Jimenez+Portfolio

=**Technology Portfolio**=

**My Life as a Tech User**
Growing up my use of technology was very limited. Socio-economically my family could rarely afford to buy into new technologies, let alone sustain their continued use. For example, though I owned an original Playstation (2-3 years after it was released) we could not afford a memory card to save my gameplay. I did not get a computer until I nearly finished high school. Though they were accessible at school, this was in very limited and functional capacity. I got my first cell phone in college, but had a very limited phone plan and horrible reception.for the first two years, until a new cell tower was built near school.

Now I find myself surrounded with technology and a bit obsessed with the small ways that it allows me to communicate with others. Whether it be through social media, websites or using my Smart Phone. I went from being incredibly low-tech to going nowhere without my iPad. I am even updating this from my cell phone. And yet, I constantly miss how things were when I was younger. When there seers fewer options in life, I felt as though I got more done. I went to the library this month and borrowed 8 books; something I have not done in ages. People were staring at me the whole way home--something I do not think would have happened when I was 13. But then again, how were all those library books ready for me? I had ordered them to be placed on hold through my library app.

NETS for Teachers Goals and Assessments
Below are my goals, reflections and assessments of my NETS for Teachers objectives. As well, a Prezi of my work this semester can be found here. Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. a. Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness ||  || Over the course of the summer I had the chance to be introduced to/experiment with multiple web 2.0 tools. Some of these I liked immediately and felt that I needed to find a way to include them in my classroom. Others were less necessary or didn't seem like they would lend very much. Through the discussions in my group's Idea Shares, I started to consider multiple perspectives on evaluating whether or not to include a piece of technology in my classroom; I started to consider things like age appropriateness and how to raise the rigor of an assignment. I've learned a great deal and will certainly be using, Glogster and Prezi in the upcoming school year, but now am much more open to the idea of using technology in my classroom than I was in the beginning of the semester.
 * **1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity**
 * ** Reflection ** || ** Goal ** |||| ** Reflection on Progress ** ||
 * This first standard caught my attention in particular because it reminds me of other standards where teachers effectiveness is measured on how engaged students are in their learning. This is something that I have always found difficult, as I can remember what drove me as a student, but I am somewhat atypical when I consider my peers from my adolescent years. Often, my reflections on how my own experience can inform my instruction does not always yield the results I desire. However, something I have found is students readiness and willingness to use almost any computer program, device, etc. that I set in front of them. As an English teacher, I want to help my students find ways to engage with texts both inside and outside of the classroom. Because collaborative learning is understood to be one of the best models, then the natural aide to collaboration is technology that promotes discussion. || Experiment with the use of multiple Web 2.0 tools (Museum Box, Glogster, etc.) to assist my students in creating meaning/reflecting on our work together |||| As we have been doing our Idea Shares (and I have been preparing for my own) I have had the chance to expose myself to more web 2.0 tools. Some of them (i.e., Glogster, Museum Box) I can see an immediate application for in my classroom. Others (i.e., Wolfram Alpha) I see limited usefulness from, whether from the information that can be gleaned, my limited creativity or the fact that to get all the features you must pay for the service. ||
 * **End of Semester Reflection**

A || Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessment incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS·S. a. Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity ||  || Constructing this assignment was difficult in terms of trying to meet what I wanted students to be tested in and to demonstrate understanding of. In English its crucial that students know who the writers of their books are. Not only are they expected to name an author on the Regents exam, but understanding how an author's surroundings may have influenced the writer can be an additional pathway to understanding the text. So I decided that a great way to combine this need with web 2.0 engagement would be to have my students create an Author Glog. Students will compose an author study and then use their research to create a Glog. Here are the and an example.
 * Proposed Grade**
 * **2. Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments**
 * ** Reflection ** || ** Goal ** |||| ** Reflection on Progress ** ||
 * This past year I did not use technology very effectively in my classroom. Though I as an instructor used technology regularly, I did not create the same opportunity for my students. Though there are perceived limitations in incorporating digital tools, I do think that it is essential to help my students be college and career ready. In that spirit, creating moments for students to use Web 2.0 tools for their assessments is an essential part of my planning and implementation. || Create an assignment where students’ pursuit of knowledge and assessment requires the use of Web 2.0 tools to demonstrate understanding. |||| I believe for this I have settled on the idea of having students create a Glogster poster board as an Author Study for one of the texts in the upcoming school year. The difficulty is just in deciding how the grading criteria for students and how to make sure that I would create equal opportunities of access for all students. ||
 * **End of Semester Reflection**

A || Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. a. Demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations ||  || This was by far the most difficult objective for me. I chose to use Prezi as a way to create additional means of engagement for my students. While I have always been impressed by the visual aspects of Prezi, I never knew what the interface of the website was like. I found myself getting repeatedly frustrated while using the website--there is much to be said about be comfortable with what you use. Once I started to get more comfortable with the site I was not as frustrated, but I was still faced with needing to decide what to include and not include in the presentation--a problem I have not had to consider as often with PowerPoint. In reflection, I think that until I become more adept at using Prezi, I would still use PowerPoint. It would be simply too time consuming to try and make a Prezi for everyday. But, I will also try to make sure I work harder to break the slide-by-slide format of PowerPoint--try to bring a little more variety into my classroom. Here is the Prezi I created.
 * Proposed Grade**
 * **3. Model Digital Age Work and Learning**
 * ** Reflection ** || ** Goal ** |||| ** Reflection on Progress ** ||
 * For the most part I’ve been reliant on PowerPoint to convey my information to students (not including notes and worksheets designed in Microsoft Word). This can create a rather flat experience for both myself and my students. It’s important, especially now that it is the summer and there is more time to prepare, that I begin to utilize new forms of exhibiting my knowledge and what I want my students to grasp/learn. This may be done by utilizing new tools such as Prezi, creating a podcast, etc. || Adapt a previous PowerPoint to include additional means of conveying information to students |||| This one has been a bit more complicated to actualize. I chose to use Prezi for this, but find the interface a bit frustrating at times. It isn’t quite as intuitive to use as I expected. It is also a bit difficult as I feel as though I could imbed so much information that it could easily become an overload of information that I could not possibly get through in one lesson. I’m trying to decide if this merely means that I need more editing, or that I should choose a different way to incorporate information with something I am already comfortable with. For instance, being more aware of including meaningful graphics/video and audio in a PowerPoint presentation. ||
 * **End of Semester Reflection**

A- || Teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices. a. Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources ||  || For this objective I wanted to create a website that I would be able to start using this fall with my classes. Considering what my students would have the most questions about, and reflecting on what I wish I had the most this past school year, I created the categories and section of this website: Mr. Jimenez' Virtual Classroom. I decided to use Weebly because it seemed the easiest to navigate and met my needs of being both web 1.0 and 2.0 together. I was able to incorporate a blog simply my dragging in a widget. However, as I am teaching a completely new set of texts this year, I do not have nearly as many items to fill the website with just yet. However, I did begin to mark articles that I would like have me and my students reflect on in the class blog. This way I will be able to advocate, mode and teach through a conversation with my students.
 * Proposed Grade**
 * **4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility**
 * ** Reflection ** || ** Goal ** |||| ** Reflection on Progress ** ||
 * Though I teach at a school that promotes global citizenship, this has been lacking a bit in my instruction. An excellent way to do this is to take my interest for media, publishing and copyright (all very applicable to the study of English) and create opportunities for discussion with, and between, my students on these topics. || Create and maintain a website/blog for my classroom for the upcoming year that includes responses to current publishing debates, issues, etc. |||| I have gotten well underway in creating the website I wanted. But have been having some trouble finding an easy source for the copyright/publishing content I would have liked to include. I am using Weebly to create the class site and blog as it conveniently allows me to imbed a blog within the site. Perhaps the blog focus should shift to be both about the course but literature and media at large? ||
 * **End of Semester Reflection**

A- || Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources. a. Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning ||  || [] |||| I have been using Twitter fairly often. I find that you have to wade through a lot of things that may not interest you or be directly applicable. I enjoy the retweet option, but don’t have much of a following so it feels a bit hollow. It’s easier to get content to post on these feeds, however, than on the communities I have joined where teachers often just speak about their own experiences and not necessarily about resources that can be used. || This objective also served as my Personal Use Project. Here I worked to engage with both a new web 2.0 tool and the online communities around teaching and English that exist. While not always as fulfilling as I would have liked (because of the nature of the service), I do feel that I gained a lot of insight into how to use Twitter and what some of its pros and cons are. Considering the chancellor's new regulations on social media, I am not certain how I would utilize it in my classroom. Personally, I may continue to use it but may spend more time just reading other's posts as I don't have much of a following to share anything with.
 * Proposed Grade**
 * **5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership**
 * ** Reflection ** || ** Goal ** |||| ** Reflection on Progress ** ||
 * Though I recently have been looking into several different professional organizations and communities I have not taken an active role in my membership and pursuit. Though I have gained a bit from these organizations, I have not contributed as much as I should, or really gained everything that I could. || Personal Use Project: Become a member of an online learning community for educators of English (preferably for adolescent ages) and monitor my consumption/contribution. Learning and observations from these communities will be made through a Twitter account:
 * **End of Semester Reflection**

For further details on my Personal Use Project, please see the next section of this portfolio.

A ||
 * Proposed Grade**

Personal Use Project
For my personal use project, I decided to experiment with using Twitter. Though I have often heard of it and visited the Twitter accounts of others, I've never made much use of it. In addition, I had heard of teachers that were starting to use Twitter to engage with students outside of the classroom.

While my reflections of using Twitter can be found in my Personal Use Project (attached below) here are three things I have come to believe about Twitter:
 * 1. It is best used when you have a community to engage with.** I found that I enjoyed using the service most when I was reading the post of someone I knew; responding to someone's information; or had someone posting content that was directly relating with me. Without having this back and forth, using Twitter can feel a bit like sending missives into the void.


 * 2. One of its strongest features is the ability to re-tweet.** Re-tweeting is a fantastic feature! It instantly allows you to share with others something that you found that was interesting and cite the source that it came from. The only set back to this is that the 140 characters can force you to edit the original message.


 * 3. Sometimes you need to dig to get the gold you're looking for.** People (and organizations) can post a lot of things that don't feel relevant or pertinent to your life. However, it's worth it to stick around as you may just find exactly what you're looking for or what you didn't even know you needed.



Statement on Digital Literacy
Below is my statement on digital literacy as I have directed it to my colleagues.

Dear Colleagues,

In learning how to plan a lesson, educators are often told to look toward the future. We ask ourselves: //Where do I want my students to be in 10 months? What skills must they be able to utilize? What assessment will be used to measure my students’ mastery?// Now expand that scope to allow a bit more time to elapse. //How am I preparing my students for more advanced classes? For higher education? For their jobs?// It may be difficult to clearly envision the last one; how can we know what jobs our students will have? But the reality is that we are indeed preparing our students for the jobs they will one day hold. But how are we to prepare them for something we cannot possibly know in advance? By updating our instruction to include the technologies and skills our students will need to be productive and successful members of 21st Century society.

According to Did You Know 3.0, a viral video series about globalization in the digital age, educators Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod state “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…using technologies that haven’t been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. ” That’s a great deal of uncertainty for educators to face. However, we must approach this if we simply acknowledge and address: (1) there are a new “set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (Jenkins 4)  ; (2) we as educators must also become adept at utilizing the technologies we ask our students to use.

For my first observation, the reality is that the entire time our students have been in this world there have been computers. And the evolution of computers, and their offspring, has not ceased during that time. In his white paper on media education in the 21st century, researcher Henry Jenkins explains that many of today’s teenagers are engaged in a participatory culture: “a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.” (3) This is possible because of the wealth of access created by the advancement of technology and development of web 2.0. If we acknowledge that this is the world our students are in, then we must also acknowledge that in order to teach these skills to our students, we need to master them ourselves. As secondary education teachers, would we imagine teaching chemistry without having mastered the material to a certain degree? Then how can we teach the media technology skills our students need if we have not exposed ourselves to them?

Before I leave you to reflect on my reflections, I’d like to turn back to a man whose thoughts on education I’m always held in high esteem. In an article on education, published in the Morehouse student newspaper, __The Maroon Tiger__, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that “the broad education will […] transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social learning .” While this may have been the goal of previous generations, the ability to do this was incredibly difficult. Even with a life dedicated to studying, to attain this level of knowledge would still not be easy. And despite the amount of technological advances we have achieved since Dr. King’s day, to attain such a feat would still not be guaranteed. Our students can only achieve this level of understanding and ability with the guidance, critical thinking, purpose and social interaction provided by their teachers.

 Fisch, Karl. McLeod, Scott. “Did you know 3.0 (Official Video Edition)” March 2, 2010. []  Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century, MacArthur Foundation  King, Martin L. “The purpose of education” //Maroon Tiger//. January-February 1947.

Copyright Clarity
For my Copyright Clarity project I created a Glog to showcase key points of copyright law for my students. The Glog can be found here: Copyright Clarity.

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This question is as complicated to answer for me as it would be for me to decide for my students. There is no one barrel in which I could be easily categorized. I am both a digital native and a digital immigrant. But most importantly I am willing to consider what technological tools are out there to be used and see how I would benefit from them. I believe that while technology can be an asset, it is a tool and should not be assumed to be the answer to all things. I am a technology user for what is convenient and is made easier by using technology, not just using technology for its own sake. =====

How can technology improve teaching and learning?
 Technology provides additional means of creating meaning for students and engaging with content. Technology allows a teacher to create multiple gatekeepers of information that can be accessed at almost any time, which allows for our students to become stronger assessors of their learning, and capable of taking a more active role. This also allows for teachers to reasonably raise their expectations of their students, as they will be able to provide means of access and participation for students that perhaps were unavailable previously.

What digital skills must students develop to succeed in school and beyond?
Students need to become adept problem solvers. With technology comes a lot of learning curves, and it is important for our students that we give them the tenacity and wherewithal to see technology through its ups and downs. In addition, students must develop an understanding of attributing work to its original owners (giving credit where credit is due) as it is a line easily blurred and crossed in the digital age. If students can develop these two traits, they have a much better chance of being successful.

1. Create and seek out professional development opportunities for me and my colleagues to learn more on how to implement web 2.0 tools in our classrooms 2. Become a more active member in the literary community through web 2.0 tools (i.e., Twitter and blogs) 3. Continue to experiment and seek out new web 2.0 tools as they are developed
 * Future Objectives: **

A-
 * Overall Grade: **