Professional Growth

Throughout my Master's coursework I have learned a ton about how to integrate technology into my daily lessons.  I used to think that I would need to plan out every detail possible in order to teach a lesson with technology, but I have learned that I can utilize the tools I already have to engage my students.

My teacher friend at my school and I are beginning work on designing our school's very first video production class.  The class will consist of many of the topics taught through the School of Education at APU and will incorporate shooting, editing and presenting videos.  Before entering the Masters program, I would have never thought I would teaching anything involving video.  I have always enjoyed editing as a hobby, but I never thought that I would be good enough to teach how to edit until I took my EDUC 514 class.

Browsing through YouTube has shown me that good teacher made videos are far and few between and some of the small things separating good teacher videos and bad teacher videos are lighting, edits, and content.  I look forward to starting my own video channel soon and beginning to make videos based on science content standards that I will be using yearly.

Another ambition of mine that was spurred through the School of Education is to start my own class website so that I can supplement my teaching with videos that reinforce concepts and encourage deeper investigation.

I've already begun to use video in my classroom to fuel imagination and the conversations that come about through watching those videos almost always leads to standards being taught.  However, a realization that I have come to is that I have always thought of teaching standards in a linear manner, but it doesn't always have to be that way.

For example, our curriculum tells us to teach tectonic plates first, then earthquakes, then damages to landscape.  Instead of teaching the standards in that order, I showed my students a video about slinkies that lead to a discussion and demonstration about P Waves and S Waves, which sparked a desire of two of my students to research historical earthquakes, which sparked another conversation about damages made to the landscape.  I let the students dictate the course of the conversation while I monitored the pace and led the discussion.  My class scored the highest they have on a quiz all year long.

I have learned to make small steps forward in using technology in my class because if I don't make small progressions, then I am bound to stand still and become stale.  Even making one small change if how I teach ever year will keep me from becoming stagnant and boring.  I think the most important piece of information I have learned this year is to stay connected because when you are trying to be innovative, you are going to need support from others.  One of the best ways to get that support is through other innovators...and Twitter is packed with them.

Ed Camp LA - Unconference

To be honest, I was skeptical about unconferences in general because I had been to plenty of professional development meetings and conferences in the past and this sounded a lot like those same gatherings.  Instead of going I thought I would play it safe and just plug into Twitter and see what was going on for a few minutes.  Man, I missed out on a great day.

In one of my previous posts, I ranted about how I never really liked Twitter so even attending this unconference via Twitter seemed like a waste of time at first.  I logged on an typed in the hashtag #edcampla at the time it was supposed to start and only saw a few Tweets.  I was not impressed.  So I logged off and then came back on a couple hours later to see that same hashtag blowing up with apps, websites, ideas, quotes, videos and other teachers I could follow.  I started poking around a little bit and started to get interested.  I even mustered up to retweet my first tweet!  And wouldn't you know it, they turned around and started following me.

I didn't realize how easy Twitter would be and how quickly teachers and other educational professionals would listen to me and begin following me.  I felt like I didn't really have much to contribute yet, so I just retweeted a bunch of tweets and asked a question or two.  After that day I came away with at least two new ideas to use in the classroom and 5-6 new followers.

Since then, I have been checking my Twitter feed daily and to my surprise the people I'm following have a lot of great ideas, websites, and apps to share.  It's basically free and exciting professional development on my schedule.  My mentality towards unconferences and Twitter has definitely changed for the better and I quickly saw how power Twitter can be when used in the right way.

When a large group of people with a similar passion are connected, amazing things can happen, and that is what Twitter is beginning to do for me.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

I started a Twitter account very early on.  I remember joining the upstart website sometime in 2007-2008 because I heard a lot of celebrities were doing it and I wanted to be in the in crowd and show all my friends how cool I was.  Unfortunately it didn't work out that way.  I told all my friends about the idea behind it (it was just like Facebook, except you can only update your status) and each time I would get the same response, "Why would I want to do that when I have Facebook?".  I slowly got more and more deflated as I tweeted daily about everything I was doing, yet only having 10 followers (3 of which were my family).  Needless to say I jumped ship because there was no point to it at that time.  Facebook had all my friends and was a lot more fun to be on too.

Fast forward to 2012 where Twitter seems to be everywhere.  News anchors talk about it, TV shows have accounts, the President himself asked Americans to tweet our opinions to Congress today.  Twitter has apparently made a HUGE comeback and I wasn't a part of it.  When I started this class and we started talking about Twitter and I didn't know what to make of it because all I know about Twitter is the annoying people on Facebook who can't seem to write an update without using hashtags (hint: they don't work on Facebook).

However, once I saw the new search functionality of the hashtags and how easy it is to follow people who are interested in the same things as you, it made me take a second look at it.  No longer were there a handful of noobs on the site mixed with attention starved celebriteis.  Now when I go on, I see professionals sharing information, companies sharing deals, educators helping educators and it is really nice.  I feel like I am using a more personalized search engine and I'm not bombarded with a lot of things that I don't need or want. 

When you type "eggs" into Google, you'll get 1.5 billion hits from every website that has ever mentioned "eggs".  On Twitter, I've noticed that you don't get just raw data, you actually get information that someone else had already researched and packaged into a short little blurb that you can scroll past if you don't have time to read it.  The functionality of Twitter has dramatically increased over the past 4 years and while I am still wary about jumping completely back in, my first experience this year has been a positive one and I am looking forward to using it more.

iPads in the Classroom

Using iPads in the classroom has been a point of contention in the education for a long time.  Many people would like to integrate the device into their lessons, while others see it as just a toy and/or a distraction.  There are others who would love to have iPads used in their classroom, but run into problems like student device/platform fragmentation (ie Android, Windows 8, Android).  Personally I fall into the latter group of teachers and highly desire to use iPads in my classroom but I have trouble doing so because I run into snags when trying to integrate the device into each of my 7 classes.

This article outlines many of the frequently asked questions when the discussion of iPads in the classroom, comes up.  One of the main arguments against using them in the classroom is that many teachers see iPads as a distracting gaming device.  The other side of the argument is that teachers must be on top of their students at all times, and even more so when an iPad is being used.  If your students are using iPads for playing games, checking Facebook, or sending email in class, you are managing your classroom incorrectly.  There are plenty of ways to restrict access to certain features, and even more so, setting up guidelines, procedures, and consequences before hand will make your lesson run a lot smoother.

Another issue that is debated is whether or not an iPad would help students learn, or detract from their learning.  Ultimately, this comes down to how the iPad is being used.  If a teacher was to stand up in class and ask his or her students to browse YouTube for a video the they think is interesting, the "lesson" would quickly spiral into cat videos and One Direction music videos.  However, a more structured lesson that only allowed students to use iPads for certain tasks and at certain times would be much more efficient.  For example, a teacher may teach a lesson about DNA and how it replicates and then ask students to work in pairs to create a short video using their iPads about how a strand of DNA is paired and made into proteins.  This provides the students with direction and allows for creativity.

There are other factors that go into deciding if iPads should be utilized in the classroom such as: cost, who pays for it, book replacement, mandatory vs optional, etc.  Each one of these questions and issues must be examined thoroughly before a healthy iOS program is rolled out at any school.  If any of these issues are ignored or "tabled", the program will cause frustration for teachers, while providing students with countless hours of class time to fill their minds with Cut the Rope.

Link to article