Pilot Change Experience Reflection

This process was both challenging, but beneficial thus worth it. The most challenging aspect would be the one teacher who did not participate by using the technology tools in their classroom. I regret to admit the lack of communication that happened between myself, the technology leader, and this teacher. They felt they were not well equipped to handle using the two technology tools in their classroom. The most positive aspect would be that the other three teachers all agreed with my change and are ready to keep Showbie and Mastery Connect moving forward in their classrooms.

I believe that Showbie and Mastery Connect are still important tools to use in the classroom because of the value they add. They allow us to be better teachers and instruct to the best of our abilities, after assessing data and scores.

I believe the next steps for this pilot change program would be to integrate Showbie and Mastery Connect in other areas of the school. I could work with other departments in my school setting and work on teaching them both of these technology tools, improving their departments as well. Eventually, it might be possible that the entire school is using the same two tools to work through their assessments.

The next step for me personally as a change agent is to remember the importance of being a technology leader. I need to take the confidence that this program has given me and share my new talents with others to improve their technology usage as well.

Mastery Connect Reflection

Thus far in the semester, I feel that my perception of a technology specialist has relatively stayed the same. I had the notion that a technology specialist has to handle a great deal of change within the school, and often they are working as an individual or part of a very small team. However, this semester has given me the tools and opportunities to explore being a technology specialist.

I believe the most challenging aspect of being a technology leader in a school or education setting is that technology is always changing. Each and every day, technology becomes more and more advanced. This means, that as a leader we need to keep up with the changes and be able to teach them to others. As a technology leader, keeping our knowledge up to date and our perspective positive is crucial. I also feel that it is challenging that our students have grown up in an extremely digital age. They know more about technology than some of their teachers. This can be a challenge to convince and teach our educators that they can take control of technology and be the master in their own classroom.

When it comes to my implementation steps for my change project, I was only in the classroom two days this week so I was able to start teaching a math topic that would result in an assessment where I would collect data on Mastery Connect.

Reflection Coding for Educators

The Coding for Educators course was very beneficial to me. First off, I think the most important thing I learned was to be open to new ideas and not shy away when things are intimidating. Even the name of this course scared me because I was extremely unfamiliar with coding. However, as I took the course day by day it taught me to not give up and keep giving my best effort towards learning new things. Secondly, this course taught me about the variety of educational opportunities that the online world of technology has available to educators. As an educator, it is easy to get stuck in the ways of how we've done things in years past, but continuing my education and being a part of this course has reminded me of the numerous resources available to enhance learning in my classroom.

I hope that I continue to build upon my abilities as a coder. At the moment, I feel more comfortable with Scratch than Python. I plan on bringing Scratch into many different curriculum areas and having Scratch codes be part of my lessons. I think I could build upon Python by just becoming more comfortable with the program and using resources online such as videos to learn how to do certain aspects of it. I think once I become more comfortable with Python, I will also feel more comfortable about integrating Python into my coding lessons.

The ideas I have for using Scratch in my classroom are in the areas of Math and Reading. I plan on having students create a Scratch board that explains place value. Students will be required to have 4 numbers and an actor on the screen. Each of the numbers will be in a specific place value and when the actor reaches or touches that number, the actor should state the correct place value spot aloud. I will also use Scratch in Reading by having students create a scratch board that lays our and symbolizes a picture of a particular setting. They will then have characters of the story, book, or novel walk around that setting and act out or represent a quick scene from the book.

I was surprised with my abilities to persevere and learn a great deal in this course. Each week I shocked myself by being able to do the projects and code correctly. There were many times I thought I would not figure out the correct code to make the program work, but with determination and time I was able to complete every assignment. This was both the most challenging but also most rewarding part of my time in this course.

Be Social

Last semester, I explored the article The Social Media Teacher – Do’s and Don’ts. Since I never had thought about the area of social media in the classroom I felt this was a good place to begin. Below are my summaries and conclusions about the Do’s and Don’ts presented. I am including these in this blog posts as well because I think it’s a quick, good reminder for anyone about to indulge in social media in the classroom for the first time.

Borrowed from Positive Results Marketing 

The Do’s:

• Spice up your classroom – The can enhance writing skills through new areas such as blogging, instead of an old tactic like journaling.
• Get yourself involves – You may consider having a page yourself as the teacher in the social media site you choose. This allows you to post assignments, discussion topics, or leave comments on student work.
• Set up a monitoring system – A teacher needs to understand how he or she will make sure that the language and conversations going on online are appropriate. A teacher should also make sure that there are no online dangers to their students.
• Personal Learning Network - The use of other resources and people to connect and share ideas!

The Don’ts:

• Forget about online reputation management - It’s important to keep personal and professional life separate.  You also have to consider about the content your students are posting and how they will be a representation of themselves, your class, and the school.
• Become stagnant - A teacher should do their best to keep their educational social media site active and engaging. Once a teacher becomes inactive, students may loose interest and attention.
• Try and do too much - Educators must understand their limits and be prepared to manage a social media site to the best of their abilities.
• Forget traditional teaching - Social media should be used in collaboration to enhance traditional learning, not to replace traditional learning completely.

This semester however, I’d like to focus more on a new article, 9 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Classroom. Now that I’ve reminded myself of the Do’s and Don’ts, how can I actually engage in social media with my students in the classroom? This article intrigued me because right away I felt like I related to it. It starts with an introduction of the overwhelming feelings of anxiety that teachers can have when it comes to not only starting a new school year, but also including a new instructional strategy in that school year. Yes! I can relate to that.

It then continued with its 9 tips for bringing social media into the classroom. Below are the nine points the article suggests. I’ve explained a few in of these tips in greater detail and how I would use them in my specific classroom. 

Borrowed from Top Education Degrees 

• Get Social. I feel like the most beneficial way my classroom could get social would be to set up a classroom account on Twitter where we follow the authors of our books throughout Literature class. We could try posting questions or comments to the author. I think the students would love logging into this once a week and seeing what contact we’ve had.
• Blog. Each week, sometimes twice a week, students are required to journal. Instead of using the “notes” application on their iPad I could have them journal their responses in an online blog. Then their classmates could actually respond to their blogs.
•  Tweet.
•  Scoop.
•  Pin. Pinterest could be used to develop a board of potential lesson plans or a board that has to do with a specific topic. For example, we just finished a unit on weather in science class. We could create a Pinterest board with different images of weather, videos on weather, worksheets to complete about weather, maps and weather graphs, etc.
• Tumbl.
• Point and Shoot.
• Skype.
• Time it. A timeline platform can be used to discuss the events of a Civil War. This allows students to discuss and contribute to the same timeline during class.

Borrowed from Awe Learning 

This article provided me with small, easy tips to help adjusting my teaching style and incorporate social media into my instruction. I'm excited to implement this ideas, while remembering my do's and don'ts!

Media Literacy

Media consumption is something that’s always intrigued me. I personally think I myself use too much media in my life, and I see the same type of media consumption with my students. Sometimes I find myself on my phone, logging onto a social media site, then swiping up to exit that site, only to open it again in 5 minutes because I’m bored. Media can be an extremely beneficial tool when used correctly; it can also be dangerous when abused or sharing the wrong message. 

Media literacy is the concept of interacting with media and the messages received. I greatly enjoyed Rheingold’s article on social media illiteracies. His five focuses of attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption sure had my attention. Therefore, attention is one of the two areas I would like to focus on for today’s blog post.

Although I’ve only been teaching at a high school for four years, I have already seen a shift in attention from when I attended high school (2006-2010) to when I am working and teaching in a high school (2014-2018). I’ve talked to other colleagues and we seem to agree that it has become more difficult to keep attention of students.  I appreciated Rheingold’s comparison of a physical presence competing with the online world during instruction. All of our students have an iPad at their fingertips throughout our lessons and it is extremely difficult to keep them engaged in classroom discussion while they have the temptations of websites, applications, and games. Just as Rheingold mentioned he wouldn’t ban laptops from the classroom, I too would not take away the iPad or our technology because it has so many positive aspects as well, when the students choose to stay on that attentive avenue.  I think it is on the teacher to become the best teacher they can be to engage students and have the students want to listen to their lessons. Here’s a quick article on keeping students engagement in class.

I also appreciated his fifth point of critical consumption. I feel like we are constantly telling students that certain internet sources were not legitimate or are not allowed for specific assignments. I personally remember in high school the constant reminder that “Wikipedia is not a reliable source.” I included some Wikipedia memes for your enjoyment, below. I think teaching students about critical consumption would be the most beneficial point for them to focus on. It would be a good lesson on where or how to find reliable information and how to fact check information online.

For your viewing pleasure, inspired by our meme posts from a few weeks ago: 

Borrowed from MakeAMeme.org

Borrowed from Meme Generator.

Created by SchruteFarms2 and posted on Reddit.