Digital Tools for Learning Final Thoughts
Digital Tools for Learning has been the most challenging course I have taken on my journey through acquiring my Instructional Technology degree. I learned a great deal about digital divides, digital equity, and a plethora of tools to implement in my classroom. I believe that I learned about more programs, devices, and tools throughout this course than in the past several years of my teaching career. I've shared many of these strategies, devices, tools, and programs with both our instructional coach, my colleagues, and our administration in hopes that we could implement many of them to positively impact students at my school. I have a unique position at my school being an exploratory rotation teacher. I have the privilege of teaching every student in our school and I have a wide variety of students across the learning spectrum, from gifted learners, students with disabilities, adaptive learners, and English as a Second Language Learners, just to name a few. By reading through my peers’ blog postings and learning about the tools in which they chose to review, utilize, and blog about, I gained at least one new device or strategy for each population of students that I teach. This experience alone is invaluable. I found the blog posts to be very engaging. I enjoyed reviewing many different resources from different disciplines and comparing my findings, thoughts, and opinions with those of my peers. I gained a lot of perspective from the responses my peers wrote to me on my blog postings. I was asked many Socrative questions from my peers that caused me to think critically and creatively about my posts, and in some cases rethink my stances. As an educator, we must be open to constructive criticism and be willing to continuously grow and gain new knowledge from other experts in our field. I feel that the structure of this class allowed for me to learn and grow in this manner, and also allowed me to contribute to others growth and success through my reviews of their resources and postings.
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Dissecting Digital Divide I always find it interesting to read about digital divides among various populations of students. Teaching in the year 2022, one would think that all students are provided equitable opportunities in classrooms across America given the degree of technology that seems to be readily available for our students to utilize. However, when researching specific populations of students in differing areas, it becomes apparent that many students are not being provided the same opportunities regarding technology. For example, when reading the National Education Association report “Digital Equity for Students and Educators, “502,591 students in the state of Georgia report that they do not have full access to the internet.” (National Education Association, 2020) 27.3% of students in the state of Georgia are at risk of falling into a digital divide, most likely a geographical, or socioeconomic divide. As much as technology is being promoted within classroom instruction, as educators, we have to stop and consider the numbers in the NEA report and realize that many of our students may be included in this number. We have to assess our population of students and work diligently to identify those students at risk of falling into a digital divide and locate resources to bridge these gaps to ensure that we are providing equitable access for all of our students. I am blessed to work in a school where I do not feel that significant digital divides exist amongst our students. There are several groups of students who may be at risk of falling into these divides, namely gender, geographical, and socioeconomic divides. I believe that these are three high-risk areas that should always be closely monitored by our school and district to ensure that these populations of students are being provided with consistent equitable technology opportunities. At Central Elementary we understand that these three critical populations of students should have action steps in place to ensure that divides are not created amongst these students. We have devised several action steps to bridge potential gaps concerning equitable opportunities. Our school provides all its students with 1:1 Chromebooks and chargers to have at home and school. We also provide WIFI hotspots in the parking lots for students to access the internet through their Chromebooks. There is also a Girls Who Code Club, comprised of females in fourth and fifth grades who are interested in STEM-related fields who work after school hours to learn more about women's contributions to the STEM fields and participate in complex coding projects. Thankfully, classes have resumed as normal at Central Elementary following the Covid-19 pandemic. We are back to full capacity in the cafeteria, we can have assemblies, there are no more masks, and there are no more virtual learning days or quarantining for exposure. Central Elementary as well as Carroll County Schools have worked diligently to ensure that life has become as normal as possible for our students. During the 2020 school year of virtual learning, all classroom teachers attempted to have classes via Google Meet and Zoom with their students. This was relatively new technology to most of our teachers if you can believe that! It seems that Google meet and Zoom are now parts of our daily lives. But at the time, it was a huge learning curve for everyone. Each teacher in our school scheduled face-to-face meeting times with their students each day, Monday through Thursday. The district designated Fridays as catch-up days and Independent learning days to alleviate some of the stresses that went along with the learning curve for teachers, parents, and students. The virtual meetings lasted no more than an hour, and teachers were asked to be readily available for their students to answer any questions throughout the entire day. It seems everyone became an expert in Google Classroom, screencasting, and hyperdocs. All of our students were provided Chromebooks and chargers to take home with them after the first two weeks of virtual learning. For the first two weeks, students just worked on paper packets at home. It was not until we learned we would not be returning to school for the year that we begin the process of checking out Chromebooks and chargers for all of our students. That is also when our school installed the Wi-Fi in the parking lots for students who did not have equal access to the internet due to either geographical or socioeconomic challenges. I believe that our school did everything that we could do to provide equitable access to technology and completing assignments during the virtual school year. It was a tremendous learning curve for all parties involved. It is my opinion that the last two school years were detrimental to many students, especially in elementary school. Each year of elementary school is vital to young students’ social, emotional, and academic growth. After reading the article from the Pew Research Center, “What We Know About Online Learning and the Homework Gap Amid the Pandemic”, I believe that my opinion is valid. The statistics in this article were staggering. For example, “parents with lower and middle incomes (36% and 29%, respectively) were more likely to report that online learning was very or somewhat difficult, compared with just 18% of parents with higher incomes. This challenge was also prevalent for parents in certain types of communities – 39% of rural residents and 33% of urban residents said they have had at least some difficulty, compared with 23% of suburban residents.” (Schaeffer, 2021). For schools such as my school, with large numbers of socioeconomically challenged students, Title 1 schools, and large numbers of students residing in rural areas, you will most likely see results similar to the ones listed above. “roughly one in five parents with homebound school-aged children say it is very likely or somewhat likely their children will not be able to complete their schoolwork because they do not have access to a computer at home (21 percent) or must use public wifi to finish their schoolwork because there is not a reliable internet connection at home (22 percent). And about three in ten parents (29 percent) report that it is at least somewhat likely their children will have to do their schoolwork on a cell phone.” (Lake, Makori, 2022) Even if schools provide their students with Chromebooks, chargers, and hotspots in the parking lots to complete assignments, I do not believe that learning at home is as effective as being in a classroom setting with peers and a teacher. The issues of troubleshooting technical difficulties still exist even if students have reliable devices and internet access. Teachers can only do so many things to assist their students via Zoom and email correspondence. Not being able to correct technical difficulties or address comprehension questions leads to frustration among students, parents, and teachers and is detrimental to the learning environment. “Nearly half of these parents (46%) said their child faced at least one of the three obstacles to learning asked about in the survey, compared with 31% of parents with midrange incomes and 18% of parents with higher incomes.”(Schaeffer, 2021). The Public School System is not meant to be completely virtual. No matter what steps schools and districts take to ensure digital equity amongst our students, I believe that there will always be divides and gaps when students are engaging in purely virtual learning. I believe the numbers from the surveys and research by the Pew Institute and the article By CRPE “The Digital Divide Among Students in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Who Has Access and Who Doesn't” support this opinion. Students and families in the public education school system did not sign up for virtual schooling. They signed up for classrooms where teachers can lead students to become 21st-century thinkers and learners through equal opportunities utilizing technology and project-based learning. They signed up for opportunities to learn from their peers through collaboration and communication in student-centered learning environments where teachers are readily available to help students troubleshoot and problem solve, eliminating frustrating and unproductive experiences. On a positive note, I do feel like I became a better teacher through my experiences of teaching through the Covid-19 pandemic. I became more aware of divides among certain populations of students and became more aware of the situations many of my students lived in,, whether it be socioeconomic or geographical disadvantages. I feel that I learned to be more empathetic as both a teacher and a person towards not only these situations but towards students’ situations in general. While attempting to teach STEM to all grade levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, each day I provided my students with an instruction page, a video recording of me, a screencast giving directions for digital activities, and a hyperlinked list of activities for them to complete for the day. I have currently adopted these Flipped Instructions into my everyday STEM classes for grades 2nd through 5th. It works well for my students, maximizing instructional time, creating responsibility for tasks, and fostering collaboration and communication amongst student groups. I also utilize interactive and collaborative tools 2-3 times a week in my classes just as I did when teaching STEM virtually. I discovered Blooket during virtual teaching. I would post on Google Classroom the times to start the competition based on the content for the week, and students either participate individually or on teams. Blooket is an extremely high engagement tool for all of my students. I have found that it works just as well in person and my students look forward to interacting with one another each time we play. I also utilized Edpuzzle weekly during virtual teaching. I have found that it is an extremely useful and interactive resource to foster communication and collaboration among student groups and build background knowledge at the beginning of STEM lessons. While I do not feel that virtual learning environments are productive environments that Foster student success, I did acquire several new and effective strategies and mindsets from my time teaching virtually. References Lake, Robin, Makori, Alvin. The Digital Divide Among Students During COVID-19: Who Has Access? Who Doesn’t? Center for Reinventing Public Education. (June 2020). https://crpe.org/the-digital-divide-among-students-during-covid-19-who-has-access-who-doesnt/ National Education Association. Digital Equity for Students and Educators. (September 2020) https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/NEA%20Report%20-%20Digital%20Equity%20for%20Students%20and%20Educators_0.pdf Schaeffer, Katherine. “What we know about online learning and the homework gap amid the pandemic.” Pew Research Center. (1 October 2021) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/01/what-we-know-about-online-learning-and-the-homework-gap-amid-the-pandemic/ Talbot, David. THe Unacceptable Persistence of the Digital Divide. Technology Review. (16 December 2016). https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/12/16/155240/the-unacceptable-persistence-of-the-digital-divide/. (image reference) Popplet Two heads are definitely better than one! Collaboration is the foundation of my STEM classroom. Starting in kindergarten, I engrain the four C’s of STEM into my student’s schemas: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. In each rotation, my students participate in project-based learning within flexible and collaborative teams. I'm always on the lookout for the latest and greatest apps and Web 2.0 tools to foster collaboration and communication in my classroom and to keep my student’s engagement levels high. “Groups tend to learn through discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas.” (Clifford, 2022) The first app that I chose to explore was an app titled “Popplet”. I experimented with this app several years ago when it first emerged, but did not find it kid-friendly. However, upon exploring the Popplet app this week, I found that there are several upgrades that have been put in place to make this app more collaborative, student-friendly, and overall more visually appealing. This app allows students to collaboratively create mind maps for planning projects, writings, character analysis, etc. It is easy to create a new Poppel, and there are several options available to make it visually intriguing for my students and their audiences. I found many of the features similar to apps that my students utilize and enjoy such as Padlet and Jamboard. When working with these extensions, my students especially like the option to choose different colors, insert images or GIFs, and alter text. I found that Popplet has all of these features available. I also found the sharing features to be beneficial for my students, as they can easily create shareable links to post on Google Classrooms or embed within their presentations. I especially like the feature that shows which student is working on the project. Much like students do when they collaborate in Google Docs, the name appears when the person is editing a Poppel. Popplet now has the feature where you can see which student is editing the project. I also like that you can color code the boxes when creating new Popples. I believe that this feature will help my students to keep their idea groups organized and grouped when utilizing this tool within their projects. For example, I read the book “The Legend Rock, Paper, Scissors” and each group analyzed a different character in the book. They were assigned either the Rock, the Paper, or the Scissors. I have each student group select three character traits using an online thesaurus for each character. They have had to provide evidence from the text supporting why they chose each character trait. I plan on having my students create a Poppet over their character from the story and instruct them to make the character trait boxes one color, and when adding the Popples and evidence from text, those boxes will be another color. I believe that this is my favorite feature other than the collaborative points of Popplet. When working through project-based learning in my classroom, my students are required from first grade through fifth grade to work through the engineering design process to teach them how to think critically and plan creatively for their projects. I always tell them that the planning phase is the most important part of the process. I believe that my students in the upper grades could utilize Popplet to organize portions of their plans and enhance collaboration amongst group members. I believe that my students will enjoy the creative elements that this app has to offer, and it will work to keep their thoughts and ideas organized. I also believe that they will enjoy the structure of the program and the way that they will be able to collaboratively organize their ideas. I also try to incorporate literacy as much as I can within my project-based learning and we often work on character analyses. I like incorporating thinking maps into the ELA components of my lessons, and I believe that aside from utilizing the Engineering Design Process, I believe that Popplet will be a useful tool for my students to create bubble maps to identify character traits. I also plan to have my students create double bubble maps within Popplet to compare and contrast different characters within the story. The one aspect of Popplet that I did not care for it was the zoom-in feature. I can see this feature being extremely distracting and frustrating, particularly for some of my younger students. It will most likely turn into a classroom management area to address, but possibly adding a category on project rubrics for collaboration and positive working skills throughout the project will address this potential area of concern. It is also very easy to accidentally zoom out making the screen extremely large and difficult to find your work again if you are not using a mouse. I think the trackpads on the Chromebook might be a bit tricky for some of my students. But with direct instruction and support from me and their team, I do not believe it will be an area of extreme concern, just an area for consideration. Plotagon An app that I began using a few weeks ago is called Plotagon. Plotagon is an app that uses avatars and different story scenes. I first began using this app as part of my flipped classroom initiative. I would choose a background that was relevant to the project that each class was working on, and I would record my voice giving my students directions to get ready for the day and the Avatar would speak using my voice. I've since discovered that it could be used as a critical thinking and collaborative tool to incorporate into ELA into my STEM curriculum. This app is extremely engaging, innovative, and can be used to activate my student's critical thinking skills and provides a 21st-Century relevance. There are a variety of characters for the students to choose from and the characters can be used together to create storylines. The character's emotions can also be changed when they are speaking using the student's voices to portray character emotions. An example of this app being collaboratively utilized in the classroom is as follows. I plan on assigning my 5th-grade students a project utilizing Plotagon recreating a scene between two characters (survivors/soldiers) on VJ Day. (Victory in Japan) to guide my students to not only understand the content of this event but to be able to apply their acquired knowledge to a created situation through collaborative writing and creatively designing the characters to project appropriate emotions and dialogue to reflect their knowledge. The student groups will benefit from using Plotagon by learning from each other’s perspectives and reflecting on the ideas each of their group members uses to contribute to the dialogue, therefore understanding the content at deeper and more meaningful levels. “Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher-level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually.” (Clifford, 2022). The students will create a dialogue using multiple characters, with the background being a Battlefield, and insert character emotions and music into their plots. Each student in the group will have an assigned role to ensure equity amongst the members and equal participation and engagement. The Plotagon clips can be easily rendered when complete and saved to iPad photo reels and uploaded to various platforms from there. There really weren't many aspects of this app that I did not find useful other than having to pay for more backgrounds and characters. Animation Desk I also chose to explore the app Animation Desk. I was extremely glad to find this app, as I have been searching for a collaborative app to teach stop motion animation with my older students. In the past, I have used apps to create stop motion animation videos using Lego characters and it has worked well, and the students were extremely engaged in creating stop motion animation based on stories they have written, but I believe that the animation desk app is a true 21st-century application that will further engage my students. When I first became STEM facilitator at my school, I had a difficult time takig on the facilitator role. I quickly learned that all of my students learned far more in collaborative and flexible group settings and that they did not need me quite as much as I believed they did. By allowing my students to become interdependent on their group members, I relaized that all four c’s were addressed in different phases of their project completion and that more concrete learning was taking place as well as social skill developments.”Cooperative learning uses both goal interdependence and resource interdependence to ensure interaction and communication among group members. Changing the role of the instructor from lecturing to facilitating the groups helps foster this social environment for students to learn through interaction.”(Biel, Brame, n.d.). As teachers, we have to teach our students how to work with others, even if it is our of our comfort zone. Relinquishing control to the students and holding them accountable for their learning is not an easy adjustment to make and commit to, but it is necessary to build social skills and truly transfer the responsibility of learning to the students and foster interdependence amongst group members. While exploring this app, I found it to be very user-friendly with lots of options for editing and the final products are professional in appearance. I found that the students can easily import pictures to animate and they also have the option to begin animations from scratch. I found this feature to be the most useful because it gives my students a plethora of options. The onion skin option was also useful and will save time when creating sequencing frames for the stop motion animation. I like how users can change the brush sizes and add layers with ease. There are also variety of colors to add to the animations. The option of adding sound is always intriguing for my students. I also think this will be a great app to implement with my younger students, allowing them to collaboratively create characters from some of the ELA portions of our STEM projects. Teaching them the basics of this app will prepare them to create animation films when they get to older grades. This app definitely taps into the student's critical thinking skills and it is ideal for fostering creativity amongst all of my students, both younger and older grades. The main thing that I did not like about this app is that it has to run newer devices. I have a limited number of new iPads in my STEM classroom, but am slated to receive newer devices next year. I plan on learning this app thoroughly this school year so that when I receive new devices next year, I will be prepared to implement it into projects across grade levels next school year on updated devices. Tumblr I also chose to explore the blogging app Tumblr. Nowadays, It seems that everyone loves to write, read, and comment on blogs to express their knowledge and opinions. I believe that blogs can be extremely useful in the classroom, just as they have been during this graduate-level course. If given a rubric containing specific requirements and parameters for the post, blog writing in the classroom gives students a voice, allowing them to express their opinions over topics and it opens the doors for constructive collaboration amongst peers when commenting. I believe as teachers, we need to teach students how to respectfully and responsibly express their opinions over topics using research, but more importantly, how to respond to others that have different opinions. I believe that the Tumblr app is a strong platform to engrain both these life skills within our students. I also believe that to be a successful teacher you have to meet your students where they and tap in to their interest levels. This concept is vital to maintaining high student engagement levels and promoting active student participation. Blog writing and commenting through Tumblr can also work to create twenty- first century learning skills using Tumblr as a platform to discuss current realities/events in science and social studies classes while supporting ELA standards, teaching students to have a voice and, and respectfully responding to differing stances on topics. Allowing students to discuss real life situations related to the content standards through open ended blog responses effectively brings all of these skills together for students. “Experts suggest that project-based learning using open-ended questions can be very engaging. Rather than spending a lot of time designing an artificial scenario, use inspiration from everyday problems. Real world problems can be used to facilitate project-based learning and often have the right scope for collaborative learning.”(Clifford, 2022) There were several aspects within the Tumblr app that I found beneficial for my students. First of all, Tumblr is user-friendly and easy to navigate. I like the feature that allows students to to insert GIF’s, videos, and images into their blog post. I believe this aspect enhances student engagement levels and makes the blog posts more visually appealing and relevant to both the author and the readers. I also like the option that allows students to add video blog posts. This is a feature that could support students with certain disabilities, allowing them to record blog posts and responses instead of writing them while still adhering to rubric guidelines, giving students a voice, and fostering effective collaboration and communication skills. Tumblr blog post links can be easily shared to different platforms and linked to Google Classroom for further accessibility and utilization. There were no components within the Tumblr app that I did not like or find to be possible hindrances during implementation. Internet Safety in Twenty-First Century ClassroomsIn my STEM classes students in grades 2nd- 5th Grade are 1:1 with Chromebooks. I try to maintain a balance between utilizing Web 2.0 apps and platforms and working with hands-on experiments through the engineering design process. We also have iPads in my classroom, but the number is limited, many of which are becoming outdated and slated to be replaced next school year. I only have 45 minutes per class, so I do not often plan for 1:1 student Chromebook activities. Students always work in inflexible and collaborative teams and generally only use one Chromebook at a time. I post explicit directions and links on the flipped classroom directions at the beginning of each class via Google Classroom, so there is generally very little downtime for students to get off task and stray from the sites that have been assigned. To help student groups stay focused when using Chromebooks, I generally walk around the room and give out participation coins which they trade in for bucks ( our school’s positive behavior intervention system PBIS) for students and groups who are all on task collaborating and communicating to complete their projects. I have found that small classroom management tactics and strategies such as these go a long way, especially when managing students on devices over short periods of time. This generally works well for students second through fifth grade. My school is a large school and heavily immersed in project-based learning, which means that students will be online for large portions of their days. This also means that there are other online safety aspects that our teachers must consider other than off-task behavior. “The internet speeds up students’ ability to study and instantly connects them with more information than a printed school library could possibly hold. However, the cyber world of modern education can be dangerous, both to your students and to you as a teacher.”(VPN Mentor, n.d.) In addition to utilizing classroom management strategies, we also have a system-wide program in place called Lightspeed. Teachers enroll all students by their Google Classroom logins to the Lightspeed system and activate the class when they begin working. Using this platform, student activity is monitored from the teacher dashboards. Teachers can see what every student is doing at any given time. This includes websites that they have visited, the music they are listening to, the amount of time spent on each website, and their searches. This is an extremely useful student safety platform because all the students know that their teacher can see exactly what they are doing. Teachers can even directly message students on their Chromebooks, reminding them to get back on task, adding to the positive device management strategies. This has eliminated a lot of all tasks behavior and searching for things that are not related to the classroom assignments. We also have restrictive firewalls on our wireless internet which is controlled by the county office technology department. As teachers, we have the option to override certain content filters, but not all of them. We can also request that certain sites become blocked if we would like to use them and the classroom. I feel that as a county we have a great system in place with our firewalls to ensure student safety on the internet and I have had very few incidences with students participating in inappropriate activities while working on online assignments. My classes are extremely limited in time, so I try to ensure that I'm thoroughly knowledgeable about any programs that I Implement in the classroom, and am prepared to troubleshoot any incidences which come up to avoid losing valuable instructional and work time for my students. I have a rule that I use consistently with all of my classes, from kindergarten to fifth grade. The rule is “ Ask Three Before Me.” Regardless if it is a technology or an engineering question, students must ask three others in their group before asking me. This enhances collaboration and communication skills amongst my students, and it also creates interdependence among the group members and creates trust and positive working environments. When common technical difficulties occur, I often create a Padlet board for students to post questions on in which I can answer or other peers and answer to ensure we are maximizing instructional time and not wasting any time answering the same question over and over again. I display the Padlet board on my interactive whiteboard so all students can see the questions and answers that have been posted. I found this to be an extremely useful resource for my students to use, especially when working with technology. When I taught my fourth graders how to use the Tinkercad 3D design platform to design ecosystems, the Padlet interactive post became the student’s lifeline and pushed my students to independently problem solve. Instructional and work time was maximized by eliminating repetitive questions and the students used the Padlet board as a reference and resource to work through their designs. In addition to utilizing the LightSpeed system to monitor my student’s online activities, our school also conducts advisement lessons on the first Tuesday of each month. Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship is a recurring topic or these advisement sessions from ages Kindergarten through high school to ensure that students know the potential dangers of the internet, both for home and school, and the repercussions for not maintaining digital citizenship while working online. Common Craft is an affordable subscription website that I believe would be useful to embed within some of our advisement lessons. It addresses topics such as Creative Commons and copyrights, online reputations, and facts and opinions. Many of these topics are topics addressed within our advisement lessons and this website would provide students with an interactive component to learn more about these topics. Finally, an interactive website I use during my first STEM rotation of the year is called Interland. Interland Is a game-based website that teaches students about digital citizenship and online security through interactive and age-appropriate leveled games. My students enjoy working to beat the levels of Interland and don't realize that they are learning valuable skills they will need to work through their web-based projects throughout the school year. References Animation Desk. 2022. (9.1.5) [mobile app] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/animation-desk-draw-animate/id946346179 Biel, Rachel, Brame, Cynthia (n.d.) Group Work: Using Cooperative Learning Effectively. Lumen Planning and Teaching Strategies. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationx92x1/chapter/cooperative-learning/ Clifford, Miriam. (2022) What are the Best Collaborative Learning Tips and Strategies for Teachers? TeachThought University. https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/collaborative-learning-tips/ Plotagon. (2021) (v1.37.8) [mobile app] https://www.plotagon.com/. Popplet. 2019. (2.5.1) [mobile app] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/popplet/id374151636 Tumblr. 2022. (24.1.2.00.) [mobile app] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tumblr-culture-art-chaos/id305343404 VPN Mentor: Keeping You Safe Online. Teacher’s Guide to Cybersecurity - Everything You Need to Know in 2022. https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/teachers-guide-to-cybersecurity/ I am new to Adobe Spark and have found it to be an extremely beneficial tool to have in my educator tech toolbox! While learning the program, I found myself thinking of many intro lessons that I could have created with this program. I also began thinking about how easy it would be for my students to create summarizing projects, both independently and in collaborative settings. I created a basic introductory lesson over simple machines for my fourth-grade students using Adobe Spark. Being a connections teacher, my students come in at different levels with varying knowledge bases of the grade-level content I am planning to cover for the week. I created the presentation with hopes of creating a knowledge base or review for all of my students. I also included visual representations of each type of simple machine that would lead to extension conversations regarding the functionality of the machines and discussions of real-world examples. By preparing the video in this manner, I have hopes that it will be productive for all of my students by providing them all with real-world visual representations that can lead to in-depth conversations with my students with adequate knowledge of the material, simple yet concise definitions of each of the machines for students with limited knowledge of the material, and provide a good introductory lesson or review lesson. I think that Adobe Spark offers a wide variety of options for students to participate in project-based learning. I see all of my classes for one week at a time, and each week, we work through projects based on content grade-level standards. The students work in collaborative groups throughout the week to complete a summarizing project. Most of our projects are hands-on engineering-based projects, but I believe that integrating video-based presentations that can be shared would be a good addition to showcase my student’s learning. I think that providing a flexible rubric, leaving room for students to add in creative elements would serve as a sufficient baseline for my students to create a summarizing project for their weekly projects. All of the 4 ‘s could be addressed in the requirements of this project. Another way to effectively implement Adobe Spark videos into my STEM classes would be to embed them into my Daily Flipped Instructions as the activator. I would create a video based on the goals set for the class that day, including their activator, and post any necessary links into their Flipped Instructions doc. In order to promote and maintain student engagement, teachers must devise new and innovative ideas consistently. I believe that utilizing Adobe Spark would be a great tool to utilize and keep my students engaged and proactive in their learning. Teaching my students to understand copyrights is important not only to the integrity of their products but an important life skill for them to understand and apply to their work now and in their future school years. I believe the students first need to understand what a copyright is, why they exist, and why they should be important to students as learners. I would want to scaffold this information to any of my classes that were participating in projects using web 2.0 materials or obtaining research from the internet. There are several student-friendly presentations, interactive activities, and role-playing activities that I would consider using with my student in order to reinforce the concept of copyrighted material and how it directly applies to them. Teaching my students to understand copyrights and media literacy concepts is important not only to the integrity of their products but an important life skill for them to understand and apply to their work now and in their future school years. Truly understanding media literacy and its purposes can promote critical thinking skills amongst my students by teaching them skills they need to analyze and evaluate materials before using them in their research and in the creation of their products. “Media literacy education helps people of all ages to be critical thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens.”(Center for Social Media, 2021) I believe the students first need to understand what a copyright is, why they exist, and why it should be important to students as learners. I would want to scaffold this information to any of my classes that were participating in projects using web 2.0 materials or obtaining research from the internet. There are several student-friendly presentations, interactive activities, and role-playing activities that I would consider using with my student in order to reinforce the concept of copyrighted material and how it directly applies to them and develop skills amongst them that cause them to think critically about forms of media before using them for research aspects or to create final projects. References Adobe Spark. https://www.adobe.com/express/ Center for Social Media. Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. https://mediaeducationlab.com/sites/mediaeducationlab.com/files/CodeofBestPracticesinFairUs e.pdf Google Extensions for the win
Hobgood, Bobby, Ormsby Lauren. Inclusion in the 21st- Century Classroom: Differentiating with Technology. Learn NC. http://web.archive.org/web/20180125110137/www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/every-learner/6776/ Microsoft Add-Ins for ProductivityI have not had the opportunity to explore many of the add-ons that Microsoft has to offer. Most of the tools I use in my classroom and with my students are Google Chrome Extensions or components within G-Suite or Education. I was pleasantly surprised when I began delving into the add-in extensions that are available. There are a plethora of tools available to enhance learning experiences for students across the learning spectrum! I found many add-ins that would be useful for my adaptive learning students, gifted and talented learners, students with various disabilities, and add-ins to promote student engagement in general. “ Looking at the innovations that have come from Microsoft in the last few years, it’s obvious that the company is committed to using technology to improve access for everyone.”(Gonzalez, 2018). PowerPoint presentations, Word Documents, and Excel spreadsheets are easily converted to docs, sheets, and slides, so I found looking through these add-ins beneficial to increase my productivity in the classroom. I chose to explore the Boomerang and Translate Outlook add-ins. I chose these because I believe that they will improve my productivity, efficiency, and professionalism as an educator. I had heard of this add-in before but never had the opportunity to explore its functionalities. I often work late into the evenings and need to send email correspondences at late hours. Boomerang has the option to compose an email and schedule it to be sent at a later time and date. It also sends the user reminders to follow up on emails that have not been responded to. This would be a useful feature to utilize when communicating with parents. I also have a large population of English as Second Language Learners. The Translate add-in would be an amazing feature to implement for these learners or when communicating with parents and at home correspondence. I think that it would also be beneficial to inform ESL parents and families of this add-in in hopes that they could utilize it at home to translate school emails and bridge communication gaps that may exist due to language barriers, therefore creating a strong support network for the students between school and home. Finally, the third add-in I chose to explore and begin implementing was the Pixton PowerPoint add-in. This add-in offers a variety of animated character that can be customized and added into PowerPoint presentations to promote student engagement in the content. Research shows that when adding in human characters, more attention is drawn to the content and more focus is placed on the content. Pixton could make my presentations be more visually engaging for students with disabilities and make the content appear more student-friendly and less intimidating for not only these students but for all of my students. Gonzales, Jennifer, (15 April 2018). 4 Ways Microsoft is Making Learning More Accessible. Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/inclusive/ Twitter in the Classroom....can it lead to collaboratively connecting your classroom?Unlike the majority of most professionals in education, I am new and relatively inactive on the Twitter platform. When I first was named STEM Instructor at my school, I was looking for as many outlets as I could to gain new and innovative ideas for my classroom, so I created a Twitter handle in hopes of finding as many trailblazing STEM professionals as I could to follow and gain ideas for my curriculum. I was transitioning from a Fifth-grade science and social studies position to K-5 STEM, teaching all grade levels in the school every single day in forty-five-minute intervals back to back. STEM at my school is a connections class and is still fairly new to many schools. There are still several schools in our county that do not have a full-time STEM instructor in a connections class position, and several are paraprofessionals, not certified teachers. So, I had a great deal of learning and innovation to do o to deem myself and my position credible. Although Twitter was not my preferred social media platform, at the suggestion of a mentor teacher, I did begin to follow #ShakeupLearning and Sons of Technology, @SonsofTechEd on Twitter. I also followed their blogs and subscribed to their podcasts. I learned a great deal about integrating technology effectively into my STEM classes through both phenomenal Ed Tech leaders. I also learned a great deal about effective classroom management from #Shakeuplearning, as I had extremely limited experience with students under 4th grade. Until this school year, these are the only two Twitter accounts I have actively followed. I have begun to follow Vicki Davis, found at @coolcatteacher. I found that Davis has a wide variety of suggestions, tools, and generally good ideas found within her Twitter account. She also addresses and discusses many current realities in classrooms, from COVID-related virtual learning issues to substitute shortages, and provides insightful and factual articles to back her stances up. She also provided resources for promotion reading stamina that I found interesting and useful. I support the content standards of the classroom teachers in my school and incorporate literacy as much as possible, so I found this particularly helpful and insightful. She also included several STEM-related projects, showcasing her students incorporating audio into their projects and including researched based articles on coding that I plan to research further for use in my classes. I also started following ISTE on their Twitter platform. Since ISTE is an important part of so many of my classes, I thought it would be helpful to become more familiar with their organization and learn more about their Essential Conditions to effectively implement technology into the classroom. I saw several posts on ISTE’s page, linking useful information showing technology integrations into classrooms that I felt were directly correlated to the Essential Conditions. After delving into the microblogging world of Twitter, I believe that it has many benefits to being utilized in classrooms to connect teachers students and even parents. “Twitter is great for both active and passive learning” (Fitzpatrick, 2015) Tweeting about events happening in class can allow parents or other teachers following your classroom to connect either by replying or just simply playing a passive role in observing the happenings in their children’s classrooms. Utilizing Twitter effectively can also land teachers in a leadership position in professional learning without them even realizing it. This is where both active and passive roles come into play. For example, other teachers may follow your class on Twitter and may interact, forming a collaborative relationship with you, each of you learning from the other. “You will find when you step outside your comfort zone and begin participating in the conversation on Twitter, that you will take your experience to the next level” (Fitzpatrick, 2014). Teachers not actively engaging in your tweets may take on the passive role and gain knowledge from your Tweets and retweet your posts, widening your network. I now see how collaborating with my students in conversations or even debates based on classroom topics on Twitter can enhance their experience in my classroom and encourage them to use higher-order thinking skills. Diana Radcliff from SaavySasstSimpleTeaching lists a plethora of effective means of integrating Twitter in the classroom that I had never previously thought of. I love the idea of naming a “student Tweeter” of the day to keep the class connected to parents or any other class followers. Showcasing student work is also a great way to promote engagement with parents and also to share student examples with others in the class and with followers. I also love the idea of going live to promote engagement and give students ownership of their work and projects. Social Media is the world most of our students live in, day in and day out and it is their “language”. As teachers, we have to branch out and meet our students where they are regardless of our comfort level. For me, using Twitter as a means of meeting my students and engaging them in their world and their languages will push me out of my comfort zone, but I can absolutely see the benefits that it will provide me, students. “Collaboration, resources, and teamwork are only a click away as a connected educator” (Fitzpartick, 2015) References Fitzpatrick, Emily, (2015). “Building Your PLN with Twitter”. The Learning Bird. https://learningbird.com/building-your-pln-with-twitter-a-beginners-guide/ Radcliff, Diana. (2017) “40 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom.” Diana Radcliffe; Teaching Upper Elementary and More. https://www.sassysavvysimpleteaching.com/2017/09/40-ways-to- use-twitter-in-the-classroom/ Podcasting
Podcasting in the classroom... how can it create a collaboratively connected classroom?
I am a big fan of audiobooks and listen to them frequently, but must admit that I am not an avid listener of podcasts. The only two podcasts that I have subscribed to and listened to are Shake Up Learning and Sons of Technology. I have learned a great deal regarding technology integration and classroom management strategies for my younger students through these Podcasts, but until this module, I did not realize how much Podcasts can offer my students. I have tried to integrate listening to Podcasts into my STEM classes previously, but could not find a way to effectively implement them into the content standards to enhance my student’s understanding of the material. I did find a Podcast response log for the students in my upper grade that I think will be effective and meaningful as I become more fluent in integrating them into my lessons and activities.
The first two podcasts that I chose to preview were “But Why” and “Tumble”. I chose these Podcasts because I believe that it will be a great resource to use specifically with my gifted learning population of students. I found several episodes within each of these podcasts that I believe will be beneficial to students in varying grade levels and activate higher-order thinking skills amongst these students. I think that this Podcast would be great to use as an activator at the beginning of the week when students begin working in their collaborative groups. Having my students listen to this Podcast with their teams and completing the response sheets collaboratively and sharing their responses with other teams or in whole group discussions will definitely increase my student’s collaboration and communication skills. Another Podcast that I chose to preview was “What If”. I often try to integrate social studies curriculum into my STEM classes and believe that this channel will be great to guide discussions and foster my student’s critical thinking skills. My students love to ask the questions “what if this happens”, or “what if that happens”. These sorts of questions can actually be used as gateways to teach our students to think critically about different outcomes and the “What If” Podcast channel provides many scenarios to do just this. I am looking forward to integrating this podcast into my classroom collaborative discussions and hearing how my students answer and enhance their critical thinking skills! In my classes, I work diligently to embed the 4 C’s into all of my lessons. My students are familiar with all of these terms and understand what each of them means. After reviewing all of these podcasts and seeing what they have to offer, I believe that effectively implementing podcasts to support my content and enhance my student’s understanding of the content will help me to enforce the Four C’s even more in my content. I also hope to teach my students to be able to record Podcasts as a part of their projects. I believe that by doing this, I will give my students an opportunity to tap into their creative side and pique their interest in the content by allowing them to add material and content that interests them. For example, allowing students to record Podcast responses and incorporating music and sound effects that go along with the content. I think that the key is to give my students a guide to creating their podcast, but not give them a lot of constraints. “ When a student is asked to create a five-paragraph essay, they are given a structured assignment. When a student is given a microphone and a few guidelines for creating their content, the possibilities are endless.” (Bradbury, 2019) Giving them the freedom to add their own creative elements to their Podcasts will generate interest and feelings of ownership over their work. Finally, I believe that incorporating Podcasts into my classes, whether it is having students listen to podcasts or create their own will allow me to reach a broader spectrum of learners. Reluctant or struggling readers can listen to podcasts and gain knowledge about the content without the stress that comes with reading struggles and in a non-intimidating learning environment. Students falling on the ADD/ADHD spectrums can also listen to podcasts while doing other things that help them to remain focused on the content. “The biggest power of a podcast is that they buy you time”. (Miller, 2018) Populations of students who do not fall on these learning spectrums can benefit from learning while working on other tasks. This aspect supports the notion of creating stress-free learning environments. Students do not thrive in environments in which they feel uncomfortable. Listening to assigned podcasts or teacher-created podcasts provides all populations of students environments in which they can feel successful and accomplished. References Bradbury, J. (2019, June 3). What is the educational value of podcasting with students? The TeacherCast Educational Network. https://www.teachercast.net/podcasting-with-students-samr-blooms/ Miller, M. (2018, February 28). Why your students need a podcast: How to do it fast and free. Ditch That Textbook. https://ditchthattextbook.com/why-your-students-need-a-podcast-how-to-do-it-fast- and-free// Goose ChaseAn amazing Web 2.0 assessment tool that captures the essence of a truly flipped classroom is Goose Chase. Goose Chase is an online scavenger hunt tool that promotes student engagement and enhances students’ learning experiences in the classroom. After reading the article “The Four Pillars of a Flipped Classroom” by the Flipped Network, I realized that the components of Goose Chase directly align with the four pillars for a flipped classroom: flexible environment, learning culture, intentional content, and professional educator based on the following aspects. Goose Chase can be utilized across grade levels and disciplines, in a variety of settings, both within the classroom setting or in distance learning. Teachers can effectively evaluate student learning through Goose Chase in either of these atmospheres, providing maximum flexibility and centering the learning on the students, and creating student-centered learning experiences. It also connects aspects of real-world applications to the content standards by having the participants leave their classrooms and connect their learning with the world outside. If teachers are intentional in planning for the content they wish for the students to deliver through the missions in Goose Chase, they will truly provide their students with the opportunities to make real-life connections. There are many effective and interactive web programs in use throughout classrooms, such as Kahoot, Quizizz , Blooket, and EdPuzzle to name a few that teachers use as means of formative assessments. These tools are great go-to assessments to use consistently in classrooms, but I believe to keep student engagement high and to continue motivating our students, we must keep activities changed up and exciting. I believe that Goose Chase is an innovative, exciting, and high-energy formative assessment tool that keeps students active, motivated, and teaches them to apply real-world skills to learned content without them even realizing it. After reading “Designing Flipped Instructions for Differentiation” by Martha Ramirez, I concluded that Goose Chase absolutely supports students with diverse learning. “When we flip, we cater to many of these students’ variances as we are making the content accessible to students.” (Ramirez, 2014) Goose Chase creates a fun and non-intimidating environment with easily accessible content for students with disabilities, reluctant learners, or inclusion students participating in mainstreamed classrooms. It creates opportunities for them to learn and positively interact with peer partners or groups. The elements of Goose Chase also create a sense of ownership and contribution amongst these populations of students as they work towards the completion of the missions with their teams. References Flipped Learning Network. (2014) The Four Pillars of F-L-I-P. https://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP_handout_FNL_Web.pdf Goose Chase. (2022) https://www.goosechase.com/ Ramirez M. (2021). Flip Learning. Designing Flipped Instructions for Differentiation. https://flippedlearning.org/syndicated/designing-flipped-instructions-for-differentiation/ Poll Everywhere Poll Everywhere is a phenomenal web-based formative assessment tool that is ideal for creating a flipped classroom. When implementing Poll Everywhere, the teacher has the option to assess students choosing from a variety of methods including open-ended answers, selected response answers, polls, and several other options. I think that Poll Everywhere could serve as a great activator, allowing teachers to effectively assess students prior to a lesson and guide their instruction based on student’s needs. Poll Everywhere can also be an effective ticket out the door checkpoint, determining the level of student’s comprehension of content and guiding their lesson planning for follow up lessons. The components of this web based formative assessment tool are simple yet concise means of assessing students’ knowledge and determining if remediation, reteaching or extending and refining needs to take place within the next lesson. These components also align with the four pillars of a flipped classroom: flexible environment, learning culture, intentional content, and professional educator. The students can be in any setting in the classroom to complete the questions in Poll Everywhere- in groups, individually, in seats, on mats or anywhere in the classroom or even at home if the student(s) are involved in a virtual learning model. Creating a flexible environment leads in to creating a student-centered learning culture. “By contrast, the Flipped Learning model deliberately shifts instruction to a learner-centered approach, where in-class time is dedicated to exploring topics in greater depth and creating rich learning opportunities” (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). Poll Everywhere can be implemented in classrooms either as an individual activity or as a collaborative group activity. I believe that it is a great tool to keep students engaged and motivated to continue learning more. I think that teachers should be careful when choosing questions to post on these assessments and ensure that the questions require higher order thinking and engage student’s critical thinking skills to effectively assess their students. “Educators use Intentional Content to maximize classroom time in order to adopt methods of student-centered, active learning strategies, depending on grade level and subject matter”. (Flipped Learning Network 2014 ). If teachers pose their questions with these guidelines in consideration, the results will give them concise feedback on their student’s level of understanding and aid them in planning their future lessons. I believe that Poll Everywhere will support students with diverse learning needs by providing a variety of assessment options, providing teachers with different options to assess each time, keeping easily distracted learners engaged. Answering the questions anonymously can encourage reluctant learners or learners with other disabilities to answer the questions without fear of intimidation for incorrect answers. I began to think about what most of the diverse learners in my classes struggle with and realized that following directions is a common struggle area. While reading “Designing Flipped Instructions or Differentiation” by Martha Ramirez, I can across some models of flipped instructions that she created with diverse learners in mind. I began to think that creating a similar model for instructions including the four key elements: turns, rules, roles, and time would greatly benefit by diverse learners as well as the other students in my classroom. I included a sample of what I plan to implement linked to the button at the bottom of this post. All of these components, along with offering a flexible environment, maintaining a student-centered classroom, intentionally creating assessment questions, and committing to providing non-intimidating environments for students of all walks of life to participate and engage in Poll Everywhere work cohesively to create a non-threatening environment for students to answer honestly, therefore providing the teacher with adequate feedback and results to apply to future planning. References Flipped Learning Network. (2014) The Four Pillars of F-L-I-P. https://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP_handout_FNL_Web.pdf https://www.polleverywhere.com/ Ramirez M. (2021). Flip Learning. Designing Flipped Instructions for Differentiation. https://flippedlearning.org/syndicated/designing-flipped-instructions-for- differentiation/ Combining Blended and Flipped Models Through Screencasting. How Do You Do It? As most teachers in America, I learned how to create Screencasts during virtual learning during the 2020 school year. I was honestly initially intimidated by the programs, and it took me many takes to get “just the right” clip to push out to my students. I quickly became aware that the shorter my screencasts were, the better my students listened to them. I had to learn how to get a lot of clear and concise information into a five-minute time frame. But, as the virtual year wore on, I became more confident in creating effective screencasts for my students.
After reading “5 Tips for Incorporating Video Lessons in Learning Stations” by Carrie Stangl, I came up with a few new ideas on implementing screencasts into my STEM classes to support both the blended learning models and the flipped classroom model, both of which I strive to include in my classes. I am going to create flipped instruction slides to push out to each of my collaborative student groups via Google Classroom in grades 3-5 including the elements of turns, rules, roles, and instructions, but in place of typed instructions, I am going to record screencasts, giving the directions and stressing the importance of the directions and providing guidance to the students. I plan on incorporating this with the students of my upper-grade classes first and eventually adapting to my lower grades students. My lower-grade students work in centers for many of their projects. I find that I am constantly repeating directions to all of my students, regardless of adopting the “Ask Three Before Me” rule. I believe that following initial directions, I am going to place an iPad at each center station with a screencast giving the directions along with modeling. “Modeling has proven to be an effective teaching strategy, and creating flipped lessons with modeling and talking through the steps of a concept as students follow along and practice the skill provide a hands-on approach to learning. (Stangl, 2021) With this resource readily available and accessible for the students at their centers, students can replay the screencast of my directions and view me modeling the directions and be held accountable for their learning, transitioning the classroom into a student-centered learning environment where the students are accountable for their learning. This will also help to strengthen problem-solving skills amongst my students. I plan to keep working to effectively integrate blended learning models with flipped classroom strategies to provide optimal classroom experiences for my students. My focus will be on creating student-centered atmospheres that follow the four pillars of a flipped classroom: flexible environment, learning culture, intentional content, and professional educator. References Stangl C. (2021). Edutopia. Five Tips for Incorporating Video Lessons in Learning Stations. https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-tips-incorporating-video-lessons- learning-stations Who owns the learning in a classroom in 2022? The teacher, student, or Google?
Who Owns the Learning? Courtney Chastain Kennesaw State University ITEC 7430 Walt Justice Ed. S. January 20th, 2022 Who Owns the Learning? Who owns the learning in a 21st Century Classroom? The teacher, the students, or Google? After reviewing Alan November's video, “Who Owns the Learning “I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. November's stance on how the web and its tools have completely flipped and changed classrooms in the 21st Century. I found his stance on how Web 2.0 tools have changed professional practices by inadvertently creating a one-sided manner of thinking extremely insightful. The example that Mr. November shared about asking a student to Google a paper over the Iranian Hostage Crisis was very eye-opening. I was not wholeheartedly aware of how so many of our students only gain one perspective over much of the research we ask them to conduct throughout their assignments. Most classrooms today are technology -rich environments with one-to-one student technology ratios. Many educators also believe that they are “globally connecting their students” through these tech- savvy classroom environments. Despite the easy accessibility of internet resources, so many students believe that everything that they read on the web during research-based assignments is completely accurate. If we ask them to “fact check” they believe that one to two sites are effective fact-checking to support the authenticity of their research claims. I believe as educators, that we have a lot of work to do in our classroom to create truly globally connected students, prepare them to be Twenty-First Century learners, and most importantly, independent deductive thinkers and problem solvers. The real work for educators will be in redesigning our classrooms. The internet and Web 2.0 tools offer educators ample opportunities to globally connect their students and bring the world to them. But we cannot let these tools teach our students. I believe this is where a lot of classrooms are failing their students. There are vast amounts of tools available and required in some cases for students across grade levels that offer modules that teach our students for us. Elementary programs such as Lexia, Dreambox, Reflex Math, Xtra Math, iReady, and IXL assess a student’s level by running a diagnostic test, and tailoring modules based on the individual student’s results. These programs read to the students, ask questions, and offer solutions to incorrect answers and seem to have become the norms for classrooms across the nation. Whereas there are many positive components to these tools, I believe that teachers, schools, and systems are becoming entirely too reliant on expecting positive results from students from the usage of these tools. When we don’t achieve certain goals on Common Assessments or Georgia Milestone Assessments, administration almost immediately turns to the “latest and greatest” new tool that is “proven” to increase student achievement. They adopt it, spend thousands of dollars on in, and implement it. The cycle repeats itself. Instead of letting web tools assess and teach our students for large portions of their instruction and giving rote assignments that are not designed for post-internet-centered classrooms, we need to pose innovative questions and assignments that are not “googleable” and increase the depth of knowledge of our assignments. We need to be intentional in our lesson planning to embed the Four C’s: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity into all our lessons on a consistent basis. We need to teach our students to ask lots of questions and show them how to view problems from multiple angles and how to conduct independent and unbiased research. I believe that adopting personalized learning paths within our classrooms is an efficient strategy to redesign our assignments to both utilize technology efficiently and embed the Four C’s into our student’s schemas. “Personalized learning, on the other hand, is broader and, at least today connotes philosophical and pedagogical points of view. It’s not just about the mere presence of technology in an instructional model. Rather, personalized learning describes a combination of modalities and goals in a field that is reaching toward better and (and in some cases, new) outcomes for children.”(Fisher, 2017) Allowing our students to learn on independent paths will help us to begin shifting our student’s thinking to guide them to be more objective thinkers and problem solvers, trained to effectively research from multiple points and draw adequate conclusions. By consistently redesigning assignment tasks through integrating personalized learning paths with all these components in consideration and teaching our students how to effectively utilize internet tools to support their thinking and broaden their knowledge, we just might be able to create truly globally connected students and develop true twenty-first-century thinkers and learners. Aside from the challenges that Web 2.0 tools pose for creating a balanced and truly globally connected classroom, they also offer many advantages and create teachable opportunities for educators if utilized properly. Most of the students in our classrooms are savvy digital learners and digital technology is inarguably our student’s future form of learning, whether it be in their later years of school or in the jobs they will have in the future. Most of our students are engaged by digital learning, as digital platforms and tools are a large part of their daily lives through the uses of cell phones, gaming systems, or online games. They are comfortable with these platforms, and they are our student’s futures. By effectively implementing Web 2.0 tools into our lessons and providing balanced and rigorous lesson designs for our students, we can teach them to utilize these tools to broaden their knowledge about assigned content while acquiring technical skills. We can tap into universally designing our lessons to reach unique learning styles within out classrooms. "Goals for effectively implementing Universal Design are to create learner who is purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal-directed." (Cast, 2018) With the backwards design model process in consideration, as educators we should be able to take the overall goals of successfully creating a Universal Design for students in our classroom, and plan our lessons to address the "how, what, and why" components of universally designing our lessons to meet all of our learners. This in collaboration with changing the rigor of our lessons and effectively implementing Web 2.0 to truly enhance our student's experiences in our classroom will work together to create a classroom environment in which our Twenty-First-Century learners will thrive. Implementing technology offers a plethora of differentiation methods to help all our students master content skills and will increase their depths of knowledge. For example, students reluctant to present research projects may utilize tools such as Flipgrid or Audacity to share and publish their work with others and the community. Utilizing adaptive technology apps on iPads can include students with disabilities in our classroom and provide them with the technical support they need to master common goals in the classroom. I am looking forward to learning different methods to better myself as an educator throughout this course. I am looking forward to learning about utilizing podcasts and visual literacy tools. I am in the unique position of teaching every student in our school, including a large population of diverse learners. I work diligently to include these students into my STEM lessons, and I am always on the lookout for tools that will engage and reach these learners, so they feel as if they are a valued part of our class STEM projects. Throughout this course, I am hoping to learn different methods to continue creating a balanced, informed, and globally connected classroom. References CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. http://udlguidelines.cast.org Fisher, Julia. (2017 , April 25th) “What’s the Difference Between Blended and Personalized Learning.https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/whats-difference-blended-personalized- learning/. November, Alan. (2014, May 5th) Who Owns the Learning? Preparing students for Success in the Digital Age. YouTube. https://youtu.be/NOAIxIBeT90 |
AuthorCourtney Chastain |