Making school a Formative Experience

Peardeck is much more interesting for the kids to engage with instead of writing answers in their notebooks. I have the free version so it does not store answers that I can formally check, but I definitely get a strong sense when I display the answers after the allotted time. This also shows other students where they are going right/wrong.

I teach 4th grade and students are still getting comfortable with using a laptop as a learning tool. Typing is still difficult and I work with a high population of ELLs, which means writing a simple sentence can also be challenging. I think more multiple question options would help me get through content faster. They all want to do well with their answers, so it ends up taking longer than a quick assessment. The students asked for more time for each question. I applaud them for wanting to do well though. The peardeck just shows how difficult reading comprehension can be for students. But I think constantly getting feedback in a way where they know they will not be formally graded is very helpful.

::The Third Teacher::

Learning how space was the third teacher was a completely new concept. It also took me a while to get on board. I have always believed that the humans in the room (teachers and students) are the pulse that keeps the learning going. Without the brilliance of my students and their hard work in collaboration my job would be near impossible. Thinking that space was just as important as them left me making thinking, "Are you sure about that?" 

Keeping an open mind, I tried to think about what I was currently doing in my classroom that is the third teacher. More toward the end of the year I let some groups of students to collaborate on the whiteboards to get ideas out there together. It was extremely beneficial for them. I noticed that for a lot of groups having the stuff taken away from physically blocking them led to more focus on the work and less focus on the book/desk/laptop/notebooks. I also had very minimal shelving that did allow them to act as standing desks and lots of students absolutely loved this too. After reflecting on this I started to understand how these certain environments allowed for certain learning interactions to happen more easily. 

The concept of the 3rd teacher is that instead of a teacher such as myself, who allows very little interaction with these learning spaces, how about I stretch it out to a larger scale to make more widely used in my classroom. Instead of only certain groups using whiteboards to brainstorm, what if I allowed this for every group? Same with standing room desk options. 

One thing that I will start immediately in my classroom is the concept of over decreasing the visual stimuli. I do a pretty good job of never using store bought posters and displaying student work and anchor charts of all of our ideas. After this course I will take more careful consideration of the color choices and the busyness of the room. I am truly inspired by the design spaces that I saw throughout this course.

Visual Literacy

Visual Literacy

The student created video about visual literacy was very eye opening. How it permeates every bit of our lives shows just how important it is. I also loved knowing that we are currently living in the 3rd visual revolution; the digital revolution. An individual can be a careful critic and fluent in visual literacy; there is even visual rhetoric!

Out of all of the Ed Tech Team courses, I found this to be the most interesting, powerful and I learned a lot! I am excited about the book cover lesson that I created. Additionally, I am very proud of the book design that I created and how much I learned in Google Drawing.

Flipped Learning!

What impact does Flipped Learning have on your classroom? How can Flipped Learning empower you as a teacher?

I'm excited about doing my first FLIP lesson. I have dipped my toe in the waters of screencasting to give direct instruction in software tools and an art lesson for my students. For a 4th grade classroom at a Title 1 school it is difficult to hold kids accountable for usage of technology at home. This will be the biggest difficulty as an educator, but I believe it is important and worth giving it a try. Another hurdle is always the reflection piece. The school year also seems so rushed that reflection time is only 15 minutes for a whole unit in my classroom. However, I believe it is important and very beneficial (even to my own learning). This will absolutely change the dynamics of my class time.

Here are my two lessons!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17YBSRiNOURkKrzgDxTQdvS3KA3ptAmobHR897gedr_Y/edit

Project Based Learning & All That Fun Stuff

In one year from now students will be engaged and excited about their collaborative learning. I am hoping in a years time that group norms will be maintained and that every 4th grader feels they can contribute. My goal as a teacher is to have a classroom that consistently looks like student oriented learning throughout the day. The PBL process really lends itself to this. 

This course has helped me to think once again about the 20time projects and how that can look in the classroom. My goal is to have 20time up and running for 15 weeks starting in January 2017.

Here is where my thoughts started:

PBL Project

Gettin' Global!

First things first! Here is my Global Collaboration Project!

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qNw0PM33DBu49HzHyPW5GzOQBIVQI6sKnlIknYV17p4/edit?usp=sharing

Also my Digital Footprint Presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1u9myX_BFFa7k97QfO-TgHAh0yUdHZ96N91xI4D_os6g/edit?usp=sharing

Being active in a PLN is a complete game changer. The reason why I love Twitter so much is that everyone can really find their niche, whether that is the Dodgers, math, make up tutorials, or civil rights hashtags. If I need a math warm up that focuses on the decomposing of fractions I can tweet it out and get lots of different ideas for typically three days. How I will use my PLN in the future is by getting my students more involved. Not only will I ask and share on Twitter, but I can include them on connecting to the whole world. Next year I plan to take assignments and whenever possible, share the collaboration with the outside world. I think this will be very engaging and powerful for our students!