New Tech Standards & Requirements

Three standards that I would like to implement at my grade level (M.S./H.S.) and within my classroom are:

1) Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making: By far this is the most crucial of the six standards set by the OETS. These are skills that go far beyond technology, but can be solved using technology. In my classroom, my students would be able to meet this standard by doing various activities via the web. An example of one of these activities would be in a health classroom. I would give each student a prompt with specific symptoms a person is experiencing. Using the web and credible sources, in groups they would not diagnose the illness, but decide what the next step of action should be. Realistically, there wouldn't be a right or wrong answer, but an explanation and presentation of how they arrived at the decision they did.

2) Research and Information Fluency: This is another important standard we would work towards achieving in my classroom. Research is by far an important part of any content area. It is supplemental to the learning going on in the classroom. Often, teachers think students automatically know how to perform this skill, however, it is a skill that needs to be learned. For this standard I would focus on incorporating it into my health or science classroom. Seeing as these two content areas go hand-in-hand, and research is a large portion of both subject areas, I would allow students access to various technological resources in order to further research units we had discussed in class. Also, implementing research projects on various species, diseases, environments, etc. would be an easy, but interesting way to allow students to practice researching various subjects. The most important part to getting students to actively participate in research is to make the topic being researched something of interest to them. Obviously perimeters will need to be set, but allow them the freedom to be creative within those perimeters.

3) Communication and Collaboration: These two essential skills need to be practiced. Students often don't realize they are practicing these skills daily through various social networking devices found only available via technology. Everyday on Facebook, millions of people collaborate and communicate on various "hot topics", discuss homework assignments that are due the next day in class, and chat with people across the country who have faced problems similar to those they are experiencing. In this class alone, I have learned how to use Blogger, a website that allows me to communicate with my classmate quickly and effectively. I have also learned how to use ScreenR, a tool I had never heard of before. Technology is quickly becoming the easiest way for us to communicate with those around us.

Special education students heavily rely on communication. They often need information repeated numerous times and tasks explained in various ways. By utilizing a class website or blog, I would be able to help target each individual student and their various learning styles. Special education students enjoying using technological aids to help them keep up with their school work. Being able to supplement material for students, would allow them to go home, in their own environment and continue the learning process. It would allow them to adjust the curriculum to what works best for them, at that given moment, without distractions.

Issues I WILL Encounter: 

Although these are wonderful, creative ideas (not trying to brag) of ways to implement technology while meeting the technological standards, as educators, we face numerous challenges when it comes to technology. The biggest challenge I have faced thus far is the lack of technology and support at home. Beginning college, I knew that my education was going to require me to have access to technology at home. If I didn't have a computer, printer and the internet, I would not have graduated. As a high school teacher, I have to be aware of the students in my class that do not have the luxury of having all the information on the web, at the tips of their fingers, at all times. In order to overcome this inequality, the work done in class would have to be exactly that, in class.

Another issue I will encounter will be a lack of funding for technology. Especially now, most school districts are running dry when it comes to technology budgets. This makes it difficult seeing as technology is consistently conforming to fit society's needs. Every other day there is a new upgrade or a newer model being released. This is something that needs to be addressed at the state level. It's hard to understand how as a state we can place standards on our teachers and students, yet provide them with inadequate resources to meet these standards. Luckily, there are various grants available for schools in order to provide students with access to new technology. Being able to seek out these additional resources is an absolute necessity during hard times and budget cuts.

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

Typically, I'm comfortable using Excel style spreadsheets. Going into the assignment I felt fairly comfortable, until it came to creating the charts. I had difficulty creating charts and customizing them to fit my needs. Overall, these charts are fairly simple to understand. I tried to create three charts that were easy to look at and get the big picture of where the growth of the students was at. My charts were made to be clearly presented by using bright, contrasting colors in order to be reader friendly. Here is my completed Student Data Spreadsheet

Analysis: Based off the information in the link and charts above, the student growth was substantial. The greatest amount of growth shown was in the pre-test vs post-test. This would be positive for a teacher to observe, however, it should be noted that over the three formative assessments, the students who performed well on assessment one, typically performed well on assessments two and three. There were a couple of cases that students regressed and received lower scores on assessments two and three. Overall, the percent of growth was substantial. Only one student did not see growth from the pre-test to the post-test.

My First Screenr, but definitely not my last!

I am so excited to know how to utilize Screenr! This is an awesome tool that will help me not only in the classroom, but also while directing the volleyball club I started this year. Although I had a little bit of confusion at the get go, I quickly was able to figure out how to create my very own Screenr! I am excited to present to you, my first ScreenR production, "How to Create a TinyURL!"

How Productive are Productivity Tools for Educators?

Here is an example of a few productivity tools for up and coming educators:

TinyURL- This application allows a teacher to crop the typical URL, making it into a much shorter, more manageable one. This would make a handy tool for teachers when having students work on a computer assignment either from home or at school. Often students will enter in the wrong letters, numbers and symbols creating confusion on why they can't get to the webpage they are supposed to be working on. This tool will make the accessibility for students and staff much more manageable.

Drop Box- Drop box is a wonderful application, not just for the teachers, but also the students. As a student, I always feel like I have documents and homework assignments in way too many places. Although one can always use a USB drive or e-mail themselves an attachment of the assignment, it becomes a huge pain! I remember one time I was inputing data for my job and I needed to finish it at home. I sent myself an e-mail attachment with the document, but I forgot that I had e-mailed it and didn't save it to my USB drive. I ended up inputing all the data again simply because I forgot where I had stored it. Drop box is a tool that would help me as a teacher organize my thousands of documents. It also is a tool I would want to teach my students to use. I think this would be helpful for them in their future schooling endeavors.

Teamviewer- Teamviewer is by far my favorite productivity tool right now. As a teacher, it would allow me to get on to student's computer to monitor their progress on assignments, help navigate them to appropriate information and lead the students through various processes while working from my computer. For the past five years I have been an assistant in special education classes. One of the hardest parts of my job is being able to access each of the students in order to give them the help that they need. By using Teamviewer it would allow me to help each student quicker and more efficiently.

Overall, these tools would be very useful while working within a classroom. The only downfall I see presenting itself is having accessibility to the necessary technology (computers, internet, applications, etc.) I can honestly say, I had no clue these applications existed until now. One of the most important parts of technology, and the most amazing thing about it, is that you have the ability to adapt these tools to fit your classroom, your students, and your teaching style. As we are going through this course, I am quickly learning my own teaching preferences and where all this "high-tech" stuff will come into play throughout my teaching career.

Does Cloud Computing Mean our Info is Really in the Clouds?

Sort of... Cloud computing is a safe, easy way to back up your technological information, data and documents. It also allows you to access your information from multiple technological devices such as, computers, iPads, cell phones, etc. Cloud computing maintains a safety and accessibility to our "need to know" data at all times. How does cloud computing work? Cloud computing is web-based. What does this mean? It means that the information is held somewhere in between our various devices. This is a blessing to many technological dependent humans who rely on having their information available at all times. Cloud computing also allows those same people to rest assure that their informations safety is not depending on one particular device. Have you ever had all your information stored on a USB drive and then had it break or decide to lose its function? I have! It is the most frustrating feeling as a professional to know that you are going to have to redo hours of work that was once already done. Even beyond that, sometimes there is information you simply cannot get back once it's lost; pictures, signed documents, etc. What does this mean for educators? It allows us to rest assure that our work is safely stored in the "clouds;" a web-based data storage system that will continuously back up our hard work and information. No longer do we need to repeatedly back-up our data on all our technological devices in hopes to salvage it. Instead, our information is sent throughout our devices, always being backed-up, forever at the tips of our fingers with just one click of a button. Cool? I think so...

Web 2.0 goes hand-in-hand with Cloud computing. There are various applications that are offered on web 2.0. Some of these are, blogger, google docs, presentation and reader, survey monkey, flickr, youtube, yodio, teamviewer, dropbox, Facebook and twitter. Most people have heard of these applications. However, are they really applications? There is no need to download them onto your computer or cell phone, right? At anytime a person can sign on to their personal blogger, Facebook, or google documents account and access their personal documents and work. With the various technological devices available now days, you can access your information from your cell phone, iPad or or computer. Like I said earlier, cloud computing is forever backing-up our work. Web 2.0 does similar work. There is no need to download our documents and software onto our technological devices, instead these applications are held in the "clouds" making them accessible from anywhere.