Reflections on Educational Technology

This week, I chose to approach the assignment from the perspective of a parent rather than a teacher because that is my reality. I have three kids at home with me, a Junior in high school, a first graders, and a brand new 4 year old (she had her 4th birthday a couple weeks ago, in quarantine) and I am still working on getting my teaching credential and not yet teaching, so I am in the same boat as many other parents across the country trying to navigate online instruction for their kids and keep them busy and happy while also not leaving the house or having any adult interaction. In theory, staying home ALL THE TIME sounded great, but it's been a lot. I chose to look into Wide Open School, particularly their daily schedule for Pre-K . I wanted some ideas about educational activities and games for my 4 year old, particularly ones that would keep her busy while I did math or social studies with my first grader or Chemistry with my 10th grader. We started on Tuesday and the videos a...

I am not currently a classroom teacher, so all of my ideas on connecting to students is hypothetical at this point, but the assignment actually did inspire me in my real life. I am one of two board members for my daughter's school's PTO and so we also run the Facebook page and I decided to reach out to parents on there to send me video clips that I could put together into a longer video thanking our teachers, telling them we miss them, and to show them that students are still learning and growing at home. I am planning on finishing it in time for National Teacher's Day, so I will let you all know how that turns out. Also, if anyone knows of a good video creation tool that will allow me to put together clips and do voiceovers, I am taking recommendations because I have not done anything like this. I am just assuming I will figure it out as I go. Back to my hypothetical classroom, to connect to students, I would probably try to do it with humor. My focus would be to encou...

Last week, I created and reviewed the learning tool Kahoot! I was a big fan of the program. I felt that it was an excellent tool for engaging students, especially when used as a review tool. After the assignment time closed, I received an email with the scores from the students that took the quiz. To see more in-depth information (who got each individual question correct, for instance), I would have to purchase the pro or premium account. If I decided to use this program in class, I would most likely purchase the pro account for $3/month. I think it would be worth it for the feedback aspect. Before I decide on a certain tool though, I always like to investigate what else is out there. The two other tools that I found the most promising was quizizz (this is a tool that is used by a middle school science teacher that I follow on social media) and Nearpod. I will start with Nearpod. It does not align as closely with Kahoot! It is not a quiz tool, it is designed to be a full lesson pre...

I am not a teacher... yet! So, coming to this assignment as someone from the outside, I have seen so many teachers step up to the challenge and it is incredible! My cousin is a teacher and, while she's on maternity leave currently, she got in her car and formed a parade with the other teachers from her school and they drove through the neighborhoods where their students live so those kids knew they were still important, even if the schools are closed. I follow some teachers on Instagram and one, Ms. Bensko at  maniacsinthemiddle , is still dressing up in crazy outfits that she wears to begin units and recording video messages to students to try to keep life normal for students. In the podcast I listened to for last week, teachers from that district (including the interviewee) were going in district vehicles driven by bus drivers along their school routes and hand delivering school work and food to students. My 1st graders' teacher, Mr. Seiders, has sent out messages on C...

I got a bit of a head start on the assignment this week and then had an issue with my phone, which is also my only internet, so then I got behind. Such is life. My head start came from the fact that 1) this is not the first Google classroom that I have had to create and 2) I had already made this specific one to share the assignment from last week (PlayPosit) because Google classroom is required for assigning the bulb (the video that you create with embedded classroom) which was a major downside of using that resource (unless your teaching and assignments are all already on Google classroom, then it's no difference). To me, Google classrooms is incredibly user friendly to set up a very basic classroom and make assignments. I just googled "Google classroom" and clicked on it and then clicked on the plus sign in the upper right corner and selected create class. I then named it "Life Science" because that was the subject I decided to focus on for this practice ...

I chose to use PlayPosit to create a formative assessment that goes along with a video which, hypothetically, would give me feedback to see if students were understanding the big information and ideas from an assigned video.  I chose this format because I tend to find videos when I need to review something or learn a microtopic quickly. My favorites are Crash Course and the Amoeba Sisters.  Building the video was very easy and there was a great number of examples of previously done "bulbs" (videos with playposit questions added) so it was easy to see how it can be used. At the end of creating the video, I did find that actually assigning the video was less user friendly. I ended up creating a Google classroom to attempt to assign the video through there. It took multiple attempts and reading through their help guide a few times to even get to the point of assigning the video.  Writing this before anyone has taken the assignment, though, does not give me much to wo...