Reflection

As a professional teacher, I feel this course has been instrumental in assisting me with developing my own technology skills.  I am comfortable with the idea of creating podcast, weblogs, and wikispaces for my students to engage in relevant collaborative learning.  I currently maintain a networked personal learning space of my own to enable me to have a better understanding of how interaction takes place using these learning tools.  I appreciate the idea of subscribing to “feeds” through RSS so that current content created on the web (that I am interested in) is sent to me oppose to me retrieving it by visiting each website.  Even more I like the aggregator tool which collects and organizes the content I subscribe to generated by the RSS feed.  I am still learning how to search and download podcast on my iPad.  I have successfully completed this task twice but merely through stumbling through it.  I want to get to the point where I can confidently subscribe to podcast and they are automatically downloaded onto my iPad or droid heiress whenever they are connected to my pc. 

The most critical knowledge of learning and teaching that I have come to understand is that there has been a shift in the way students learn today yet the teaching to accommodate this evolved style of learning is lagging behind.  I must continue to pursue a well rounded understanding of how to close the gap between these two points in order to be an effective teaching professional in the 21^st century.  As far as being teacher-centered, I’ve never really cared for the idea.  Our focus should be on the student and their abilities and responsibility to learn all they can in ways that are most effective.  

I can continue to expand my knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement by maintaining a networked personal space where I subscribe to websites and weblogs to stay abreast of the best practices associated with integrating technology into classroom learning.  I can also use what I have learned from this course in my own class and invite administration and colleagues into my room through actual visits to sit in on lessons with their students.  I can also invite them to visit my class weblog and wikispace or listen to a podcast created by my students communicating their learning.  I feel most importantly, by sharing with my students the valuable ways to use technology tools for learning that will increase their success in school and their abilities to aim and obtain competitive careers in their future. 

Within the next two years I plan to maintain both a weblog and wikispace in my classroom.  The learning that takes there will hopefully grow not just with me but hopefully with my students as well.  I hope to see them begin to take more ownership of their learning where they begin to value their own thinking and creativity to use them as tools whereby they take in more knowledge.  I also plan to continue increasing my expertise in understanding 21^st century skills to maximize my effectiveness in using instructional strategies that increase student learning.  I plan to do this by visiting websites such as Partnership for 21^st Century Skills to utilize all the resources they have available for preparing educators to be 21century educators.

Profiling Today's Students Pt II

Profiling Today's Students Pt II

Profiling the Students of Today

Profiling the Students of Today

Evaluating 21st-Century Skills (P21.org)

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills website contains an immense about of detailed information and like many informational websites, provides links to additional or related websites with expanded resources. Though it is a large amount of information to cipher through, I find this site to be very informing and put together with collaborative sophistication. I wanted to read and digest as much as possible and soon realized that it was way too much to attend to in one setting. I actually reviewed it in several and had to keep swimming back to the surface if I was to ever get my assignment done.

I was surprised at how much information was in place and the clear lines of precision that they had been organized and formulated. I appreciated the interconnection between the framework's student outcome and the skill support systems to hold things together. I liked that the standards were broken down similar to the way standards are broken down in the Sunshine State Standards with the expected outcomes in place.

As I browsed through a few of the states' profiles at Route 21, I was surprised that they were individualized and not just 1 set of standards and assessments adopted by all of the states. This would be the one place that I disagree with because in order to ensure that all students are being taught the same skills each state should adopt and assess the same standards. Then too, it may be that these are their objectives based on where they are now and they are choosing which standards they will address initially based on their current position in progressing through the initiative. I can understand their professional development, press and recognition, and other profile information being different due to each state possibly being at a different place of implementation.

The implications for my students and myself as a contemporary educator is that we have a lot to learn and a short amount of time to process and assimilate that content. There needs to be a major shift in how we spend our day learning. We need to engage in more relevant and real world experiences that stretch our ability to think critically, be problem solvers in a collaborative fashion, and to co construct knowledge while producing a creative output.

Blogging in My Classroom

My 4th grade, 95% ELL class write book letters to me each week. These letters must include how they used the reading strategy and the focus skill being addressed as well as 3 events or ideas in the book and their thinking on at least 2 of them. Sometimes this can be overwhelming to keep up with. They write their letters in their composition books which are relatively small but for me adding them to the other load of paper I take home has been somewhat discouraging. I do enjoy reading these letters and responding to my students who in turn must respond to any questions I may ask and then write another book letter (about a different book) which will be due in 7 days. I could create a blog site where students post their book letters and I could post a return letter as a comment to them. Initially, I wanted to give them the liberty of writing to their classmates but realized that this may pose a challenge for me to keep up with. Now that we have been doing this for several weeks, some students have still not turned in a book letter. Perhaps being able to write their letter on a blog might peek their interest. Also they could address their classmates and I would still be able to check their work and comment. Finally, I would not have to take home 5 composition books each night (many times I am not free to read them after school due to meeting, trainings, and the like). I could simply access my blog site to read away and respond to their letters. What a wonderful idea!!!
I wonder if my class wiki workspace can handle blogging since I already have the students registered with access id assigned by the workspace. I do remember having to determine if I wanted them to be able to simply read or read and write. I will have to check this out tonight. In the mornings for bellwork or during independent study time they could use the computers in the classroom being that I have 5 computers for each student in the group and post a book letter blog. I can’t wait to get started.

Blogging Questions

To My Walden Blog Group:
I have subscribed to all of your links posted here so far - Heather, Gina, Michelle, and Lori. I like the appealing backgrounds offered in Edublog and am considering changing over. I will be sure to let you know if I do. Do they have a RSS feeder? I am using Google reader and have not been able to comment on your blogs through it. Does anyone know if this should be possible? I will be blogging this question on my site as well to see if I can get a sooner response. Second question - by subscribing to your sites does that make me an automatic follower or is this a separate step? I am doing both just in case. Finally, are we able to tell if anyone has read our blog even if they don't comment?

Technology

I like the convenience many of today's technological tools have to offer. It is definitely a new way of thinking. It's difficult to keep up with all the changes and advantages. I feel often that it's an area that we are allowing to spin out of control yet at the same time it takes the control out of the hands of a few and puts it into the hands of many.