Lesson 1

1.    What did you learn this week that you will use immediately in your classroom?

          This week was a great intro for the class. It got the wheels turning and already has me wanting to implement many things into my classroom. I think out of everything I learned, there are three things I will implement in this upcoming school year; a blog and or Wiki, classroom website and e-books.

      I can’t wait to implement a blog or Wiki for my reading group. We will be reading several novels this year and I love the idea of having discussion questions on a blog and having the students respond via comments. Mr. Langhorst’s Season Book Blog was a great example and it seemed very successful. I think the Wiki will work really well in our study of Kentucky for Social Studies. Students will be able to link ideas and continue a community of learning.

     The second thing I want to implement is a student run website. I have had a website the previous two years but it became very overwhelming to keep up with. I am hoping that if it is student run throughout the year it will eliminate the extra work for me and give them the technology exposure and experience.

     The third item I want to use immediately are the e-books. We have a big Accelerated Reading program and we have a range of readers. Having the resource for them to listen to a variety of books online is a great resource for the classroom that will allow them to succeed in their reading to reach their goals.

2.    What steps will you take to implement this in your classroom?

I think the e-books will be an easy implementation. I will introduce a resource we can use early in the year. Then after a mini lesson on how to find a book and use the resource, students will be able to use it on their own time for their own reading needs.

The reading blog and Wiki will require more prep time. I plan to use the reading blog early in the year. I will go over rules and expectations before jumping on the computers. I will then post questions about their first few days back to get them use to responding using a comment. After some exposure to the blog I am hoping it will be a easy transition when we use it for reading discussions.

The Wiki used in Social Studies will require some trial and error. Students will be put into groups and they will be in charge of researching a particular section to post on the Wiki. I will give them some general instructions on how to use the Wiki in the beginning and from there I will help and guide as needed.

I am really excited about the classroom website. I will introduce this within the first week of school. I will explain the expectations, rules and “jobs.” I will assign a job for so many students and rotate them throughout the year. Jobs will range from posting spelling words, to updating a blog on what they learned that day, to school wide news. It will give the students responsibility, technology exposure, and will allow them to communicate with parents about their learning.

3.    What challenge(s) will you face when using this in your classroom?

Challenges will vary throughout the year. There always seems to be some unexpected glitch along the way. I believe the two big challenges that we will face will be time and resources. As of the past two school years we have had 1-2 scheduled lab times a week, one in reading and one during our Social Studies/Science time. With the strict schedule it doesn’t allow me to give computer access to all my students at all times. With the is a lack of resource time, not having access to the computers for all students will limit what we can do and the amount we can do in a given amount of time.

Time is always an issue. I fear that having students update the website or discussing a book via the Internet will not be doable in a school day. With all the other demands of the day, implementing something new in addition to everything thing else could be an issue.

4.    What will you do to overcome the challenge(s)?

I think the best way to overcome the lack of computer lab time will be to have a structured plan and schedule so students can accomplish what needs to be done in the appropriate given time. We recently received 5 iPads for each classroom, so I am hoping this will help in gaining access to the technology when we need to it for class.

In regards to time an updating the website or communicating in the book discussion, I will most likely need a weekly schedule for both. Daily activities might not be doable so having a weekly due date for items should give students the time to complete their assignments.

A Vision of Today's Students
This video was very interesting because it gave insight to today's students. I found this to be very true when I was in college. Everyone was on a computer doing several things at once, while in class listening to the lecture. It all depended on the class whether or not you could get away with it and do well in the class. It is interesting how the world is changing with technology, especially with families. It is interesting to see a family out to dinner and no one speaks to one another. Everyone has their own agenda and is in their own world, it is very sad to see this because I did not grow up like this and I am thankful for that.

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EDOL 53301 – Lesson 1

Technology Explorations #1-3
Student Name: Samantha Norman                                     

Date: 7/1/13

#1: Wiki - http://pbworks.com/education

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  I am unfamiliar with Wiki’s until I explored these first few lessons. PBWorks is a piece of software developed for many business communities, education being one of them. I have created a free account with PBWorks to explore what they have to offer. It seems that they have a very detailed layout to the website that allows teachers to do many things with their classroom Wikis. To become more familiar with this site I visited Mr. Boyer’s 5th grade PBWorks site (http://mrboyersclass.pbworks.com/w/page/19233611/FrontPage). Linked to his site he has a twitter account where students give daily updates about what they are learning. Each one of his students has their own blog in addition to a classroom blog for different activities, such as book discussions. The site contains bios for each student and also displays their work and projects, which I found to be really cool! In addition to Mr. Boyer, I also visited Mrs. Lambert’s PBWorks site (http://grade3responds.pbworks.com/w/page/14225497/ FrontPage). Her site is very simple and seems to only contain electronic student portfolios, which is also a great idea. Viewing their sites helped me think about ways I could set up my own site and use it in the classroom.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  This resource would be a great classroom website. It includes areas for links to other sites, it has the ability for students to collaborate with each other and communicate with outside sources. This might be a resource I use for my reading groups to discuss their novels. With the layout of the site I could make blogs within the site for each book and be able to keep them separate, instead of one continuous blog throughout the year. We could express our thoughts individually using personal blogs or communicate in a group setting. It allows for a lot of possibilities in the classroom. I think that I will use a Wiki for my reading discussions or for research projects we do in Science and Social Studies.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? I would recommend this site to educators who are comfortable with technology. I feel that the site could be overwhelming for teachers who are new to technology implementation. It does have a FREE option to set up a site and use it in your classroom, which is always great. I think exploring it and looking at other examples is a must to have a better grasp on what it could be used for. I am interested in seeing if there are other sites available that are less overwhelming and easier to use. Being a 4th grade teacher I would prefer a site for my students that had less, only because I believe it would be too much for them to handle. I think once they became familiar with a Wiki, website and blog they would be able to use this site with more ease.

#2: E-Books – www.tumblebooks.com/Gwinnett County Georgia Public Library

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Being a fairly new teacher I came into a classroom that had boxes of stuff that had been left behind by previous teachers. A few boxes included giant headsets and tapes for audio books. These boxes took up a lot of space and not to mention the older technology of a cassette tape, which is a little outdated. So, when exploring this site it was great to find that I could have everything in those boxes located on the internet. This site had a few things to offer, which included; ·      e-books – books meant to be read online that do not include audio ·      read alongs – online books that include both the text and the audio ·      videos – a video segment that has been created using picture images, with audio explaining a topic, such as ecosystems. ·      audio books – books online that have audio but no text Some of the books even included lesson plans and there was an entire COMMON CORE portal, a list of books and the standards they were linked too, a teachers dream! What was also nice about this site is that is broken up into age groups; lower elementary, intermediate, high school students, etc. There are other similar sites out there that offer some of these things. The Gwinnett County Public Library also had a great library for e-books and audio books for students.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting?  I love this resource because it allows students to read an assortment of books even if they might be struggling readers. The audio gives a great example of what a fluent reader should sound like and the variety of texts give students a wide range of reading material. This would be great to use if you were reading a book class wide and some students needed a little more guidance. You could have the struggling readers listen to the text and follow along, while others are silent reading. I think it would also be great for students to record themselves reading aloud and then listen to the audio, and compare themselves to the recorded audio text. This would allow them to evaluate their own reading skills and find ways to improve.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? I would recommend this site to other teachers because it has a lot of books for students of all ages and has extra items like lesson plans and relation to the common core. One downside to this site is the popularity of the books. They aren’t the most popular books of today, which restricts things a little. I feel that teachers would need to enter the site and find a book to plan around, instead of planning for a specific book and going to look for it on the site, because it might not be there. I did find that more of the popular books were on the Gwinnett County Library site. I believe you would have to contact them and get a library card to use the materials, but searching for them and exploring the site is free.

#3: Pod Casts/The Education Pod Cast Network – www.epnweb.org/Mr. Langhorst’s Classroom Website – www.liberty.k12.mo.us/~elanghorst/

1.	Describe what you learned from exploring this resource.  I was not able to access The Education Pod Cast Network website. However, I found an abstract about the site saying that it is collection of educational podcasts. I did get to explore Mr. Langhorst’s website and was blown away. He has an amazing website full of information and great school projects. On his website is a link to his Guerrilla Season Book Blog and it was an eye opener. He had great discussion questions for the students, which were all answered using a blog. The author of the book was apart of the project, which I found to be very neat. Having that interaction with the students must have been very valuable. It is a great resource to use if wanting to plan your own book discussion blog. I got a ton of ideas by looking at one link from his site. In addition to the book blog he had many more helpful links. Student resource page, parent page, teacher resource page, and weekly glimpses of what they were doing in the classroom. He even had a space for student podcasts. I was amazed and it is a great place to brainstorm off of his great ideas.
2.	How could you use this resource in a school setting? The podcast database would be a great place for student to get resources for a project. I think the best way to implement a podcast for my 4th graders would be to have them speak about a topic they researched and then link it to a Wiki. This involves so many common core standards and it would be great for the students! I can see it being used as assessment tool rather than a teaching tool at this level. In the older grades it would be great for students to listen to a podcast to gain information to use as a resource. They could listen to a podcast created by the teacher if they missed a class to catch up and they too, could use it to create their own podcasts. A very neat tool to incorporate in the classroom. Mr. Langhorst’s site gave me so many ideas for my classroom. Student run websites, book discussion blogs, displaying student work via the internet, and more. I discussed some these things earlier in the blog.
3.	Would you recommend this resource to other educators? I would recommend the podcast database for teachers to explore and use in their teaching. I think it would be more appropriate for older grades since it is just audio without visuals. I do think creating podcasts would be great for any grade level. It would tie in a wide range of standards and allow a unique way for students to share what they learned. I definitely recommend Mr. Langhorst’s site (www.liberty.k12.mo.us/ ~elanghorst/) It gave me so many ideas for my classroom. He has some great ideas and his implantation of technology is terrific. I think it give a different experience to everyone who looks at it, but some great ideas will stem from it.