Tom Ward was a great speaker that I found engaging. I think I could immediately relate to him because he was of similar age, is a math teacher (I'm getting certified in both chemistry and math), and he is a MAC graduate! This set up the tone for the rest of the presentation.
Tom presented a lot of creative ideas of how to use technology. All the tools he mentioned like blogs, twitter, vine, videos etc were all familiar to me. However the innovation was in the way he used them. I have never really considered having my students create a video. I didn't think there was much room for that type of creativity in a chemistry class. But now I see that video can be a change in the monotony of usual assignments. For example, instead of having students present a project, they can create a video. Another idea is students collecting videos of their experiments as part of gathering data. Many students probably already use twitter, so tweeting questions to their teacher might also be easier than sending in an email, especially if it just a quick question.
I usually just do a search on google when I need something, or I'm looking for an interesting classroom activity. But knowing that there are certain education bloggers out there who have activities of good quality, and are update their blogs consistently encourage me to follow blogs rather than doing sporadic searches. A tool that I do think I'll start using is an RSS reader like the one Tom mentioned is useful in keeping the blogs organized and keep me updated. I think this is an essential strategy for a starting teacher because I don't want to invent the wheel. By following blogs, I can start accumulating a bank of activities that I can use as needed. Seeing Tom using this, and speaking about the community of teachers who want to share their activities is really what is pushing me to do this.
In summary, Tom gave a great talk, and was very friendly, approachable and practical. He gave us a lot of realistic advice, especially from the perspective of a new teacher. For example, he told how in his first year teaching he was barely able to keep up, and definitely couldn't incorporate too many activities. However, as he got more experience he is now able to incorporate an interesting activity at least once a week. It is reassuring to know that it is normal if I don't manage to do too many activities in my first year. I think starting to compile interesting activities starting now will make me well equipped for when I am ready to do classroom activities.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Padlet
I had the wonderful opportunity to watch some of my colleagues give a presentation on Padlet. The execution of the presentation was great. It was informative, engaging, and gave me the opportunity to try the tool and see what I can do.
Padlet is a relatively simple tool, which they illustrated beautifully in their use of a quick video to show the basics. After that they gave us all a chance to quickly dive in and get creative. I felt engaged and got excited in customizing my Padlet wall with chemistry related pictures and videos. What seemed to be a wall for sticky notes quickly transformed into so much more. I think the group did a great job in showing the range of uses of Padlet when they each created their own Padlet site, and shared it with us. I think that was the most powerful part of the presentation because they showed a variety of different ways a teacher can use it in different content areas.
In my chemistry classroom, I can imagine having a Padlet instead of a traditional website for my class. I could have a Padlet with information about myself, with a note linking to a new wall for each of the classes I teach. Withing each class "wall" I might have a note for homework, one for video resources, one for bell work. In an effort to streamline all the classroom technology resources into one place, bell work could be collected using another tool like Socrative, but other things like posting resources and homework is not something that Socrative would be useful for. A possible way to combine these too is to have a wall for assessment and bell work that link to Socrative.
As of now, I'm not 100% sure how well it would work in a classroom, however I am definitely willing to try and use it instead of a traditional teacher website since I think it's more interesting and versatile. It is also something that students would modify parts of and add to, which is empowering and hopefully would encourage them actually referring to the website and using it.
Padlet is a relatively simple tool, which they illustrated beautifully in their use of a quick video to show the basics. After that they gave us all a chance to quickly dive in and get creative. I felt engaged and got excited in customizing my Padlet wall with chemistry related pictures and videos. What seemed to be a wall for sticky notes quickly transformed into so much more. I think the group did a great job in showing the range of uses of Padlet when they each created their own Padlet site, and shared it with us. I think that was the most powerful part of the presentation because they showed a variety of different ways a teacher can use it in different content areas.
In my chemistry classroom, I can imagine having a Padlet instead of a traditional website for my class. I could have a Padlet with information about myself, with a note linking to a new wall for each of the classes I teach. Withing each class "wall" I might have a note for homework, one for video resources, one for bell work. In an effort to streamline all the classroom technology resources into one place, bell work could be collected using another tool like Socrative, but other things like posting resources and homework is not something that Socrative would be useful for. A possible way to combine these too is to have a wall for assessment and bell work that link to Socrative.
As of now, I'm not 100% sure how well it would work in a classroom, however I am definitely willing to try and use it instead of a traditional teacher website since I think it's more interesting and versatile. It is also something that students would modify parts of and add to, which is empowering and hopefully would encourage them actually referring to the website and using it.
Tech in My Placement
While I knew that technology is an important resource to teachers, in the chaos of being a new student intern trying to get adjusted to a new environment, technology was one of the last things on my mind, The survey really pushed me to focus my observations and find out about what resources really are available to us. The school I am placed in is interesting because it is technically a school but shares a building, a main office and principal with another school. So it's an interesting place to work in, especially with regards to allocation of resources.
At the advent of my placement, one of the first complaints I heard the staff struggle with was technology. At the general staff meeting, I heard concerns that computers were not distributed effectively; some rooms had too many, and others had none. In addition, the technology issues were handled by the district as a whole, and our school was not provided with a technology office for the school. So any technology change requests, or even issues with login information had to be sent to the district via a "help ticket". It was very inefficient, and created a lot of unnecessary frustration and delays. In addition, the printers were not working, which means teachers cannot print out their assignments to make copies. Teachers who don't have access to a printer at home were struggling, and I witnessed some collaboration between teachers to help each other out. I am actually not even sure the issue is resolved till now.
The school does have several copy machines available, and although they keep jamming, they generally get the job done. It's a great resource, and there are a couple in our school, and another 3 upstairs in the main office. Other great resources are the computers in the classroom. In my classroom, the teacher has a computer at the front of the room, in addition to about 10 computers in the lab space in the back of the room. The students have the option of using the computer just for research, or using it during a lab experiment.The teacher also has access to a projector of great quality, as well as a sound system. The sound system is basic and includes a microphone the teacher can wear comfortably as a necklace, and speakers. This allows the teacher to be heard clearly by everyone in the room. There is a district wide technology officer, that I did not have the pleasure of meeting, but heard about from my mentor teacher. He is apparently very friendly, and knowledgeable and was able to set up my teacher's computer, and upgrade her mouse since the old one was had a chord that was too short, and even resolve issues in the students' computers.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the resources available to the students. I feel this much technology is a good start for someone like me who is just a starting teacher. I am not sure how much technology I would be able to incorporate at this stage of my career. I acknowledge that there are some issues with technology resources in the school, and I believe that will probably be true of most schools. So I think the trick is so learn how to be resourceful with what you do have, while also working with the system to acquire the other resources that are needed.
At the advent of my placement, one of the first complaints I heard the staff struggle with was technology. At the general staff meeting, I heard concerns that computers were not distributed effectively; some rooms had too many, and others had none. In addition, the technology issues were handled by the district as a whole, and our school was not provided with a technology office for the school. So any technology change requests, or even issues with login information had to be sent to the district via a "help ticket". It was very inefficient, and created a lot of unnecessary frustration and delays. In addition, the printers were not working, which means teachers cannot print out their assignments to make copies. Teachers who don't have access to a printer at home were struggling, and I witnessed some collaboration between teachers to help each other out. I am actually not even sure the issue is resolved till now.
The school does have several copy machines available, and although they keep jamming, they generally get the job done. It's a great resource, and there are a couple in our school, and another 3 upstairs in the main office. Other great resources are the computers in the classroom. In my classroom, the teacher has a computer at the front of the room, in addition to about 10 computers in the lab space in the back of the room. The students have the option of using the computer just for research, or using it during a lab experiment.The teacher also has access to a projector of great quality, as well as a sound system. The sound system is basic and includes a microphone the teacher can wear comfortably as a necklace, and speakers. This allows the teacher to be heard clearly by everyone in the room. There is a district wide technology officer, that I did not have the pleasure of meeting, but heard about from my mentor teacher. He is apparently very friendly, and knowledgeable and was able to set up my teacher's computer, and upgrade her mouse since the old one was had a chord that was too short, and even resolve issues in the students' computers.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the resources available to the students. I feel this much technology is a good start for someone like me who is just a starting teacher. I am not sure how much technology I would be able to incorporate at this stage of my career. I acknowledge that there are some issues with technology resources in the school, and I believe that will probably be true of most schools. So I think the trick is so learn how to be resourceful with what you do have, while also working with the system to acquire the other resources that are needed.
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