Personal Learning Reflection

• What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?

Students learn by making connections.   The Web 2.0 philosophy is an effective way to for students to make multiple connections by not only reading information, but interacting with it.  Giving students the opportunity to respond or represent learning in multiple ways allows students to show the complex connections they have made while learning.

• How did integrating the Internet help you think about and evaluate uses of technology?

I learned more from the videos in this course than I could have learned from years worth of reading.  The opportunity to begin to use a blog also got me thinking in new ways.

• Which of the assignments that you turned in do you feel really exemplifies good teaching with technology and why?

I believe the RSS Reflection and Lab represented good teaching with technology.  First, this was a new technology for me.  Scaffolding in a virtual world can be complicated.  Meeting the needs of both beginning and advanced learners within a single assignment can be overwhelming.  By giving me specific tasks to accomplish, I built my own skill base.  I feel that this lab was particularly good because I then had to use the new skill in my everyday life.  I have often felt overwhelmed by the amount of content out there.  This lab actually filled a need for me and probably many other online learners.  This is a great example of a tool that will actually make my life easier and one that I will continue to use.

• How have you met your goals established in your Personal Growth Plan?

I am excited by what I have learned.  Before this class, I was not really part of the Web 2.0 world.  I have spent lots of time interacting with various IB blogs and am beginning to participate regularly.  I have continued to monitor the RSS reader, but need to spend more time fine tuning what I truly want to follow realistically.  Combining my interest in blogs with the RSS reader has saved time. 

• Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?

I have used Twitter regularly for about a year.  I would like to expand this type of communication into a blog.  I am still debating what kind of topics I will throw out for parents to read about.  I am also still thinking about how to manage the feedback.  I plan to continue to grow my personal learning network.  I am struggling with managing the number of people I communicate with and follow.  Once grad classes are done, I hope to have more time to focus on the PLN.  I would like to expand online collaboration to my school’s faculty.  I plan to post school documents on google docs and attempt to hold some of our book club conversations on google docs as well.  This course, combined with 811 has reinforced many things that I have been doing and opened my eyes to many new learning and teaching opportunities.

Learning Style

I have often wondered what type of learner I am.  Most educators were successful students.  I learned how to play the school game well enough to get good grades, but I'm not sure that always equals learning.  Over the years, I have figured out that I am an auditory learner in most cases and also display some of the needs of a visual learner.  I learn best by discussing content with other people.  I have also found that I learn best when engaged with the speaker, especially if the speaker uses a story like format to presenting information.  I prefer to listen to the speakers emotion and often use that as a cue on what to pay attention to.  I also prefer to see visuals of what I am learning, especially diagrams or video.  The ideal learning opportunity for me is a visual presentation with voice along with it.  Interestingly, that has been a common format in both CEP810 and 811.

I often find myself struggling in courses that require tons of reading without the opportunity to interact with anyone about the knowledge.  Earlier in this session, I appreciated the analogy that learning is not an empty vessel, but a dialogue.  I need the dialogue to be successful.  I have also learned that while I have a hard time sitting perfectly still, I am easily distracted when asked to perform tactile learning tasks.

The statement that we can't teach every learning style in every lesson poses a challenge to teachers everyday. The OES staff read Brain Rules two years ago and had a similar discussion about incorporating its beliefs.  We concluded that doing things like showing a powerpoint while reading the content can be effective.  We often use a turn and talk strategy for students to discuss content, but we added a stop and write strategy where students take a few minutes to journal write independently about a topic.  Sometimes the students would then switch journals and respond either in the journal or verbally.  I also think that some subjects lend themselves to certain learning styles.  Science tends to be more hands on and we are headed that same direction in math.  I found it interesting that such a small percentage of learners preferred tactile learning.  I wonder if what we prefer always equals how we learn the best.

Creative Commons Photo

Here is a photo that I would consider using as part of a lesson next year.  We encourage our students to take action as a result of learning.  This can be a confusing concept, especially for students in 3rd through 5th grade.  Many students think of fundraising as the only form of action.  This photo provides another example of people taking action.

Attribution:

Image: 'Securing the occupation doors'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99306180@N00/3220646227

Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

Here is a recent photo of my office.  It should be done before school starts, I think???


http://www.flickr.com/photos/66061069@N05/6016249263/

#comments

#commentsYour idea of a blog with many editors sets the stage nicely for collaboration. Enjoy using this program with your SIG. You have a great topic for discussion in your statement, “imagine if the Declaration of Independence authors had use of a blog....how would it be different? the same?”.

PC Maintenance and Security Workshop

My computer tech often reminds me that I keep a lot of things on my desk top.  I do that because I like the ease of which I can access things from both home and school, however, this means that I do not often have a safe backup on the districts shared drive.  For this assignment, I explored various "File Back Up" options using our Atomic Learning system.

In general, I learned that backing up files is incredibly easy and that there are both free and pay versions.  I started with a tutorial about Karen's Replicator and was excited that there was a free site that would do exactly what I wanted.  After learning about that and realizing that I had to explore three tutorials, I stumbled across pay dirt.  I discovered that windows XP has a build in back up system.  As soon as I log into my computer at school, I will be able to have all files on my desktop saved directly to my school's backup system.  I plan to immediately share this with other teachers, after getting approval from the tech department of course.  It seems incredibly easy to categorize my files and choose what I want updated in which location.  I amazed by the ease of use.  The third tutorial I watched evaluated various systems.  I am confident that I am using the correct option for work use.  In the future, I may need to investigate additional options for home use, especially when it comes to backing up pictures and videos.

http://www.atomiclearning.com/highed/pc_cleansecure

http://www.atomiclearning.com/highed/pc_cleansecure

http://www.atomiclearning.com/highed/pc_cleansecure

RSS Page Reflection

For the last few weeks, I have been experimenting with the RSS feed, netvibes.  You can see a few screen shots of my new RSS reader at the end of this posting.  I have enjoyed following 2 different International Baccalaureate Blogs.  One of the feeds updates me on official IB postings and the other updates me on users' comments.  I have also been following the Education Week and michigan.gov sites as well.

I took a technological leap forward last week and added my first comments to a blog.  I thanked a principal from a school for an interesting IB video that he posted showing the 5th grade exhibition.  At this point, my response has not generated any additional responses.  I look forward to participating more on the IB blogs in the future.  There are numerous practical postings about how schools are implementing the IB program.

I have checked my RSS reader every few days since creating it.  Some pages, like the Elementary Educator page, are updated every few months.  However, Education Week site is updated several times each day.  For pages that are updated infrequently, the RSS reader seems like a useful tool to make sure that I don't miss any new content.  For pages that are updated very frequently, it seems like an overwhelming amount of content.  For example, Education Week has 18 new posts in the last 23 hours.

I have learned many random things over the last few weeks.  I use the word random, because I have had a hard time following a single topic on certain sites.  From the NPR page, I learned about suspension rates of secondary school students.  In Texas, the rate was as high as 60% of students being suspended at least one time between 6th and 12th grade.  This seems incredible, especially compared to other states in the study.  On the Merlot page, I looked at a lesson titled "Born to Blog."  I thought that was fitting, since this course is my first exposure to blogging.  I learned that I may actually have more interesting things to say than many of the people out there.  From the Tech & Learning site, I found some support for administrators in my district getting Ipads.  The link included about 15 apps that were all designed at making life easier and more efficient.

I have learned a few important things about an RSS reader.  First, it must be managed effectively or it becomes almost as overwhelming as just surfing the whole internet.  I also learned that it is important to subscribe to things that are as specific as possible to your particular interests.  Over time, I can see this being a useful tool for gathering information that I am interested in.

Getting Things Done

For about the last four years, I have been using Microsoft Outlook to manage my workflow.  This process has gotten easier over the years both as I get to know the program better and with the addition of an Iphone to my life.

The process of staying organized has been getting easier as I have a better idea of what I need.  For example, I started with an email folder titled important.  This year, I changed that title to three different folders titled today, this week and someday.  I have also gotten better at using the calander function as well.  For example, I have figured out how to enter reaccuring appointments so that I can remember to meet with certain students on a weekly basis.  I have also learned how to sync my calander with the school and district calanders in addition to giving my secretary read and write access to my calander.  We still meet on Mondays to go through the week, but we are much more on the same page now than ever before.  The last thing I learned to do was how to use the date due function on the Outlook calander.  I can see the whole list each time I log in and it is prioritized in order of due date.  Our school voicemail system is also set up through outlook.  I get text copies of voicemails (they don't always work well,) but I am now able to sort and save voicemails just like emails.

This process has been very helpful.  As we learned in one of the videos, it is stressful to try and manage all of this in one's head.  It is also stressful to try and manage the work flow process in many different ways.  While I still panic every now and then at the amount of work that needs to be done, at least I know that I am not missing anything, usually.

I am happy with the process I have been using.  I hope to find a way to prioritize my to do list better than the due date system I am currently working using.  Because I have been using essentially the same system for several years, I have a hard time imagining switching without finding something considerably better.  I am open though, in case something better comes along.