.

Performances of Understanding - Providing students opportunity to actually read aloud a paragraph or page they have practiced or described main elements of their reading are strategies I am thinking about incorporating to fulfill this principle. Still working this out.

Connecting with Experts - I like the idea of Skyping with an author or enjoying a read aloud with the media specialist. In each instance, providing the students' opportunity to ask questions such as, “Why did you read the dialogue that way?” can give great insight for students struggling with reading fluency.

Student/Learner Success - Student success will be determined by each individual’s progress towards their goals. Students will be able to use multiple methods; a video recording using screencastify, reading one on one, or audio recording using audacity, screencastify, or vocaroo.

Ethical Citizenship - Incorporating copyright laws and digital citizenship components into my first mini-lesson seems appropriate. For these mini-lessons, I envision students accessing various websites and providing them with information on how to be safe consumers of information.

Goal Reflection

It’s time to reflect on my progress towards my goals. To do so, first, let me repost my goals.

1) At the end of the summer semester, I will have established a platform upon which to build my professional learning network.
2) At the end of the summer semester, I will be able to identify and use four new web 2.0 tools for improving my professional learning network.
3) At the end of the summer semester, I will be able to infuse newly acquired knowledge into weekly lessons through the 2018-2019 school year to improve the learning of ALL students.

So far during this summer semester, I feel that I am making adequate progress towards these goals. Goal 1) I have begun creating my PLN through this blogging site by adding many, but not too many, RSS feeds. These include Twitter and blogging feeds. In addition, I have been conducting searches and adding quality sites to my Symbaloo webmixes. Goal 2) prior to this semester, I had not used Symbaloo, Blogger, Weebly, or Twitter for PLN purposes. I plan to continue to improve my use of these sites as well as look for others that will enhance my PLN. Goal 3) my knowledge of these platforms has definitely opened my eyes to how I can incorporate them into my classroom. For one, I have discovered that Weebly has an education component that provides teachers with the ability to create a class website and the ability to manage student accounts. Using curation sites such as Symbaloo and Scoop.it allow students access to teacher recommended sites for games, research, worksheets, online links, etc. I especially like the ability to differentiate links based on the needs of individual students.

This week I have read articles related to the importance of having a growth mindset. (I have needed a growth mindset since the beginning of this summer semester.) It is easy to become overwhelmed and frustrated with technology and the complexities of the platforms associated with them. It’s easy to have a fixed mindset. However, we must remind ourselves that old dogs CAN learn new tricks. Carol Dweck tells us that our "brian is like a muscle and can grow over time."  Being an old dog, I need to remind myself of this fact.  In her article "Even Geniuses Work Hard", Dweck encourages teachers to embed the word "yet" at the end of "I cannot do that" sentences.  "I do not know how to embed a live Twitter feed into blogger yet," or "I do not know how to create a Weebly site yet," are personal examples from this semester. By adding that one word, I give myself the power to persevere and find ways to overcome these deficits.  The greatest benefit of this technological age is having access to tutorials via YouTube, websites, Q and A’s with those more knowledgeable, and other self-help resources. These resources help us overcome the “yet.” There is great satisfaction in completing a task which you previously could not do or were scared to attempt.

Letting Go

This past November, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Georgia Ed Tech Conference. The best presentation I heard happened to be the very first presentation on day one. Jaime Casap, the Chief Educational Evangelist at Google, gave an inspiring talk about changing the educational model from one with students regurgitating and memorizing facts to one that is inquiry driven. He stated that education is no broken but just needs to be tweaked. Advancements in technology have altered the way the new generation of students learn. Students, through open source materials, can be their own problem solvers. He stated that this shift should encourage us not to ask what our students want to be when they grow up but to ask what problems do they want to solve. (Video worth watching Jaime Casap National Conference Keynote 2016)

There are two reasons I make reference to Jaime Casap. The first is that I read an article by Grant Wiggins titled Great Teaching Means Letting Go. The second is that I watched a discussion led by Chris Lehmann focused of inquiry learning. Both of these media discuss the changing face of education and the need for educators to adapt to these changes. In the article, Wiggins discusses the need for students to transfer learned concepts and strategies to various situations. He emphasizes the importance of students working independently with the teacher’s role being one of inquiry asking students about “what they did, why, and what did and didn’t work” (Wiggins, 2016). In the podcast, Lehmann shares his belief that learning needs to be inquiry driven. Teachers need to ask questions that go beyond their own understanding and encourage students to do the same. Lehmann states technology has transformed teachers from being a source of knowledge to being mentors who build caring systems and structures to support student centered learning environments. Casap’s GAETC talk completely supports the ideas and beliefs shared by Lehmann and Wiggins. All three believe that good teaching need to be inquiry driven with Lehmann and Casap going further by including educational technology as a key component.

As I spend the summer weeks decompressing the 2017-2018 and then preparing for the 2018-2019 school year, these ideas are and will be at the forefront of my analysis and preparation.

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Searching the interwebs has become a necessary part of my world and probably the world of most educators. After completing the Google Challenge on multiple days, I realized that my search techniques are effective for finding the necessary information but a bit “messy”. I understand how to use keywords and multiple phrases to find the answers to the questions. What I don’t know are all the ins and outs of Google’s searching shortcuts. I have decided to spend some time in the coming weeks learning how to incorporate two or three shortcuts to improve my searching skills. I think the asterisk, quotation marks, and colon will be the three I will begin using.

What I’m realizing is that these “shortcuts” can help narrow the abundance of information to a better collection of credible sources. In today’s world where anybody can be an author, the more tools we have to decipher reliable sources from garbage the better. Finding information on any topic is possible, but the reliability of the source must always be questioned.

Back to a brief reflection on my searching pattern. I recently read the article, “The Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future” and began thinking about how I conduct internet searches. I’m not going to lie, there are times (more often than not) where I will type in the actual question I am trying to answer. After reading the aforementioned article, I fall into a category of searchers who bounce from site to site, skimming content, and sometimes squirreling away PDFs to print off and read at a later time. I think much of my search behavior stems from having such limited time due to my profession, family responsibilities, and lack of free time.

Interestingly enough, some of my searching techniques are similar to teenagers. According to the article “How Teens Do Research in the Digital World,” teenagers often want to find answers quickly, lack patience and persistence when searching topics, and conduct searches based on questions. This occasionally occurs during my research as well. Another issue with teens doing research is that results can be reiterations of similar content. Debbie Abilock recommends using the method of triangulation to avoid this. Triangulation involves locating three different points of view pertaining to a topic.

Having been born in 1976, I’ve been labeled as a member of Generation X, arguably the greatest name for a generation since “The Greatest Generation.” People with birth dates beginning in 1993 are known as the Google Generation. Those born during this year and the years after have never known a world without the internet. Their first stop for information: “Okay Google.”

With the advancement of the internet, Google searches have become an integral element of our daily lives too. From checking weather, to ordering toilet paper, to consuming news, to connecting with friends, to researching any possible topic; the internet has become an element we can’t live without. I guess that makes us all adopted members of the Google Generation.

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I don’t mean to be Captain Obvious, but I’m sure we all have experienced the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips when we are online. Having watched Infowhelm, I now have an understanding for why I have this feeling. This video shares an interesting perspective of the amount of information that is stored on the web. I3 stacks of books to Pluto if all was printed! (How many pages per book?) With so much “information” coming at us through social media, blogs, podcasts, emails, videos, etc., how do we discern facts from “alternative facts,” relevant from irrelevant, worthy of digesting from junk?

To some degree we all have strategies for guiding us through this process. As teachers with limited time, finding efficient strategies is necessary. To this purpose, I found Byan Alexander’s article regarding “info wrangling” extremely relevant. His system of receiving “inputs” from various sources, reflecting on that information, and then sharing thoughtful reflections tackles this filtering of information. However, his depth of “inputs” is extreme for me. Narrowing down these inputs to a handful of quality sources seems more effective. Karen Lirenman in The Journey from Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency discusses her success using Twitter. As Lirenman built her PLN on Twitter, she discovered a wealth of inspiration from like-minded educators. She also embraced one main element discussed in Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning, and that is that you should embrace failures.

Upon reading Karen Lirenman’s article, I found that she has ideas related to my goals. She states that she is “gaining knowledge, and looking for ways to tweak the growth of others to better suit my own growth,” and “trying to be the innovator instead of the follower.” I share the same desires.