Chishty_Sabine_SU2014

 I've always been a big technology user since I was very young - my family has always had a computer, and my parents both worked tirelessly when I was a kid, allowing me endless time to play with and on the family computer and learn how to use it well. I was also fortunate enough to attend a school where computer literacy was a high priority. Throughout grade school, we practiced typing non-stop until each of us became incredibly fast, and every year after, we received regular instruction on a wide range of skills, leaving us highly proficient in Microsoft and Adobe programs among others. Due to this extensive training, I found new technological advances easy to use (I've become our school's Excel guru, which often results in work I don't necessarily want added to my pile). While I love the occasional vacation from being so plugged-in, technology definitely plays a huge role in my daily life, from reading the news on my phone in the morning (while listening to music on it), relying on SmartBoards, PowerPoints, and Google Docs in my classroom, instruction, and communication, and Skyping with my family and friends. I'm a big believer in the capacity of technology to take student learning much farther in terms of creativity and differentiation.

A moment in my life that could have only happened thanks to technology was when Jessica Lau, a girl whose family had hosted me in Guadalajara, Mexico, when I was twelve years old, contacted me many years later to tell me she and her family would be briefly passing through Chicago. This was six years later, after I had graduated from high school and happened to be home for the holidays, and I was shocked, having neither seen nor spoken to Jessica since those two weeks so many years before. Nonetheless, I responded to her (she had found me via Facebook, unsurprisingly) and two days later, her family came to my house for a long, home-cooked holiday meal. The dinner was initially, unstoppably, awkward (not helped my Jessica's mother and brothers' weak English and my being the only member of my family who speaks Spanish), but soon enough everyone was laughing, joking, and enjoying one another's company. I haven't seen Jessica since, although Facebook tells me she lives in Florence, but that night was a satisfying, strange international dinner and reunion that was made possible, in my mind, by technology. Maybe Jessica would have worked to find me even without the digital tools that made it so easy, but somehow I doubt it.

__Goals for the Semester: __ //1. Facilitate and inspire student learning & creativity // Thinking on performance indicator b, I would love to construct a digital space (blog, Drive/dropbox assignment, etc.) in which students are given a real-world problem and asked to use their reading and opinions to respond to a scenario and one another. We are teaching Persepolis come September, so I am considering building out an interactive text that students can contribute to on our class blog.

//2. Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments // For this standard, I would like to create tools for guiding creative writing/brainstorming (our first unit includes producing a multimedia narrative) that foster creativity.

//3. Model digital age work and learning // One of my summer planning priorities is ensuring we have a streamlined, clear website for the fall that will include student work and assignments so both students and families are easily able to access information regarding the course. My goal for this standard will be completing this to build a site that is student-friendly and can eventually be easily managed by my teaching assistants.

//4. Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility // During the fall, students will be engaging with lessons digitally and at their own pace each Thursday while rotating out of conferences with their teaching assistants. In preparing these lessons, I want to create resources for each student that are differentiated and offer several options. This may seem like directions at different reading levels and/or readings and media options calibrated to student reading levels and differentiated performance tasks (likely in Dropbox).

//5. Engage in professional growth and leadership // Reflection most stands out to me in this standard, and I think it might be most valuable for me to reflect on the process of engaging with/producing digital tools and content in working towards my other goals in order to better think through how to best continue using new technologies throughout the school year.

You can see my work around achieving these goals at my final portfolio here.